Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm your host, John Furrier here in Palo Alto, California studio and promoting as a great guest, CUBE alumni, co-founder, technical co-founder, and she's also the VP of product at Platform 9 Systems. It's a company pioneering Kubernetes infrastructure. Been doing it for a long, long time. Met her with Ms. Katsuki. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate you, Nora, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me, always exciting. So I always, I love interviewing you for many reasons, one, you're super smart, but also you're a co-founder, technical co-founder. So entrepreneur, VP of product, it's hard to do startups. Okay, so everyone who started a company knows how hard it is. And it really is, and the rewarding too when you're successful. So I want to get your thoughts on, what's it like being an entrepreneur, women in tech, some things you've done along the way. Let's get started. How did you get into your career in tech and what made you want to start a company? Yeah, so, you know, I got into tech long, long before. I decided to start a company and back when I got in tech, I was, it was, it was very clear to me as a direction for my career that I'm never gonna start a business. I was very explicit about that because my father was an entrepreneur and I'd seen how rough the journey can be. And then my brother was also is an entrepreneur. And I think with both of them, I'd seen the ups and downs and I had decided to myself and shared with my family that I really want a very well-structured sort of job at a large company type of path for my career. I think the tech path, you know, tech was interesting to me, not because I was interested in programming, et cetera, at that time. To be honest, when I picked computer science as a major for myself, it was because most of what you would consider, I guess most of the cool students were picking that as a major, let's just say that. And it sounded very interesting and cool. A lot of people were doing it and that was sort of the top choice for people and I decided to follow along. But I did discover after I picked computer science as my major and I remember when I started learning C++, the first time when I got exposure to it, it was just like a light bulb clicking in my head. I just absolutely loved the language, the lower level nature, the power of it and what you can do with it, the algorithms. So I think it ended up being a really good fit for me. Yeah, so it clicked for you. You tried it, it was all the cool kids were doing it. I mean, I could relate, I did the same thing. Next big thing is computer science. You got to be in there, got to be smart and then you get hooked on it. Yeah, exactly. What was the next level? Did you find any blockers in your way? I see male dominated, it must have been a lot of, how many females were in your class? What was the ratio at that time? Yeah, so the ratio was pretty, pretty, I would say, bleak when it comes to women, two men. I think computer science at that time was still probably better compared to some of the other majors like mechanical engineering, where I remember I had one friend. She was the single girl in an entire class of about at least 120, 130 students or so. So the ratio was better for us. I think there were maybe 20, 25 girls in our class. There was a large class and maybe number of men were maybe three X or four X number of women. So relatively better. How about the job when you got into the structured big company? How'd that go? Yeah, so I think that was, that was a pretty smooth path, I would say, after you graduate from undergrad to grad school and then when I got into Oracle first and VMware, I think both companies had, the ratios were still pretty off and I think they still are to a very large extent in this industry. But I think this industry, in my experience, does a fantastic job of bringing everybody and kind of embracing them and treating them at the same level. That was definitely my experience. And so that makes it very easy for self-confidence, for setting up a path for yourself to thrive. So that was, Okay, so you got an undergraduate degree okay in computer science and a master's from Stanford in databases and distributed systems. That's right. Okay, so dual degrees. Did that come, was that part of your pathway or you just decided I want to go right into school or did it go right after each other? How did that work out? Yeah, so when I went into school, undergrad, there was no special major and I didn't quite know if I liked a particular subject or set of subjects or not. Even through grad school, first year, it wasn't clear to me but I think in second year, I did start realizing that in general, I was a fan of back-end systems. I was never a front-end person. The back-end distributed systems really were of interest to me because there's a lot of complex problems to solve and especially databases and large-scale distributed systems design in the context of database systems really started becoming a topic of interest for me. And I think luckily enough at Stanford, there were just fantastic professors like Mendel Rosenblum who offered operating system class there then started VMware and later on I was able to join the company and I took his class while at school and it was one of the most fantastic classes I've ever taken. So they really had and probably I think still do a fantastic curriculum when it comes to distributed systems and I think that probably helped stoke that interest. How do you talk to the younger girls out there in elementary school and through? What's the advice as they start to get into computer science which is changing and still evolving?  What's your advice when they say, what's the playbook? Yeah, so I think two things I always say and I share this with anybody who's looking to get into computer science or engineering for that matter, right? I think one is that it's important to not worry about what that end specialization is going to be whether it's AI or databases or back-end or front-end it does naturally evolve and you lend yourself to a path where you will understand which systems, which aspects you like better. But it's very critical to start with getting the fundamentals well, right? Meaning all of the key coursework around algorithm, systems design, architecture, networking, operating system. I think it is just so crucial to understand those well even though at times you may question why is this, is this ever going to be relevant and useful to me later on in my career? It really does end up helping in ways beyond you can describe. It makes you a much better engineer. So I think that is the most important aspect of, I would think any engineering stream is definitely true for computer science because there's also been a trend more recently, I think, which I'm not a big fan of, of sort of limited scoped learning, which is you decide early on that you're going to be, let's say a front-end engineer, which is fine, you know, that understanding that is great. But if you, I don't think it's ideal to let that limit the scope of your learning when you're an undergrad phrase or grad school, but later on it comes back to sort of bite you in terms of you not being able to completely understand how the systems work. It's a systems kind of thinking you got to have that mindset of, especially now with cloud, you got distributed systems paradigm, going to the edge, you got 5G, Mobile World Congress was recently happened, you got now all kinds of IoT devices out there, IP of devices at the edge. Distributed computing is only getting more distributed. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. But the other thing is also happens, a convenience to happen in computer science is that the abstraction layers keep raising things up and up and up, where even if you're operating at a language like Java, which during some of my times of programming, there was a period when it was popular, it already abstracts you so far away from the underlying system. So it can become very easier if you're doing JavaScript or UI programming that you really have no understanding of what's happening behind the scenes. And I think that can be pretty difficult. It's easy to lean in and rely too heavily on the abstractions. I want to get your thoughts on blockers.  Did you have any of that? Yeah, so I think, so is there something really kind of personal to me which I like to share a few times, which I think I believe in pretty strongly and which is for me, sort of my personal growth began at a very early phase because my dad, and he passed away in 2012, but throughout the time when I was growing up, I was his special little girl and every little thing that I did could be a simple test, it's not very meaningful, but the genuine pride and pleasure that he felt out of me getting great scores in those tests, et cetera, and that I could see that in him, and then I wanted to please him, and through him, I think I built that confidence in myself that I am good at things and I can do good, and I think that just set the building blocks for me for the rest of my life, right? So my, I believe very strongly that, yes, there are occasions of unfair treatment, et cetera, but for the most part, it comes from within, and if you are able to be a confident person who is kind of level and understands and believes in your capabilities, then for the most part, the right things happen around you. So I believe very strongly in that kind of grounding and in finding a source to get that for yourself, and I think that many women suffer from the biggest challenge, which is not having enough self-confidence, and I've even, you know, with everything that I said, I've myself felt that, experienced that a few times, and then there's a methodical way to get around it. There's processes to explain to yourself that that's actually not true, that's a fake feeling. So you know, I think that is the most important aspect for women. I love that, get the confidence, find the source for the confidence. We've also been hearing about curiosity and building. You mentioned engineering earlier. Love that term, engineering something, like it, building something. Curiosity, engineering, confidence. This brings me to my next question for you. What do you think the key skills and qualities are needed to succeed in a technical role, and how do you develop to maintain those skills over time? Yeah, so I think that it is so critical that you love that technology that you are part of. It is just so important. I mean, I remember as an example, at one point with one of my buddies, before we started platform nine, one of my buddies, he's also fantastic computer scientists from VMware and he loves video games. And so he said, hey, why don't we try to, hack up a video game and see if we can take it somewhere. And so it sounded cool to me. And then so we started doing things. But something I realized very quickly is that I, as a person, I absolutely hate video games. I've never liked them. I don't think that's ever been changed. And so I was miserable. I was trying to understand what's going on, how to build these systems, what I was not enjoying it. So I'm glad that I decided to not pursue that.  