d Urban Development as areas where people in these regions wake well below the area immediate income and experience extremely high poverty rates. So these areas are specifically called out in the US Treasury guidance as places where funding will be assumed to be allowable for certain uses such as health. And this further allows us to prioritize equity in the selection of the proposals that will move forward and be presented to you as a council. So just to go back to the scorecard itself, I wanna pause here to receive your feedback. We do have just a few more slides in the presentation, but before we open it up for questions on the presentation as a whole, I wanna give you an opportunity to provide feedback just on this scorecard. What's missing, what should be taken out? How would you revise this tool to ensure that this is an effective, efficient and equitable process? So look forward to hearing from you on that. Colleagues, any feedback for Ms. Patterson on the scorecard? I see some, anyone? I have some, but question. And then Mayor Pro Tem. Ms. Patterson, just to be clear on the qualified census track, well, first of all, let me say, I think the criteria is great. I think you've done a really good job. I mean, one of the hard things I think that we have all the time is, we have 80 proposals and one of the things about setting up a rubric like this is it really does its best to try to keep politics out of it and really be able to drill down using the criteria that you all have established, and especially using the equity tool to, as you said, so that decision-making is not clouded, and I really like that phrase, to try to make really good decisions. And I think you've done a great job. The qualified census track, I assume that a bunch of the proposals that we have are probably city-wide, and they probably have some, I haven't seen any of them, so I don't know, but have a focus on certain populations that are spread throughout our city. How would that be, the qualified census tract column here as part of the evaluation, how would that be viewed? Yeah, it's a great question. And that's something that we can work individually with authors of proposals on, knowing that many organizations do work city-wide, what we can do is in the drafting of proposals that are selected for funding, in the drafting of contracts, we can understand where the services that those organizations are providing will be focused. And so even if an organization works city-wide, we may work with them specifically to fund specific services and activities in the specified qualified census tracts. And again, just to give an idea of where we're talking about. So that's an initial answer. I think we can dig in on this a little bit more specifically to understand how to ensure that funding is being targeted in these areas, but there is a process that we can use to ensure that the funding is targeted in these areas, even if it does go to an organization that is working city-wide. Thank you very much. Madam Mayor Prottam. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Leela. This was really good presentation and I appreciate all the work that's happened so far and it feels like we've made a lot of good progress. I'm wondering if we know how much funding is gonna be going towards these community projects versus things that the city staff itself might be proposing. Yeah, that's something that we have the opportunity to decide. And I think it would be wise to set targets in terms of not only how much funding will be directed internally to city departments versus outside organizations, but it also may be wise to set targets based on those core categories that we've identified, health, housing, education, and employment. We have not sort of codified those targets to date, but I think it would be important to think about what the balance should be. Thank you. And when y'all are putting proposals through this process now, are you thinking about the whole or 52 million minus what we've already allocated as being available now or is this like the first half and then we'll do another process for the second? Yeah, I think largely the latter. And so knowing that right now, we have $25 million minus the 7.3 that has been allocated for premium pay. This is sort of the first round. And as I said, we're really using this as a pilot to understand how to improve the process. But yes, we expect that we will have ongoing rounds of engagement and proposal development for the additional $25 million that we expect to come in May or June of 2022. I really appreciated the recommendation about hiring more staff. This is a huge endeavor and it's a lot of funding. And I think bringing in additional people to manage and do this kind of engagement work is a really great idea. Y'all are awesome and we don't want to burn you out. And it's been a very stressful time. So really, yeah, I'm fully in support of bringing on some more staff to manage this process and make sure that we're doing it right. And it seems very worth investing in that. Thank you. And happy to move forward to those portions. If there are any more comments about the scorecard itself, I'll just pause to see if there's anyone who'd like to speak to that. Why don't you go ahead, Ms. Patterson, and people may want to comment on that later. Okay, no, Councilman Freeman. I figured you couldn't see my hand. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Leela. I do appreciate the presentation. The first question is, I know that the scorecard looks a little different from the presentation we received. And I'm assuming this is the updated version. If you could just please make sure and get that version, that would be helpful. And then I just want to make sure that when we say residence most impacted, if we could nail that down a little bit more or spell it out, some type of asterisk that kind of says what that means, because I think it has a tendency to move and it's fine to move, but how it moves and what it actually means needs to be clear. I really appreciate the equity tool being used in this process. I think this was what was missing in our participatory budgeting and making sure that we were using an equitable tool to spell out how we would get to the actual projects that would have the biggest impact to those folks who've been left out of the process. And so I feel really good about the scorecard. I feel really good about moving forward. And I'm this, I'm excited. This is phenomenal. And with just about $17.5 million, I think we get a first round to kind of flesh out what the issues might be, acknowledging there will be some and work through them. So I thank you. Well, thank you for this time. And I would also add, I think it's a great idea to add staff and not try to throw it on existing staff. So thank you. Well, I appreciate that. I know it's been a collaborative effort to date and we could use more capacity and just want to respond quickly to the point about most impacted, that's language that's used in the Treasury guidance and will be more specific to say those residents, most impacted specifically by COVID-19, the health impacts, as well as the economic impacts associated with the pandemic. Recognizing that, of course, many of those are rooted in things that people had been experiencing prior to the pandemic. Thank you. There's someone I asked you to go ahead and move on. Okay, so just a couple more slides here. As we look forward to the next phase of this process, staff is really focused on this question. How will we track and measure the impact of these investments? And to be good stewards of these funds, additional staff capacity is needed to comply with federal guidelines and ensure that funding decisions contribute to equitable, measurable and transformative impacts. So just to give you a bit more detail about the additional staff capacity that we are recommending. We are recommending that we hire two full-time positions. One would be housed in the Budget Management and Services Office and one would be housed in the Finance Office. The position in Budget Management Services would be largely focused on managing the grant-making process all the way from engaging residents to establishing budgets and monitoring expenditures. And the position in finance would be focused on the accounting process, but this team would really work together to ensure that the process is again as effective, efficient and equitable as possible. So to go back to the timeline, just wanted to say that moving forward, we really see this as ongoing rounds of engagement and review and allocation while evaluating all along the way and improving the process as we go. So just to close with our final recommendations, these are the top recommendations that we bring before you today. First is to hire two new positions to build the capacity that's needed to administer these funds. Second is to establish a review committee to vet and prioritize proposals that would be comprised both of city staff and residents to continue to review proposals for eligibility with the most positive reviews using the scorecard moving forward to you that you would make the final decisions about which proposals are funded. And then to plan for ongoing rounds of engagement, proposal development, review, allocation and evaluation. And so with that, I'm happy to open it up for discussion. I know that Bertha and I look forward to taking your questions. Thank you very much, Ms. Patterson. Can you take down the slides? Thank you. We really appreciate your presentation. So I do have one question and then I'll open it up. So to what extent are we coordinating with the county? You know, I see education proposals. And when I see education proposals, I think that's what the county should spend their money on, you know, that's just an example. So can you talk about that a little bit? I'm happy to, I know that in the engagement phase, we've been very closely coordinating with the county to ensure that any ideas or input that we receive is shared. And then I know deputy city manager Johnson can probably say more about what's planned moving forward. Yes, thank you, Lita. And thanks for the presentation. We are, the county is working with us and they have been at all of our engagement opportunities with our residents. They also will be presenting to their county commissioners and using similar many other slides that we have in this presentation. I believe that's on September 12th. What we believe will be the best way to collaborate moving forward is that we have the review committees that we have county staff on those proposal review teams that are county related functions. As you mentioned, particularly health, we talked about making sure that we have someone from Durham County Public Health to participate on those teams.  So there's much engagement to be done.  But we are really hopeful that we can bring forward some joint proposals to the city and county as well as the county taking on some of those proposals that are most aligned with the work they do today today. Thank you very much. Yeah, I just think that's really gonna be important. I could see, I could see, yeah, I worry about confusion and overlap and all that, but it sounds like y'all are doing a great job coordinating and I really appreciate it. And I see some in the chat, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson points out that participatory budgeting does use an equity tool. So I just wanted to mention that. All right, colleagues, other questions or comments for Ms. Patterson, Council Member Freelon. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you so much for the presentation. It was very informative. And I just wanted to first to comment just to extend some gratitude to the city manager. Well, this is like a unique situation getting this money from the federal government. It gives us this kind of unprecedented one-time opportunity to make this big investment. It's really exciting. I'm really excited about the internal shifts that Durham has had to make in order to create space for a really immersive community engagement process, which the city manager has affirmed will continue beyond this process and could hopefully help impact and improve our participatory budgeting process. And I'm particularly talking about the budget healing. It's just a really, like you said, it's something the community has been waiting on and asking for for a long time.  So I'm grateful for that. I had a comment about the scorecard. You asked about the scorecard and you know, I've learned just from listening to community members and community organizers, there are a lot of critiques about how city processes and access to city funds are kind of, you know, privileged nonprofits that are really good at kind of nailing criteria and scorecards like this one. And it kind of, it's one of those invisible ways that white supremacy excludes, you know, working class folks who are putting proposals together don't have the same infrastructure to be able to, you know, to nail seven out of eight of those criteria. So there is, I think there, it would be great to engage some of those folks with the scorecard to get their critical feedback. I don't have any substantive contributions to offer other than to go back to the same community that you spoke to for some of the budget healing stuff to present them with the scorecard and get them to really read into it. And I don't know if some things, you know, equity could be more weighted, for example, than some of the other, you know, some of the other areas. I think there are people in the community that would be better equipped than I am to be able to do that detailed analysis. And there might even be able, there might even be some institutional support that we could garner from the, you know, the Race Equity Institute, or the, or sorry, I'm thinking the Samuel Du Bois Cook Institute for Race Equity at Duke. They just put out a really amazing report about the impacts of COVID on Black Durham, for example. And there's a great organization that put a back in the Black proposal together that talks about, you know, the history of ways in which public policy is undermined Black agency and wealth building capacity in the past and that this could be a restorative opportunity for us to make an intervention in Durham's Black community specifically. And that's really exciting to me. And I would love for our rubric to reflect that as a focus area in a way potentially that's weighted for projects coming from Black organizations, or I'm not exactly sure how to make that happen. And again, I'm just kind of thinking that it would be great to talk to the back in the Black people or the Bull City 919. There's a couple of organizations, the Durham committee, you know, there are a couple of organizations that I think would be really good to run the rubric by to get feedback from folks on the criteria. Yeah, so those are my comments. Thank you. Great comments, council member. Thank you so much. And thank you for that important reminder. Colleagues, other questions or comments for Ms. Patterson, council member Freeman. