session to order at 9am on Thursday, June the 10th. And I want to welcome everyone here today, my dear colleagues, our wonderful staff, and everyone who may be listening as well. We're so glad to have everyone with us. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl here, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, here, Council Member Caballero, here, Council Member Freelon, here, Council Member Freeman, Council Member Middleton, here, Council Member Reese, here, thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, I want to start with just a couple of quick announcements or comments. One is that, as Mayor Pro Tem said as we got started here, we're in the homestretch. And I spoke to the manager yesterday, and she is asking, we know that it is our job here today, to try to solve all of the questions that we have before us in terms of the budget, so that we're not doing anything on Monday night the 21st. So we don't have a lot of items, but we have a few items we need to settle for the budget. But I hope we'll all keep that in mind. That's certainly what I'll try to help us do. But the manager did, again, especially your request that I remind you all of that. Our job today is to get through these budget items so that on the 21st, we'll have a budget that is ready to be voted on. And occasionally, something has to come up at the last minute, but let's try to avoid that if we can. The second thing that the manager and I talked about when we were going through the list of things today is we had a brief discussion of the request that the folks from the Master Aging Plan had made. And what we decided to recommend to you all today, because that's something that we all care about, but let me just set the table a little bit. The staff had not had any report on that, any information on that prior to the very, very recent things that we've heard, nor have we as the council heard a report on the Master Aging Plan. The county commission I know has been taking it up, but our thought, and I'll recommend this to you just from your thumbs up or down, is that we would not discuss that this morning. The staff has no analysis to offer, no information, but that we hold that for a future time that we asked the Master Aging Plan folks to come to the council to make a presentation at the work session. And that if we would like to fund that later in the year, it would not be a large amount of money, but we could make that decision at that time. So that was my recommendation and the manager's recommendation, but I want to just check that with you all. I see one thumb from council member Reese. Do I see some other thumbs? Okay, everybody's good, I think. Madam manager, so I think we're settled on that item. Yes, council member Caballero. My one request is that we hear it on the earlier side of the new fiscal year. So early fall versus Decemberish. Yes, noted. And I'm sure that our staff can make that happen. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I believe those are all the things that we needed to do at the beginning. And council member Reese, I'm sorry I didn't see your hand. I'm trying to figure out how to mute myself. There it is. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good morning, colleagues. I really felt like I should just say at the outset of this meeting how much I appreciate your patience and grace with me earlier this week as I communicated to each of you. One of my kids experienced a health emergency late Monday evening that prevented my participation in our last meeting. I hate that. That was always a sick feeling when that happens. But I'm happy to report that I invested some time over the last couple of days to watch the meeting. So I was able to receive all the public input, although not at the same time of day that y'all did. And I just wanted to thank you for for shouldering the burden at that meeting in my absence. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.  So thank you for thank you for your comments. And we're always glad to do that. All right, we'll now turn to our staff. And I believe that I will call on Mr. Allure. Our first discussion is the premium paying bonuses. Mr. Allure. Good morning, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. Just ask briefly that the agenda be put up on your screen just so you know what you're getting into this morning. Yes, we will have a couple of presentations, one from the HR department, one from the Durham County. And sandwiched in between there is a brief discussion on emergency communications facilitated by Bo Ferguson, Deputy City Manager, Bo Ferguson. And then for the remainder of the meeting, we'll turn towards the other business you have noted here, bulleted here, and any other business you'd like to attend to for this morning's follow up work session. And with that, if the city manager has any remarks, I'll turn it to her. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Durham City Council. My remarks will be brief. I would like to thank our budget management services department, as well as our departments for working since we last were in session to bring additional information to you on items that you wanted to continue to discuss today. We look forward to taking your final direction and completing this budget. And finally, I would like to welcome interim County Manager Hager to this meeting who will be making a presentation for us. And I look forward to working with her as we both complete our budgets and talk about the very large increases that we're going to receive coming to our community from the federal government. So that will be all that I would present this morning. Thank you very much, Madam Manager. And with that, I'll turn things over to Director Youngblood to give you an HR update. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the city council. I was asked to prepare a presentation to give you some additional options on premium pay and pay for performance budgets. And that is what I will go through today. Next slide, please. To provide a little bit of context and history, I wanted to make sure that we understood the genesis of premium pay and premium pay history for the city of Durham. So at the beginning of the pandemic, the city wanted to recognize employees with a heightened risk exposure to COVID-19. Departments determined which employees would be eligible for premium pay based on a shared set of guidelines that were established through a temporary premium pay policy. Employees who were deemed eligible for premium pay received a 5% of salary from March 30, 2020 through June 19, 2020. And the total amount for salaries paid out in premium pay for FY20 was approximately $808,000. What you see on the screen now are four different options for premium pay. The first option reflects what has already been recommended in the city manager's budget. That is a continuation of the 5% of salary without any additional compensation for a total of $3.9 million. The second option builds upon the original recommendation. In addition to the 5% of salary, we are recommending an option 2 that employees receive an additional lump sum payment of $1,250. The cost differential between option 1 and option 2 is approximately $1.9 million, and the total cost for option 2 is about $5.8 million. Option 3 is a variation on option 2. We continue with the 5% salary payment, premium payment, and we provide here in option 3 differentiated lump sum bonuses based on the employee's salary. The additional cost from option 3 compared to option 1, which is a part of the original budget recommendation, is about $987,125 for a total cost of about $4.9 million. Option 4 is a variation of option 3, which is 5% salary premium pay, with larger bonuses that are differentiated again based on the same salary break points as in the previous option. The additional cost for option 4 compared to option 1 is about $1.97 million, and a total cost of $5.9 million. This slide provides you a summary of the various premium pay options by pay group. As you can see by and large, general employees would receive the largest amount of the total of premium pay across the different options with not insignificant amounts going to both police and fire, and there's also money within each of the options for part-time employees who would meet the eligibility criteria for premium pay. Moving now from premium pay to pay for performance bonuses. I'm sorry, Regina, could you go back to that last slide just for a minute? Yes. Thank you. Just needed a minute to look at it. Okay, now moving from the topic of premium pay to pay for performance budget options, excuse me, pay for performance lump sum options for employees, we have three options on this slide. Option A reflects what is currently recommended in the budget, which are differentiated pay for performance bonuses based on various salary break points for a total of $3.1 million in cost. Option B increases those established pay for performance bonuses by about 50%, and then option C doubles the pay for performance bonus options. And so as you can see, increasing the options by 50% yields a total cost of about $4.7 million, and doubling the bonus options is basically double option A, $6.3 million. Next slide. Again, breaking down those options by pay group, general employees, again receiving the greatest amount of the pay for performance bonuses, police and fire, and part-time individuals being eligible. Now this is a representation of the cost of pay for performance bonuses by fund. General fund would bear most of the cost of the pay for performance budget for these bonuses. Option A is $2.3 million, option B $3.5 million, and option C $4.6 million. And I just noticed the note that popped in. You may wonder why we did not break down the premium pay by fund. The premium pay will not have any impact on the fund since the premium pay will be coming from the ARP funding. And the last slide is really just meant to provide a sample employee impact for consideration, depending on which options we pick for premium pay and bonus. There could be a number of variations that would yield very different results. So using a sample employee, we have some assumptions on the slide. This would be an example of a sworn police officer full-time with a base salary of $55,000. The assumption is that this individual is eligible for premium pay and would meet the criteria to receive the pay for performance bonus because he or she received an effective or better performance rating. I'll walk you through option 1A. The raise that the individual would receive is reflective of the structure adjustment that is being recommended for the police pay plan of 4%. So that raise amount would be $2,200. The individual would then receive premium pay at 5% of the salary, which is $2,750. In option A, there is no premium plus bonus, but the pay for performance bonus for this individual would be $1,250 based on the salary of $55,000 for a total payout of $6,200, which is approximately 11.3% increase for the employee. Option 3B, the raise and the premium pay would be the same, but here's where we start to see some variation in the premium bonus. In option B, we're assuming that we would give an individual a flat amount bonus in addition to premium pay ranging from $500 to $750, depending upon the person's salary.  