I think that takes away 80, 90% of the work. And then I think it's important to inculcate a level of discipline that you are not gonna get sort of, you're not gonna get jaded or you're gonna continue with a happy path where doing the same things over and over again, but you're not necessarily challenging yourself or pushing yourself or putting yourself in uncomfortable situation. I think a combination of those typically, I think works pretty well in any technical career. That's a great advice there. I think trying things when you're younger or even just for play to understand whether you abandon that path is just as important as finding a good path because at least you know, that skews the value in favor of the choices. Kind of like math, probability. So great, great, great call out there. So I have to ask you the next question, which is how do you keep up to date? Given all the changes, you're in the middle of a world where you've seen personal change in the past 10 years from OpenStack to now. Remember those days when I first interviewed you at OpenStack, I think it was 2012 or something like that. Maybe 10 years ago, so much changed. How do you keep up with technologies in your field and resources that you rely on for personal development? Yeah, so I think when it comes to the field and what we're doing, for example, I think one of the most important aspects and I am product manager and this is something I insist that all the other product managers in our team also do is that you have to spend 50% of your time talking to prospect customers, leads and through those conversations, they do a huge favor to you in that they make you aware of the other things that they're keeping an eye on as long as you're doing the right job of asking the right questions and not just listening in. So I think that, to me, ends up being one of the biggest sources where you get tidbits of information, new things, et cetera, and then you pursue. To me, that has worked to be a very effective source. And then the second is greeting and keeping up with all of the publications. You guys create a lot of great material. You interview a lot of people, making sure you're watching those. For us, CNCF, there's a ton of activities. New projects keeps coming along every few months. So keeping up with that, listening to podcasts around those topics, all of that helps. But I think the first one I think goes in a big way in terms of being aware of what matters to your customers. Awesome. Let me ask you a question. What's the most rewarding aspect of your job right now? So I think there are many. So I think I love, I've come to realize that I love the high that you get out of being an entrepreneur independent of, in terms of success and failure, there's always ups and downs as an entrepreneur, right? But there's something really alluring about being able to define path of your products and in a way that can potentially impact number of companies that will consume your products, employees that work with you. So that is, I think to me, always been the most satisfying path and is what kept me going. I think that is probably first and foremost. And then the projects, there's always new exciting things that we're working on. Even just today, there are certain projects we're working on that I'm super excited about. So I think it's those two things. So now we didn't get into how you started. You said you didn't want to do a startup and you got the big company, your dad, your brother with entrepreneurs. How did you get into it? Yeah, so I know it's kind of surprising to me as well. But I think I reached a point of VMware after spending about eight years or so where I definitely packed hold. And I could have pushed myself by switching to a completely different company or a different organization within VMware. And I was trying all of those paths, interviewed at different companies, et cetera, but nothing felt different enough. And then I think I was very, very fortunate in that my co-founders, Shereeshwagram, Rupa Karak, Bikyuv met them. They were kind of all at the same journey in their careers independently at the same time. And so we would all eat lunch together at VMware because we were on the same team. And then we just started brainstorming on different ideas during lunchtime. And that's kind of how, and we did that almost for a year. So by the time that the year long period went by, at the end it felt like the most logical, natural next step to leave our job and to start off something together. But I think the point of that had not been for my co-founders. I had to come forward with the team, as knew each other at VMware, but you were kind of a little early. You had a vision. It's kind of playing out now. How do you feel right now as the wave is hitting? Tribute to computing, microservices, Kubernetes, I mean, stuff you guys did and were doing. I mean, it didn't play out exactly, but directionally you were right on the line there. How do you feel? Yeah. You know, I think that's kind of the challenge and the fun part with the startup journey, right? You can never predict how things are going to go when we kicked off. We thought that OpenStack is going to really take over infrastructure management space and things kind of went differently, but things are going that way now with Kubernetes and distributed infrastructure. And so I think it's been interesting and in every path that you take that does end up not being successful teaches you so much more, right? So I think it's been a very interesting journey. Yeah. Certainly AWS hit that growth right at 2013 through 17, kind of sucked all the oxygen out, but now as it reverts back to abstraction layer, essentially makes things look like private clouds, but they're just essentially DevOps. It's cloud operations, kind of the same thing. Yeah, absolutely. And then with the edge, things are becoming way more distributed where having a single large cloud provider is becoming even less relevant in that space and having kind of the central SaaS-based management model, which is what we pioneered, like you said, we were ahead of the game at that time, is becoming sort of the most obvious choice now. Now you look back at your role of Stanford distributed systems. Again, they have world-class program there, neural network, you name it. It's really, really awesome, as well as Cal, Berkeley there was in debates with each other, who's better. But well, that's a separate interview. Now you got the edge. What are some of the distributed computing challenges right now with now the distributed edge coming online, industrial, 5G, data? What do you see as some of the key areas to solve from a problem statement standpoint with edge and as cloud goes on-premises, data center, to essentially data center at the edge, apps coming over the top, AI enabled. What's your take on that? Yeah, so I think, and there's different flavors of edge and the one that we focus on is what we call thick edge, which is you have this problem of managing thousands of, as we call micro data centers, rather than managing maybe few tens or hundreds of large data centers, where the problem just completely shifts on its head, right? And I think it is still an unsolved problem today where whether you are a retailer or a telecommunications vendor, et cetera, managing your footprints of tens of thousands of stores as a retailer is solved in a very archaic way today because the tool set, the traditional management tooling that's designed to manage, let's say your data centers is not quite, it gets retrofitted to manage these environments and it's kind of square peg and round hole kind of situation. So I think the top most challenges are being able to manage this large footprint of micro data centers in the most effective way, right? Where you have latency solved, you have the issue of a small footprint of resources at thousands of locations and how do you fit in your containerized or virtualized or other workloads in the most effective way to have that solved, you need to have the security aspects around these environments. So there's a number of challenges that kind of go hand in hand, like what is the most effective storage, which can still be deployed in that compact environment and then cost becomes related. Costs are huge, because if you move data, you're going to have cost, if you move compute, it's not as much. If you have an operating system concept, is the data in state or stateless? These are huge problems. This is an operating system, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely, it's a distributed operating system and where it's multiple layers of ways of solving that problem just in the context of data, like you said, having an immediate caching layer so that you still do just in time processing at those edge locations and then send some data back. And that's where you can incorporate some AI or other technologies, et cetera. So it's just data itself is a multi-layer problem there. Well, it's great to have you on this program. Advice, final question for you for the folks watching, technical degrees. Most people are finding out in elementary school and middle school, a lot more robotics programs, a lot more tech exposure, not just in Silicon Valley, but all around. I'm starting to see that. What's your advice for young girls and people who are getting either coming into the workforce reskilled as they get enter? It's easy to enter now as they stay in and how do they stay in? What's your advice? Yeah, so I think it's the same goal. I have two little daughters and it's the same principle I try to follow with them, which is I want to give them as much exposure as possible without me having any predefined ideas about what and what they should pursue. But I think that exposure that you need to find for yourself one way or the other because you really never know. My husband landed into computer science through a very, very meandering path and then he discovered later in his career that that's the absolute calling for him. It's something he's very good at, right? But so the reason why he thinks he didn't pick that path early is because he didn't quite have that exposure. So it's that exposure to various things, even things you think that you may not be interested in is the most important aspect and when things just naturally lend themselves. Find your calling, super power, strengths. Know what you don't want to do. Yeah, exactly. That were great advice. Thank you so much for coming on and contributing to our program for International Women's Day. Great to see you in this context. We'll see you on theCUBE. We'll talk more about Platform 9 when we go to KubeCon or some other time. But thank you for sharing your personal perspective and experiences for our audience. Thank you. Fantastic. Thanks for having me, John. Always great to talk to you. This is theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier. We're talking to the leaders in the industry from developers to the boardroom and everything in between and getting the stories out there, making an impact. Thanks for watching.


Intelligence Analysis, Cultural Geography, and Homeland Security. That's a mouthful of a course title, but its length is necessary to convey the complexity of this course. You may be asking yourself what cultural geography has to do with intelligence analysis or homeland security. Well, have you overplayed the game risk? In the game, you're charged with creating and dissolving alliances and conquering and maintaining territory with the ultimate goal of world domination. Well, an oversimplified example, it really shows the importance of geography, including cultural geography in intelligence analysis. The goal of this course is to expand upon that and really show you how and why cultural geography is so important to intelligence analysis and homeland security. In the real world, examples of the importance of cultural geography in intelligence analysis and homeland security are all around us. Think about the role that the landscape of Tahir Square played in the Arab Spring uprising, or the role that nationalism and ethnicity are playing in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Knowledge of cultural geography can only enhance our understanding and analysis of real-world events like these. This course is unique in that it combines two different perspectives. It is both theoretical and application-based. It provides an academic background in cultural geography and asks you to apply that knowledge through a series of exercises related to intelligence and homeland security. Those exercises challenge you to incorporate geographic information systems techniques to demonstrate the applicability of the theory. But don't worry if you don't have a background in GIS. We use Penn State's ArcGIS online framework and provide detailed instructions to help you through the exercises. So if you've been wanting to dip your tone to the world of GIS, this is an excellent course to gain familiarity with ArcGIS online while learning content directly applicable to your major. We hope you'll consider joining us in exploring the intersections of cultural geography, intelligence analysis, and homeland security. In addition to being applicable to your careers, it'll give you the opportunity to think critically about the meaning of words we use in our everyday lives, including things like space, place, identity, landscape, and mobility.