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. I just wanted to fully associate myself with council member Freelance comments and just noting that there's a lot to the actual like work of doing race equity in our inside of our funding stream. And so just acknowledging that that was what was missing in our participatory budgeting process is what I was getting at. And so you might have used an equity tool, but an equity tool without acknowledging who it directly is accountable to doesn't quite get to the point. And so I really appreciate council member Freelance calling it out and saying that we should be talking to the Black Agenda 919. We should be talking to the Durham Committee on Affairs of Black People. We should also be talking to the people that are in the committee for people with disabilities. There's a whole host of folks who are disproportionately impacted by this COVID-19 pandemic. And the data does tell the story. And so the reason we have to do vaccine equity and the reason we rushed, all of those things were based in that aspect of race equity that we're not talking about right now, but I think the tool does get to that. And so that, which is why I appreciate what you changed in that point, instead of focusing on the 51% community benefit, which is all broad and wide, you're changing it to actually say what the Treasury has already acknowledged is that we actually have to use racial equity. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any final comments? Ms. Patterson, thank you. We appreciate you. It's really wonderful to have you on our city staff as a Fuse Fellow. And I've just heard great things about your work and I wanna appreciate this excellent report today. Thank you so much. Ms. Johnson, thank you as well. We've heard good things about you too. Over the years. All right, thank you so much for being with us and we're looking forward to the next, we're looking forward to what's next and excited about the proposals and what you're gonna bring to us and many thanks. All right, colleagues, now we're going to move on to item 29. Let me figure out here in a minute what item 29 is. Oh, I see Mr. Allure. This must be the quarterly report. It is indeed. Mr. Allure, good to see you. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of Council. John Allure, I'm the Acting Director of Budget and Management Services. I'll try to be brief here and giving you some highlights of the end of year, the fourth quarter report ending fiscal year 2021. And what I'd say is overall it is good news. And there's some areas of concern that we will not have, I don't think at this point of great concern but certainly things we need to draw your attention to as we move very rapidly onto the first quarter report of FY22 in about a month's time. So as we always do with the general fund, so this is the summary is that expenditures were under budget by approximately 8.4 million. This had to do with a lot of savings in personnel, lap salaries, vacancies, and also some operational savings having to do with departments. In the current environment, not getting to spend all of their budgets operationally. All departments ended within budget naturally. And then the expected revenue surplus, it's approximately $18.2 million. The main drivers here are, as you will see sales tax and property tax, an overall positive variance of 26.6 million. To summary of our revenues, the major revenues for the quarter, as you can see, the blue being the actual, the red being the budget. There's more detail in this, but as we go on, but just gives you a brief visual of where we stand. Next slide. Speaking of sales tax, so 11 months of collection, $69.2 million. And this includes some positive good news due to the renegotiation of our interlocal agreement with the county. The projection for 12 months is $78.1 million. And our final payment will actually come, it's expected to come tomorrow. So we'll know if that bears fruit by tomorrow. As you would imagine, strong recovery from COVID, which led to much higher collections. And this is statewide. I think in all 100 counties, we were, our colleagues were all caught by surprise by this. Property tax, about a $5 million positive variance. And the next following slides kind of give you where we stand moving up, looking at the various fiscal years, actual to budget. So here's the sales tax, is a very large positive variance of about $14 million. Next slide. Utility tax. Saw a reduction there in what we received from the state on utility tax payments. Permits, an increase, almost a doubling, although it's not a lot of money. I will bring it to your attention because as we get down later slides, I would say that I would characterize that as don't count on that. That is a one time thing that is mostly driven by driveway permits. Occupancy tax, of course, down. As a lot of that has to do with what happens in the downtown business core and particularly what happens with the Deepak and hotels, et cetera. Power bill is up. We budgeted very, very conservatively because we thought particularly with the power bill, revenues, the gas revenues that that would be down. But in the end, the state rewarded us with more than we expected, $6.1 million. Charges for services. Better than we expected at $8.8 million. Although I would say that what is hidden in this what was positive was we didn't expect the amount in planning and development fees to be so robust. We certainly saw reductions in our parks and recreations charges for services programs. Just overall with the general fund, just a summary of what we just talked about and then moving on to expenditures. As I said, all departments showed surpluses. Some departments saw great surpluses. I mean, the number that you see right there that would stick out to you is the 2 million in emergency communications largely driven by vacancies. And we will have a report on the emergency communications department shortly after this. And then moving on, you see other, again, all of this, a lot of it driven by the vacancy situations in police and parks and recreation in public works. Moving on. And then just an overall summary, it sort of, it amalgamates everything we were talking about on the expenditure side into the sort of the aggregate areas of personnel services, operating expenditures, et cetera. Fund balance. So at the June 30th of last year, our position was $51.8 million. All things considered, we project fund balance for looking back a couple of months to be $67.8 million, which is about $34.7 million above the policy level threshold of 16.7%. This will be confirmed. This is what our friends in accounting tell us. This will be confirmed when the audit is certified and you'll certainly get a report on that in the coming council work session cycles. It's just looking at the financial position a little differently, budget to actuals don't have a whole lot to say on this other than to say that, you know, a lot of the revenues, the way they performed was not how we expected them to perform. It was a very robust situation and a lot of them and in some areas we certainly saw reductions where we did expect them. Moving on. So moving on to the major enterprise funds, water and sewer fund, overall revenues were close to budget, expenses slight reduction there. There's a large transfer to the CIP, which you will see. Again, the water position with the revenue continue and then overall you have a slight positive variance of $120,000 transit operations fund. This is one of the funds obviously that we're looking at very, very closely. Operating revenues were not even close to what we expected primarily due to the fare free ridership. We were able to balance some of that with a reduction in operating expenses but overall the projection is slightly going over budget. Here you see the revenue side of the picture and you certainly see the reduction in revenues there, 2.6 million. Next slide, thank you so much. Oh, seemed to skip the head there. Thank you, we can just stay, yeah, perfect. Thank you, Christina. And overall the variance is to the red by just under a million dollars for the transit fund. I'll say more about that after we finish with the parking fund moving on to solid waste. Overall the fund blend the fiscal year with the deficit just shy of about a quarter of a million dollars. Operating revenues less than what we budgeted and certainly we saw what I would say is some increases in the overtime on the expenditure side. So here you have the revenues and the reduction by about $600,000. And then moving on to the expenditures, you see the slightly as overall a budget variance of $96,000. Stormwater fund ended quite well. Year end results about 108% above budget on the revenues and then on the expenditures below budget by 88.5%. And overall, you see the increase in revenues here and then on the expenditure side, you see the savings in the expenditures 1.6 million with a positive variance of about $3 million on the stormwater fund. Finally, a parking. So the revenues had a shortfall of 65.83 to budget as you would imagine due to the lack of parking demand. We had a bond risk financing that helped to smooth some of this and obviously a reduction in operating expenditures. So here you see the loss in operating revenues to the tune of about $3.9 million. And then on the expenditures, some slight savings there, but overall a deficit of $2.9 million. So what I would say about both transit and parking quite obviously is we're monitoring this very, very closely. We've met with our partners in both in finance and Sean Egan and Thomas Leathers to discuss the situation because of course we wanna know moving forward how this is gonna look. And a lot of it is not being able to establish a baseline. So where we like to project based on what we thought was normal going into Q1 is not normal because we're not seeing the return of the downtown core as they anticipated. So it's certainly people from transportation are available to answer your questions to more detail. But what I characterize it is say that we're closely monitoring the position with these funds, but it's still very, very difficult to establish as I say what the goal line is. Finally just throw this in the debt service fund to say overall that the debt service fund is performing fine. We have no issues there. Any other fund that is missing here is simply because there's not a whole lot to discuss with them and that they're performing as to be expected. And I think at the year end report that no news is good news with all of this. And that concludes the presentation. I normally we end this with sort of a budget highlights. I'm not gonna do that this time because the picture changes so much. And if I were to give you budget highlights right now they'd probably be stale in a couple of weeks or it would have been stale by the time we wrote them. Other than to say as I say that we're very rapidly we'll be preparing the Q1 report. We very rapidly will be going into preparations for how we proceed with the FY23 budget process. I've certainly heard all of the comments today here about how we open up the budget process to be even more inclusive. How we apply an equity lens and an equity tool to the budget process. Certainly when we talk about ARP and we look at that equity tool that those tools are not done in a vacuum. And I can say that people are advancing on these fronts in iterations and we are learning from each other and applying those things. And what I would say is allow us just a little more time but I would anticipate by the time we get to retreats in February and March that you'll have more information on those things. Mr. Allure, thank you as always for a great report. Excellent presentation. And I know that budgeting through this pandemic has been as hard as all the other departments working through this pandemic and you all have done a great job. Colleagues, questions and comments for Mr. Allure. Mr. Allure, I have one, the fund balance in the $64 million, the $64 million, am I getting that number roughly correct? Yeah, about $34 million above the threshold, yes. Where, what was, when we met at the retreat what was the number that we predicted? How different is it from that? I sense that we are better off than what we had predicted at that time, is that right? We are better off, I can't put you the exact number. My memory seems to say around 55 is what I remember. Yes, it's better off. It's one of the reasons when we talk about ARP that particularly with the general fund in terms of revenue recovery at one time we were considering asking or considering using something some of the ARP money for revenue recovery for the general fund, we are no longer considering that. Because it's such the robust consider, we wanna save that for what Lila and Bertha presented about to you earlier, that there just doesn't seem to be the need for revenue recovery in the general fund. Thank you. Colleagues, other questions and comments for Mr. Allure. Mr. Allure, thank you. It was a great report and congratulations to everyone in the staff who is managing our budget and all the departments. It's wonderful to see that as usual, every single department came under their budget target.  