And for pay for performance, we have bonus amounts of $1,500 to $2,250 in this particular option. And based on that person's salary, they would get a pay for performance bonus of $1,875 for a total payout of $7,450 representing approximately a 13.5% increase for the employee. And an option for C, again, premium pay and raises would be the same. We have larger amounts of budgeted or recommended in this particular option for premium plus payment. So the premium plus payment would be $1,250 because those payments would vary from $1,000 to $1,500 based on person's salary. And their pay for performance bonus would range from $2,000 to $3,000 depending on the salary. And this particular individual would receive $2,500 for a total payout of $8,700 reflecting approximately a 15.8% increase. I'm happy to take any questions that you have. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Ms. Youngblood. And we really appreciate this work. Thank you so much. There were questions that Councillor Maurice had in the chat, which the manager has answered. I just wanted to make sure everyone saw that, which is regarding the source of the funds. Councillor Marisa, are you satisfied with that? Yeah. All right. Questions from Ms. Youngblood? All right. If there are no questions, comments at this time? Okay. Council Member Middleton. And then Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good morning, everyone. Good to see all. So I guess the impetus was a feeling that we could do more. So I guess the assignment before us is to decide whether or not we're going to do more. Yes, that is exactly. That is the assignment. It was a little silent when you asked. Okay. All right. That's the assignment. Okay. Got you. I yield back. Yeah. We need to figure out, as you know, we have the recommendation before us, which is the pay plan structure adjustments and the bonus plan and the premium pay. We have three things that the administration has recommended to us just to refresh everybody. The premium pay, I believe that we were informed by management would go to about 1100 employees. Is that correct, Ms. Youngblood? Do you have an estimate on that? That is correct. It's a little bit more than that. A little bit more than 1100. So the frontline employees, the 1100 frontline employees would receive the extra 5% for retroactive for premium pay. There's the bonuses that are on the sliding scale relative to three different break points in terms of how much people are earning. And then there's the pay structure adjustments. And so now we're being asked if we are, we asked the administration to show us some other things so that we could decide if there was something more that we wanted to do. So any questions or comments? I'm sorry. This one, within the context. So with the proposed tax increases that are already in play, obviously we haven't approved the budget yet. What are the implications or impacts on revenues and within, if everything else was left the same and we chose the top option, could budget refiners talk to me a little bit about the potential impacts? So I will begin, council members. The bonus payments are one-time payments. So those payments come from a source and in the case of premium pay, the amount that is approved from premium pay for bonuses reduces the total that we have left to invest in other kinds of things that are priorities. So we have received about half of our first tranche of our art funding. It is about $25 million. And we have only requested at this point officially the premium pay as one of the uses of that. So the original amount that we had requested for that, I believe, I don't, I keep a lot of numbers in my head, but I believe it's about $3.9 million. And so that $25 million would fund the $3.9 million. As you increase that, then the $25 million that we have would go down by that amount. And that is only for premium pay. There's a little bit more impact in the regular bonus because the regular bonus increases are coming from our fund balances in the funds that the employees work in. So that was the reason Ms. Young-Bla showed the funds that the employees actually work in so that the council could see that those bonus amounts would be coming from those fund balances one time. Majority of it, certainly most of our employees work in general funds. So that's where the biggest impact is for the bonuses. There's no proposal that you see in front of you today that is going to really change the tax increase that's recommended because the tax increase is funding primarily the salary adjustments. Those are the adjustments that we have to carry forward into our multi-year plans. That's helpful. Thank you, Madam Manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Council Member. Thank you, Madam Manager. Colleagues, I do want to point out two things that are one thing that I think is worth consideration. I'm going to state this, and Ms. Young-Bla, you can tell me if I'm right or not. One of the choices we have if we were to make some changes