Good evening. We'd like to call the Durham City Council meeting to order at 7 p.m. Monday August the 17th and certainly want to welcome all of you that are here with us this evening. If we could just take a moment for silent meditation, please. Thank you. We'll ask Councilor Brown if he would lead us in the pledge. Madam Clerk, would you call the roll please? Mayor Bell. Present. Mayor Pro Tim Cole McFadden. Present. Councilmember Brown. Here. Councilmember Cattady. Here. Councilmember Davis. Here. Councilmember Moffitt. Here. And Councilmember Schulman. Here. All right. Thank you. Are there any announcements by members of the council? If not, we are entertaining the prior times by the city manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, everyone. This evening I have one priority item, which is agenda item number 24. It is a supplemental item and it is a resolution and titled a resolution in opposition of redistribution of local sales tax. Thank you. You've heard the city managers prior to item entertaining the motion. We're probably moving second. Madam Clerk, we open the vote. You close the vote. It passes. Seven is zero. Thank you. Thank you, City Attorney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. No priority items. Likewise, recognized City Clerk. No items, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. We'll move to the agenda. Consent agenda being first. Again, if an item is pulled by the member of the council or the public, we discuss that later in the program. Otherwise, consent agenda can be approved by motion second of the council members. Item one on the consent agenda is grants management performance audit June 2015. Item two is renewal of the city, Durham City County and a local co-operation agreement for inspections for five year renewal. Item three is the 2014 Durham Environmental Affairs Board annual report. Item four is 2014 Durham Open Space and Trails Commission annual report. Item five is 2014 Appearance Commission annual report. Item six can be found on the general business agenda. Item seven is resolution providing approval of a financing by the housing authority of the City of Durham for Maureen Road Apartments for purposes of section 147 F of the Internal Revenue Code. Item eight is grant agreement for sidewalk and bike lane construction on Copper and Fletcher Road. TIP number U-4726HO. Item nine is grant agreement for sidewalk and bike lane construction on Cornwallis Road. Tip number U-4724. Item ten is grant agreement for construction of bicycle and pedestrian facilities on Hillendale Road. Tip number U-4726HK. Item 11 is the grant agreement for sidewalk and bike lane construction on Maureen Road. Tip number C-4928. Item 12 is transient amenities installation and repair contract. Item 13 is proposed condemnation of property located at 3810 Page Road, parcel ID 158077 for the Southeast Pressure Zone project. Item 14, superseding of 2014-2016 job driven national emergency grant project ordinance number 14672 and approval of the Fifth Amendment to work for us investment act contract between the City of Durham and educational data systems incorporated. Item 15 is revision to city code and fee schedule for towing regulations. Item 16 is stationary container rental contract between the City of Durham and waste industries LLC. Item 17 is strap tire disposal recycling service contract between the City of Durham and Central Carolina holding LLC. Item 19 is an item that can be found on the general business agenda. Items 20 through 21 are items that can be found on the general business agenda as public hearings. Entertainment of motion approved with consent agenda item. So moved. Second. It's been properly moved. Second. Madam Clerk, we open the vote. We close the vote. It passed a seven and zero. Move to the general business agenda. Item six, approval of contract for consulting and technical assistance engagement between the City of Durham and Enterprise Community Partners Inc. Mayor Bell, members of council, Reginald Johnson, director of the Department of Community Development as was discussed at the work session. This is an item that provides technical assistance for the City of Durham through Enterprise Community Partners of Maryland. As we discussed at the work session, there was a request for us to add to the scope of work an analysis and recommendations on how to formulate a rental program for downtown Durham. We've worked with the department with the consultant and they've added the scope of work to the contract. We've had a chance to work with them on the timeframe as well and we're comfortable with the scope of work as well as the cost that's incurred, which is another $24,000, which brings the total cost for this phase one to $101,000. We recommend approval. Some questions. I don't know if it's council, but I'll go ahead and proceed with my questions. First of all, I appreciate the administration's proposal to move forward in terms of trying to develop a program. And I had a few questions relative to task three, which is the new party. We're talking about the Downtown Durham Rural Assistance Program. And I guess one of my questions is under one data analysis of the downtown Durham market. One of the things that they're going to propose to do is assess the current downtown populations as compared with overall city population to identify subgroups that may be currently underrepresented in the downtown market. And I guess I need to understand what's the rationale behind that? Mayor Bell, we have with us Mrs. Karen Lotto from Enterprise Community Partners. I'm going to take the podium to respond to that question. Mr. Mayor, Council, pleasure to be here today. So Mr. May I understand correctly the question is what's the rationale behind the demographic analysis? So the rationale for this was to understand and be able to target more clearly the population that we're actually trying to encourage to move downtown. We need to know who lives there and who doesn't live there in order to determine who we're targeting with the program. I have some questions about that. Yes, sir. I can respond to that. And then item A says potential target populations, two to four potential target groups will be considered based on citywide housing need analysis. What is that all about? So what we're proposing to do is to take a look at what the overall housing needs are in the market, what has been articulated by you and others as the policy priority for downtown, and to pick between two and four groups. And this would be people groups that differ primarily probably income from an income perspective, whether we're talking 50 to 60 percent AMI, 60 to 80 percent AMI, 80 to 100. We would break those groups down with DCD. We may also look at different household composition. Are we talking singles? Are we talking couples? Are we talking people with children? Pick two to four of them and really model the program, look at how the program works for these different demographic groups because a lot of the program will be the same regardless of which demographic group you serve. Some aspects of it will differ in particular how much of the subsidy there is, how much subsidy is required, and to some extent which units we think people will target depending on their household composition. The timeframe for concluding this project is December 2015 to January 2016. And I guess I'd like to have a better understanding of that in terms of what we can expect from this project. So the timeframe for completing this particular task of the engagement is mid-January 2016. And we base that time based on how long we think it's going to take us to do the work and really considering other commitments that we have, two other engagements that we need to get done in the same timeframe, and the reality that the holidays, they always slow you down no matter how hard you try not to have them do that. That is just the timeframe for this particular component. There are three other tasks in the contract. I didn't know if you wanted me to speak to all three of those. No, I'm just particularly interested in the rental assistance program. That's the one that was added on. Yes. So we would anticipate, and by the completion date, that would be the date that we actually deliver the written document that would outline the overall program design. Can you tell me what do you mean in terms of delivery? I saw somewhere in there that you're going to deliver a memo. So we would deliver two things. The first is an actual written description in a memo or a report or whatever we want to call it. And the second would be a high level presentation, like a PowerPoint presentation that we could then go over with you or that others could then use to discuss the program with other stakeholders. Are there any plans to present status reports on your work between the time you start and the time you complete it? We are anticipating, and I would defer to Mr. Johnson, but we are anticipating that we will be providing regular status reports on the overall engagement, whether that's weekly or bi-weekly, with the department remains to be finalized. We expect to, Mayor Bell be receiving at least bi-weekly reports. Okay, I hope we build that in. And again, my focus is on task three. And I would hope that we would see some type of status reports. Since you're talking about almost a five-month period, at least two or three times within that timeframe. But let me go back to where I am relative to this proposal. Because I think we're overthinking this. I think we're making a lot more complex than it needs to be. I think the timeframe is unrealistic. I think you ought to be able to do this, certainly within 90 days. And so for that, I'm going to go back to what I raised in terms of what we were hopefully going to gain out of this. We've defined the target area. It's downtown Durham, and the staff has presented the outline for that. We've also said that we've defined the target. We want to look at families that are 60 to 80 percent below the median income. So when you talk about finding groups, we know what we're trying to do. I don't see the value of looking at the demographics downtown. What's down there? I mean, I just I think that's a waste of time. We already have the product in the makings. We've got luxury partners already downtown. We have some that are on the drawing board sort of coming out. So the value of who's living downtown is in that doesn't make any difference to me right now. What I'm concerned more about is persons in that category that we define 68 percent below the median income become health opportunity to rent one of those apartments downtown with certain criteria. So that's I just I think it's a waste of time to go through and talk about who's living downtown, what the demographics are that that to me is a waste of time for what I think the goal is. The next piece is I've been I've tried to be very, very specific in terms of what the targets and what the goals are for this program are. I've sent emails to council members. I've sent emails to the staff. I just want to go over them again. And just remind us of how that fits in. Again, the target is 68% of families living in Durham below the median income. I don't care where they live. I want them living in the city of Durham. What I've suggested is that we put some kind of timeframe on how long they've been living there. I don't want a program that's going to attract people to Durham to get into this program. I think people need to have had invested interest in this in the program in the city. You know, I think five years might be a reasonable timeframe. Again, that's for you guys to come through. Another reason I say five is because the target population that I think we're looking at people who are making public employees salaries, maybe teachers, maybe policemen, that that range that doesn't necessarily mean it's gotta be those people. That's what we're looking at. We're also looking at people that are working. They have an income. They have an income. I know it's unrealistic to think if we look at departments that are downtown where it's basically a one and two bedroom apartments that you're going to be getting families that younger get five people going into one bedroom apartment, you might get five people going into a two bedroom apartment. I think again, that's what you'll work out. I'm going to give you some numbers here which shows how I target that. The other part of that is to me, when when you talk about room gap, and we're talking about providing that from the city, that's pretty easy to do. It's really pretty easy to do. And I just want to go back to some numbers. I'm going to use the numbers that that I said to you guys earlier. And I'm going to thank Councilman Moffitt because he had an original table. I modified it. Then he came back this evening and modified it again to make it more readable. And I appreciate it, Don. I know he's sending out to all all the people. And basically what he did, he took as