Thank you so much. You are very welcome and thank you also to our partners in the finance department and in particular acting director Emily Desiderio, who has always been a great colleague and is always a great set of eyes as we will continue to work in conjunction on these matters. Thank you so much. Madam manager. Mr. Mayor, thank you. I don't like to pop in on too many presentations but I did want to, as Mr. Allure was speaking about the savings, he mentioned numerous times that much of that savings is because of vacancies that we have in some of our operating departments. So I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the employees who are working in the operating departments with many, many vacancies and that involves overtime and a lot of day-to-day grind, I would call it. It saves us money and we are working to feel positions like other organizations are doing in a pandemic but our employees rise to the occasion day in and day out to take up for those vacancies where John is reporting. We're doing good financially. There's a employee side to that. So thank you, John. I thank John for stepping up to serve in the acting role on a permanent basis and look forward to us moving into our next budget season. Thank you, yes. And John, Mr. Laura, I should have mentioned that. Thank you for stepping up to that. We know you well and we're grateful. We know you got it. Thank you. All right, colleagues, thank you Madam Manager and now we'll move on to item 30 and this is the Durham Master Aging Plan presentation. And I believe that Joan Pelletier is here with us. Oh, Gina, are you, Ms. Upchurch, are you getting started for us? I am going to get started for us. If you can hear me, okay, I'm going to share our slides and walk us through the slides. Thank you. Are you gonna introduce yourself, Ms. Upchurch or should I introduce you? No, I'll do it. Thank you. I'm just trying to get my slides up here. So I'm Gina Upchurch and I'm here as a representative with Aging Well Durham with a team of people and we've got a little bit of time but I just wanna thank the Mayor, Mayor Shull, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, all the hard work in council folks and Manager Page for having us. This is a lot of hard work you all do and we've been sitting here since one and we see what you do. So thank you for your service to our city. And we really appreciate the chance to get in front of you. We came one time to your meeting and then you got invited back to this work session so we really appreciate this opportunity. So I'm gonna be the first speaker and I'm gonna see if I can get the big screen here for you and from the beginning, here we go. See if you can see it, okay. And so I am just going to start us off I'm the executive director of senior pharmacists in Durham but we are representing a large group of individuals. So I represent one community-based organization but there are many that have been working on what you're about to hear. Next you're gonna hear from Chalisa Howard Martinez who's done a ton of work, wonderful work in Durham but she most recently helped facilitate the Durham Master Aging Plan with Melissa Black and you'll hear about that from her. You'll hear from Dr. Janet Becker who's an associate professor and director of the Duke Roybal Center on Aging. You'll hear from Joy Gardner who's a volunteer not only at senior pharmacists but at the Durham Center for Senior Life and Mr. Johnson is with us I believe also but he's had a medical issue it's not gonna be able to speak to you but he's with the senior Tarhill legislature and he's been helping prepare this for you also. So our design outcomes is we're gonna give you an overview of how two coalitions have become or are becoming one agency called Aging Well Durham. We filed for articles of incorporation and we're going to be working with the IRS to get 501C three status and you'll hear a little bit more about that. We're gonna talk about the Durham Master Aging Plan that's laid out a lot of our workforce. And finally you're gonna hear about a request and we've already made it to you once but it's gonna be for $150,000 a year for two years to match what the county is doing so that there'll be 300,000 a year to get this initiative going and you'll hear more about the initiative. I wanna say on a personal level I think this is a very meager request to take and support very bold action. So there've been two coalitions. One called Durham's Partnership for Seniors and you may know about other names that's been called Keeping in Step through the Years, the United Way Senior Issue Team, Results-Based Accountability Senior Issue Team and then when we work with Duke it was called HIP or Healthy in Place Seniors but it's been a very sort of loose coalition of dedicated people but very little staffing to support it. It's a longstanding coalition. It's been the springboard for many initiatives and it recommends how Durham County can spend our block grant funding around aging services. It's hosted several aging summits which I know several of you have attended and it led the effort to create the Master Aging Plan and the city supported that and now we're asking for support to help implement some of that. Then when COVID hit and some of those same people but other people gathered steam and we called ourselves the Durham's Partnership for Seniors and more COVID response and it really began in response to what was going on with COVID. It began with us training each other on telephone reassurance and sharing resources. Then we started coordinating agencies around food, volunteers, critical resources, handouts, for example, when SNAP or Food and Nutrition Services expanded, we shared that information with each other so that it could get out to the community. We added several very engaged academic partners in our work which you'll hear about today. And then we cosponsored a successful community health worker grant which was initiative of the Duke Durham Fund and you'll hear a little bit about that. The reason this is important, how does wanna bring your attention to this number, excuse me, this number in the bottom right-hand corner if you can see my little arrow of 64%. So from 2018 to 2038, the population 60 and older in Durham County is supposed to grow 64%. I want you, I know in all your free time, if you can spend a little time looking at Chatham County, Orange County, Wake County, Caswell County and see what aging services they have at the county level that are often county departments. We don't have that here in Durham. We are very far behind the eight ball. We have what we need to make things happen in Durham but we need to come together. We don't need to all be necessarily in the same train cabin but we all need to be on the same train tracks going in the same direction. So what we're gonna be talking to you today is about how we coordinate many stakeholders and move in the same direction because we cannot do a good job in terms of what we do for older adults and not just older adults, aging adults, by the way, this whole initiative is around not just older adults but aging adults including people with disabilities whether it's vision problems or different ableness. So they're included in this. That's why it's called aging well Durham but 64% growth, we're not ready for it in terms of quantity or quality and we need your support to get there. So next I'm gonna hand it over to Shalisa to talk about some of the work that we've done. Thank you, Gina. Good afternoon everyone. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the master aging plan, the timeline and also our process that we use to design the plan. So we first want to start off with this concept around livability and being an age-friendly community. So the focus is on older and aging adults but at the same time making your community more age-friendly, more livable for older adults makes it more age-friendly for everyone and particularly other groups that are vulnerable to social or health inequities or disparities. So folks like people with disabilities but also younger folks. So our goal is to make Durham just overall a more livable and age-friendly community. Here are some of the goals of livability that have been defined by AARP. So feeling safe in the community, participating in community activities, being treated with respect and then having access to key resources like housing and transportation. Also these goals of livability, we wanna make sure as we move forward with developing aging while Durham, we wanna make sure that as we develop strategies and partnerships around these goals of livability that we center the voices and lived experiences of those individuals who are aging in Durham. Next slide please. So here are the other four goals of livability, access to recreational activities and opportunities, health services, knowing what services and activities are available. This number six is really important. Durham has a lot of really wonderful resources but folks are very confused around how to access them and how to access information about them. And then of course, we also wanna emphasize having Durham being a place where everyone feels that they can contribute to the economic, civic and social life of the community and then receiving appropriate support if people can no longer safely maintain their independence and their homes. So this process began back in January of 2019. At that time, there was an application that was sent to AARP and the Royal Health Organization from Durham and included letter of support signed by Mayor Shul and also the County Commissioner, Head of the County Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. And then at the same time around this time, the Steering Committee got together to begin developing the vision, mission and values for the Durham Master Aging Plan. In March, we had a kickoff activity where we basically introduced this process to the community members and invited them to participate. And then the next month in April, we began developing parts of the plan with different working groups that worked on, for example, the domain definitions, but also goal statements. And basically from March of 2019 through August, 2019, we developed key parts of the plan. In August, we also developed and designed, I should say, a midpoint check-in meeting where we invited even more community members to share with them parts of the plan that already had been developed and also received their feedback and put about it. So in September, again, we got back together with the Living, Livability Working Groups where they developed strategies, indicators. The Steering Committee also continued to meet. They wanted to know more about how other communities have implemented their Master Aging Plan. And then from like about December of 2019 until March, 2020, we kind of just wrapped things up as far as the plan. So we had a map celebration. It was virtual because by that time, we were already headed into the COVID-19 pandemic. And we also did a presentation for the Durham County Board of County Commissioners. Next slide, please. Here's a list of some of the, well, all of the, I should say, all of the Durham Map Steering Committee members. So as you can see, is a very diverse group of different stakeholders of different organizations that are working in Durham to improve quality of life for aging adults and also people with disabilities. Next slide, please. So the map, the Master Aging Plan, there's several domains of livability. It's actually nine in total. And for Durham, we took those nine and we kind of combined them. So we come up with five working groups. So on the right side of your slide, you'll see the five working groups that develop each of those different domains. Next slide, please. A big part of our process was making sure that within each domain that we were doing a lot of check-ins and making sure there was alignment between the domain's components and also making sure that at all points, we were clarifying language and concepts, making sure that we were all clear about our common language for what we wanted to do with this Master Aging Plan. We also took time at each session to share information about emerging initiatives at the local and state level. So for example, during this process, the housing bond was an issue that was going to be voted on in Durham. So there was a lot of discussion around how does the housing bond impact, for example, the housing domain. We also had folks who were working on the city's comprehensive plan come in and talk to us about things around transportation. Another key part of this design process was that we wanted to make sure we had ongoing engagement and brought in new perspectives at the working group levels, whether that was new stakeholders, representing organizations and communities, but also individual older adults to be a part of this process. Next slide please. This slide lists the maps, cross-cutting issues. So these are all priorities that we feel should be part of all aspects of the plan. And so another piece of this is that as we developed each component, we also would go and check back in to make sure that these showed up throughout the plan. And I think moving forward with Aging World Durham, we'll definitely try to work on developing a framework that also includes the cross-cutting issues to make sure that this work continues, that these lens of thinking about these different priorities based on community members' needs and identities and situations that they continue to be a priority for our work with Aging World Durham. Next, I want to talk a little bit about how the Durham Master Aging Plan aligns with the city of Durham's current strategic plan. So we took a look at your strategic plan and we thought that we mostly aligned with the goal around connected, diverse and engaged communities and the different objectives underneath that goal. Next slide, please. So for example, for the Master Aging Plan our outdoor spaces domain, the domain definition around outdoor spaces being available throughout Durham and being the needs of all users. Also, green space and buildings are being plentiful, affordable, accessible, well-maintained, beautiful, inviting and safe for all. That is the vision for how we want outdoor spaces to be for Durham. Next slide, please. And so in the city's strategic plan, there's also an objective around cultivating strong connections between neighbors, making sure that neighbors and residents and community stakeholders are able to develop strategies to strengthen and stabilize neighborhoods. So next slide, please. So how we kind of feel like, again, the alignment between the Master Aging Plan and the current strategic plan for Durham is also within the Durham maps outdoor spaces domain, there is a goal around collaborating with public and partner partnerships or partners to support inclusive and equitable access to outdoor spaces and building. And as a strategy for that, we are talking about improving outdoor safety by using aging accessibility and racial equity as lenses for design. And one of our indicators for that is also, again, working with folks who are developing the Durham Comprehensive Plan to make sure that it reflects the needs and preferences of older adults, individuals living with disabilities and communities that have been historically marginalized because of their race and ethnicity. So now I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. Bedker who is going to describe the Durham Partnership for Seniors in More COVID-19 Response Project and also academic partners and their role in this new nonprofit. Thanks so much, Chalisa. And thanks to the city's leadership, we really appreciate your support in developing and endorsing this plan. It has just been an interesting afternoon listening to all the work that's been brought forward and discussions today. And as we were preparing for this and just thinking how the pandemic delayed implementation on the Master Aging Plan, it's clear