here is that the premium pay, an increase in premium pay, would be for part of our workforce. And that, you know, the 1100 plus that we talked about earlier, a pay for performance bonus would be across the workforce, and everyone would receive a benefit. Is that correct, Ms. Young-Bla? That is 99% correct. So a pay for performance bonus would be, everyone would be eligible for it if they are pay for performance eligible. So there are some individuals that might be in their probationary status who would not be eligible for a pay for performance increase. And also the pay for performance increase is contingent upon that person's actual performance. And if they've received a performance rating less than effective, then they would not be eligible. But the broader reach definitely is there for the pay for performance increase. It is eligible for a lot more employees than just the premium pay. And I've got the updated premium pay number for you. It's 1361 full-time employees, 59 part-time. And then there's additional 175 people that might be partially eligible based on the nature of the work that they did during the time period. Thank you. So that sounds like it's just a little more than half of our workforce, roughly. All right, colleagues, any comments? Anyone want to offer thoughts at this time or any more questions from Ms. Youngblood, Council Member Caballero, and then Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So I just had some questions. So I know that the salary adjustments, and I forgot what it was for general employees, that's two or two and a half percent. It's two. Okay. And that's to alleviate part of the step plan prop issue that we're going to hit more significantly next year because we're not giving enough of an increase to follow the formula that we had set before. So typically what we were planning on doing prior to COVID for our step plan was to make sure that we adjusted it every other year. The market cost of labor increases about two percent per year. And so we are behind in adjusting. And even though we are going to move the structure two percent in this next budget, that would mean that we're still behind the market increases by two years. Yeah, by two percent. And so our plan was to also increase the open range every single year. And that means we're about six percent behind the market. But we're going to move the open range about seven percent. But the individuals within the open range plan are getting a two percent across the board increase to their base. Okay. Thank you. Does this, I mean, the pay for performance, I mean, this does at least alleviate. I know it doesn't help us in the long term, but it does alleviate the feel, you know, what employees are feeling in their paycheck. It does offset some of it if it doesn't correct completely for the long term. That's correct. So they're going to feel a lot more money at one time in their pockets. But because we're not fully funding the pay for performance plan with step increases or full pay for performance increases, individuals will have a lower feeling of a lower earning potential over time, because only some of the money that they're going to get this year will go into their base to be multiplied and added to over time. Okay. Thank you. And then one final question. We received an email, I feel like just a few days ago from and again, it's about firefighter. Hey, I feel like some city staff was on this email. Yeah, manager pages on it. And I just happy to forward it, but just wanted some commentary on what was shared that basically there wasn't a cost to the city to add the five percent merit raise. We don't need to discuss it. I don't even know if you've had the opportunity to see it, but I did want to flag it and happy to forward it to you, Regina. Thank you. Thank you. I have seen it, but I am not prepared with any comments related to it today. What I can say is it takes an oversimplified view of the impact to the city's multi-year and I would feel more comfortable with budget explaining the impacts to the multi-year plan. Thank you for that. Yes. Obviously, when you're dealing with pay for performance, it's a more complex issue that does affect not only current revenues in order to balance an increase for that. But as Regina and both the city manager pointed out, it has multi-year implications and an inflating factor to it. Thank you. Madam Mayor Proce. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to express my thoughts on what we should do. And I think that it would be great for us to increase the amounts in the budget for both premium pay and paper performance bonuses to the highest amounts that are recommended by the administration. And I think that that's reasonable for a couple of reasons. I feel I feel a concern about us not us not following the plan that we put in place back in 2019. And that's, you know, that a lot of that is beyond our control. We had COVID. We had an economic downturn that impacted the city significantly. I think that, you know, we understand that our employees understand that. But I think that we should do as much as we can to we should do as much as we can to make up for that with the one time money that we have access to with what as much as we can, as much as we feel that we can afford, we, you know, these bonuses aren't going to, you know, as Regina said, add to the employee's base pay over time. They're not they're not the raises that we promise, but I