an example, two apartments. He looked at West Village for a one bedroom apartment. He looked at what the monthly rent was for that. It was about 1420. He took a two bedroom apartment, which is at 605 West. And he looked at the monthly rent for that. It was 1960. And so when we look at persons, and again, we've got to understand who's defining the medium income. And he has a number here. We get it from the census, the metropolitan statistics, and it gets skewed a little bit because Chapel Hill is a part of that, as well as Durham. So I think our medium income is higher for that region. It might not be the same for Durham. So that's another piece that I think you all can look at, but it's not going to take 90 days to do that. So if we just take, for example, what he's determined, the medium income, the medium income for a family that said 100% is $47,200 for one person. For two people, it's 54,000. For three persons, it's 60 plus 1,000. For four persons, it's 67 plus 1,000. That's a family of four. And of course, you can go on up to five, six, seven, eight. But realistically, if we talk about those apartments, it's probably unlikely you're going to get larger families than families of four, four persons down to what the family looks like. It could be a wife and a husband, two kids. It could be whatever makeup, but just look at those numbers. So if you look at those area medium incomes, and then you look at what's 80% and what's 60%, he has those numbers. And now if we use the rule of thumb that no more than 30% of a person's annual income should go towards rent, that tells us how much rent those families can afford. And I'm saying this to you, I know you know it, but I'm saying it also for the record and for those that don't understand what we're talking about. And again, we said 30% is Durham's program. We might want to make it 40%. Since we're talking about persons that are closer to 80%, we might want to make it 40%. And again, that's a call that I would think you all would come up and tell us. So let's take an example. If you look at West Village, where there's one bedroom apartment, four persons who are in the 80% income, 80% of the average medium income, if you looked at what it would cause for them to move into a one bedroom apartment in West Village and how much they can afford to pay, the gap is $476. If you look at that same one person in the apartment, for the 60% person who's making less, the gap would be $712. So you know, a rule of thumb for us might be we don't want to contribute any more than say $600 to this thing. So that would rule out this person who is at 60% and wants to live in a one bedroom apartment in West Village. But now, if you look at that same apartment where you've got two persons, the gap goes from $476 to $340 that we would have to provide. And if by chance you could find a family of three persons that want to live in a one bedroom apartment in the West Village, the gap would be $206. That could be a family with one kid or whatever. I don't know what it is, but that's what we're looking at. And if you look, if you look at, it's $206 for 80%, it'll be $510 for 60% person. If that same family at 80% had four persons, the gap would be $72. Now, we don't know if we can get a family of four living in a one bedroom apartment. That's where it goes. Likewise, you can go down to a two bedroom apartment where it gets to be a bit more expensive. And it looks like if we say we don't want to spend any more than $600, I say $612, there will be only one case where you would have a family of four persons that wanted to live in a two bedroom apartment and we'd have to make up $612 for that person. So you can go through that, but the point is there are really only six points, six points, that if this council decided they didn't want to spend any more than $612 for this, for family for this, that would qualify. So you pretty much narrowed the pool. Now, it doesn't take a lot of rocketing.  All you've got to do is announce the program. And I'm just saying how to announce the program. You can work with, you know, people at Durham Housing Authority, you can work with developers and say, we've got this rental substance program, assistance program, where if the family meets this criteria and you may put some other criteria in there, then we can cover the gap. You don't have to have a lot of study for that. Let me finish. You might have a lot of study for that. So that's the outline of the program. Now, where I think the real issue comes is how do we monitor that program? And what is it going to take to do that? Who's going to go out and find these families? Who's going to certify these families? What kind of criteria are we going to have that a family that's 80% and suddenly six months from now, they're 100% and do they still qualify to live? That's the kind of detail that I would expect you all to work out. But you don't need to do a study. You haven't got to talk about subgroups. Again, in my opinion, you don't have to talk about subgroups to meet the criteria that I'm laying out. 60 to 80% living in Durham, residents of Durham, having them there a certain amount of time, being able to verify the income. That's another piece that you all will come back to. How are you going to verify that Bill Vell is really making what he says? Is Bill going to have to show you my income tax since I'm working? I mean, you all work that kind of detail out. But for me, it doesn't take from September to January of February to develop that type of program that I'm looking at. And I think it can be done in less time than you're proposing if we're dealing with the type of issues that we have here. And I'm just going to remind the council, my colleagues, that this doesn't preclude any other incentives that developers may want to make to do affordable housing. We just passed a thing that the planning department presented to us where, and I don't call them incentives. I don't call them incentives. I call them concessions because they're concessions to developers. They become incentives, in my opinion, when you start getting developers money. The program that the staff came up with doesn't require to see to give anybody. It gives them a concession, gives developers concessions. You can build three, if you want to build, if you want to build market rate houses, if you can build three, and if you want to build additional one, then you get concessions, not having to do the parking and all those. That's a concession. The incentives is when we put money into this 26-story tower that's going to be built. Incentives when we put money into 21C and incentives when we put money into hotels and incentives when we put money into some of these industrial areas that we're working with. So we'll have concessions right now. And it's in my opinion that concessions are going to work until we put in that other piece about what does affordable housing mean in terms of income. And I know the staff says they're going to tweak it, but Mr. Manage, I think you need to get that done pretty quickly because nobody's going to pay attention to that until they know exactly what am I going to get from these people who are going into affordable housing. But the point I was making, we've adopted the program already and we haven't said anything about how we're going to monitor it. We just adopted it. The other piece is we're already doing basically what I'm suggesting. We're doing it right over in Rowland Hills, where you've got a mixed income development where 140 plus units, you can tell me 140 plus units, I guess units there. As I understand it, all of them have been rented with the exception of three and the ones that haven't been rented are the market rate departments. But the people who are 80%, 60%, 30%, they've occupied that. And the only way we're able to do that is because we put money into the project, which allows the developer to charge the lower rents. So we're already doing that. We're doing it right over here on South Street in our home ownership program. We set a criteria, we said no more than 50% of those houses can go to people with market rate above. The rest have to be below that. And we're already going through that criteria now. So we we're doing it. It's not like we're reinventing the wheel. We're just doing it, taking a little bit different tactic here, which DHA does and a lot. And you know I've heard that there are a lot more programs around the country that are doing this thing. Maybe you can find them, maybe you can tell them to what we have. But my point is it doesn't take, in my opinion, the time that you've got listed here to do what I'm suggesting we ought to be able to do. It just doesn't take it. So I'm ready to have more conversation on it, but I'm not comfortable with spending this kind of money to develop this type of program and do all the things that you're talking about doing, which I don't think are needed. And it's taking your time, taking staff time, when you can be better focusing on trying to deal with these things here. And again, don't pay attention to tone of my voice. Yeah, absolutely. I understand your concern about getting this done. I come at this from the perspective of how do I, to the entire council, bring a solid policy recommendation that the council can act on. And I think I want to kind of raise a couple of questions, which is we've targeted 60 to 80% area median income. But if, for example, because we haven't looked at the numbers, if, for example, in fact within the next ring neighborhoods in Durham, you know the next ring, you know, you have downtown and then you have the rings right around. No, no, no, no, no, no. Sir, may I, may I please say something? I just want to make sure we talk about the city that we've designed. Yes, yes, the city of Durham. So within the next ring, we have a superabundance of housing affordable households at 60 to 80% area median income. I heard a concern at the work session about is 60 to 80% really the place we want to be spending our money. The council has adopted a resolution that has said that in the transit quarters in downtown is one of the transit corridors that the target that the focus is getting 15% affordable under 60% of area median income. So that was the part of our saying we really need to take a step back and think about what is the appropriate target demographic. The other side of this is I hear a great deal of concern from you about bringing families which could just be, you know, couples or could be families with children. It depends on how we define family. But if in fact we are not seeing families with children, if that's the target group downtown, then why do we think that low income households or low income households are going to move downtown just because you subsidize them? There are other reasons why families with children may or may not choose to live downtown. Is the program going to meet your policy goal? Let me respond to that. I'm trying to be clear again. The target is families that income is between 60 and 80%, okay. And I've already said that in some cases I don't care how you constitute a family. I mean, we know families get constituted in different ways now. But it depends on the numbers. The point is that the people who own these apartments now, they are already dealing with that. They are already dealing with that. They are the ones that would be that the person would come in and give the application to and they go through whatever financial checks that they have to go through to determine if this person is financially able to move into this apartment. If somebody comes in, we'll see six people. I doubt very seriously if they're going to be able to rent that apartment. So I'm not trying to force anything on the bulbs. I'm just trying to say give the same persons who are 68% the same opportunities that someone is at a market rate above to move into these places. You might find market rate people there above that don't have families or that do have families and they choose to move there because they can afford it and because the developer will let them in. So that isn't an issue for me. I don't think we need to get and the point that you made about, again, I'm talking about downtown. So if you've got places where affordable for persons that are living, that's fine. I'm not trying to take, I'm trying to focus on these new units that are going downtown and the only reason they're going downtown is because we've made the public private investments to help build up downtown. That's what I'm focusing on. So it's not a question of well, so you got another group of people who are already living downtown, you know, do want to, no, I don't care about that. If they're living there, fine. I just spoke to a young lady who's living in 605 Chapel Hill. She pays $1,250 a month for rent. I didn't get into asking her what her income was or anything like that. I know her. I suspect how she got in there, but she's paying $1,250 a month for a one bedroom apartment at 605 Chapel Hill