the areas identified and those that Chalisa just covered are still very relevant, if not even more important. The longstanding coalition of partners that Gina described at the outset were not idle, obviously in these last 18 months. Actually new partnerships were activated to meet the needs of the community and that was really exciting and have continued to meet with the same enthusiasm despite all the hardships over this last year. I was especially moved during this working session, during the citizen matters discussions on housing and transportation and couldn't agree more. We all found, and particularly with the older adult community and persons with disability, it's difficult getting information to people in need and even finding people with unmet needs to be able to help them. And so this Durham partnership for seniors and more expanded coalition, this larger group, came together to support many new initiatives that had not been planned pre-pandemic. I'd like to spend a minute on just specifically on the cohort of community health promoters and how they were brought together to provide support to older adults where they live. Next slide please, thanks. When thinking about this role, community health promoters, it was really, I just want to put in context of who these folks were that came together. So here we were in a time where services were suspended or at reduced capacity, there were even greater needs for food, healthcare access, et cetera. And Project Access of Durham housed a position to support a cohort of 25 individuals to help residents meet their basic needs. These community health promoters spanned generations, they represented different races, they spoke different languages, they lived themselves in public housing or in senior housing, they were volunteers of local organizations. This COVID response project was made possible with Duke Durham funding and was really a signal of how much work we have left to do. It was also an indicator of what's possible with funded positions committed to the health of our community, specifically with a focus on equity and aging. Next slide please. As an academic partner, one of many that were involved and continue to be involved in the coalition, I want to speak in support to the request here today because of the city's commitment to the master aging plan implementation will actually be a catalyst for all of us to think about the many other improvements and investments that we can make in an age-friendly community. You've already had this vision and have committed to it, it's listed with the World Health Organization, it's listed nationally with AARP. So with a coordinated strategy of centralized support, we have the opportunity to be inclusive and be thinking differently. Also bringing forward, I think from where I sit as an academic partner we'll be able to more equitably be able to bring additional resources to Durham so that we can all reach a common goal and move forward in areas that maybe we hadn't yet considered. I think I'm going to transition now to Joy. Joy, you with us? Yes, yes. Okay, great, thanks. Thank you. With support of the city of Durham and Durham County, we are proposing to develop a backbone organization to manage several roles related to map implementation and linkage with city and county goals. Agent Well Durham, it will retain the active community engagement and recruit additional partners to join Agent Well Durham as it implements the map. Transition to five liveability for work groups that design the map to implement work groups of Agent Well Durham. Next, okay. Agent Well will have the vision of Durham as a community where aging adults age well and drive. Agent Well Durham will have, promotes collaborative efforts to build a safe, affordable, accessible, connected and inclusive community for aging adults in Durham. Agent Well Durham will provide a collaborative space to pull everyone together to work on upstream priorities. Agent Well Durham will convene and provide continuous support to work in groups for the master age plans implementation. Agent Well Durham will center community members live experiences with a specific focus on those who have experienced health inequities. Agent Well Durham is requesting $300,000 for two years of funding, $150,000 per year for the nonprofit Agent Well Durham, which assumes the roles and responsibilities of two groups, Durham partnership for seniors and Durham partnership for seniors plus more, COVID response coalitions. Funding from the city will match that from Durham County. County's funding is contingent on Agent Well Durham receiving funds from the city. Agent Well Durham is also requesting the city support with collaboration with cities, initiatives, information sharing, alignment of priorities and strategies and long-term sustainability. We thank you for assisting us today. And if we have any other questions, please let us know. Thank you all so much for a great presentation. I'm not sure who's got the slides up. If you could take those down, that would be great. Thank you. Ms. Gardner, Ms. Uptchurch, Dr. Bedker and Ms. Howard Martinez. Thank you, great presentation. Colleagues, let me just give you a little context here. Those of y'all who are enjoying City County when we were meeting in person a while back, we signed the, we agreed to sign on to the master aging plan. I signed that on behalf of the city as our friends here indicated Wendy signed at the time as chair on behalf of County. And this work has then gone on subsequent to that. The County, both Commissioner Howerton and Commissioner Jacobs have spoken to me about the fact that they have approved $150,000 in funding for this work to set up this backbone organization contingent on the city's funding. So they're asking us to join them in funding this at $150,000 a year for two years. As I understand it, this would not be an ongoing expenditure. This would be a two year commitment. And so I just wanted to let you all know that this is part of the, this is not only a request from our friends here today, but also a request from the County Commission that we matched them. So I think now I see Ms. Pelletier here. Do you also have some comments? No, other than thank you all for hearing our presentation and for considering our request. Thank you. Well, you all did a great job of presenting and putting this presentation together and more to the point, you've done a lot of amazing work and I really am very appreciative. Colleagues, comments, questions at this time for our presenters. Council Member Caballero. Just a gratitude for the presentation and thank you for coming back. I know I remember when you all were here a few months ago. Others? Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I look forward to availing myself of much of the work product of this group in a few more years here in Durham. So I'm really excited about all the work that you're doing. Thank you so much. Just a quick question. The $300,000 which I certainly support partnering with our friends at the County. What happens after the two years? I'll try to take that and everybody else can chime in. So this work has been done on a voluntary basis except for a small grant we had as the partnership for seniors coordinator. It was a full-time position that kept getting sliced and diced till now. Now it's just about $12,000 from the County. I see it as sort of infrastructure for the work that the city and County need to do but we know that it's not gonna work. We don't start it with some significant funding. I don't see this necessarily as a community-based agency that has to go out and raise money to do basic infrastructure type thing. So while I appreciate the mayor's comment and we are just asking for two years just to make sure it's working and we're creating the outcomes we wanna create to implement the master aging plan but this will be ongoing work. And I'm not saying it's just gonna rely on the city and County, you heard Dr. Betker talk about other funds that could come in but I see this is really infrastructure that supports the city and County's obligation really to support aging adults. But in a lot of communities there are actually departments within the government to get this done and that's not happening here. So something needs to be done and we're just asked for two years to jumpstart it and see how well we can pull it together to get it going. That's an honest answer, so. I appreciate it. Yes, Shalisa may have, yeah. Yeah, I was gonna add on to Gina's response that I think also this group has also looked at, for example, how could we use aging world, I'm sorry, to develop an accountable care community kind of model here in Durham, which definitely looks at developing community infrastructure but also looking at how do you develop collaborative funding relationships with other stakeholder groups in the community who are working on the same priority and also looking at, for example, other kind of investors, including city, County government but also even healthcare systems, health plans. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for innovation and thinking about how do we maintain this over time? But it's gonna take just an initial investment just to get us started on just thinking about all the different possibilities for how this could be sustainable. Thank you all. Other questions or comments, Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you everyone for being here today and for your presentation. It's been great hearing more about this proposal. We've had a couple of residents come to us asking about it and so it's good to see the progress that's been made. I'm excited to partner with the County to make this happen. Wondering if our staff knows what the funding source is for this and was also, I know this is just a presentation today on our agenda at what point would we actually be asked to allocate the resources? I think they're asking us to allocate the resources soon. Madam Manager. Yeah, Madam Manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So anytime we have consideration to give consideration to any new funding after a budget has already passed, provided we get the direction from council, we will go and look for the most appropriate funding according to the request. If the request as it has been here today is supported by the council and it's one time, obviously we have one time funding and a fund balance which would potentially be the best funding source to fund an initiative such as this. There wouldn't be another place to go. Thank you, Madam Manager. Thank you. I just had one more thing, Mr. Mayor. Sure. There are a number of things that we would like the county to partner with us on and thinking about one that we talked about today with the tax grants and making that a county-wide program. So I'm not saying that we should, there's no quid pro quo, but I hope that they see this as a sign of good faith that we are excited about partnering with them. And I hope that we can also take the county on board with some of our priorities and initiatives. That's a great point. Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you all for the presentation. I really appreciate it. I did have a chance to check in on Filer City's services and it looks like they have a council on aging, which we do not have in the city of Durham. And it would be great to actually have that acknowledging that one of our largest populations is of seniors and people who are aging and we would hope would be thriving. And mindful that it may seem like this is a county effort that we should partner on, but I think it's more of a city effort, acknowledging how many folks who are seniors live within the city limits. I had hoped that you could separate out how many that was because it could probably show that more of them live in the city limits and are using city services. And any way that we can ensure that they're thriving, which is the version of, you know, live, work and play that we always talk about as our timeline has to be included in what we're doing with our seniors. And I'm excited as well. I'm grateful for each of you and for all the work. And it takes a lot of time. I will say that I noted, I think this closest closest we get is the mayor's committee on folks with disability. And I would hope that you could come and present there as well. Maybe that could give you a little bit more handles on how to push in on, on departments because I feel like this should be something that came from a department. So if there was something in collaboration with a parks and rec or a, you know, I'm trying to think of what's with other departments or neighborhood improvement services, there, there is, there's definitely some on ramps here. And I would love to make sure that it doesn't just live as just the kind of an all shoot one time, you know, $300,000 contribution.  So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Two of our member, two of our city staff were on the, on the steering committee. Miss Phillips from transportation and Miss Stancil from neighborhood improvement services. And many things that we do in the city, of course, touch seniors very deeply. Parks and Rec indeed, transit, affordable housing, many of the things that we work on. I'm going to, it sounds like I'm, I'm not going to let council member Freeland comment because he's too young. We're going to have an age limit. We're going to, we're going to privilege our seniors here, council member, council member, where you'd like to comment. No, that was laughing. Okay. So I hear a lot of support here. And what I'm going to do is council members, I'm going to ask for some thumbs. If you were supportive of supporting this two year. Funding. Could I see your thumbs. All right. Sounds like we've got it. So what'll happen now. I'm going to ask for some thumbs. I'm going to ask for some thumbs. Ms up church and, and, and company is that. This, our administration will figure out how to fund this though. At some point, the, you know, some point in the near future, I'll bring a motion to us. That to allocate those funds, but you see that you have the unanimous support of the council. We really appreciate y'all being with us today. And, and bring us such a great report and thank you for your work. All right. Thank you everybody. We appreciate you. Thank you so much with us. Thank you. All right. We will now move to our last presentation, which is Mr. Randy Beaman. And this is the presentation on, on 911. Mr. Beaman, good to see you. It's really nice to have you with us today. And we're looking forward to your presentation. You're, you're our last presentation today. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And let me share my screen. Can you see that, Mr. Mayor? Yes, we can. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm trying to get an icon move here for a moment. Okay. So Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members, Madam manager and executive team. Today I want to bring forward some serious discussions around Durham Merge Communication Center. Durham Merge Communication Center recognizes it's critically important to fully staff our 911 center with well trained professionals to serve anyone in need of emergency assistance. I know our community members have expressed concerns about 911 call answer times. And that you are hearing from people in the community about their concerns. I recognize and take responsibility that we are not meeting acceptable standards of call answer times. We're not meeting the expectations of our residents and visitors when callers are not able to receive assistance in appropriate time for emergencies. I want to state a few things unequivocally. We are answering 911 calls and residents should absolutely call us in an emergency. While a majority of the calls are answered quickly, we understand too many people are experiencing prolonged wait times. I will not rest until the center achieves a standard of excellence in call answer times that the residents of Durham deserve. In today's presentation, I will outline transparently where we are right now, what immediate steps are being taken to better handle existing call lines and where we are on our journey to permanently achieve and maintain adequate staffing. I also want to take this opportunity to recognize the incredible work of our call takers and the heavy burden they have carried. Our call volumes have served and while we have plans in motion to address our high vacancy rate, I'm going to share with you today that it will take time for those efforts to have impact. In that meantime, the increase in calls has fallen on their shoulders. This team is second to known and they are invested in the future of this center. I want to be sure to take this opportunity to publicly thank them for their dedicated public service. We're staffing updates. I want to talk to you currently through the most recent data. We have a vacancy of 28 full-time employees. Public safety telecommunicator employees. We have 11 part-time public safety telecommunicators who are working at least 20 hours a month. These part-time employees do not reduce our vacancies because they are not considered full-time. But they are supporting us in a huge way. Staffing is not where we need it. Call volumes are high. We are experiencing unplanned and elevated absenteeism, coupled with challenges of attrition. Present to you on the graph here is talking about call volumes for July. There are four areas that I want to wish to point out for you. 9-1-1 calls for July, the total was 27,913 calls. That is the fifth, the most calls in five years that has occurred in a single month. That is this month, 27,913 calls. Moving over to the right side of this table, you will see answered times in seconds. There are two very important areas I wish to point out for you. Answer time in 10 seconds, 75.27%. Answer time in 20 seconds, 81.03%. Industry standard tells us that we should be answering 90% of our calls, 9-1-1 calls, in 10 seconds or less. And 20 seconds, we should be answering 95% of those 9-1-1 calls. I also want to point out to you at the bottom of the graph, you will see average answer time in seconds. Of the calls we answered, 9-1-1 calls in July, we answered those calls in 10.41 seconds. We are supporting this process of call answering by we've implemented an on-call reporting system for administrative staff as well as communication staff. And these folks, our employees are receiving compensation for this on-call process. We've added incentives for recruiting higher skilled individuals, master column officers as well as certified training officers. Those skills will help shorten the training time and also assist us in the staffing levels. These benefits, not only are we looking at for external recruitment processes, but we're also looking forward into our internal promotions and career pathways by offering these incentives. We've also added an overtime incentive to encourage more staff coverage, recognizing the efforts. And we are paying our folks double time for these efforts to help in supporting us in these call answer times and the call volumes. What are we doing now? Here are some of the immediate steps that we're taking. We are streamlining the call taking process by implementing industry standards on how we process those calls. We are mindful that faster call processing provides us the ability to answer more calls. However, certain emergency call types, we cannot consider these call processing standards because we must respond appropriately dependent upon that particular type of emergency call that the call takers and telecommunicators are handling. Most recently, our staff has generated a tracking tool to help support in our mentoring and live training programs through training documentation that will better manage the timely release of our trainees. We're adding capacity. We are taking and have taken eight steps in adding capacity, and we're gathering support and receiving support from our public safety partners. Our fire department personnel are currently assisting us in dispatch. Additional personnel are scheduled actually next week, 13th through the 17th, to take what we call an abbreviated basic training class to help support us. Our Sheriff's Department is providing and offering support from the communication telecommunicators there in the Sheriff's Department. Our emergency medical services partners are willing to provide us and are having people step up to help support us. Duke University is willing to help support us in staffing. We're also utilizing what we call an emergency hire process, wherever and whenever possible. We're utilizing retired and former employees for part-time staff and also to support us in the training. There are 11 part-time staff, and we are continuing to recruit in those efforts. We've modified the schedules for our trainees that are currently being mentored in the academies. We've modified those schedules so that not only are they receiving the job training, but they also are assisting during the peak hours of our call lines. In addition, we're looking at our policies. We're reviewing our policies for procedures. We're updating those on a regular basis so that we, one, maintain our operational compliance that, at the same time, we continue appropriate training. But we also maintain quality of our call management and our call processing. We have to maintain and make sure that our standards of calls processing and the training meets the standards so no matter what type of call surge, we must make sure that we are properly managing those calls within the standards and maintaining those compliances as we review these policies. We must maintain our accreditation as we review these policies, and we are mindful for the need of quality service as we are looking at these processes. The citizens deserve that quality of service even during those call surge situations. Moving on to what is our long-term successes and our progress? First, we want to talk about retention and support. We've implemented pay increases for overtime. We've increased employee engagement. We recognize their work performance, the calls training, regular communications, both written in one-on-one discussions. We acknowledge their value and their importance that they play in the work they do every day. We're providing resources for training, for mental wellness, and scheduling for work-life balance. In recruitment, we've been working, excuse me, all summer recruiting former employees, retired employees, and those employees who've left the ECC for a different career path but are willing to work part-time. We, with the support of HR, have a continuous recruiting process, and we've established a registry. We have recruitment notices posted on professional organizations, the websites, various social media platforms, attending job fairs, and also word of mouth. We've implemented a hiring bonus incentive for our external experienced telecommunicators, master comms, certified training officers, and also we provide a bonus for our internal community, our internal employees who desire to advance their careers and their skills. We continue to provide continuous training academies. We have two more academies before the end of this year. We've increased the academy size by eight trainees that will start this month, September the 20th. That is doubling the current academy. We have a November academy where we have planned to have 12 trainees. We will have 20 more staff by the end of this year. Now, this does not mean that all 20 will be released and functioning independently. However, it does mean that our continued efforts will reduce the vacancy levels in our training areas. We are continuing to recruit certified training officers. Currently, we've increased our training staff by three. One is hired. Two of these folks are scheduled to be in the September 20th academy. We've expanded that to include former trainers, retired staff who are working part-time, and they're going to support the live training of call takers, also supporting us in the cross training to those staff coming from other agencies. Our training curriculum has been streamlined to quickly move callers through the classroom and into the live training environment. Call training now has been reduced from 12 weeks to eight weeks, and that is total training time from classroom and also live mentoring training. Contingency plan. Attrition is unfortunately the reality of emergency communications industry. Attrition planning includes permanent training academies. These academies will be at different skill levels until there are no vacancies. We will continue to utilize the support of public safety partners, Fire Department, Mercy Medical Services, Durham Sheriff's Office, and Duke University. Most recently in the last passing weeks, we have been in discussion with our computer aided dispatch vendor, more addressing alternate routing in a different context. Alternate routing considerations are in discussion, and we will continue to investigate the most efficient and best way of looking at the alternate routing as a source for contingency planning. Our backup center is going to be serving as our training facility. The purpose for that is, is our current facility, our training quad limits us in the size of folks that we can bring into these academies. So we are now moving our training academy to the backup center where we have an afforded larger class sizes for training. September 20 academy is a combination of both call takers and training officers. This combination provides greater utilization of the skill sets and increases the division of training staff. In summary, I want you to know, we are not where we need to be. We are taking appropriate steps to get us to an acceptable standard of call answer time and to meet the expectations of our residents. We continue to training academies permanently with increased class sizes. We're supporting the hiring incentive bonuses, overtime pay considerations, standby pay for both public safety emergency communicators and our administrative staff. I want you to know that I am committed and diligently working and will not rest until we have returned to the standard of excellent in call answer times that the residents and visitors of Durham deserve. Mr. Mayor, at this time I'll be glad to take any questions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Beaman. We really appreciate it. Colleagues, you have heard Mr. Beaman's report and we really appreciate the fairness of it and the very clear explanation. And I'm going to open the floor now to questions or comments from my colleagues. Who'd like to get us started. Councilor Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Director Beaman, good afternoon. Good to see you. And thank you for being with us. And I want to thank the administration, the staff as well. It was me who asked for this talk and this presentation at our last gathering. And I want to thank the staff for so quickly presenting it to us. So first I want to appreciate you for your forthrightness right at the beginning of the presentation. And you know, there's, there's, there's a bit of, well, not a bit, there's a crisis of confidence going on in our city regarding our emergency communication center. And I'm going to appreciate you for just acknowledging that right up front. I also want to appreciate you for the, talking about the incredible work that our call takers do and just the incredible pressure that they're under. This is not an easy job. It can be quite harrowing at times for the folk who take those calls, but they, they remain calm and professional under some really horror movie type scenarios sometimes when that call comes in. So I want to follow them watching and listening. I want you to know that, that there's a, an incredible reservoir of appreciation for just the pressure you're under and the stress of your job. I do have a couple of questions. I, the immediate steps being taken to improve call, answer time performance. The box was streamlining of processes. I, what does that mean? When we, when we say we're streamlining and we're going to be employing industry standards, does that suggest that we weren't doing that all the time using best practices in the industry and, in terms of our processes and, and what's the difference between a call that can be streamlined and one that can't be. And I guess a little bit of the history as to if, if we weren't doing it before, why weren't we? And if you just, just because, what does that streamlining mean? So, and council member streamlining in this process under the industry standard is we have what's called emergency rule. So if your call volumes are reaching such a level, then you can do a shortcut in the processing of a call. And so that is specific as to the, the volume of the calls. And even when you do that, we have to be very careful that we're not losing that quality of the call or the need of the call. So we use our scripted, if you will, priority dispatch, scripts for fire, emergency services and police. And so when we are in certain conditions, then we can do what's called the emergency rule and quickly disconnect. A lot of times when you're with a caller, you will stay on the line with the caller until either the, the responding agencies arrive. But we can do a quick, a quick disconnect. Now there are certain calls such as a respiratory or cardiac oriented that you are not able to quickly disconnect. You must stay on the line because you may need, and we'll need to give life saving measures. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. I want to ask a little bit about the contingency planning. I think last time we discussed this, I was concerned that we were routing calls to Raleigh.  Not because the conditions that necessary, necessitated a routing were addressed, but because Raleigh just kicked us to the curb, they didn't want to take the calls anymore. And what I was curious about a concern about was that when Raleigh decided to stop taking our calls, in so far as that did not indicate that there no longer existed a reason for our calls to be routed. What was our immediate action at that, at that point? Now I know we talked about, I saw that, you know, increasing capacity and as part of our short-term steps, but was there any consideration of invoking any mutual aid agreements with other cities or other municipalities to step in where Raleigh stepped out? Because my assumption is that the need did not go away, just the partnership went away. So the moment that happened, what were the steps we took to take up the slack that Raleigh had left? And that's not pejorative towards them, in so far as they weren't doing it anymore. What was our action at that moment? So what we were doing is we were engaging our staff where when we were monitoring our call volumes and when we were bringing on our additional staff in the call-taking role, that we believed that we would be able to manage the call volume at that time. However, we are seeing higher call volumes than we have seen in quite some time. Right. So the belief that we could manage the increased call volume just happened to coincide with the precise moment when Raleigh decided not to do it anymore? So we have been, I'm sorry, we have been planning to bring on more staff and we were initially in the planning stages of disconnecting from Raleigh later. And so that was where we were developing and have been developing and training our staff to take over and not need the alternate routing. So I guess when Raleigh, however, when Raleigh decided not to do it anymore, that was not when we had planned on. Were we left in a lurch at that point when Raleigh did that? The scheduling and the timing was different than what was initially planned. So insofar as we were anticipating that the steps we were taking in terms of buttressing staff and getting additional personnel, when Raleigh stopped, whatever shape we were in at that point in hindsight, were we in fact ready to do it at that moment? Or should we have considered bringing in another municipality or another center to give us a more time or more cushion? We were prepared because what we were doing was also looking at adjusting shifts or scheduling of people so that we could manage the call. We had already been in that planning stage prior to the date. So we were already planning for that transition. We were not expecting the date when it occurred. Right. And I guess that's my point, that insofar as we were not planning on that date, was it our position that we would just make do until our contingency plans, our plans on adding personnel caught up with the level of the problem we were facing? No, sir. We were planning to take it over. We were already planning. And so we had the staff. We were adjusting schedules. We were adjusting staff as we added the staff that were coming off of the academies into the training. So we were already planning prior to the actual date. Okay. Would you speak to, and I'm glad that you put the graphic with the recent month's data call volume and answer time. Would you speak to residents and citizens who might be watching, who have heard the anecdotal stories out there and we've heard them a folk calling and not only did it take a long, I can imagine that, you know, when you're in the midst of an emergency, six seconds feels like 60 seconds. And if you call 911, you don't get an immediate answer, folk hang up and maybe call back. Would you speak to the, let residents and citizens know what they need to do. If they call 911 and the phone just keeps ringing. Based upon this graph here, should they just wait to stay on the phone? They eventually will be called or should they hang up and call back again? What would your counsel to them be? They absolutely need to stay on the line. The call will be answered. Because in the call management system, what we call call queue. So if you have dialed 911, you are in the system. And so therefore the next available operator will answer your call. If you hang up and you read out, then you are within the queue at a lower level. So you're removed through the queue at that point. So how much of, if we juxtapose where we are now, with the time when we were routing calls to Raleigh, what is different now, percentage, what do, how many, how in better shape are we, than we were when we were routing calls to Raleigh in terms of personnel, terms of staff and percentage wise, we have four more people than we did now. Quantify for me, our condition right now, relative to when we were routing calls to Raleigh. And I'll do respect. I would need to get you those numbers. I would not want to speak out of turn. Sure. You got ball parks to some sense of? I would say that we are, I would, I would estimate that we are at or better than when we were. But I would rather defer until I give you an exact answer. I think it's possible that we're at at the same level. We are better than where we were better. Okay. That's all I'll yield for now. I want to give my chance for my colleagues to jump in, but a direct to me. Thank you so much. I'll yield for now. Thank you. Thank you. Council member colleagues. Other questions or comments for Mr. Beaman. Council member Freeman and then mayor pro temp. Mayor and thank you. Mr. Beaman for a very brief presentation and a very good statement. I would love to have that statement and, and I'm writing actually. So if you could share it, that would be awesome. I think you stated a lot of process related information that wasn't in the presentation. And then. Just along the lines. I also have been. Any other way to say it, but like last week when I had to call 911 because the gentleman was shot on mainstream. I waited four minutes. By the time I got through. It was so I understand like we're operating from averages, but I want us to be real about how difficult it is. To like say that we're at or not at. And so just making sure that we marry that with actual reality. I didn't want to ask the question about. So as mentioned. Are we working at all with the county sheriff and their call dispatch system? Like, is there any overlap in that at all? They have a different dispatch system or CAD system. They do not have the same. We answer the calls and we transfer the calls to the sheriff. And so what we're working with is that they have staff that we are bringing on board to help us in the dispatch area, but they are not a level where they can dispatch calls or take calls. Thank you. And has, have there been any conversations to maybe discuss how they could be on the same system? Is there it? Like, I don't know whose system is newer. Is there any conversations between either of those dispatch offices? Is that a regular or ongoing thing that happens? Never happened. So I had spoken with the supervisor of the communication center and, and have mentioned about how that might work. And we are still having open dialogue on that potential. And I was really, um, I do want to note for my colleagues that I had, uh, in a ride along a few years back noted to myself that the first responders or that call dispatchers are not included as first responders. And I know that in the lat, like in 2019, a number of communities actually passed resolutions to recognize their call dispatchers as first responders. And I would like to offer, um, to bring forward a resolution that actually does that for the city of Durham, noting that the state does not right now. And so I just want to share that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Other comments or questions for Mr. Beaman. Mayor pro temp. Sorry. Yes. You're really cute. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. No worries. Um, thank you, Mr. Beaman. I just wanted to know when we might be able to get data from the city of Durham. Um, I think the comprehensive data that you sent us for July was really helpful. Um, And I would love to see data, that data for August and then for the next few months, um, as we continue to try to solve the problem, um, just so that we can keep track of what's going on and be able to communicate with residents about the progress. Thank you. Mayor pro temp. We currently have out on our webpage, we're working on a number of data issues for complete transparency. And so the August data, we are waiting on information from our provider of that. It's called eCats. And so we work through the state number one staff. To get that information. And they are working on some data issues at the moment. And as soon as that becomes available, we'll be glad to share that with you. And it will also be posted. On our website as well. Thank you. So the, the answer is, I don't know when that's going to be available, but as soon as it is available, we'll be glad to share that. Appreciate it. Mr. Ferguson. Thank you, Mayor Bo Ferguson, Deputy City Manager. I did want to add in the discussion of the August data, I think for transparency and my discussions with 911 leadership, I'd want to set expectations that we think, just from experiences in the 911 center, that the August data is likely to look similar to the July data. I think a number of the short-term measures that, that Mr. Beaman has discussed today. I think we are hopeful that we'll see impact in, in the September numbers, but I want to set expectations that we're not looking to, we're not expecting to see significant improvement from August, given some of the conditions that persisted from July into August. So I just wanted to say that, transparently for the conversation. Thank you, Mr. Ferguson. All right, colleagues, other comments or questions, Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank Deputy Manager Ferguson for coming on and kind of forecasting what we might see in August. I, I'm just not comfortable. It seems to me this, this, this feels somewhat spectator-ish to me. Like we're, we're kind of watching what happens and hoping for good outcomes. I fully affirm that the steps of adding capacity and, and the training, what we're doing to increase personnel and fill vacancies is absolutely critical. But if you bundle all of that together, we were or should have been doing that even while we were still routing calls to Raleigh. And we were routing calls to Raleigh because we were in an emergency situation. We're still in an emergency situation. So it seems to me it would be counterintuitive, counterintuitive to throttle down what we're doing. We should be flooding the zone with everything. And until these measures that we're doing, the increased capacity, bringing in new recruits, until those things bring us to an optimal state or, or make us bring us to interesting standards or however you want to describe it. It seems to me that, that we have, we have throttled back from all hands on deck when we were, because I assume when we were routing calls to Raleigh, all of this stuff should have still been going on anyway. So it's going on. And now we don't have the mutual aid. And it doesn't seem to me that when we lost that mutual aid, we took any significant or any extraordinary steps to make up for that extraordinary step, which was indicated at that moment. There's a reason why we were routing those calls. And I'm not convinced that the reason why we were routing them has been addressed or there's been a cessation of those, those conditions or an amelioration of those conditions. So I would just, you know, I would respectfully say to staff and the administration and to director Beeman that the, the, I don't want to hope for the best. If we haven't, if we're not throwing everything in our toolbox at this, this problem, I would strongly recommend and suggest that whatever our level of engagement and response was at the most critical time of this, this crisis that we return to that footing. While all of these measures, these, these kind of measures to, to bulk us up and buttress us and get us to industry standards and get us optimal are going on. I still think there needs to be some emergency actions taken. You know, I, I, I'm hearing increasingly more stories and I listen, I understand you got to parse out anecdotal from what's actually, you know, we can document in the period and I know that when folk are kind of in the heat of the things, you know, sometimes we can make stuff up and I'm hearing it too often. And, and, and hearing this presentation today. It seems to me that we are, we are throwing things at this problem that will not yield immediate fruit yet. That will not have an immediate impact. We know they will ultimately and kind of like hoping for the best in the meantime, until they kick in. And I'm, I'm, I'm not comfortable with that. I think that the people of the city aren't comfortable with it. And this isn't about any individual administrator. This is about us as a system, as a government, as an administration. I want to be very clear with that. You know, I'll leave that to the staff to parse that out, but I, I think that the administration and the staff and our, and our 911 call center, whatever we were doing at the height of this problem, I am not convinced that we have receded from the, that level of concern and that level of, of emergency and that we should be doing all those things. If we need to be looking for another partner to help us, then we just no shame in that we should be doing that. Durham sends out help to other jurisdictions all the time when they need it. And if we need help, but I am not, I'm not, I'm not comfortable with just, you know, what we're doing these things and we're going to hope that they take impact. I think we should be doing everything we can. And once upon a time we were doing all of this and had mutual aid from Raleigh. So I'll stop there. I see a director Ferguson, Deputy Ferguson came back on. Thank you, council member. I very much appreciate your comments. And I want to reinforce for you that. There is no stone unturned in this conversation, including alternate routing. And I'd like to acknowledge that Mr. Beaman has had. Significant conversations with, with potential partners along those lines. But there were, there were concerns raised in our community when the alternate routing was in place. There are about how those calls were handled. I think those are realities for that system. I think we are confident that it was the