think that they will go a long way toward supporting our employees and making folks feel like their work is valued, putting a little bit of extra money in their pocket and, you know, doing all that we can with the one time money, because we don't have the recurring fund that we would need to advance the pay plan that we originally that we originally promised our employees. And the other reason is that this year has just been really bad for everybody. And I think that us doing all that we can for our staff is the right thing to do. And it sets the right example for the community at large that that this is an important time for us to be supporting workers. And I want us to do as much as we can, you know, as much as we can afford. And so I think the highest recommendation from the staff is reasonable. And I would support us increasing doing doing option four for the premium pay and doing option C for the performance bonuses. Thanks. Thanks. And let me just try to put a number on that what I just so we can have some context. What I think, Ms. Youngblood, you can correct me is that the we will be talking about approximately another $3.1 million in the paper performance bonuses, and approximately another $2 million in the premium pay option. So we'd be in the five point something million dollars additional in one time payments. And just to keep make sure I again continue to understand that with the premium pay money, the approximately $2 million, that money would come out of ARP funds. And the paper performance bonuses, the approximately $3 million additional would come from the various fund balances from the funds from which to whom the money, the departments to whom the money we've got. Is that right? Did I get that right? You did. Exactly. Correct. Okay. Colleagues, Council Member Freelon. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to echo what Mayor Pro Tem Johnson just said, and also coming off of Tuesday's budget healing event at North Carolina Central, we did some brainstorming and some dreaming and visioning around the American rescue plan funds. And there are like five pillars that it's actually quite broad what types of things this money can go to. But they gave us kind of five pillars to determine kind of where to make these investments. And one of the ones where it was very clear was provide premium pay for essential workers. So I just wanted to emphasize that this feels really in alignment with the purpose and intent of those monies. And yeah, I support going as far as is as feasible. And we have another 25 million coming next year to do some of the other things that we want to do. I think we'll still be able to do that. So I just wanted to chime in on that front. Thank you, Council Member. Maybe one other check-in would be important. Mr. Allure, the general fund, can you remind us what our plans are for the great majority of the funds for the this really significant impact for performance bonus cost options for performance bonus increases would be from the general fund would be from the general fund fund balance. We are already planning to spend about 2.3 million, as I read this, out of the general fund fund balance for performance bonus cost option for performance bonus. If we added another 2.3 million out of the general fund balance, why don't you remind us what our plan general fund balance is that we would be taking out. We would be reducing that. We would still have a significant balance, but can you remind us of that amount? Yes. So when we did budget briefing, what we had coming out of fund balance was $2.9 million for one-time bonuses. So increase that by that amount. And so what we're doing, and there's some other adjustments obviously, but you originally saw was about the use of $10.4 million from fund balance in FY22. With some other adjustments, that's going to increase it by about $14 to $15 million from fund balance. And your surplus amount that we were projecting was $23.6 million, above and beyond the $16.7 million. So there is comfortable capacity. Great. Colleagues, just to remind us, the 16.7% is our goal. This would put us, we're still $20 million above that goal. So I think what I'll do now is I'll accept a motion and then we can continue discussion. So to give our management some direction, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move that we include option four as our premium pay bonus and option C as our pay for performance bonus in our 2021-22 budget. Second. Moved by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Seconded by Council Member Middleton. That we, can you say it again, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, I don't have that slide pulled up. Yep. That we approve option four for premium pay and option C for pay for performance bonuses in the budget. All right. And that was seconded by Council Member Middleton. Other discussion, colleagues? Council Member Rees. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll be supporting the motion when it comes time to vote. Just briefly wanted to thank Council Member Freelon, who at our budget work session, I guess two weeks ago, asked staff to come back with these options and want to thank staff for working hard in the interim to put together a set of plans that let us kind of figure out what we want to do.  