How do you persuade someone to stop bombing civilian areas? Not to recruit children as soldiers, or that they shouldn't raid villages to pillage the only food supply? There has never been a greater need for effective advocacy for the protection of civilians in conflict and crisis. But how do we do this protection advocacy? What skills and techniques can we use? How can we identify decision makers? What tactics work? And how can we manage risks? Welcome to the Advocating for Protection podcast, where we bring you the real experiences of advocates in conflict and crisis. In each episode, you'll hear from those who are lobbying in the corridors of the UN buildings in New York. Those who are face-to-face with armed actors at the front line of conflict zones and everything in between. They will tell us about their personal experiences, their successes, but also the challenges and how they overcame them. This podcast comes to you from the Global Protection Cluster's advocacy working group. Please be aware that it contains discussions of violence, abuse and exploitation faced by civilians in conflict and crisis. Good afternoon, good morning, and welcome to the Advocating for Protection podcast. My name is Roshin Mangan, and today I'm representing Save the Children, who, with Oxfam, co-chair the advocacy working group at the Global Protection Cluster. Today, I'm joined by two Oxfam colleagues. Abdul Wasim Mohamed. I'm Abdul Wasim Mohamed. I'm the policy and advocacy manager at Oxfam in Yemen. I'm based in Sana'a. I have been working with Oxfam for the past four years now in Sana'a. And before that, I was working on the development settings. And away before that, I was also working in Sokotra Island in the tourism field. But six to seven years after the conflict, I had two shifts to working in the humanitarian sector. And yeah, I've been doing this work now for the past four years with Oxfam. And Lawrence Robinson. My name is Lawrence Robinson. I'm protection and hunger policy advisor with Oxfam International. I concentrate largely on conflict, the conflict and hunger agenda, and the connection between food insecurity and protection. I've worked a little bit in the New York space before, so I'm excited to be talking about some kind of UN advocacy techniques and what protection of civilians week looks like, and how this year's event went. Great. Thanks, Lawrence. And that's a great segue into actually what we're going to be discussing today with both of you, which is the protection of civilians week or POC week in New York. However, maybe before diving into the POC week, I think it would be great to hear a little bit about your experiences, what motivates you, how did you get into this line of work? So maybe, Abdelwasa, you can start. As you may know, you know, the Yemen has been suffering conflict for the past nine years now, and it resulted into devastating crisis where we have up to two thirds of the country or the population are dependent on humanitarian assistance and also being affected myself from the conflict because when the conflict started, we didn't have anything to do, actually, and I consider myself as a resilient person and, you know, speaking some English and also I want to believe that myself, I have the heart of an advocate and I always do this on a personal level and I saw this opportunity with Oxfam and I thought this could be me and I could do this. What I liked about this work, also the values that are being demonstrated by Oxfam and I felt that I fit in and I can do this work and yeah, I have been doing it for the past four years now and traveling across Yemen, it's a challenging environment but it is really, you know, when you know that you are doing good and you are there to support people who are in need and also, you know, most of what we do in terms of advocacy is creating spaces and also doing our best to advocate at national level and also external level and I would like to say, you know, Oxfam is one of the prominent NGOs who are doing this, you know, in terms of advocacy and we are able to do a lot in terms of, you know, ensuring people's voices are heard at national and also at external level and yeah, we hope we'll be also able to do that moving forward. Yeah, I think that's so interesting, Abdel Wasa, what you're saying about you being affected yourselves and then how you can then give back and advocate and then obviously the link between national and international is where you come in Lawrence around what motivates you to be in the global advocacy space? What do you think your, you know, your work is really contributing to the likes of Abdel Wasa's advocacy at the ground? For me, it's exactly that. So how do we build those connections to try to achieve some level of impact? Obviously, we're working in really challenging environments and very different environments and we need to try to utilize a whole range of spaces from New York to local, national, political contexts to regional spaces with regional mechanisms. So for me, it's all about building those connections and using different kinds of expertise to try to work out what our goal is and then use our different skill sets to try to achieve that. So for me, I have some background in New York advocacy. I've worked with a number of different civil society organizations including coalition building organizations that work in New York to try to achieve, for example, steps forward at the UN Security Council or when we don't have action at the UN Security Council or steps forward in the UN General Assembly can we filter down some of these opportunities to those that don't have access to New York, typically? So that's typically where I feel like I'm useful sometimes is being able to bridge a little bit between those, the actions happening at the local, national level and then where can we achieve some things at the regional level, at the international level? Yeah, and I think Oxfam is very, very good at linking that critical piece which kind of brings us up, you know, you're talking about the New York spaces and being able to leverage the New York spaces. Lawrence, can you tell us actually what POC week is for maybe those who don't know? Yeah, so protection of civilians week takes place in New York every year and it's basically a week dedicated to quite practical and I'd say constructive discussions on the theme of protection of civilians which is a dedicated kind of topic on the UN Security Council agenda. They have an open debate on protection of civilians, the Secretary General briefs, there's a Secretary General report on protection of civilians which is meant to be sort of this like comprehensive reporting mechanism on the state of protection of civilians across all the different contexts. So it includes important figures and trends on the degree to which civilians are being affected by conflicts, the degree to which they're being actively targeted, the targeting of medical facilities, infrastructure for food security, a whole range of different topics related to how civilians are being affected by conflict. Then within that open debate, you have many different member states even beyond the UN Security Council come in and make a statement and then you have side events on a whole range of topics depending on what's interesting to civil society UN agencies and member states and like we worked on on conflict and hunger which has sponsors from a whole range of member states, UN agencies and civil society all coming together to agree we need to tackle this issue. So whereas the UN Security Council often talks about country specific issues on its agenda, this space is a bit more, it takes a bit more of a step back and looks at the kind of global trends. Over to you, Abdulwasa, in terms of what Lawrence is talking about is a wide spectrum of side events all on thematic topics. However, you came from Yemen to obviously elevate the protection needs and the protection concerns from Yemen. So can you maybe tell us a bit why you think it's effective, why you think it's useful and why you prioritized it? I think being in New York where everything or they say it all happens there, it is really a great opportunity for me especially in terms of prioritizing, I thought this is a great opportunity for me not only to share my perspective but also to ensure that the perspectives of Yemenis is also included and also I've been speaking to many civil society leaders, different communities, I was visiting IDPs, the internally displaced communities and also trying to understand from them and also to hear for their concerns and their views and also what they need to happen in terms of decision making and a forum like the UN Security Council is the best place for this and also I managed to engage and take part in a couple of events in line or they reflect the situation in Yemen like the conflict induced hunger. It was really great to see the level of participation from the different missions and also member states and also it was really great to hear other experiences from other contexts including context of conflict where experiences were shared, also I managed to an extent to share the issues and also the concerns from the communities in Yemen and also the mechanisms and the interventions that we do at Oxfam to elevate the suffering of the civilians. Also it was a good opportunity to pressure for action, for next steps, more things need to be done and actions need to be taken by the leaders at the UN Security Council and it was really a great opportunity to communicate the concerns of the communities and also to pressure for action. Yeah and I think that's the key word, action because I mean I was also a POC week where I had the opportunity to meet you and the big question I think is exactly what you're saying Abdelwasa is what's the action? So it would be really interesting to hear what does Oxfam do to really move some of these discussions that happen at the POC week forward? I reflect on this question quite often because often as advocates we're sort of encouraged to try to have these short term change goals over the space of a year you create like a one year advocacy strategy with you're going to try and achieve X goal or within a certain space of time you're going to try and move influence one actor to take X decision sometimes I believe one of the privileges of working for an organization like Oxfam is you get to take a little bit of a step back and look at the situation a bit of historical perspective and think critically about okay what will make a difference here so I'd say primarily one of the opportunities around protection of civilians week is to contribute what you can a little bit towards crystallizing strengthening some of these norms that we talk about international norms it's a really unsatisfying advocacy objective because it's so intangible but just the fact that you're contributing to the conversation and widening the broadening the consensus around discussions on human rights in a space like the UN Security Council the chances to interact with people on the margins have those side conversations have some bilateral meetings and then have the opportunity to follow up with them afterwards that's I think where the impact happens is that we can have meetings with different member states on the side we can build off of the conversation we can talk about what needs to happen next and I'd say that's one of the key themes that I noticed particularly within this year there's so much consensus around the obstacles we know that often the UN Security Council is paralyzed or it's unable or I'm willing to take action so in most of the conversations you hear discussion on ways to move that forward even from member states themselves we need to explore new mechanisms be that at the regional level through UN General Assembly perhaps through the group of friends on particular issues we have outcome documents from these things that we can point in reference