right, it was the right decision and the right architecture for what we had and the circumstances we were dealing with at the time it was in place. And I believe that if we were to, to pursue bringing alternate routing back, we have an obligation to make sure we could do so and try and address those concerns in the process. And I'd like to acknowledge that those conversations have, have been ongoing, but that there is nothing at this point that we could announce about that. It is a conversation we've had. In the meantime, though, I would like to say that a number of the measures that, that we're in Mr. Beaman's presentation today are, are newly conceived and implemented and that we do, that we do anticipate making an impact now and that those are not necessarily measures that we had in place in June or July and that it is not unrealistic that we will see some impact. But I think we want to be realistic about the fact that there are right now measures and there are long-term measures and we want, we want to not, not make promises we can't keep in this setting. And so I think it is realistic to say we, we expect gradual improvement. And we will do everything in our power to exceed that expectation. But I think we want to set the expectation realistically now with what we know. And I think you've acknowledged that, that we ought to be doing everything in our power. And I would just want to assure you that those conversations happened. Deputy Ferguson, I appreciate that. And I appreciate that the conversations are ongoing. I just, I just want to be clear. Whatever the issues or challenges were with our agreement with the Raleigh, the cessation of that situation was not our choice. Was it not? It was foist upon us by Raleigh. Is that correct? I would reiterate, yes. I would reiterate though, Mr. Beeman's comments are factual and accurate. We were very close to our, to our planned switchover date. And that was based on careful analysis of where our staffing levels had been previously, where our call taker volume was, what staff was coming out of training and coming onto the floor. So it was a decision we were moving towards the competence. The switchover from, from Raleigh's timeline to ours was, was not a significant Delta. And Mr. Beeman has captured that appropriately in this conversation. I think in addition, you know, I think while none of the numbers that, that, that we have produced in terms of the call taking performance throughout, throughout the alternate routing period or after, while none of those are where we want them to be, June's numbers were, were not concerning in the way that July's numbers moving in the wrong direction work. And so the initial sense of confidence in, in the June numbers were, was understandable at the time. I think it is since, since that time where we've recognized that more efforts are necessary. And those are the efforts that I'm referencing in my comments. Again, I appreciate that. But the conversations as, as I understood the representation, the conversations about alternate routing are still ongoing. So my assumption is that there's a reason why we're still exploring those options and probing those options. And that wherever we are in terms of our staffing, wherever we are in terms of the efficacy of our contingency plans have not made us comfortable enough to remove those conversations from the table. So the fact that we're still probing those conversations goes to my, back to my point that the cessation of that arrangement and the cessation of those activities, whatever the, whoever's, by whomever's timeline, if we're still discussing enough suggests to me that we're still recognizing that we need to be doing more and some other things need to be happening. So, and I'm, I, you know, I won't go back and forth about it. I did hear Mr. Beaman suggest that we were either at or better where we were when we had that contingency, when we had that arrangement with Raleigh in the first place. It just seems to me that the Raleigh situation has gone away and we still have residents calling and getting the same results that they were getting when we were using Raleigh. And I understand that there were issues with directing calls and routing calls to Raleigh. And no matter what we do, folk are going to, you know, cheer or boo or hiss, no matter what action we take, I get that. But what I'm most concerned about now is that the problems persist and for a number of folk in our community, there seems to be no impact thus far. And I want to give you full credit for the, for the steps that we're taking. But again, I've heard nothing to suggest that when Raleigh went away, our situation has improved to any degree or to any measurable way where we don't even need to be thinking about that anymore, because we are having those conversations still about mutual aid. So again, and I'll stop here. I just want to again impress that I don't think anything should be off the table right now. And I hope that those conversations, whatever they are, will at some point yield fruit. And those conversations will at some point become some concrete type of arrangement or agreement because this is just unacceptable. Point blank. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You're back. Thank you, Council Member. Colleagues, other questions and comments for Mr. Beaman. Council Member Caballero. Thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. And I also want to thank manager Page. She spent some time with me on Tuesday, really digging into this issue. And I know we still have a lot of work to do. I know residents are concerned. I know our staff is concerned. And I have confidence that we are moving in the right direction. Whatever we need to do to get it better. I support. I appreciate Council Member Milton for making sure that we heard this presentation. And. Dr. Beaman, thank you for the words at the beginning. We know we need. We need to make sure that. We need to make sure that. Folks to, to feel confident when they call 911, that they feel safe, that their issue is going to be addressed. I know that this is, you know, my understanding is it was an issue. And then with the impact of COVID, it just made it so much harder. And so we are having to. We do an undo a lot to get us in a better place. And so we need to make sure that. We need to make sure that. We need to make sure that we have the word to continue on the progress that we are making. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any more comments? Council Member Freeman. Just a quick question. In your notes, when you were talking about the pay increases across training, I didn't know if you noted that the, I guess the first was that the. In part of that. I just wanted to make sure before I start digging. So are you, when I was speaking about the incentives, the hiring bonus incentives, is that? Yes. To Council Member. Yes. Yes. So that is also relative to both external and internal and receiving the incentive bonuses as they continue to, in their skills and career pathways, they will be recipients of those pay incentive bonuses. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So the bonuses, but there's no conversation about reclassifying them. Yeah. So once they obtain their certifications, say that as an example, they're in a call taker and they move to what we call a calm officer, then that will be a promotion as well as they will receive a bonus. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, ma'am. Other comments or questions? Mr. Beaman. Thank you. I have a, if it, when you hear that, when you hear that a call has taken four minutes to answer, what do you all do in that case? We trace it. I'm sorry. Do you go back and look at the circumstances and so forth? Yes, sir. What we need very importantly, and we asked that on a regular basis when we do have a citizen or someone who has experienced that, we need the phone number that they dialed not one one. And once we receive that phone number, then we can go back and find out when the call was received. And also the activity that was going on at the time of the call placement. Okay. All right. Well, I think that's important. You know, if there's a call that takes four minutes, I appreciate that you all do that. And I know that you did that around the McDougal terrace calls. I'm glad to hear that that's routine. Yes, sir. It is. I added my number in the chat. Thank you. And the, we all know that we're not where we want to be as you began your presentation by acknowledging, and I appreciate the steps that you're taking. I know that our community is waiting to make sure that we are where we need to be. We do. This is the kind of thing that our television stations love. If there's a complaint whether or not it's true, they're going to blow it up. And it does erupt confidence. But as I said recently to members of the press, it, it, it, people are calling 911 people are confident enough to call 911 in larger numbers than they ever have. So I think that's the big picture. But I do think that, that erosion of confidence can continue and is a problem. And we need to be, of course, serving people at that 90% level for the, for a 10 second answering. And I know that we'll get there. I appreciate the measures you're taking. I think in terms of what we can do. And when I think about the questions that council member Milton is asking, if there are additional resources that we need to provide, you will let us know. We haven't heard that. But you're already, the administration's administration is providing you with those resources. For example, the, the bonuses that you talked about, but if there are things that the council needs to do, I'll just say to you and Mr. Ferguson and manager page that we want to hear what they are. And I want to appreciate deputy manager Ferguson. He's a fantastic administrator. And I know he's given you all the support that you could possibly want. And I'm just glad he's in that chair. And Mr. Beaman, thank you so much. We appreciate you're being here with us. And we're looking forward to the next month's report and the next months and looking forward to progress. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council. Thank you. Colleagues, we're not quite done. We, Mayor pro tem Johnson pointed out that I had mentioned, and she had intended to have a, during the, the discussion of the. ARPA funds that we were going to talk a little bit about eviction diversion. As I mentioned to the folks who came to talk about it. And then I dropped the ball and I apologize. Is Mr. Johnson still here? Mr. Reginald Johnson. I believe he is Mr. Johnson. I'm sorry to pull you out. I hope you weren't taking a nap or maybe about to have dinner. No, I'm still here. Thanks for sticking with us. I'm sorry. I apologize. My fault. One of the things that we had done, talked about Mr. Johnson was. That during. We wanted to hear some information about the. Emergency rental assistance. And talk a little bit about that during the, the earlier discussion. In response to. Some of the. Concerns that we have been hearing. Can you talk to us a little bit about the emergency rental assistance program and how that money is getting out the door. Yes, I can. I'm going to share my screen. I have four slides to, to show you, and maybe that can kind of set the table and we can kind of, then I can offer some comments. If you don't mind. Thank you. Thank you. Share my screen. We can see it. All right, beautiful, beautiful. So this is real short. I'm just going to provide a few updates and then we can. Comments. So just as a reminder. With the Durham emergency rental assistance program. This is funding to assist the low income households that are unable to pay rent and or utilities from the US Treasury department. City of Durham received initial allocation of $8.4 million. Then there's a second. Allocation. Yeah, right. Two of 6.6 million. And. During County received the initial allocation of $1.2 million. And a second allocation of just under a million. Dollars. And so what we did was we contracted with the county. The department of social services to administer our portion of the funding as well as, of course, they were administering theirs. So we will have one seamless program for the, for all of Durham. So in terms of the applications and disbursements for the, the. E wrap total of 6,400 applications have been received. And around $6 million have been paid out in rental and utility assistance from city and county funds. Nearly 1200 applications have been paid out for utility and rental assistance. Over $3,600, $3,600 applications alive being other words being worked on by DSS. And to date only 27 applications have been determined and eligible. Of course I'm getting this data from the. Department of social service with them and I meet with them actually every week. To discuss progress and make adjustments. Multiple attempts are made to contact tenants with inactive applications. That means that someone who started an application. But there's been no follow-up on that application. Or there's been a long period of no activity. They do email blasts for tenants who don't respond to calls and postcards have been sent to address. It's a long time. This I'm shifting years to the legal aid of North Carolina eviction diversion activities. This is from January 1 to August 31. The number of new cases closed as of August 2021 is 650. The number of pending cases worked at the start of each month. 751. The number of closed cases with no e-mails. 