Street. And I granted those apartments come furnished. I mess up to the tenant whether they want to keep it. They come furnished, but they live in there. And I asked about how many other people you think are living there. She gave me some number. I don't, but that wasn't an issue for me. The fact is that she's there and I think we're for the same type of opportunity for some of the other apartments. The other piece is I've taken numbers that my colleague provided in terms of rent for these apartments. You know, there may be apartments that rent for less. Right. And I just showed you one 605 and one bedroom apartment is 12 1250 a month. Whereas in West Village, one bedroom apartment is 1420. So it's higher. So what it means for me is that you might find more people that are qualified to go into that apartment and also might mean that we pay less. The other piece is going to be up to the council to decide how much of that revenue stream that we get him from that penny tax 2.4 million that they want to invest in this. You know, they may decide we don't want to spend more than $100,000. That's the council call. And you know, just like it's going to be supply and demand, we run to the same problem that the Durham Housing Authority runs into with his vouchers. They have a lot of people that qualify. The point is they're limited in terms of the amount of dollars and we're not going to be any different than that. But at least someone will have gotten into the door. Now, I don't want anybody to be put off about the fact that my example showed 100. All I was trying to do is to indicate that if the council took the upper level of the gap, which is $600 a month, 12 months for one person, that's $7,200. If you took 10 people, that's $72,000. If you had 100 families paying that, it'll be $720,000. That's all I was using an example. But I think if you look at this latest piece, we're going to be limited in how much we put out in there. And I'm suggesting that maybe the limit might not be more than $610 per family. So again, let's have a conversation. I'm trying to make sure we get on the same page and understand where we're on this. No, I go ahead. I want to finish that. I'm happy to hear from Councilman Schuler. I recognize I'm listening to Councilman Schuler. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I appreciate your passion, Mr. Mayor, and recognize its genuineness and just a couple of things. So I think we're talking about the difference between 90 days and 150 days. You know, we're talking about two months difference in the time. You want to tell me why I'm concerned about that? I would like this Council to make the decision. Okay? In January, we don't know who's sitting here. You could have four other people sitting here, theoretically. And you could have two or three other people here. I don't want to go through the same discussion over again. I would like this to be a decision that the Council makes and moves on. Now, if a new Council comes and wants to wipe it out, that's their call. But I would like this Council to make the decision as to whether or not we move forward and how we move forward. The program, if we implement it, it's always going to be tweaked. I know that. I mean, we do some things when we say, oh, we can change it. But I don't want to be starting over a stretch, trying to educate a totally new Council on this project. So that's why the 90 days becomes important to me. Aside from the fact, I really think it can be done in 90 days based on what we're asking for. But go ahead. Well, okay, so I can understand that. But I guess I, let me just predict with confidence that you will be sitting here in 90 days, Mr. Mayor, and I'm planning to be two. And so I hope that it won't be totally new. But, but I understand your point. I just don't think it overrides the point that we have, you know, there's a scope of work here, and it includes this task. And there are other tasks that I think are really important to go along with it, which is to help build an affordable housing strategy. And it's not just this one simple task. I'm not against it in any way. I'm happy to see this being studied. And I appreciate the passion with which you've attacked it really. I do think there are a lot of issues to be worked out. I don't I think that the monitoring issue that you mentioned is really tricky. You know, people move a lot when they rent.  You're talking about people in potentially a bunch of different apartments with new owners coming and going with, and with renters coming and going. And I think that I think that it can be done. But I appreciate the fact that I think it needs some time to think it out. Well, and I also think that, you know, the transit resolution says 60 percent or below the area median income. We all voted for it. And so I think that thinking about what the target group is in the right target group makes perfect sense. So to me, giving that some study seems important. So I would just say, I'm happy to support this. And I'm happy to support this at the addition of this. But I don't see what the I think that to me, if the consultant in the department think it's going to take five months and not three, I respect that. And I'm happy to go with it. Again, based on what they want to do, I don't think they need to do all that. That's the bottom line. I don't think that all needs to be done. The other piece about on top of, I made it very clear that I'm not trying to impact the original study. I asked very clearly, what would it take to do this part? I didn't say stop what you're doing. I said what additional resources will be required to look at a real estate program? And that's what they came back with. And that's what we're paying them for. And the other piece about the transit stop, 60 percent below is fine. This doesn't impact that. The thing I would say about, I chair to try and transfer the board. So I understand well the transit program. We aren't going to know for sure where those transit stops are until probably another year. By the time it gets through the fairs and gets, we aren't going to know that. Meanwhile, apartments are still going on, apartments are existing. And an opportunity, in my opinion, would be lost to wait for what's going to happen on transit stop. I mean, we said transit stops. What we should have said is a definite transit stop. Because we don't know where those transit, we know what's proposed. I know what's proposed, all of us know what, whether it happens or not. I don't know. So that's not going to impact the target group that I'm speaking specifically to in terms of existing apartments and new apartments that we're going up in the downtown area, which has been defined by the staff, which does include those circles which the staff has outlined for transit stop. That doesn't affect that. It doesn't affect that at all. Target again is existing apartments and new apartments that are coming on board will be coming out of the ground that we will be focusing on. And the limitation is what we want to limit it to.  You don't have to spend $600,000. You might not want to spend $500,000. But that's for a council to decide. And that's something you might want to face in over a period of time to see how it's working, what you're able to get from that. Councilman Mark. I understand the frustration. I've seen, along with everybody else here downtown develop, I've seen housing costs at Cleveland Holloway just takes my breath away. It's not necessarily downtown, but it's very close in. And I see a lot of potential benefits from the program, Mr. Mayor, that you're suggesting. But I also see a lot of potential pit faults. And the devil is in the details. There's a lot of details to be worked out. If this is to become a program that I can support, what I don't want to do, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. And what I don't want to do is to rush a process that winds up with a lot of repair work required. It's not typical for the council to get into the details of writing the policies. I have often said to people that the city of Durham does great work, but never quickly. And that's because the staff is very methodical, very careful, and make sure that when we, when they put a program in front of us that it's a program that's designed for long term success. So while, and I don't know yet, there are many, many, many details yet to be determined. So to me there's no program to support or not support. Conceptually, I see the possibilities and the potential, but I get very nervous when we talk about rushing the staff and the consultants to do a specific program. So I want to caution patients and, you know, methodical establishment of a program if we move forward with this. Thank you. Thank you, Don. I'm going to recognize Councilor Brown, but I need to comment when these things come up. Again, the timetable that we've been presented with includes work that hasn't been proven to me needs to be done. I mean, I don't know why you've got to study the demographics of downtown Durham. I just understand why you've got spend time studying that. I don't know why you've got to spend time studying who are in these two groups. In fact, I really don't know how you're going to do it. That's fluid also. How are you going to determine how many people are making quit of the income? Let the market determine that. You develop the program, you present it, and if people are interested, they'll come forward. And who've got the criteria, that's the big part about it, developing the criteria that we want to care forth, not studying how many people live downtown or the demographics of how many people live downtown or who are in these subgroups. That isn't it. How do you pay it? That's important. How do you monitor it? That's important. How do you manage it? That's important. But that to me doesn't take six months to do. It really doesn't. I don't understand that. And that's why, again, I said independent of what we do, I want to see more frequent reports coming to this council so we can say, okay, we think you hit it in the right direction or you aren't. And the other problem is once we lock in, I don't want to have to be paying for additional work. Because it's very clear in this document that they deliver this and anything above that we're going to have to pay for. And I have an issue with that. Councilman Brown. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I appreciate your comments as well as my colleagues. I guess I would suggest that really none of us up here are talking about a rush to judgment with this program. We had a former colleague up here, Howard Clement, who on occasion was fond of talking about the paralysis of analysis. And in all kinder, I think, certainly part of what the mayor suggesting may be a paralysis. In my judgment, we should determine a couple of things. Number one, the $2.4 million of the penny for housing. How much of that do we as a council want to dedicate to the rental program? That's a very important decision. And one that will, in the short and long run, help determine where some of these citizens end up living. West Village, for example, is probably the most expensive of all the apartments that have been recently constructed. But we need to look at more than just rent. Because as I mentioned at the work session, folks, some of these apartments and the complexes are really hurting for tenants. And they're offering, call it an incentive or a concession or whatever. Usually they do not go down on the amount of the rent, but they will offer one or two, in some cases three months rent for free. So that's really an important component of this. I would also suggest that we look at what's normally called best practices. Who else is doing throughout the country or certainly the southeast programs such as what we're talking about this evening. And I mentioned again at the work session that some cities definitely had a targeted program for police officers, some for teachers, in order to encourage them to not to live in Nightdale, as some of our officers do, which I think is just absurd. But this is the sort of thing that we need to also consider. Very simple, best practices. When you're talking about families, you cannot dismiss the issue of schools. Where would the families who are end up in some of these apartments, what are the very simple question? What school district are they in? And what options do they have in terms of magnet schools and so on? Another issue is that who's going to implement this program? I don't think that DHA, the Durham Housing Authority, wants to do this. So how much and how many can one person do this on city staff? Or will it take more than that? Again, that's why I'm strongly suggesting a plan that will be done incrementally. Not a big rush just at the beginning because this, I don't want to overemphasize this, but this, you know, it's not an easy task to do this and to do it correctly. So I think these are just some of the issues that we need to address because it should be not the consultant's decision, obviously, but the council's decision in terms of how much money are we going to set aside for the rental program? And if you begin with that, then that can give you an idea realistically, probably, of how many families that we as a city can afford to host in this program. Just a few of my thoughts, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Jane. And again, I don't disagree with any of the comments that you've made. Seriously don't. I've said from the start, it's going to be the council's decision as to how much of that revenue we want to spend on this program. It's always the council's decision. I agree that it's going to be administrative costs. And I don't know how many people is going to take to implement the program, but that's what the consultants, that's the part of the job that I think they come back and recommend. We accept it or we don't accept it, but I don't want to get into that level of detail. That's what I'd like the consultant to do. Again, if they're, and I heard them say earlier, their programs across the country, and I don't have a problem of barring something that's good. I suggested the Durham Housing Authority simply because they are here. And we understand they deal with a population much more extensive than the population I'm speaking about, but they do have guidelines. And, you know, those guidelines might apply to us and they might not. We've been talking about 30% income. No more than that. No more than 30% of these families' incomes should go towards rent.  