to and we can work with those member states afterwards and within coalitions that are created actually during these events we can work within those to push the conversation forward and just maybe before moving on can you explain what group of friends is or what the concept is just in case anyone doesn't know essentially it's groups of of like-minded states that support a particular issue so for example there's a group of friends on conflict and hunger that includes a number of states that support the UN Security Council Resolution 2417 and want to see it implement it better and Abdulwasa I'm very curious to hear from you in terms of you were saying that pre-you leaving for New York you went and you consulted with communities consulted with different civil society experts consulted with Yemenis that maybe can't leave what happens when you go back from New York and everybody is scrambling for I assume asking you how it went and what's the outcomes but I'm really curious to hear from you you land back and then what happens well yeah you can imagine the level of excitement that people would have to hear the news what happened there for me in terms of bringing that experience back with me to Yemen and explaining the whole thing that happened the processes and what I was also able as an advocate because it was a huge responsibility on me that I have to carry all these messages and concerns and perspectives of the civil society and the affected communities as well to ensure that diplomats are aware or that we're trying to push them and also policy makers in New York to make sure that the UN Security Council resolutions are taking seriously and I have tried as much to link that to what's happening in Yemen because warring parties have always acted with impunity and also the UN Security Council members should do more to hold the conflicting parties accountable including the conflict induced hunger which is a huge crisis in Yemen. I have always tried my best in all these meetings to ensure that policy makers are aware or they are hearing the voices from Yemen the perspective including on the peace process for example that Yemenis want a lasting peace need more action from the UN Security Council and from all member states to ensure that protection of civilians is prioritized and also that access to services is always prioritized by the conflicting parties because to be honest for civilians civil society and also the activists that have been talking to people they hear that the UN Security Council is concerned this politician is concerned about what's happening but people need to see action I think we just need to keep knocking the door and keep pressuring those politicians the different targets the powerful nations to ensure that they are doing what they have to do to ensure that people are getting what they want that's why I always made sure that the people I meet around here in Yemen I assure them that I have delivered the message and I ensure that the international community take concrete measures but we will keep the pressure on that and also to support the flow of commercial supplies and to do something around addressing the economy, deteriorating economy and also the access to food and the fight needs to continue and as advocates we can never be relieved until we are sure that something out of these meetings is becoming fruitful and that the voices of the community affected people is always heard by these politicians and I think that's such a hot topic these days how do we make sure the affected communities are central to these discussions and I think your experience of consulting, moving delivering the message and then feeding back is an incredible example of how that global and national and regional levels as you were saying Lawrence should be connecting just I'm curious around a question around obviously the POC week it has a number of different side events we're talking about a number of different things from conflict-induced hunger to attacks on healthcare to access that protects just wondering Lawrence how do you pre POC week really prioritize what Oxfam is going to lean in on and maybe you could talk us a bit through what the preparation looks like for that yeah it takes a lot you really do need that access to New York to have the connections to understand what events are going to happen what are the main themes of POC week a lot of that isn't really transparent in the beginning and it's not all online so it is really helpful to have access to connections with different organizations and agencies who are present in New York with that access to try to get a sense of the lay of the land and then you can have those discussions with your key colleagues organization and with other allies on what to prioritize we used our kind of representative in New York and our connections there and other allies to do that we have a bit of a brainstorm amongst ourselves we have to think carefully as well like is this still a space that we are going to achieve some impact in it to what degree is it worth investing time and resources in it we have to be really critical about that we have to think about that because there's always an opportunity cost that we could do with that budget or with that time and resources elsewhere so we have to think that through but for us at least for this week we did think it was critical to engage particularly to ensure that we have Abdul Weser's voice and the voices that he's supporting from Yemen in these rooms to make sure that those perspectives are represented this space is not typically one in which affected communities are all that present you have the UN Security Council which doesn't include any kind of dedicated seat right to civil society we see more and more civil society briefers come in which were supported by different member states which is encouraging and you see that happening more and more but the side events are great in terms of actually having member states those that take some kinds of decisions at the international level on these topics that they actually get to hear from affected communities and those representing them if I look back at this year and what we were thinking we were looking at the context humongous levels of conflict induced hunger we knew that in this year's POC week that they were going to that was going to be a primary theme so we thought it being important to be there not with really specific change goals or anything like that but to be in the room so to make those connections to our partners, local level partners and colleagues in countries and in regions so that then we can build on that further for example in the conversations on conflict and hunger to try to, as advocates to try to make sure there's a continuity of conversation between New York and other regions between New York and other kind of policy spheres on okay well what does this resolution mean what can we do with it how can we actually implement it in practice and that's one of the key things resolution from the UN Scrooge Council or anything doesn't necessarily mean anything until it's implemented on the ground ultimately these are statements pieces of paper and things that need to be implemented I mean you've set a huge amount there and I think maybe just back to you Abdulwasa in terms of preparation priorities so you have global colleagues like Lawrence deciding and working with collective colleagues figuring out what the priorities are matching it with the actual advocacy priorities of the member states talking to the New York colleagues and you're there in Yemen can you maybe just explain to us then what's your preparation and prioritization look like you know you were talking about going to consult the communities but what does it individually look like how do you prepare for some of these conversations you had Yemen is a very challenging environment to work in and when it comes to priorities either access or funding shortages or fuel crisis or protection of civilian crisis land mines a lot of devastating issues that are you know sometimes recurrent sometimes you know they just come out of the blue and we have to deal with them we have also climate change crisis as well in Yemen you know we have floodings that thousands of people get affected and I want to mention here what a colleague a civil society colleague has mentioned you know the importance and the significance of NGOs like Oxfam you know where we have all these resources and we have colleagues like Lawrence and other colleagues in New York and in Washington DC who always you know spare no effort to create spaces for us but also for the civil society organizations speakers, leaders sometimes we're able also to secure spaces for civil society speakers to brief the UN Security Council which is a very important sip because she believed that the narratives are always competing there it's always either you know conflicting parties who are trying to push with their narratives and the international community they don't have that much of an insight of what's really happening in the ground and this is you know one of the ways where we come reach that gap and ensure that you know we are bringing the ground realities and we are bringing civil society speakers and to share their experiences to provide their observations and also their anecdote information about what's really happening and what also the perspective of the communities themselves how they want to see things moving and what they want also to see the international community doing the level of dedication from colleagues has been really outstanding in which you know myself and the civil society managed to meet with a lot of you know different missions different officials they were very interested to know more about what's happening and having opportunities like this is really great and it brings the ground reality and it's also stresses the urgency of the level of action that is needed to ensure that people are protected and the team was really perfect for this and I think that's great wording to end our session today I mean you're talking about bringing communities up to the New York level having incredible collaboration with New York colleagues both internal and external to Oxfam today we attempted to talk about and to share what POC means for Oxfam and for us as humanitarian advocates who work on protection of civilians I really want to thank both of you both Lawrence really was able to provide that global understanding and I think Abdulwasa you know your messages and your quest for making sure that those spaces are being held and the platforms are correct for the right people so I think thank you both so much I've really really enjoyed our conversation and maybe for those who are interested in you know understanding more about POC week you can go to the UN Occia website thank you so much thank you thanks thank you for listening to this episode of the Advocating for Protection podcast it's produced by the Global Protection Cluster's Advocacy Working Group which is co-led by Save the Children in Oxfam and includes members from National and International NGOs and UN agencies you can find out more information about the Advocacy Working Group on Global Protection Cluster.org look out for the Protection Advocacy Toolkit whilst on this website and if you have feedback or suggestions for future episodes email us at protectionteamatoxfam.org


Love is something that you experience within yourself. It need not be enslaved to anybody or anything. Relationship is individual. How you relate to this person, how you relate to this person, how you relate to this person is entirely different because the transactions cannot be same with everybody.  Your neighbor comes, you don't do such things. You'll just do this, but with the same amount of love you can do it. Love is about how you are. It's got nothing to do with anybody. If this distinction is there, all relationships will go well.