562 cases. Percentage of cases closed that preserve Tennessee 76%. And we'd add that they've exceeded the target up to this point by 26%. And just as a reminder, in terms of the eviction diversion resources. This grant was to fund five attorneys to paralegals. And community resources. Coordinated salary. And $50,000 in indirect costs to support the households facing eviction in Durham. And for FY 21, it's $500,000. And then we increased it. We will increase it to about $15,000. And another $15,000 in FY 23. It's a 3% increase for a grant year. For each year. So I'm going to stop at that point and stop sharing my screen. And speak generally to our work with department of social services. Well, and legal aid. I think legal aid is also doing a good job. They've been quite busy actually lately since the moratorium ended. And so we're pleased with that. And can say they're doing a good job with the resources that we provided them. In terms of work with department of social services. Remember, there were, of course, there were several comments made. And I would just say in working with them in working with them weekly, you know, even at my level, directed the director with director robes. Normally. Programs that we administer. When we start the program, the program rules and guidelines are set. They do not change. This. Program. The guidelines are changed almost daily. Literally. We'll get guidance on one the week and then another guidance another week. And we're constantly making adjustments. And I would say that department of social services has made a significant amount of adjustments. In terms of how they're reviewing applications and taking information. Of course, I'm not definitely not speaking for them, but being as close to them and in relationship with us. That I think that they are making adjustments as quickly as they can. And they have actually placed. Social workers at the courthouse. And actually going place a third and two there now. And going to place another is my understanding there. But they've also, we have, if you remember, that we had five organizations that we're going to serve as proxies. And they've actually have social workers that are signed to those as well. They are expending money above the money that was the allocation. In other words, expending county resources. They're going to place another. The money that was allocation. In other words, expending county resources to help support. Additional employees to get these funding, this funding out. And so I would just offer that as, as some commentary. With that, I'll conclude my remarks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. Mr. Johnson, thank you. And again, I apologize to you for not getting to this earlier in my fault. I have one question. The, the, the second charge of money that we got to 8.4. And then there's a 6.6. Have we already received that? We received part of the second charge. Okay. Was that pretty recent? Yes, it was. I don't know the date, but it's a portion of it that we have. Received. But it's not been dispersed yet. The county is actually going to receive some additional funding. From the state that I think is the way the guidelines are, they're going to be dispersing that first. Before I look at. All right. Thank you. All right. Colleagues. Council member. And then mayor pretend. Thank you. I appreciate it. I was wondering. I was like, oh, I guess we're not going to hear from. Mr. Johnson. So. No, it's fine. Thank you. For hanging in with us. It is a marathon work session. I appreciate. I will acknowledge. I'm a frequent flyer over at community development with a lot of my questions. And y'all are super patient with me. So thank you. I just want to say, and I, I see some movement. I'm seeing some improvement. And. And I know that the rules have changed significantly from the, the initial.  And you needed to have the landlord involved. And now those rules have changed. And what I'm hearing. Still is that that's not necessarily changed on our end. When I say our end with NDSS. And so my urging, and this is urgent as we heard from several residents who are. At the courthouse helping residents not get evicted, our rental assistance program right now, since the Supreme Court, you know, throughout the CDC moratorium, this is all folks have. And so we have to do the best job possible. That does not mean we're not working hard. That does not mean that folks aren't stressed at either the city or the county or the nonprofits who are doing it. And so we have to do the best job possible that does not mean we're not working hard. That does not mean that folks aren't stressed at either the city or the county or the nonprofits who are doing this work. I acknowledge everyone is working tremendously hard. At the end of the day, we have to get as many people rent assistance as quickly as possible. And I would like to have a discussion on, can we give more money to our legal aid partners so that we can have more attorneys down at that courthouse. I want to really lean in on DSS for. Making the process go as smoothly as possible. Making the application be as easy as possible to fill out. So that our nonprofit partners can really do their job and be the ambassadors that we hired them to do. And we can get the rest of this money, you know, these applications that are being processed and then the second tranche out to the community.  And, you know, I'm not here to chastise anyone, but the burden of, this is our burden to carry as local and as local government. And we have to get those dollars out quickly. You know, there are things that we can't control. I did this last year with our water fund, right? Where I really leaned into staff and folks really did an excellent job rising to the occasion. This is something we can control so much of what we do. Is there's really strict state preemption or the feds aren't being cooperative. And in this case, the federal government has relaxed a lot of the rules that would have maybe traditionally applied. And we have to follow suit. And we have to make sure that our processes are doing the same thing. So that's my, my urging today. I appreciate everyone's work on this. And I hope that we can get these dollars out the door quicker. Mayor pro tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Reginald, for, for that information. I read online recently that I think nationally, less than 20% of these e-wrap dollars have actually gotten into the hands of tenants, which was a really scary number in Durham. We're doing a lot better than that. And appreciate that. We've been able to, um, to get a lot more of that money out the door, but of course there's always a lot more to do. Um, and the need is greater than the resources that we have available. Um, but I appreciate all of the work that you all are doing and the folks at the county and legal aid and all the organizations that are helping. People get these applications done. I feel like Durham. Um, though, of course we need, you know, we need to get more money out the door. We've done a lot better than a lot of other states. Um, I'm excited to see that that work continue. I want us to consider an emergency allocation to legal aid for additional eviction diversion. Um, and they are able to essentially double, um, the size of their program. That's what they're, that's what their capacity is. Um, if we were to, um, fund them, I think it's a little over an additional, um, half a million dollars for this year and a half a million for next year. So I want to put that before my colleagues and also the administration for, uh, for evaluation for us to do that. I think that we, um, this needs a rapid response. The end of the eviction moratorium at the Supreme Court was a huge disappointment. And, um, I want us to do all that we can. We can't do an eviction moratorium, but we can help people get lawyers. And I want us to do as much of that as we possibly can. Um, but I also have a question for you, Reginald, about the second tranche. Are we, is the plan to. Also have that money given out through the same process with it going through social services. Um, or are y'all considering any other life alternative distribution ideas? Uh, we're having conversations about that. Mayor pro tem. Um, there's been no decisions, uh, made actually, we have it on a daily basis. Uh, I don't have anything other than add, uh, to that without the discussion other than to remember, there's a major investment in terms of, uh, technology because of the accountability. The challenge with this money, the reason you see the numbers that you do, at least one of the reasons, uh, in terms of percentage. Uh, normally we don't administer programs where the rules change. And that that's one to, uh, I would also say that this program is short on, uh, programmatic, but a high on accountability. Uh, and it actually, you know, even a hood counterpart saying it's the reverse of what, uh, hood does. Uh, it does. Uh, it's big on program description and accountability is not as stringent. Uh, and that's one of the reasons, uh, that you see what you see, uh, in terms of those numbers. Um, so I would just offer that, but no, we don't have, uh, a plan we have in conversations and, but we have to take into account infrastructure. It's the same conversation that we had when we started. Yeah. Thank you, um, for bringing that up. Absolutely understand that we're running a program or trying to work within a program where the rules change every day. Sounds absolutely impossible. I appreciate that y'all have to be incredibly flexible to make that happen. Um, yeah, the county got off to a slow start, but they're doing a lot better now. You know, I get, it took a while to get, to get things moving, to get the software up and running, but, um, that the money is getting is getting out now. Um, I'm sure there are other organizations that, um, that could help. But yeah, federal federal money is hard. I'm sure that they're, I'm sure that somebody has done a study somewhere of how much money is wasted. Actually just trying to meet the requirements of federal programs to try to help people. Like all of the reporting and like all of the money that we spend on means testing people that we could just be giving to people. Um, I'm sure you're more frustrated about it than me. Uh, thank you. Appreciate your, um, your efforts. And yeah, we'd love to hear thoughts from, um, from my colleagues or from our city manager about increasing our funding for eviction diversion as soon as possible. Thank you. Madam mayor pro tem. Um, It's six o'clock. The city clerk had to depart because she is hosting a meeting of the mayor's Hispanic Latino committee. She's doing double duty today. I'm sure you're more frustrated about it than me. Uh, thank you. Appreciate your, um, your efforts. Um, I think that we're going to be doing double duty today. Uh, and we are grateful that Ms. Roland is here with us. I would like to try to not discuss this much longer. Ms. Roland, we'll get to you in a minute. We're not quite ready. Um, Mom. I think that, uh, what I would propose. Um, In terms of. Yeah. So let me just say, I have a high comfort level when I hear that the, uh, There is a $6 million out of the. 9.6 available. I'm thinking. Okay. Things are moving a lot quicker than they were. Um, I Am totally, uh, You know, grateful for their work and feel the same urgency that council member carbhiato expressed. Um, and, and Mr. Johnson, I hope that you'll convey that and that, that, used to get that money out the door. But I am I'm those are better. That's better than I thought we were going to hear. So I'm happy about that. And then the in terms of the eviction diversion funding, I don't think we should have a big discussion about that now. My thought is so um we have heard Madam Mayor Pro Tem we got did we not a proposal from Legal Aid and they said I know that I had when I I had communicated with Peter Gilbert and he had wanted to make a proposal and I believe that he sent it. He did. I only um I only sent it to I'm sorry. Go ahead. I only sent it to a couple of folks because the guidance from staff was that we were going to have a broader conversation about ARPA funding and that we would have this conversation as part of that. So I didn't want to kind of jump the queue. But there are other sources of funding that this could come out of that I think I think it's worth just having our staff take a look and give us some recommendations. Yeah, I mean I think that one of the things that I've appreciated about the manager's approach to the ARPA funds is we all keep saying hey can we send something out of ARPA funds can we can you know I almost every council member has said that today and uh or last week or you know and uh the manager has really encouraged us to stick to the process. On the other hand I did see a really big fund balance uh and uh this seems like it might be an opportunity to you know for a one-time expenditure especially if it's a one-year and not a two-year commitment we you know we could talk about that. But I would ask you then Madam Mayor Pro Tem if you would send that to all of your colleagues and we can and we can discuss that soon. We'll ask for Mr. Johnson and the staff to give us some guidance on that. We'll do thanks. Thank you. All right now we'll move to Ms. Rowland. Ms. Rowland do you have a report for us? Hi good afternoon Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem members of City Council. I have the report from what Diane or relate to me about your nominations from today so I'll start with the Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. It was a majority vote to reappoint Robert B. Glenn Jr. to keep his seat. The next one was the Housing Appeals Board. There was a majority vote for Teresa Rae Shikarelli to take the spot and at-large alternate member. The Workforce Development Board, there was a majority vote to vote Susan, Amy, and Mark Atkinson to represent a private sector. The last one that we discussed was the Mayor's Hispanic and Latino Committee so there was a majority vote to reappoint Mario Giscogne, majority vote to reappoint Annabelle Rosa to keep her seat. Lastly it seems like the last seat looks like we have three votes to re-advertise that seat, two votes for the person listed on the ballot who is Mo Rivera and then I have two council members who actually didn't vote. Okay, Ms. Rowland, thank you. I think we should re-advertise unless any of my colleagues have any objection. Okay, so let's re-advertise for that second seat. That's good. Thank you. Ms. Rowland, thank you. Madam Manager, shall we settle? Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, we are ready to settle the agenda. I have for you consent items one through 24 and items 26 through 28 and then I have GBA public hearings items 32 through 34. Thank you so much, Madam Manager. Madam Manager, thank you and all the staff and the City's, Attorney's Office, the Clerk's Office and everybody that's stuck with us today. It has been a marathon. I really appreciate my colleagues. We've had some great discussions today. Very difficult topics. So you've heard the manager's recommendation to settle the agenda, can have a motion for its acceptance. So moved. Moved by Council Member Freelon, seconded by Council Member Middleton. Let's see, I'll call the roll. Ms. Rowland, do you want to call the roll? Yes. Yes, I can if you like. Yep. All right. Mayor Shull. Hi. Madam Mayor, Pro Tem Johnson. Hi. Council Member Freelon. Hi. Council Member Freeman. Hi. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Reese. He's absent today. Yes. And Council Member Caballero. Thank you very much. We have now settled the agenda. I believe we have finally done it. Thank you. I really appreciate it, colleagues.  And I only disagreed with 43% of the things that most of you all said today. So that's not a bad percentage. You guys are amazing and really appreciate you so much. Colleagues, I'm going to adjourn this meeting at 6.07pm. And thank you all so much. Thank you. Thanks, y'all. Thank you. Thank you.