It may be that if you're making 80%, maybe you ought to be able to pay 35%, which means that it's less cost to the city, but it's more families that you can deal with. And so that's the kind of detail that I would want the consultants to come back with. And again, this is a big company, as I've been told.  You've got staff.  She's got a staff behind her. So I accept that. And you selected for that reason. But again, the timeframe, I just think, is too long for what we're asking to do. And I know the program is always going to be tweaked. And just because you implement the program at this level, again, it's up to the council to decide how much they want to bite off of. You come back with a program and you say, well, council members, you can serve 100 people. We think you can serve 100 people. And if we say that based on where we are, we think you shouldn't spend any more than this number of dollars for a family of one, two, three, or four. And here's what it's going to cost you to do that. If the council says, we accept that fine. If the council says, no, we want to spend that money, that much money, we want to spend half of that. Then it's very easy to come back and say, okay, if you're going to spend half of it, here's probably the number of families that you can accommodate. But that's a decision that council make, but we make it based on you having gone through and giving us the details of how the programs should work. And again, I'm going to remind my colleagues, we've already accepted the program for the staff for concessions to developers. Again, I say concessions, not incentives to the developer to build affordable housing if they get certain concessions. We didn't say one thing about how we're going to monitor it, not one thing. We don't know how we're going to monitor it. And I don't think that's part of your job. That's not part of your job. But somebody's going to have to come up with that. Go ahead. If I may just comment on a couple of points. I think this issue of resource allocation really is a critical one. Because we are not talking, this is a zero sum game in the sense of we have this many resources and they're going to be allocated to all of the purposes that the council has to allocate. In this case, we have this much, you know, penny for housing money to be allocated, not just to this program, but to all of the resources that the council has to allocate. In this case, we have this much, you know, penny for housing money to be allocated, not just to this program, but to all of the programs that the city wants to do in housing. And so if the council is making a decision how much of the penny for housing should be spent on this program, that's not a decision to be made in a vacuum. It's a decision to be made in spending it on a rental assistance program generates this, spending it on this type of program generates that. It's one thing to say, and there are ways to ease into that by saying we're going to start with a pilot and see how that goes. Before we make a huge funding commitment, but I think we are very conscious as in our job as advisors to say we have to lay out the alternatives and then it is the decision of the policy makers to decide which of those alternatives they're going to choose and how much of their resources they're going to dedicate to them. And the second piece I want to note is indeed as a number of you have noted the devil is in the details with all of these programs and that is what starts today. And that is what starts to make them gory painful as you go through the program development because it's everything from on the income side not only how am I going to income certify who's going to do it. How am I going to count certain income? If they've only been employed for six months, if they are hourly worker, if the unit is on the rent side, if the unit, this unit includes utilities but this one doesn't, how do I wait those two things next to each other? How do I monitor it before somebody moves in? Who do I pay? Who do I issue the check to? There's just a bunch of decision points that you have to figure out that you have to work through it and you also need to spend some time understanding if there's going to be market uptake. Do the landlords want to deal with this city bureaucracy or that city bureaucracy and if not how do we streamline in such a way that they don't have to? So I don't want to undersell the fact that there's, in order to deliver to the city a program that they can act on that there's just a lot of detail that has to be worked through. I give you that. I'm not belittling that at all. I'm not belittling that at all. But I'm just saying to me it still doesn't take six months or five months to develop that type of criteria. And again, you know, when you talk about how we're going to spend the penny for affordable housing, that's a council decision. I made it quite clear if the council inside wants to spend $100,000 and wants to spend all of it, that's a council decision. That isn't what we're asking you. What we will be asking you is after you've developed a program with this criteria, then we can go through and figure out, well, if we've got this number of people paying that to extreme the $600 a month and that's $720,000, do we want to develop that? No. We might say no. We want to cut it down. So that, again, I think you get into some areas that the council has to make decision. Again, the details of what we're trying to get you to develop. And I don't want to get in a position where we are playing this program against the whole affordable housing program. That's not where I am because as I said, if this council is serious about having families and giving families an opportunity to fall in this category that we would find to occupy some of these units that are going up in downtown, that's a decision to count. If we're not serious about that, we just have to get off the whole thing. If we're serious about it, let's move forward with a program that will lead us into that. And it's not playing this against the whole affordable housing piece because I do have some questions about that but I'm leaving that alone. I'm trying to focus on this additional task that they were getting out of. Thank you, Mayor. As much as I would like to vote on this, before I go off council, I feel very strongly about affordable housing and feel committed to it and I'm very glad that we passed the penny. I don't think we should be rushing the process. I'm much more interested in the original scope of work, not so much the add-on. I was willing to go along with the add-on. But to me, it's not so much how much we want to spend of our housing penny versus how many people do we want to serve and at what income levels. I much more would prefer to see what options we have to provide affordable housing in a cost-effective manner that may be using our public land. It may be building affordable units just outside of downtown or elsewhere in a community. I'm just not sure at this point and I don't have enough information that I want to provide rental assistance to move people downtown to expensive apartments. If we could be building more affordable apartments and getting people in them in the long term, that's something I'd be more interested in. We know that there are probably over 1,500 applicants on the Section 8 voucher waiting for housing. We know there are people in need. Those may not be singles or couples that want to live downtown because it's cool. I mean, we'd all like to live downtown because it's cool. But I'm not sure that's the best use of our affordable housing money. And I really want to see what they can generate and that we can have that broader discussion about our priorities and what it's going to cost us and what we get for it. Thank you. Dan, I appreciate that because I guess the question I've raised still remains on the table. Do want to look at this section of our city, which is downtown, for persons that fall in this category of income, 68%. The 1,500 people that you're talking about, I don't know what to do. They range from probably 90% down to 30%. And I'm not suggesting that you want to try to fit the program to people who have the 30%. That isn't where this project comes from. And, you know, all the pieces about how do we want to provide affordable housing? That's the scope of the work. I'm not taking away from that. I'm just saying I'm going back. I'm trying to be very targeted in what we're looking at. And again, if the council is of the opinion, they don't think that's where we're going to be focusing our attention. That's the council decision. So I'm not I'm not playing one against the other. I'm trying to be very specific in the area we're talking about, the families we're talking about, the source of income that we're speaking about, and the fact that we don't have the details which a consultant can develop for us based on what I heard them say. And so what I'm arguing is the timeframe, the timeframe to do that. And I'm suggesting that some of the information, some of the work that they're talking about doing doesn't need to be done to do this. It just doesn't. And it takes time. It takes time to do that when they could be spending it more on developing the details of the program. And, like I said, I want to be clear about even what the deliverable is. When I saw a memo, that doesn't mean anything to me. What I wanted to see is a detail plan of how it will be implemented. And if that's what the memo meant, that's fine. But I just want to make sure that's what we were speaking about. Again, I recognize the mayor, Pro Tem. I will be very brief. As you know, I certainly support this, your vision, Mr. Mayor. And we can intellectualize this issue until midnight tonight. But the bottom line is that we have to have the will to make a difference in downtown. Not only do we need to diversify the population of people who live there, but businesses as well. That's a different issue. But we need to take affirmative action to make change downtown. We have not had this much discussion over affordable housing in other areas of the city. We talked about how much it will cost. So I don't understand the issue regarding downtown. I'd like to be able to live downtown. But I cannot afford it either. But I think we need to not be a part of continuing the segregation downtown. That's a very strong word. But that's exactly what it's beginning to look like. Businesses, black businesses moving out. And so I see nothing wrong. We have no problems giving money for affordable housing to the same people over and over and over again. Let's think outside the box and try to do something different. And we don't have to even look at what other cities are doing. Let us make a difference here and let other cities look at what we're doing. That's all I have to say, Mr. Mayor. To that point I can tell you that other cities are looking. The clerk advised me that someone from Massachusetts heard about our proposal that's in Massachusetts not in North Carolina. And I've had some other people in cities in North Carolina to talk about it. So Durham is getting to be a beacon for other cities and what we're doing. I mean, I can count, I can't count on my one hand because it's going to take more fingers, but the point is how many people have come to Durham to look at what we've done? We had a contingency here from Rocky Mount, I mean from Mount Air, Providence, Rhode Island, Columbia, South