I just wasn't a great student. I never could pass a math exam. I was good at literature and I enjoyed that and geography, which to this day I like enjoy both, but no I was not because I felt I was so behind because having to sort of struggle on my own doing correspondence we would do the car. We were out on a mail route. Lessons would come to us and we would do our lesson and mail it back to Regina, the head office at the time. So I guess I got through that okay and I believe at the end of the year I had to go into town to write a final exam and my marks were never very high because my I just wasn't a really clever clever student.


The subtitle of my paper is the trouble with you economists, okay, and you know sometime Last February in February in 2008 when the rice prices are really up and high I was in Bob Ziegler's office and Bob said he's the current DG of your he's the current DG and Bob Ziegler said He started off the conversation. He said the trouble with you economists and I thought to myself How many times have I heard that? Nobody ever says the trouble with you plant pathologists or the trouble with you plant breeders There's always the trouble with you economists. So he said the trouble with you economists is you're always thinking about the past you're never thinking about the future and I Said Bob you should be lucky because When we think about the future we project the future we're always wrong, you know And so about that time there's a guy called nip on who came from TDI to give a compass to the rice prices are way up here Nip on said One of his presentations he said, you know Everybody thinks the rice price is going to stay high The World Bank thinks so and they're always wrong and so and so things don't so like that like that and he said predicting the rice price is like fortune-telling and He said this might happen that might happen something like that And finally he said at the bottom only God knows So I think we should quit well. No, I don't want to quit yet because I want to I want to add something pursue the idea Ziggler's problem, you know the trouble you economists. Yeah, okay, so you're always looking the best Well, you know in fact when prices were high in September October November December of 2008 What did the economists say? Well, Randy Barker gave a seminar at Erie. Well private was March or something April April so Prices were sky-high and what Randy Barker said in April was These high prices are not going to last they're going to come down just like nip on I gave a seminar and I said these high prices of rice are not going to last they're gonna come down But Bob Ziggler didn't want to hear that He wanted prices to stay high Because if prices are high it justifies more money for Erie. He's got more money anyway, so So, you know if you focus on the past you're wrong if you focus on the future you're wrong Yeah, you know, so Yeah well Yeah, you know I had a chart where I projected the Erie budget, you know, yeah And that's the only projection I had the budget was had been going down down like this So I projected it going like that. That's what happened. And that was nice too. That was happening Bob Ziggler was happy Well, I think you know the challenge is that the time lag between increasing the budget for a research Institute And any impact on productivity in farmers fields is about a 15-year lag This is the problem with games or any of these don't match. They want they want they want a three-year And they won't not a 15-year impact and one of the problems I have Mention that is about you have impact assessors now at every one of these centers, right? And they're trying to assess the impact almost year-to-year about what has Erie accomplished this year or so forth like that and You know Rome you said Rome wasn't built in the day I mean, you know people like the Gates Foundation they need to understand what agricultural research and stuff is about you know because it is a 15-year horizon of this stuff and That's one of the one of the major problems. Well, I think that you're right the emphasis on impact is misplaced We need an emphasis on Monitoring and evaluation that is monitoring what's going on exactly so we can understand the process and we believe This process will lead to technological change and will lead to impact that is beneficial to farmers That's the question. Yeah, so are we making progress toward the goal and in order to understand? Even now what the impact is you you have to have data and survey work to find out again going back Which farmers are adopting which aren't adopting why what's happening on the ground? There's a big project now the Gates is going to fund in Africa to do just that I mean We don't know much about the new races We need to we need to understand in that work that what we observe on the ground today is a result of Research that has done 10 15 years ago So the new races in Africa are the result of work that Monty Jones did at water 15 years ago. Yeah Has nothing to do with what Gates is funding today. Yeah, and that's the process we have to understand That's the process the president Obama has to understand when he says we're going to start funding More work on agriculture in Africa Yeah, that that impact will happen in the future and in the distant future not in the near future


I see my students inspired by this work all of the time. From day one moving forward, I see it in their reflections, their sharing, their willingness to emerge as leaders in the classroom and beyond. I see it in their connection with our larger community as a result of coming to understand the connection that they may have to populations that they weren't previously connected to. They involve themselves wholly and fully in their service learning experiences, which is a component that's embedded into each course I teach. And by fostering those relationships, both at the campus level and the larger community level, they have the opportunity and are motivated to go out and take it and rise to the top as leaders in those positions as well. And it all comes back to that empathy piece, that piece of understanding, that piece of connecting, and that piece of recognition of the profound value to be found among and between individuals.


lopment plan is not coming up but perhaps staff or the applicant could clarify the offsite trail warren creek trail thing I can't get the picture up but there is a graphic commitment and I'm assuming that's a binding commitment all graphic commitments are binding I'm trying to find that my own my copy for reference also the applicants are certainly welcome to speak to it if you're going to have to help me on that one pat I believe that went back to 2003 Diane when there was a commitment to provide a easement for a trail through warren creek which is on the southern side of this property next to the commercial we still have no problem with that it's all in flood plain so there is a commitment on the adjacent property which is not part of the action tonight it's associated I think with this proposed development but it's not part of the action before you it would as the applicant alluded to would stay a commitment from the 2003 action as an easement dedication any other questions comments any other comments from the public let the record flick and no one else in the public wanted to speak the public hearing is closed as a matter of fact before council it's been property moved in a second Madam Clerk will you open the vote close the vote it passes seven zero moved item 24 zoning map change Hudson property Z13 000010 good evening Pat Young again with the planning department the Hudson property is a request to change the zoning designation of a 7.99 acre parcel located at 117 East NC 54 highway east of Fayetteville road and west of Interstate 40 from its current zoning designation of residential suburban 20 to office institutional with a development plan and if approved the action before you would allow for a maximum of 150,000 square feet of office space there are text graphic and design commitments associated with this request detailed in your staff report and your agenda package these include transit and roadway improvements including dedication and development of a four foot wide bicycle lane as well as design commitments staff determines this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan designation for the property planning commission recommended approval of the item at its September 10th 2013 meeting by vote of 11 to 0 I'll be happy to take any questions it's public hearing the public hearing is open the questions of the staff about a council if not we have one person to sign up to speak on this item Bob Zulwot Zulwot thank you Mr. Mayor members of council Bob Zulwot with McAdams here representing Davis Moore capital I've got Earl Uellin from Kimley Horn and Austin Coon as well and we're happy to answer any questions you have thank you very much you're welcome to the questions of the proponent by recognize councilman shul Mr. Mayor I guess this is actually for the staff which is that's appropriate just the the additional 450 hundred trips per day to already overcrowded roads do we have any problem on that I'll ask Wesley Perron with the transportation department to address that concern no sir we do not see any additional problems with that well explain why not I mean it looks like we're already over the already over the number you're referring to Interstate 40 yeah let's see because the the current traffic volume on NC 54 is 16,000 but the capacity level service D is 27,200 so they're well below that and the additional traffic generally by the site will not approach that okay and so but 54 and I mean I'm sorry but Interstate 40 and Fayetteville Road well Interstate 40 certainly is over its capacity but this facility does not have direct access to that and Fayetteville Road it does not have direct access to Fayetteville Road okay thank you you're welcome is further comments by council further comments by council is anyone else in the public going to speak on this item if not I'll declare the public under this close matters of effort for council I am second it's been a problem to move them second Madam Clerk will you open the vote close the vote pass this 70 run moved item 25 zoning map change Hope Valley Farms POD BB revisions Z 13 0 0 0 1 2 good evening again Pat Young with the planning department Hope Valley Farms Pod BB revisions as a request to change the zoning map designation of a 6.77 acre parcel located at 1051 Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway between South Roxborough Road and Archdale Drive this site was zoned commercial general or CG with the development plan in 2009 and the development plan at that time included a large number of graphic and text commitments which would stay in place with what's before you tonight and these included enhanced project boundary buffers in transportation improvements there are two excuse me there are five proffers two broad sets of proffers that the applicant is requesting to have removed from the 2009 commitments that's before you tonight one is the removal of the proffer that in the 2009 limited sale uses and convenience store uses on this site and the other set of commitments that are being asked to be removed are roadway improvements along Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and South Roxborough Street which have been have been previously provided by others staff determines this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other adopted policies and ordinances and planning commission recommended approval at that October 8th 2013 meeting by a vote of 11 to 0 I'll be happy to take any questions thank you you've heard the staff report this is a public hearing would ask council members you have questions of the staff initially on this item if not we have three persons who have signed up to speak Patrick Biker Louis Cheek and Dr. Cendall or Dr. Isley your name ma'am okay do you mind if you could just sign up so we can have that for a record if you can go and sign up I'm sorry could you go to the clerk's desk and just sign the yellow card please right there is this is that it okay I didn't understand your name okay all right are you speaking in opposition to to the plan okay okay you can have a seat I'll call you at the appropriate time Patrick Biker Louis Cheek let's take 10 minutes at the most on this please thank you good evening Mayor Bell members of the city council my name is Patrick Biker I live at 2614 Stuart Drive I'm an attorney with Morningstar Law Group in Durham along with my co-counsel Louis Cheek I'm here tonight representing Murphy USA we are requesting this minor zoning map change to 6.77 acres along the south side of Martin Luther King Junior Parkway directly across an existing Walmart I'd like to briefly introduce the rest of our team that's here tonight from Murphy USA Mr. Wayne Gibson our project engineers are Hamilton Williams and Greg Cistrunk from Greenberg Faro and then our traffic engineers Earl Llewellyn of Kenley Horn given the time of night I will follow the advice of our friend Howard Clement to be seen be brief and be seated there are two important points to show we have accounted for potential neighborhood impacts with the development plan that is before you tonight first we will construct a 0.8 opacity buffer entirely within our property to provide more detail on that committed element a 0.8 opacity buffer means that for every 100 feet along the side and rear property lines we will install about 8 to 10 canopy trees 11 to 17 understory trees and about 75 shrubs and to me that's a lot of planting along 100 feet we're talking on average one shrub every 16 inches as a result there will be plenty of screening along the property line back towards Hope Valley Farms second based on Durham GIS it appears that the closest residents to our project is approximately 500 feet away that's more than one and a half football fields and that 500 feet is in addition to the 0.8 opacity buffer I just described for those of you on the council know where I live my backyard is just about the same distance from Nana's restaurant as this development will be from Hope Valley Farms Townhouses moreover there's a committed element to ensure that any drive-through facility has the speakers oriented away from the residential area that is southeast of our development one last point this parcel before you has been zoned commercial for the past four years we have we now have a project that can implement this established zoning designation we were pleased to host a neighborhood meeting about this project since there was a TIA required with this zoning map change accordingly I sent out 45 personalized letters to nearby property owners only two of those 45 people invited came to the meeting and we had a thorough discussion with both of them about the landscape buffer I described at the start of my comments we did not perceive either the two neighbors to be opposed to the convenience store that we're proposing at this location and now I'll turn the presentation over to my co-counsel Lewis Cheek and then our team will be happy to answer any questions thank you Mayor Bell, members of council my name is Lewis Cheek and it's a privilege along with Patrick Biker to represent Murphy USA Murphy is an international company based in El Dorado, Arkansas it's fully integrated engaging in the fuel exploration and drilling business it's on the New York stock exchange it has 1174 convenience store sites across the US 73 of these sites are in North Carolina with over 500 employees this would be the first site in Durham there would be seven to eight employees we anticipate about a 1200 square foot building with four islands with eight fuel dispensing pumps we estimate that the site would create two million dollars in tax base and of course there would be associated sales taxes there will be a number of enhancements and improvements to make this development neighborhood friendly traffic improvements will be constructed to mitigate the effects of a modest increase in traffic there will be no further median cuts in Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway as a result of the project staff has studied the project and has determined that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies the planning commission voted 11-0 to recommend approval we ask that you approve this zoning map change and I'll be glad to answer any questions you have thank you are the questions by members of council and proponents recognize the council here David thanks to you recognize the council David and David's fault about the mayor well I just wanted to ask Mr. Chique if you would reiterate the question I asked earlier about the lighting and and any intrusion of lighting from this facility owned to the neighbors behind it let me leave that to one of our experts good evening mayor and council my name's Hamilton Williams with Greenberg Faro project engineer representing Murphy USA for this project the light will the majority of the light will be under the canopy that's where the high intensity light and it will be recessed lighting LED lighting that will primarily not spill out from under the canopy except for in the perimeter drive area the site lighting itself will also be LED lighting as well downcast and will definitely not spill beyond the property limits thank you recognizing Mayor Pro Tem one of the concerns that I have about this convenience store comes from complaints that I receive from residents who are located near a convenience store in ward one one of the problems that they talked about was noise from cars coming unto the convenience store property all times of night and I'm just concerned that there might be litter on Martin Luther King Park way from folk who are coming into the convenience store what assurances do you have that there will not occur I know you don't have any noise but you don't have to come up with that we'll certainly monitor our property and do everything that we can to hold down the noise to deal with any litter that's generated that's a difficult problem of course but we'll do everything within our power to try to make sure that it's not a problem with our property this gentleman I think wants the two of them good evening Mr. Mayor Mayor Pro Tem Council ladies and gentlemen I'm Wayne Gibson with Murphy Oil our address is 422 North Washington Elderator Arkansas Mayor Pro Tem concerning the noise at convenience stores we know that can be a problem we've looked at this area and in particular Durham for several years we've looked at the demographics competition traffic counts and locale what we found out is where you located many instances that noise problem is not as large and we feel like in this area where we've located this site we don't feel like that would be a real issue with cars coming in with music blasting and so forth and should it be we will avail ourselves of the noise ordinance that you already have in place here and the police department to take care of that thank you sir do you pay your staff a minimum wage that has nothing to do with your request but I'm just interested in knowing we're well above the minimum wage in starting how about a livable wage and a very livable wage as well so most of them will be attendants or we will have a manager assistant manager at this site and four to five cashier types that would man this station all right thank you sir thank you other questions comments Ida if she could just take your name for the record please yes this is Ida Lan O'odhu okay thank you I am speaking on the behalf of Elmgren townhouse neighborhood and at Hope Valley Arms North proper of about 240 homeowners a zone change for the adjacent property at 1051 Martin Luther King Jr. was requested by an applicant the city review process provided notifications however the notifications did not reach all of these at these 240 townhouses or home I should say homeowners on behalf of this neighborhood I ask that city council continue the hearing process and allow the neighborhood the opportunity to meet and speak with the applicant and form an opinion about the project we understand requirements in the notification process were met by the city however due to the timing of the notification and our board elections coinciding our third party homeowner association and our new and old neighborhood boards could not process this until after the transition was completed hence 240 or I should say most of the 240 properties in question did not have access to the notification and the opportunity to participate in the zone change review process as citizens we plead that the Elm Grove townhouse neighborhood be allowed to participate in this process with continued hearings by city council thank you thank you let me ask before I move to the staff is there anyone else that wants to speak on this item but staff do you have any comments relative to the request by young lady I don't think we have anything to add other than I think the representations applicant made were fair and again as the opponent acknowledged that notice requirements were met and all homeowners but then a 600 foot area were directly contacted okay let me ask are there other questions or comments but I remember the councilor councilor market I have a question for miss is it I just wanted to ask when you found out about the rezoning yes it was at our election board of election meeting it was after it was at nine o'clock there was a gentleman present to express surprise that he was the only one at the hearings had we not heard about this I just wonder what day oh I think it was the when was it 12 12th I think it was the 12th nine o'clock in the evening that was the first time right okay do you have a specific concerns about the this project we just don't know enough about it we didn't we weren't given a chance of any kind and since this is not really single dwelling homes we're talking about we're talking townhomes which are densely packed which I maybe I don't know the planning or you know rules or anything or if there's any special considerations for townhomes because in the same area there are a whole lot more people than a single dwelling establishment we just want to sit down greet them speak with them learn a little bit more not everybody in the neighborhood is savvy with plats and the report that was prepared so it would be good for everyone to just meet and greet the other side and just learn what this is all about good thank you very much thank you the uh proponents well let me recognize councilman brown first I'm sorry what uh what did you go but what neighborhood are you representing again I'm a little confused is that a section can you come to the microphone is that a section within hope valley it is there are three neighborhood associations that oversee Elm Grove I mean hope valley farms the whole area is divided into three neighborhood associations if you will and ours is at the very tip of hope valley farms north and it's betting right next to the property I guess the the land is right next to the property in question which is a wooded area okay thank you thank you Steve or staff can you inform us again about proper notification that was was mailed to those I would assume would that be the neighborhood that she's referring to close enough to the subject property there are homes within the Elm Grove neighborhood that were within the 600 foot mandated notification area those property owners were actually sent first class notice as prescribed by both local unified development ordinance standards as well as the state statute just to remind council here in Durham we actually provide 600 percent more notice than required by state law state law only requires a 100 foot notice ring around promoters so we could go well beyond that in addition we also