Carolina. I can just name a lot of persons that have come to Durham to see what we're doing. And I can tell you some are asking also, well, who's living downtown? And what kind of people are living downtown? I'm not talking about a program like you got up in Chapel Hill because I don't think Chapel Hill is the type of program we want person. They're reaching a different target. The demographics are different in Chapel Hill than they are here in Durham. So that isn't a program that I would necessarily, and I'm not going to say that. I'm suggesting we want to try to model our program behind. I recognize the city manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ms. Lado, could you clarify one thing for us, please? I'm assuming when you developed the scope of services and the costs associated with Task 3, you projected some hours of work for each of the components and the costs associated with that. So could you estimate, since it's not really broken down in our detail in Task 3, what the hours or the time frame that you were in? I could, but not at this particular moment, because I did not bring the backup with me. But I can certainly follow up with you tomorrow. I'm not trying to belabor it. I thought it might be helpful to know how much time or cost would be shaved off. The first task is a trivial activity, the demographic analysis. I'd have to go back, but it's on the order set. Because that's just a data poll. So that would obviously, it would impact the cost at the margins, but it wouldn't shave significant amount of time off the activity. The time of the activity is really spent on the development aspects of the different, just the different aspects of the program getting to understand the housing market, because we do need to understand the development of the housing market, because we do need to understand the product that we're targeting. To understand what are the different rents, what are, you know, what are we going to potentially need to subsidize at different income levels compared to the rent levels. And to get a sense from building owners what would be, or building managers, rather, what would be the program runs. Or they don't like the agency administering the program. Can I just speak, because the manager raised a good point that I was going to ask him another way, but what's the total hours that you had developed for the program, the task three? I could tell you tomorrow, but I can't tell you right now, I didn't bring it with me. Okay. Fine. That's one point. Again, understand that these families are no different than any other family that wants to come in and rent an apartment. They aren't any different. We aren't trying to take over anything from the developers. The developers who we want to make sure is they aren't discriminating. That's what we got a human housing people to look at. We can make sure that's not happening. But a person goes in and applies to an apartment. He has no difference. And then he figures out how much can they pay? And if the family has talked to this group and it meets our criteria and it meets our criteria, then they know how much additional dollars they might be able to have, but they come to define what the criteria is. Now the questions you might want to put in there are these taxable dollars when they get it? You know what, you throw that in there. Someone asked me when I was at a PAC 1 meeting Saturday. Well, you know the housing authority gives $900 vouchers. I don't know what he meant, but that's what he said. So can a person in effect double-dip? Can a person get a voucher from the housing authority and then come get a voucher from the city and then go to the developer? That's what you tell us. But again, I agree it's in the details, but I also agree that if the other programs that are doing it, if you've got the type of company that I've been led to believe you have, you got the resources called on, you ought to be able to find those answers quicker than six months to do. Councilman Davis. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the passion and I appreciate the need to work with people around and in other quarters that we have in the city. I also appreciate what I've read about the consultant and the company that will be working with us. But I'm a bit concerned about the fact that we want this work to be done between now and the end of the year before the elections and we have a bit more confidence in the smooth transition of government that we have and I'm hoping that the people of Durham will elect people who will be able to make sound decisions and will be able to help us to make those decisions and I have no fear of the people who might come and who would be a part of our decision that understand the need to move as quickly as possible and maybe some of the things that the consultant might tell us that we may already know but I have no fear of the folks who will follow the folks who will be departing and would hope that we would have confidence that they will help us to make those decisions. So I don't have a fear of the decisions. Let me be clear I don't have a fear I don't have a fear I don't have a fear when I first spoke about this program it wasn't because of you know potential election coming up it's because what I thought personally was a reasonable amount of time to do this project and I've said again that the other piece that comes in there is yes you might have a different council I just firmly believe that you don't need six months to develop this program now again you've got the consultants the council has to make a decision the first decision has got to make is whether or not in fact it wants to do the program and if in fact it does want to do the program do you want to do it under conditions that the consultants have proposed and so we go ahead and move on let's talk about fear recognize council Mr. Shewell because I see someone signed up Thelma Glenn signed up for item 6 and I'm not sure what item 6 is oh it's this one oh okay alright I recognize Ms. White I said Thelma White good afternoon mayor and city council how are you everyone I'm here to represent the Emerald Woods Association I am the president and I stand to support the mayor's proposal on ask the city council to please support the mayor thank you Councilor Shewell I'm sorry we have Dr. Allison I don't have a card okay alright you want to speak on some okay well what you should do is go to the podium and ask the clerk for the card you can just come up in terms of time to state your name and you can fill out the card later good evening mayor I'm the council my name is Frank Meacham and I have about 35 years of working in housing particularly low-income families I see the value in our communities being integrated also like the mayor's idea of incentivizing housing we don't want anything they can go in there and think they go in there for a lifetime as in some other home work as I have seen on more than one occasion so I can certainly support his position thank you if you can just come to the podium to state your name and address and give the card to the clerk good evening Mr. Mayor members of the council my name is Jarvis Martin and I'm a resident of 3608 Mossdale Avenue the area of affordable housing is one that is very dear to me personally I am a person who worked in this arena for many years it's not an easy task this council and other councils has done a lot to move forward this whole effort but I do support the mayor's position from the standpoint that I do think we need to do something now to diversify the population in downtown there are a general feeling in this community that the council moving forward is concerned with the development of downtown not concerned with the livelihood of the total community having the opportunity to benefit and live and enjoy the fruits that we as taxpayers have paid for many of the things that we boast about today and proud to see I think this is just a step forward as said it's not something that has to be put in concrete it's something that can be tweaked over time and if other things come online that can be replaced that I know that the council can take the steps but I do agree that we need to move forward and quit talking because there is a segment of this community that feels that they are being left behind and not given the opportunity and when I say that I'm talking about the people who provide our services what you are talking about provided an opportunity for some teachers people who work in public safety people who serve us when we come downtown to enjoy the benefits who work as waitresses of service capacities so those are the people that I think need to live in proximity or have the opportunity to live in proximity as to where they work and to me this is just one small step forward and yes the details the devil's in the details and this council can work that out thank you very much for this opportunity to be here tonight I had a privilege of reading an article that was in the Durham news I was really fascinated and encouraged me to come down here tonight and I probably want to congratulate thank Mr. Brown he looks like he might be supporting this idea that's what it said and he's getting ready to leave we leave a positive legacy to do something like this I was a little concerned about two other people one is leaving one is running for mayor before the mayor gets ready to leave I'm a little concerned Durham mayor proposes rental assistance program I've been here watching the conversation between three people on this end ever since I've been here while the mayor was speaking very interesting I'm totally supportive of us doing something different this is out of the box diversity socioeconomic diversity having a gap that you can close and folks who can't really afford to be downtown downtown is looking real really good I've been concerned because Fairville street is not looking as well as downtown and I hope that these folk who leave it and those who are trying to go up higher will have the courage to support this we need out of the box activities in Durham downtown is looking very well but we need some folks living down there who really can't and I was looking at HUD's medium income and what that means and they deal with it in terms of one family I mean two children and two people and so forth it's all the way up the median income is $67,400 who's making that kind of money that looks like most of us we need some gaps and Lord knows I'm seeing something going on right now I hope we can get some policemen instead of Wade County instead of Pitt County to stay inside community community police and some of the teachers assistants let them come downtown a couple of childhood schools right straight on the way so Mr. Mayor I congratulate you on this idea it's excellent and I hope some of the rest of the folks will positively say let's move ahead we got smart people making good money to their staff talking about they need six months eight months nine months we're not rushing anything it's late doing it coming up with a this kind of program thank you for giving me this opportunity to come down here I don't come often and I wanted to just watch the faces of the conversations going on while the mayor's talking thank you very much welcome is it anyone else who wants to speak on this item this is not a public James Chavis my name is James Chavis I say 2813 Ash Creek in Durham of all of you we don't agree on much but one thing I do have to say I watched those three faces too and it's a shame and disgrace Mayor Bill how they disrespect you okay you can disagree but while he's talking I never see him talking to anyone else he's sitting back listening but you three y'all sit there and ran y'all mouth with each other grinning and sninning what would they say to us three blacks one, two, three so to three whites that segregation right there that's what showing to the people out front how you all do not respect and you know I don't go with everything Mayor says okay but y'all will be colleagues and one thing y'all have done tonight has been very disrespectful to him thank you if it's no one else who wants to speak on the side am I going to move is this young lady going to have to speak if you leave it okay thank you I'm going to move back to the council recognize whoever wants to speak on the side recognize councilman Shulman thank you Mr. Mayor so a couple of reasons that I so let me just say I do support this and I have said already that I support this and we'll be planning to vote for the recommendation that we have added this to the to the scope of work of the consultant and I agree with that the question here is not whether or not we're adding it to the scope of work at least the way I understand it from everybody's position but exactly how long it's going to take to study it and so I think about let me just give an example of why it might take longer I think that we we think about what we did in Southside and we think about what we did on South Street and I