as a courtesy send a notice to all neighborhood organizations or organizations that register with the planning department and we did send I think a handful of notices out to several organizations that had registered with us in addition we do place legal ads in the local paper of record as required by law and we also post a placard on the property to to additionally advertise that there is a rezoning request pending thank you councilman brown if I may on my records indicate I did send a first class letter to the Elm Grove townhouse association on April 2nd of this year I was sent directly to them recognize councilman Marshall Mr. Mr. Medlin since we're talking about the 600 foot notification zone there's a substantial amount of property undeveloped property that surrounds the subject property who owns that property that is owned by Caswick the developer of Hope Alley Farms okay so that there's one landowner that owns a substantial amount of property and that's primarily flood plain and stream buffer areas that are being retained as a permanent open space so the number of residential properties that are actually within the notification zone are fairly limited you are probably looking at what five just looking at the if you have a map in front of you in the Elm Grove community you're talking about the four buildings on the north side and all of the individual units and I think two or three of the internal units but the arc actually crossed okay councilman Moffitt to be precise it was 45 property owners be happy to share this list with you if you'd like to see it so 45 property owners got noticed yes plus the association when you say the association I'm sorry when you say the association what do you mean councilman councilmember Moffitt the Elm Grove Townhome Association Incorporated thank you I don't want to go back to the public unless you want to ask the question councilman Moffitt you still have the floor that's you're done okay any other comments questions by the council if not I'm going to close the public hearing on this matter and matters back before the council it's been proper moving second Madam Clerk can you open the vote close the vote it has this five to two would council member Cotati voting no and council member Moffitt voting no thank you let's move to the next item item 26 street closing north of sale street good evening I'm sorry good evening excuse me excuse me Mr. Mayor I'm sorry yeah I had a question before they leave I think that one of our council members asked that the exterior of this convention convention nothing building be enhanced and embellished was that proffered with using brick that understood by all parties attractive building it was brick brick I thought it was brick not do we have a difference on this there were design commitments from the previous zoning that were unchanged by the action tonight it incorporated it says any of the following materials brick traditionally endorsed synthetic stucco precast concrete panels split face or ground face concrete masonry hardy plank or other fiber cement siding vinyl stone glass aluminum or metal panels well let me let me just come back to this I don't know who made the motion but I specifically was told that the bill was going to be brick same here say what well we need to make sure that's a part of the well I that's that's what I'm trying to figure out from the the city attorney how do we do this as we're taking a vote on that you would the the mover would need actually the people who voted in favor of it would need to rescind the vote and then you can vote and move again okay I would ask to make the motion the second motion to to reconsider the action that we just took yeah motion to reconsider it's been property movement second madam clerk will you open the vote close the vote can you close it's a reconsideration so you want you want me to do it again could you open the vote again please close the vote it passes seven zero all right now can we go back to the question that's been raised in terms of the type of material that we use on the building specifically yes mayor bell members of council on the half of murphy usa we will amend our design commitments to state that the building will be with the exception of the windows and the doors and the trim be be a brick exterior on all four walls well you know I thought about that the staff have that yeah we'll email to staff in the morning okay sure entertain the motion on the item again some of it's been property movement second madam clerk will you open the vote close the vote it passes five to two with council in Makatate voting no and councilmember moffett voting no thank you let's move to street closing item 26 north of south street street closing 13 000003 good evening again members of council pat young with planning department sc 13 00003 is a request by winners and raven all to close 150 linear foot segment of north of south street this property is currently an open right of way but has been used for many years as parking by for the adjacent building sheets incorporated is proposing utilization of this property for parking inside access to a new convenience store and gas station under site plan review currently by the planning department and other city departments city agencies north colander department transportation and utility service providers have reviewed this proposal and no service delivery or other impacts were identified thank you and I'll be happy to answer any questions okay this is a public hearing the public hearing is open let me ask so there are questions by members of the council first on this staff report if not we have one person that signed up to speak proponent jamie girhart is there anyone else who wants to speak on this item if not let's go out and you have three minutes thank you mr. mayor council members my name is jamie girhart I work directly for sheets incorporated and I'm also a new resident of the city of Durham I we moved this summer 46 05 second more shows road Durham I agree with staff's report and their support of the action item today I'm here to answer any questions on behalf of either sheets or withers in ravenel who is the applicant thanks welcome are there questions of the proponent anyone in the public wants to speak if not let direct reflect no one else has to speak the public hearing is closed as a matter of fact for council it's been properly moved in second madam clerk we open the vote close the vote you passed a seven and zero thank you welcome to Durham let's move to item number four which was full mayor pro tem excuse me I pulled that item we'll just a brief comment had some concerns about report investment act youth contract with community partnership ink yeah I had some concerns about I think this is the contract that has been awarded to a firm outside of Durham is that correct I think there are like one half point rating difference from between the firm is this the contract that operation breakthrough was also volume yeah okay I'm sorry I didn't what I just want to make sure I have the right one maybe I don't okay here it is CPI $175,000 please I just don't understand the small margin between the ratings half a point for a firm in Durham and one in Raleigh and Raleigh is do you understand what I'm saying the rating system could you explain why that firm got the contract rather than a local firm simply put my name is Michael Honeycutt I'm the senior manager of workforce development the RFP was reviewed by members of the Durham workforce development board who had the opportunity to meet with the providers to ask questions to review proposals the youth commission reviewed the proposals made a recommendation to the full workforce development board and the workforce development board made a recommendation on the awarding of the contract I just wondered why well the just a moment CPI score was overall score was 89 operational breakthroughs was 88.25 operational breakthrough is local CPI is not and I just don't understand how the is getting this award may I CPI has been the provider for the past three years they have met and exceeded all measurement goals and while I'm not a voting member of the workforce development board I believe that was a good part of their decision that the provider has met and exceeded the stated performance goals that are mandated by the state and the federal government how do you mentor local firms so they can take advantage of this business in the city how can we just think about that but we need to do I think a better job of embracing our own contractors thank you thank you Mr. Mayor I was at the Durham Workforce Development Meeting Madam Mayor Pro Tem where this was discussed I think one of the things about this is this is only a six month contract which would mean that we would be we would have another opportunity and another that there'll be some more scoring in the future for this same contract is that true in the near future so I think Cora at the meeting I think that there was some feeling that let's go ahead let's keep this contract with the same group for the next six months keep the continuity and then we'll be bidding it out for a longer period of time so I know that that was kind of part of the thinking on part of the group this is a six month contract huh I'm sorry I didn't this is a six month contract yes it is beginning when I'm sure it was right here before me but okay Mr. Mayor that was still a little consolation to me uh business is business for Durham is business for Durham I'm not disagreeing with your point I just I didn't realize it was a six month contract January and June it is for the renewal well what's the difference now renewal for six months or what yeah and I'm James they can the U program coordinated for office economic and workforce development it's a six month contract with an option for renewal for up to two years and so we wouldn't necessarily go back to a RRP after six months unless the contract is not performing well also it's a six month it's a six month contract because we extended the state actually required us to extend the last contract for additional six months because we have a new reporting system that that's just started in August of this year well not I guess I need clarification it's a difference of saying it's a six month renewal and you don't necessarily have to go out for be it again is that what I mean you say right we're right the federal or guidelines that we that the WIA fall under doesn't require us to go out to RRP but every three years and so since we just already just had a RRP would not require to do that again until three years however we can decide or the workforce development board city council can decide to request the RRP after at the end of six months or we can wait for an additional two years we usually do that based on performance so you have the option of doing an RRP yes sir and what is the barrogate do you think the board is going on I'm trying to understand councilman Schultz comments what was it done is standing we were going to try for six months and then we look at it or what and by relooking at it doesn't mean you go out for another bill or you just look at how they perform inside was generally based it off of performance well the mayor pro tem raised the question for a rating that close I'm hard pressed to see why we wouldn't lean towards a local firm but I could feel a bit more comfortable if you tell them you're going to go out and rebid it again in six months but if you tell them you got the option to do it something tells me that's not going to happen but go ahead recognize councilman Schultz councilman could talk the other issue that was raised Mr. Mayor was as I remember in the meeting was the issue of a recent audit of the other applicant and I know that that was had a big effect on the people that were voting on this as well this was information that the board got I guess after the scoring and so I think that was the that was the other thing that I as I remember and obviously I haven't gotten my recollection all right on the first thing but as I remember that was the other big item of discussion as councilman could talk yeah I was also at the workforce development board meeting and I don't have it in front of me but we did as a board have a lot more information in front of us and I believe too that the contracts were compared on how they were going to be administered in staffing because again the recommendation is to continue with the current provider and the the competitor in this case operation breakthrough was going to use a different model such that they were I believe using interns every six months and there were concerns about continuity and training and work with the youth so there was a whole host of stuff that we looked at that made the current applicant stronger and that was the board's recommendation so I just wanted to share that I mean there is a lot more background information that could be shared but that was shared with the board who made the recommendation recognize the mayor pro town I still have a same question then how do you mentor local companies to do business with the city that has to you're trying you're dealing with training and development so I know there must be some model that some city is using somewhere to help local business that is concerned that I have and I will always have that there will be no opportunity for operation breakthrough to get the kind of training that they need I mean it could be that interns will work could work they work in planning they work in other places in city government so I think we need to be able to think outside of the box if that is going to help us with local business further comments on this item I'd like to find a little bit more about how this project is progressing as we go into closer to the six months period I really think that it's unfortunate the operation breakthrough isn't here to speak to some of the questions raised and I guess we can try to find some answers about that were they aware of why they weren't awarded the contract yes they have been we have met with Mr. Tabron all right all right any other items on this any other questions on this if not entertain a motion on the item I'm going to leave this alone because we haven't got both people here it's been property moving second madam clerk will you open the vote and close the vote it passes six to zero with who's abstaining you're abstaining Miss Smith I'm sorry are you voting no I am voting okay it passes six to one would council member hold McFadden voting no all right let's move item number ten which is on a consent agenda financial crimes task force grant Victoria Peterson that's item 10 you have 10 and 11 you want to speak on 10 first I'm sure I'm going to get three minutes Mr. Mayor I think the other folks did and since I'm the only one here to speak that just laid out victory you can have three minutes thank you Mr. Mayor I have I would just like to sort of ask Mr. Mayor there are some reasons why some of us a little concerned about our leadership in the police department and this is one of the areas that very few of you may know this it has been brought to my attention as an activist in this community that we have had some officers to go into persons homes and take out monies and claim that those dollars were raised because of drugs we have number 10 as monies that's going to come from the U.S. Department of Treasure $23,000 an additional $3,000 in 800 to use to monitor and watch over drug monies lottery monies corrupt monies basically and I have some concerns about that and a matter of fact this evening I was out and outside talking to another gentleman on the same same issue that there are other persons in the community that's been complaining that officers and not all the officers because we do have some very very good police officers in our law enforcement particularly the older ones those few over there standing over there I consider them older officers that are very mature and they know what they're doing but we are having some concerns about some of our younger officers so I would like to ask the council and Mr. Bonfield can we please get a report of the drug monies the so-called drug monies that have been labeled that the police department has gotten over the last five years what are we doing with those dollars and why can't some of those dollars be used for this financial crime task force because some of us do have and I was also told that sometimes Mr. Mayor these drug dollars are supposed to show up in the courthouse and they're not showing up so here you have crimes or persons being arrested for certain crimes but the drug monies are not there so my question first I think we need to get a report before we approve this what's happening to the drug monies that you guys are getting that's coming in when you go into persons homes and they have five or six thousand dollars and somebody's question well why do you have this kind of money in your home and you're clearing and you're claiming that these are drug monies and you're taking those dollars and you're not giving those dollars back to those residents and to those families and that is going on in Durham because I have not heard it just one time Mr. Mayor I've heard it several times so my question here is why is it that we're giving these folks an additional three thousand dollars why can't they use some of your drug monies that you're already bringing into the that you are already getting into the community All right thank you Ms. Peterson I think the manager heard your comments I would only suggest that if there are people who are making these accusations they ought to bring them forth they ought to bring them forth not let it be hearsay they ought to bring them forth and the city manager's here I'm not asking now but if you've got people they need to bring that information forth I was told we can't act on hearsay right I was told that I know one person is or is welcome to Mr. Baker about it okay well you take that offline speak to the city manager if you don't mind that's what I've been told don't know if it's true well I'm saying speak to the city manager about that we can't go on hearsay but I do want I do want I think you need to know about it though well we appreciate that okay all right you we want to entertain a motion on this item it's been properly moved on the second Madam Clerk can we open the vote and close the vote it passes seven to zero the next item is item 11 amendment to fitness medical risk training contract for psychological services yes mr. mayor I have two concerns about this first thing I'm glad to see that the police department does have somebody or you have hired a firm to deal with some psychiatry of some counseling for your officers I would like to see to take this a little further my understanding dealing with Mr. Walker Derek Walker that was shot a few weeks ago and I've heard this from police officers because I've asked them I have a criminal justice background and I know how to ask questions I've asked them who was your licensed psychiatrist in the department you don't have anyone in the department so I understand that some of your officers may need counseling may need some psychological evaluation but I also would like I think some dollars need to be set aside to bring on a psychiatrist when you have situations when a young man or a young woman is is having a a mental breakdown and you stand out there in the public for one hour and you talk to them but you don't bring a licensed doctor a licensed psychiatrist a licensed person who has years of training to talk to that individual but then somebody can shoot that person down because he's waving a gun we have some concerns in this community about that so the only thing I'm gonna ask ask Mr. Mayor and the city council members to allow to add some more monies to this so that this law enforcement can hire a licensed psychiatrist that when we have a crisis in this community like we had with Mr. Walker a few weeks ago that that psychiatrist can come in and speak to that can go down and speak to that individual since we're not allowing the family members my understanding his family members tried to go down and talk to him my understanding the pastor was asked to go to asked to go down and talk to him Mr. Mayor none of those individuals were allowed to talk to this to talk to this individual Mr. Davis who was having mental illness who was having a mental breakdown publicly but what we do what we do and it wasn't just that police officer we as a community made a decision to do what we did because we're not making sure that this law enforcement department has the kind of equipment and the materials and the right kind of personnel that they really need to have so I'd rather see some of the additional monies added here of Mr. Mayor and Mr. Bondfield to bring on a licensed psychiatrist who is certified board certified and thank you very much welcome thank you comments will be taken in consideration entertain a motion on item it's been a property movement second Madam clerk will you open the vote close the vote it passes seven zero thank you any other arguments to come before the council before we adjourn if not the council adjourn at 10 22 p.m. thank you


We dressed up as we thought that we'd gotten the wrong dinner. We have a bag over your shoulder.  You don't listen with the camera. The thought makes me shudder. Why we didn't put a stop to Sam's shouting out questions as we were out in the south lawn. We did the starlings would come back. Today I saw my first Robin Redbreast in the spring and the tree outside the Oval Office. Six of you in the bushes. This is, you know, all the things that go with the job. I was worried that I'd get out of shape in this job. But thanks to Mike Dever's diet and Jane Fonda's workout book, I feel just great. You wouldn't believe the muscle I developed in my left arm. Among photographers that journalists don't treat you well or as fairly as you like. Welcome to the club. White House photographers model the one pictures worth a thousand denials. I have a confession to make. Those top secrets, satellite photos of the Granada Air Base that I showed up and took down a few weeks ago. I think you really should know they weren't really satellite photos. We had a balloon on Mike Dever's. The other day when all those ball players were out there on the south lawn in the baseball day that they had, Jim Watt told me out there that when he was a boy, he dreamed of one day being out in the center field in Yang State. Truly going. Fair. I also know that you have wide-angle lenses that are wide enough to get all the Democratic presidential candidates in one shot. You just don't have a lens that's wide enough to get all their promises. Is it true that young Gary Hart is having the wrinkles airbrushed in? There are some things that you and I have in common in addition to being on the opposite ends of the camera. For you in the dark room is a place to develop film. For me, it's a place where the Democrats use it as a think tank.  You raise your flag on Mount Surabachi. You have breakfast with Baker, Dever, Meese. Let's get serious for just a moment. And that's all I'm going to take. On the newspaper or magazine page, I always look at your work first. And so does everyone else. It's that still photo that captures the essence of the moment speaks in our memory. And if the rhythm of the broad-caged meeting can capture the truth as consistently and accurately as you do, the American people might have a better perspective on many issues in the day. And I believe you do your job honestly and fairly and that's the basis of our press freedoms. So I thank you for inviting us here this evening. I thank you for your fairness and your hospitality. And if we'll all just remember, this side is my right side. My far right side.