think that I can tell you that I'm disappointed and I think many of us are disappointed that that neighborhood has not become a diverse neighborhood we put a whole lot of city money into it a lot of federal money into it and we've got a neighborhood that it's disappointing to me because it is largely a white neighborhood and I think that studying it trying to get it right to figure out what the right price points are to try to figure out how to increase that diversity is super important and I think that a reasonable amount of time to get that right makes sense so I don't I just want to be clear the speaker said we need to support the mayor's program here I'm planning to vote for it I'm just planning to vote for it and the staff's recommendation that should take 150 days instead of 90 days and plan to do that thank you I recognize councilman Mark thank you Mr. Mayor I realize that I have four questions really that I that mattered to me how much is a program like this cost how long will it cost that what is the impact of the program overall and what are we trading off to do that so if we're if there are 50 families that will get no service from the city because we we've subsidized 50 families when we could have helped 100 that's an important trade off to me and those are the questions that I have and I would have about any program that none of which we know yet and which hopefully the consultants can help us with and then we'll have something that we can talk about in the details how much is it cost how long will it cost what's the impact what's the trade off thank you although the questions the comments I've shared my recognize the mayor I would like to know how much time what this have taken had we not asked for the add-on maybe you said it but we've been intellectualizing so long so the entire scope of the of the task is from September 1st start to mid-February is that because you added some on no ma'am what was it before it was September 1st to mid-February okay any other questions let me say again taking consideration the comments have been made we make a decision however the decision comes out we move on and I would expect the same thing to happen on this particular item so again I would let since I've raised a question I would entertain a motion to accept the consultant's recommendation but to have the target move to the end of December rather than what's being proposed that's the motion I would accept I so move and if there's a second to the motion it's been properly moved in a second there's a discussion on the question recognize the councilman market yes I did I'm not sure I quite understood are we saying that we're willing to accept the contract if if the completion of task 3 can be completed on December 31st so that would be up to the consultant then either withdraw task 3 or entire okay and I think it's fair to ask the consultant is that doable I think it's fair to ask that question that's where it is given the conversation we've had and I've heard you say that it only takes 7 hours to do the piece that I had a question about but you haven't told us what the total I think I think it's fair to ask that question one further question given what you said earlier I need to ask did you mean the end of December did you mean the end of November I think we'll see new council members first meeting in December I said the end of December and I understand that new council persons will come in I appreciate that okay now we're talking two weeks difference right okay I think we would be comfortable with agreeing to December 31 on behalf of Enterprise I think we would be comfortable to agreeing to the completion of task 3 by December 31 further questions discussion recognize councilman shul so that means December 31 instead of January 15 that's where we're talking about that's correct okay further discussions if not I'm going to call the question the question is to accept the contract with the modification on task 3 to be completed by December no later than December 31 so if they can complete it before that that's fine but no later than December 31 and other part of the contract would stand as it is there's further discussion on that if not I'm going to call the question Madam Crick will you open the vote will you close the vote let it passes seven is zero alright thank you to the next item please item 19 the crime report Mr. Mayor Mayor Pro Tem council Mr. Manager Mr. Attorney I'm here to present the police department's 2015 second quarter report which covers the first six months of the year the quarterly report covers our department six performance measures violent crime property crime part one index crime clearance rates response time sobriety one calls and staffing levels the executive summary includes other and significant events during the second quarter part one violent crime was up by 13.5% in the first six months of 2015 compared to the first six months of 2014 the rise in violent crime was driven by an increase in a number of aggravated assaults robberies and homicides during the first quarter we started a 90-day initiative to target gun violence this initiative continued into portion of the second quarter the final results are included in the executive summary we've continued to gather available intelligence about shootings and the focus on areas where the shootings have occurred in April crime stoppers and project safe neighborhood started a gun stoppers initiative the initiative focused on soliciting information about illegal firearms in the community such as those possessed by felons and those used in crimes crime stoppers will pay up to $500 cash for information leading to a felony arrest and recovery of an illegal gun and Durham each month officers and community volunteers go door to door speaking to residents and passing out information in areas which had the most gun violence in the previous month although there were 16 homicides on one fatal self-defense shooting reported during the first six months of 2015 13 of the homicides have been cleared by arrest one of the homicides is a case in which a victim was shot in 2011 but died as a result of his injuries this year so far this year we've had 20 homicides 17 cleared we also had six cold cases from prior years which have been cleared so far this year there was a double homicide on Dawkins street cleared from 2012 we had one homicide from 2013 and three homicides which had occurred in 2014 reported sexual assault were at a three-year low during the first six months of 2015 the number of robberies increased but investigators made several arrests during the second quarter on April 29 officers arrested six people on armed robbery charges members of this groups were charged with committing a dozen armed robberies during April property crime was up by 3% during the first six months of 2015 the rise was up by increases in reported larcenies which make up more than half of all reported part one crimes investigators from our departments continue to work with investigators from other area departments to focus on shoplifting which accounts for a significant percentage of our larcenies there have also been increases in larcenies from vehicles and also from buildings we have continued our residential awareness program which focuses on how to continue to urge people to down 911 to report suspicious activity these calls often help officers make arrests especially for property crimes our community resource officers have been encouraging people to take practical steps to avoid being a victim of property crime for example don't leave valuable items in plain view in your vehicles and secure items such as bicycles compared to the same period in 2014 reported crime was down in two part one categories that was rapes and burglaries clearance rates for homicides robberies larceny and motor vehicle thefts were above the FBI national average clearance rates for cities our size the average response time to priority one calls during the first six months was 6.2 minutes priority one calls were answered in under 5 minutes during the first six months that did not meet the target of 57% our sworn positions are currently fully staffed this includes 25 recruits who graduated on August 3 from the basic law enforcement training class number 41 academy the BLET 42 academy with 14 during police department recruits started on August 10 the first non sworn vacancies at the end of the second quarter to end this presentation I would like to share some photos of our successful 2015 national night out celebration more than 100 neighborhoods and businesses participated on August 4 you can view more photos on our facebook page thank you very much you're welcome chief let me ask first other comments or questions that councilman on the report recognize chair chief thank you for the report in your one of the things you had in your in the report that we received the materials among the human relations commission recommendation was the residency initiative programs people have already talked a little bit tonight about our hope that we will have more of our officers living here the reference was that there weren't going ideas about some residency incentive programs and I wondered where are we on that do we have we made any progress do we have any concrete ideas councilman if I could interrupt apologize most of that work we're doing out of the HR department out of the police department we'll do it in conjunction with the police department but we want to conduct some surveys this fall of officers chief and then the next question where are we on the body cameras where what's our timetable now I wouldn't be able to give you a timetable we're going to be doing it as soon as possible meaning that right now we do have we're looking to see which ones we're going to buy and we have a request out at this point so we're looking in a very near future to at least start outfitting officers with the body cameras we're putting together the we're just about completed the policy and reference to it so we'll be rolling that out soon great and I know one of the concerns that were some of the concerns that were raised and were talked about during the the public hearings that you had I don't know the public hearings they were the meetings that you had with the public I had to do with some of the privacy issues and I know that for example the one I was at Chief Marsh to scrap some of the potential issues that can arise and that's through very carefully Chief Marsh has been doing an excellent job putting that together and he's apparently leaving no stone on turn the amount of material that he has read just on this subject alone is unbelievable and I'm pretty sure he'll be as addressed as best as possible great and then I was glad to see that you all have finished the fair and impartial policing training and done very quickly and appreciate the initiative you all have taken on that and also I was glad to see the misdemeanor diversion program that the plans to extend that to age 21 and so I know that's not just an initiative of yours but also the mayors and other organizations around the city I'm certain you'll be very pleased in the very near future as we roll that out and to speak to the fair and bias training we also have that are coming to us now so we can train their departments in reference to it great and I was appreciative of the recruiting statistics it definitely I appreciate it looks like you really are making a good effort at getting minority applicants I noticed that this last time there were 33 African-American applicants versus 24 white applicants and so again I know I just want to say that it's much appreciated well if I can give you a 41 BLT BLT breakdown for the last officers who just graduated we have one Latino female three Latino males three African-American males 18 whites and for the 12 that we have right now we have three African-American males one African-American female two Asian males one Latin male seven white males and then we have three recruits who speak Spanish I just the aggravated assaults continue to be I mean I think when you look at the numbers they continue to be the thing that seems to be really driving the increase and you all have commented to us before about that and I was wondering if you wanted to make any more comments tonight about how we're trying to deal with that because that is definitely when you look at the numbers that's what's really pushing everything on we're addressing that extremely aggressively we're looking at looking for the available intelligence we're working with the community to the extent that we have our initiative where these officers and these volunteers from the community are actually going door to door in places where we know we have had a high instance of shootings I think a lot of that's going to make a difference as far as getting the information that we need in order to identify these few individuals that are causing all this great and did the how did you all feel about the results that you described and that we've heard from previously about from you and Chief Smith in terms of its results in the Corn Wallace and McDougall Terrace areas did you feel that did it have the kind of positive results that you were hoping for I think it has I think it's been a lot quieter but also more importantly I think we've gotten a lot better results from the community as far as trust and partnerships and I just wanted to mention there were description of several officers having to respond and I just wanted to mention that you know that I know we all recognize the courage that that takes to walk into that situation and I did want to just say to the you and the members of the department that that's very much appreciated by everyone in Durham the courage to do that one of the things it was mentioned was the event led by the DL Forbes Youth Foundation in April which I did attend and I would say there are maybe a hundred people there and I just wanted to say that I thought that that was a fabulous event the role playing was super intense and very realistic and it really I think for any for a grown up like me but for a young person as well I just thought it was a tremendous educational tool and so I hope you'll pass that on and I also noticed one other thing what I mentioned officers Armstrong and Kramer were cited for their use of life saving tourniquets and I just thought it was very impressive not only that they save these lives but that in particular officer Armstrong was cited for pushing this into the department and the department has picked up on this and made the equipment and training widely available so again I wanted to say to our command staff that this is a great this is a real tribute and I appreciate it and then finally I just the clearance rates are down from where they have been and I wondered if you had anything to offer on that is that related to aggravated assaults or are there any other factors that have been making those clearance rates I think as we continue to move forward getting the trust from this community that the clearance rates will go up and I think a large factor will be the cooperation from the community and I think that's very much important Thank you, Chief Thank you, Councilman Schuhl recognize Councilman I'm sorry Councilman Brown and then the Mayor Pro Tem Chief what is the I'm harking back to our rather lengthy discussion about the rental program that obviously you heard what is the starting salary of range of salary for police officers at the Academy they're at 33,000 and when they graduate I believe they're at 36,000 do I have that about right up and down up and down somewhere in that in that range and then of course as time goes on depending on your promotion your raises so they would be able I think to qualify for this rental assistance program any assistance you can give them would be just fine I think but I think that if you're looking at living downtown I think they definitely would need some assistance I'm sorry I think if they're looking to live downtown they would need some assistance if we're looking at the numbers that I heard thrown around very hot what percentage of the Durham police force lives in the city of Durham I don't have that number for you but I can make it available for you because I've heard that unfortunately it's rather small I would have to get that number to you I'll tell you that I live in Durham we know that that was a requirement yeah if you can get back to us sooner than later on okay we can get you that information because I think it's important for the majority of our officers to live in the city in which they serve thank you thank you Councilman Brown recognize the mayor Pro Temp good evening and thank you for that report and the work that your team is doing normally I come to all of the Academy graduations I was a bit worried this time that it was on a city council meeting night please please don't deprive us of that opportunity because they need to see us and know that we support their work we've had that discussion thank you very much can you make a promise then I'll ask the manager as long as as long as I'm chief of police are there any other chief chief thank you for the report thank you very much we moved item 20 I'm sorry item 20 2014 evaluation assessment report good evening I'm Karla Rosenberg with the planning department I can certify that notification for the public hearing item before you from the planning department tonight has been properly noticed as required by state and local law so before you is plan amendment case 15 0001 the 2014 annual evaluation and assessment report or EAR of the Durham comprehensive plan this document allows the city and county to evaluate progress over the past year in implementing the plan and its objectives included in the EAR proposed policy changes and rectification of any differences between the city and county versions of the future land use map the plan amendment requiring rectification is we have additionally updated the recreation and open space and agricultural layers of the future land use map and included a section on planning trends and issues staff recommends approval of this application the planning commission recommended approval on May 12th 2014 with a vote to 11 to 0 and the board of county commissioners approved on August 10th 2015 with a vote of 5 to 0 on this item I'll recognize county sure just have a quick comment which is I really thought that the trend analysis and the memo was really interesting is Rosenberg and the I was was really appreciative of that and and the policy implementation highlights I thought showed a tremendous amount of work by all of our departments to meet the planning objectives and so it was just a really interesting document to read if not anything wait a minute I'm sorry this is a public hearing is anyone else in the public who wants to speak on this item if not let director reflect no one else has to speak claret we can close as it matters back before council it's been probably moving in a second to consider ordering completion of streets and portions of Ravenstone and Stone Hill, the state subdivisions. And a lot of staff is coming forth to present that. I have two persons that are signed up to speak. Is there anyone else that wants to speak on this item? Is this the public hearing? If so, if you could go to the clerk's desk and sign up. Thank you. We're open to public hearing with staff comics. Good evening, Mayor Bell, members of the council. I'm Robert Joyner, development or view group manager. Item 21 is to consider the ordering of the completion of streets and portions of Ravenstone and Stone Hill state subdivisions under the Enabling Act Authority. The proposed projects are inside the city limits. Staff recommends that council adopt a preliminary resolution, conduct a public hearing and adopt a final resolution to order each of the projects. Be happy to answer any questions council may have. And I'd also like to state that the advertisement for this public hearing to consider these proposed improvements was published in the August 7th edition of the Durham Herald Sun, as well as individually mailed notifications via US mail. Thank you. You've heard the staff report. Let me ask first of the questions and members of the council on the staff report. I recognize council member Moffitt. The preliminary resolution, has that already been adopted? It has not. It would be a part of this order. So you'd adopt a preliminary resolution and then a final resolution. All at the same time? Yes. Thank you. I mean, all in the same meeting. Is that the point? All in the same meeting, I apologize. Thank you. I recognize council member Brown. Yes. Could you give us, because I know we discussed this, what the average monthly payment would be from the average homeowner in this district? So the ordering of this? Yes, sir. The ordering of this improvements is for the street. So the numbers that I'd be talking about would actually be the combined totals for the streets and stormwater. So for Stone Hill Estates, the current engineering estimate would be $2,531. And for Ravenstone, it would be $2,701. And again, that is the combined streets and stormwater estimated cost. That's the total cost. And that's the total cost. The time period would be 10 years, no interest. And so the monthly fee would be an average of what? For the two subdivisions. Bear with me just a second, sir. We should have that. $21.09 for Stone Hill Estates? Yes, I do. $21. $21.09. And $22.51 for Ravenstone. Thank you. I just think it's important for all of us to understand that, and listening to the audience as well. Thank you. Are there other? I recognize Councilman Moffitt. Yes, sir. I just want to confirm that the 2,500, the 2,700 numbers you cited, that's half of the total cost. That's the 50% of the cost that each average home would be assessed. That is correct, sir. Thank you. Any other questions before we go to the public? If not, I recognize James O. Williams and Gwen Silver. Is there someone else? And one other person? So we have three minutes initially on this. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. James O. Williams, 102, Satrine Court, Durham, North Carolina. I said I'd like to say hello to Mayor Bell, Mayor Tim, and to the City Council. I'm going on my ninth year in Stonehill. I've been dealing with these streets every since, and I have missed a moment in the last eight years of being down here. The situation is originally, I must say, the city of Durham dropped the ball. Within the last, I want to say, 30 days, the streets have been remarked. Manhole covers have been, shall I say, filled in. I understand that we will not be able to get the work done on the streets until June of 2016. At that point, the cost is going to escalate. Who's going to pay the bill? I'm looking at my homeowner's taxes. My taxes are going up, but my property value is going down because the streets haven't been completed. I got to look at heavy equipment coming through the neighborhood, where they have filled in. All is going to be torn up between now and next year. So who's going to pay for that? We get no city services as it stands. The snow, neighbors have to get out there and do their own thing to get up and down and out of the neighborhood. So where do we stand at this point? The 50-50 deal that we're talking, I really don't think it's fair, but as it stands, look like I'm stuck with it. So where do we go from here? I'd like to know. So, Wayne, if you've been down here, as you said, and I appreciate the fact that you followed this, and I'm going to leave it to the staff to try to respond to the question. Let's sit and imagine what they're talking about. Mr. Williams raised a number of issues that might have different answer for different questions. When you say city services, I know we're talking about just snow removal. Are we talking about sweeping the streets themselves? Okay, that's one thing. Snow removal is another thing. And just generally coming through to check the neighborhood. Let's say, for instance, storm drains having leaves down in them and water not being able to flow. The city doesn't come out to remove the leaves out of the storm drains. That's another problem. So one of the questions that I've asked the city attorney to help us understand is at what point the assets, both the streets and stormwater assets, do become the responsibility of the city and how we transition those assets to the city ownership since I'm not clear who exactly owns them now. That will certainly be a question that we'll have to deal with. But I think as you've seen already with the street work that's been done, we're trying to be proactive and come out and do some things that maybe we don't legally have the authority or have to do because we don't own those streets. So I assure you that along the way over the next several months, as we move forward, we will respond to concerns that you have that get raised as we try to work through the details of how we transition the ownership of the public assets of the streets and stormwater. Now the question about the additional costs, Mr. Joyner may wanna address just for the record, the process about what happens going forward once the council adopts a resolution and the work is scheduled and the costs are actually calculated and how any of the final calculations run. But other than that, in terms of the day-to-day services, if there are particular issues, I would ask you to call us and we'll do everything we can and try to respond to them. Yeah, because I look at it the, I live at the intersection of Satrine Court and Loadstone. The city drops come down, sweep the streets. When it gets down to Satrine Court, they make a U-turn and go back. And which I can understand with the manhole covers being up, say, this high, turning up the equipment is something the city will have to worry about there. And along with the person that's operating the equipment to explain to us, it involves what happened. And I do understand that, but, you know, my concern is, where do we go from here? Shall I say, everybody looks muffled. Mr. Williams. Yes. So moving forward, the city has had worked on advertising for the work. And so the city recently about a week and a half ago held the final bids and at that time they did not receive the appropriate number of bidders to open those bids under state law. And so there needed to be three bidders. There was basically one. And so at that point, the city has to go forth and re-advertise. Now the problem that we're running into is the ability to do the work has now been condensed because you have to re-advertise everything, go back out, hold additional public comment period, and that squeezes down your construction timeline against the winner when you can biably do those types of things. And so at that point, the Public Works Department has recommended that this item be re-bid and that the work be completed in the summer to allow for an appropriate timeframe to construct the improvements. Okay, re-bidding itself, at this point you had given them what, 45 days I do believe? I believe that was the approximate length of the time to construct. Okay, at the next bid, can it be extended? Because if you only got one bid this time, Lord knows what's gonna happen the next time. Marvin Williams, Public Works. So essentially now that we're re-bidding the project, we may have a little bit more flexibility under state law if we made multiple attempts to re-bid the work and we are unsuccessful in getting more than one bidder. At that point, we can talk to the city attorney's office to review any appropriate contracting laws to see if we can go with the one bid that's submitted. But we would caution the council if there is only one bid, the prices may be above what we've initially estimated for the project and that will be another discussion point that we have to bring through the city manager to decide if the costs increase have gone beyond what we initially presented to you over the summer, how the council liked for us to proceed with the work. Are there Councilman Davis? Yes, Mr. Mayor, I'm assuming that the price that we've quoted to the residents here would stay the same, even though the city may have to encounter more outlay that we have committed to making this quote, or are we committed to the half that is a part of what we have here on our form? Which of the two takes precedence? That'll be a decision the council will have to make at the time once we know the final numbers. Sure, well, I'd like to lean in favor of the commitment that we've made to them at this point already. I recognize the Mayor Pro Tem. Mr. Williams, we're going to take some of the money out of the stormwater fund anyway, right? We have an excess amount of money. That's a separate item that will be coming under a separate public hearing. Right now, we're really focused on the streets. There will be a separate for the stormwater improvements that need to be made. And at that point, the council can direct us with how we should proceed with. Okay, so we're not even gonna deal with that part. Okay. Are there other questions by council members? Because we do have other speakers. Mr.  Well, one question I did ask, you know, my tax rate is going up, but the value of my home is depreciating. Let me be clear about the tax rate, at least for the city. I can't speak for the county, for the city. We've set the tax rate for the city and it didn't go up. Oh, you're saying it didn't go up? No. I think the difference is because I got to look at the city today. The tax rate for the city did not go up. I can't speak for the county. Oh, okay, you can't speak for the county itself. The city didn't raise its tax rate. I'm just looking at the streets being what they are. You know, the value of my home is not worth what it was when I paid for it nine years ago. Well, let me see, because I asked that question also. My question was, when the county does this evaluation, again, the county sets the value of your house, not the city. When the county, I say your house, the property, the county does that. My question was, when the county does the evaluation, does it take in consideration the streets that are in the neighborhood, or is it just looking at the property itself? And I recall, I think, Mr. Manager, that the answer was it does not impact the value of the house. Now, if that's not the case, we need to go back to the county and try to understand that. Just for the record, reevaluation is going on right now, so we'll start knowing later this fall what some of those projections are. But again, I don't want to speak for the county, but from what I understand, most of the valuation is done by sales, comparable sales, not by the condition of the street. So depending on ultimately what the sales comps are in your neighborhood, that's what's going to be the biggest driver in terms of what your new tax value is once reevaluation takes place at the end of the year. I understand what you're saying, but I'm just looking at homes being sold in the area for well below the market value at this point, okay? Well, in that case, it would be well for you because it means that the value of your house, taxable value would be less, and therefore, at that time, it should be less. But you know where you take that up with, and I'm not being facetious. With the county. With the county. Okay. All right, that's all I have, but this point I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. You're quite welcome. Let me recognize Gwen Silver. Good evening, Mayor Beall, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the city council, and city administrators. I support the completion of the streets, and I also support the city council making up the difference between what they've approved if the streets are deteriorating over the winter months. But I also want you to reconsider the 50-50 and pay an additional amount of, perhaps residents pay 10% and you pay 90% of the bill. In addition to that, I heard the discussion about affordable housing. I think those of us who purchased bought homes that we could afford. I do not support the affordable housing for downtown. I think it's not gonna be sustainable, and I think that long-term, it's gonna be something that the city is not gonna be able to basically provide, and we don't know who's gonna be coming. The train for actually working on affordable housing left 10 years ago, and that was when West Village was renovated. We're far behind the ball, and I don't think that we're gonna really be able to keep a catch-up in order for it to be a diverse downtown as we need it to be. Thank you. You're welcome. Ryan. Leneer, I can't read his last name. Alansi, I apologize. Members of the council. I've been up here a few times now. I'm the president of the Ravenstone Homeowners Association. You should have received from me a formal written objection to moving forward with this action on behalf of the homeowners in our neighborhood. I do wanna agree with a member from the Stone Hill Board that talked about the housing subsidies. The city wants to spend $600 a month to subsidize the rent of people that it feels are more desirable to have downtown than me in my neighborhood. The $600 per household in our neighborhood would cover the cost in four months. So I don't really think that's fair at all because we already live in Durham. And since we're, as the other member of the board from the other neighborhood mentioned, we're already paying into services that we're not receiving. So we're subsidizing a great deal of the work that the city is presently doing. We are, sorry, I have a cold. We are not getting bids on the work because you spent an hour today berating the consultant from the affordable housing group. People don't wanna work with the city when you stand them up here for an hour and nitpick everything that they do in their proposal. The other thing is that, this is just not right. Core infrastructure, police service, fire service, EMS, roads, that's what the city needs to be worrying about. Not how do we make a certain demographic live in a certain neighborhood? That's what the market will dictate. Whatever the market will bear is what rent is gonna be. If people wanna live in a certain neighborhood because they're Hispanic or they're black they're gonna live where they wanna live. You guys shouldn't be worrying about that. You should be worrying about fixing the roads and neighborhoods for people that are already paying taxes that already live in your city. Thank you. Welcome, I appreciate your comments but I can tell you that this council worries about all the things that you spoke about and it hasn't changed and will not change on that. I'm gonna recognize, I apologize, can you recognize that name? No, I can read your name.  I'll let the city turn and read all the names. Good evening, everyone. I also live in the Ravenstone subdivision. My wife and I are first time home owners. We purchased our house going on two years ago now. We're very excited. We have a lot of things to consider because it's kind of a starter home. We wanna raise a family here in Durham. I went to North Carolina Central. We're kind of rooted in the community. We have opportunities to move away but we've been dying to stay. Things of this nature where you make a decision to charge us, to fix what seems pretty simple, roads in our community to get us back and forth and to do different things, make it a challenge for us to do that. So when we consider our next home purchase, we will remember the decisions made today and going forward on how much Durham is supporting our family. So just my piece. Is there an MD Jaleel? Dear respected mayor and council member, thank you for giving me the opportunity. Actually I bought this house this year in last year. I'm in Ravenstone. But as per the home owners disclosure statement, I see, and I already talked with Mr. Engineer, Mr. Joyner, and he said is as per this disclosure statement, it's a proposed assessment or something but the check is no. But am I able to pay for this new assessment or improvement or anything and something like that? So would you please consider for me, that's my question is. Thank you. You're welcome. Is there anyone else that wants to speak on this item? Again, this is a public hearing in any form or fashion. Let the record reflect that no one else has to speak on this item. I will declare the public hearing to be closed and matters back before the council. It's been properly moved to second. Recognize council will market for comment. I think that this item has been before us for a long time. This has been a real issue to these homeowners. We need to get these roads completed on a timely basis. I'm understand why now that why the paving the lack of bids has impacted the timetable but I'm hoping that we can move this forward as quickly as possible. I fully understand the concerns that the residents have raised. I have no question about that. City did some things that should not have done. And I appreciate that also. Unfortunately, we still have a process that we have to go through and it probably isn't agreeable to those that are being impacted but we're trying to do the best we can to right as much of a wrong that occurred. I would tend to favor keeping the prices of what we have now, no matter what the bids come in with unless they come in lower. But we'll make that decision at the appropriate time. Any other questions on the sign them? If not, I'm gonna call the question. Madam Clerk, we open the vote. Close the vote. It passes seven to zero. And do we have to open the public or continue to open another public hand for this other resolution? You need to adopt the final resolution. It's been properly moved in second. Madam Clerk, we open the vote. Close the vote. It was moved by the Mayor Pro Tem and seconded by Councilman Brown. It passes seven to zero. Is there anything else to come before the council? I'm sorry, item 24, which was added onto it, resolution and opposition of redistribution of local sales tax. Say what? No, this was added. It's been properly moved in second. Madam Clerk, any questions? Here none. Madam Clerk, we open the vote. Close the vote. It passes seven to zero. All right, thank you. Any other items to come before the council? Yes, sir. I recognize Councilman Brown. Yes, for the special council meeting and like an excused absence, please. No, one. Special council meeting in the work session. No, both. Well, don't say that for Jane, because I got a request too, go ahead. But let's move on his first. Can you open the vote? Close the vote. Passes seven to zero. I'm going to ask for an excused absent from the work session also. I've got an issue that I have to be at my office on that day. It's been properly moved in second. Madam Clerk, we open the vote. Close the vote. It passes seven to zero. Any other items to come before the council? If not, the council is adjourned at 9.07 p.m. Thank you.