This is the tension we have between investing in base pay, which implicates the use of recurring funds versus these kinds of bonus options that use one-time funds that put additional money in our employees' pockets, but don't make any additional progress in the step plan that we were forced to, to skip over in the last budget cycle. I just wanted to add one note, which is that I don't want us to get caught up in the passive voice when it comes to our inability to invest more recurring funds in base pay. This is a choice that all of us are making, and it's a choice that I support. But it means, but the choice that we're making to not make additional investments in base pay through the use of recurring funds means that in order to improve the financial situation of our employees, this is the kind of thing we have to do. As I said, I support that choice because there are lots of other things we want to do, but I think it puts an especially specific burden on this council and the administration in our next budget to make sure that we take the steps that are necessary to get us back on track with base pay. And so I just wanted to put a fine point on that. I know that we've heard from a number of employees who are frustrated by this issue, who don't see one-time money as especially meaningful, and I want to say that I acknowledge that. But given the choices that we have all made to get to this point, I think the path that the Mayor Pro Tem has sketched with this and the supporting information from staff, it gives us a path forward, and I will be supporting it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Any more comments? Okay. I think I will make one, which is I certainly agree about the base pay and we need to make that right. We need to get with our plan and we need to make sure that next year that's a top priority. I will say, though, that this is a huge positive hit to the pocketbooks of our employees. Huge. The example we have is for an employee who's paid $55,000, an employee being paid $40,000, you know, the increase to their pay for this year will be, you know, in the 20-something percent range. This is a large amount of money in the pockets of our employees and I think it's great. I'm very supportive. All right, colleagues, any further discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call the roll, please? Mayor Shul? Mayor Pro Tem Johnson? Aye. Council Member Caballero? Aye. Council Member Freelon? Aye. Council Member Freeman? Aye. Council Member Middleton? I vote aye. Council Member Reese? Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Youngblood. Thank you. Thank you and allow me to please say thank you for all the hard work of my team that worked on all of these scenarios. I'm pleased with the final result. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, we'll now move to Mr. Ferguson, unless Mr. Allure has any more comments. No additional comments. All right, colleagues, we welcome both Ferguson. You all will remember that there were questions raised about any potential implications of the 9-1-1 needs, staffing needs for our budget. And Mr. Ferguson is here to give us a brief report on that, and then we can discuss it. Welcome, Mr. Ferguson. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem, members of council on both Ferguson's Deputy City Manager for Operations. We also have 9-1-1 Director Randy Beeman with us this morning. I want to thank you for this opportunity to answer any questions you may have about the fiscal year 2022 proposed budget and how it pertains to the 9-1-1 budget and staffing concerns there. But since this is the first public conversation we've had with the council since some concerns have been raised, I just wanted to start off by saying this. Durham's 9-1-1 Center is staffed. It is taking 9-1-1 calls, 100% of the 9-1-1 calls from Durham residents. Durham residents should feel confident in calling 9-1-1 when they have the need for assistance. That assistance is being provided. Those calls are being answered. Public safety is being maintained in Durham. And I want to offer reassurances that that is happening now. And there is an intensive effort to ensure that we will continue to address our vacancies to ensure that that continues into the future and that we improve our ability to maintain appropriate staffing in the center. I want anyone who is listening to understand that confidence and to make sure that they call 9-1-1 when they need help, that call will be answered. That being said, I want to acknowledge that concerns about our staffing level are understandable and legitimate. And there is an intensive effort now to reexamine our recruitment and training process to ensure that we have the best process possible to fill vacancies with highly trained, well-prepared call takers and dispatchers to make sure that we continue to provide this important service to Durham residents. With that, I do want to offer one historical note. We are currently at a staffing level in the 9-1-1 Center that is commensurate with where we were in the middle of summer of last year. Our low point over the last 12 months in staffing occurred in November. And we have been on a steady upward trajectory since November. Again, that is not to minimize concerns about the vacancy level we have now, but to offer assurances that we are at a place that is similar to where we were a year ago and definitely improved over our low points in the center. With that, I want to just provide that as an introductory table setting and then see what questions Council may have about the budget, answer any questions about our recruitment efforts, see what other discussion Council would like to have today. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much, Mr. Ferguson. And I'll now ask your questions, Council Member Reyes or comments. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank Deputy City Manager Ferguson for giving us that report. I also want to appreciate the staff's willingness to add this on the agenda today. I guess my perspective on this is guided by something my father always said. It's not always true, but he likes to say there are very few problems that can't be solved by the application of mere money. That is 100% true, as I've learned in my 50 odd years on the earth, but when it comes to something like this, it does feel like some of these problems can be solved by the application of mere money. But maybe it would be helpful for me at least to understand why the administration did or did not feel it necessary to come forward with a budget adjustment to this particular department in light of the staffing problems. It's just seems to me that maybe some of this can be solved by paying people more money or offering more money or doing more. I don't know. I'm not an expert at this, but it seems like if we have trouble hiring people to do this job, maybe we're not offering enough money to people to do the job. Help me understand why I'm wrong about that and maybe just a little bit of how we got into this situation because that might help us figure out how or not, not at all, the council can be helpful in resolving it. Thank you, Council Member Reese. Those are extremely reasonable questions and assumptions, and I'm happy for the chance to walk through them. But let me start with the end of your question first and sort of work backwards. I'm going to talk in a few generalizations. Obviously, there's a lot more detail to this, but the question about how we got here, I think, is at a high level to say that we have experienced a high number of vacancies in this department somewhat persistently over the last three to four years. It's not a problem that happened all at once and from one cause. We were in a maintenance mode that was filling the vacancies at a rate that was fast enough not to take a serious downturn. That system did not work as well in the last 12 months, and primarily that is more people left than historically have been leaving. We did not have one training academy that we traditionally have in the course of a calendar year as a result of the implications from COVID and that put us in a hole in late 2020, late calendar year 2020 that resulted in I think some of the more acute concerns that are now widely done. What that tells us is this, we have had a consistent repetitive training program and there is an ongoing training program that runs in our 911 center, and I think the simple answer to your question is we need a bigger pipeline to get people through that system to fill vacancies faster. We have not seen that our salaries, our benefits are a negative factor in filling vacancies. We get enough applications when we apply for them, but we have identified that our training that our training regimen does not move enough people through at one time. As we have said very publicly over the last month, it is critical that these staff be trained appropriately and thoroughly, and that takes time and that takes very intensive interactions between the trainer and the trainee. It is something that does not scale easily. We can't just double the size of a class. In this scenario, we have a lot of one-on-one attention, two-on-one attention for our trainees. Those are some of the reasons, although I freely admit they are probably inadequate reasons for why we did not put effort into scaling up this program sooner. But all of that comes to me, I think, to the final answer to your question is money has not been a lack of resources, has not been an inhibitor on this. This budget, when fully funded, allows us to have the positions we need on the floor. I think it allows us to pay those staff appropriately, but what we need to do better is make sure that when we have applications, we can take more of those applications in a fiscal year, move them through the training process and get them on the floor. That is where our efforts are very keenly focused right now. We have made a number of changes over the last six weeks in terms of that program, both in terms of positions that we are recruiting for now and plans for the rest of this fiscal year that we are confident are going to address this issue. That does not mean that we are not continuing to look at every possibility to ensure that we are both moving people into these positions quickly. And also that we are treating our existing employees appropriately and making sure that we have an environment that supports them, encourages them to stay with our organization. So those are an additional set of conversations. I would like to publicly thank the partnership of our Human Resources Department, who has been right at Randy's side over the last six weeks and at my side, talking through every, you know, all possible options and scenarios and those are being looked at. We will not hesitate to bring a request to the city manager if we feel like it is in the best interest of this department and if we feel like there is a good opportunity for funding or for our policy consideration to address that concern. So hopefully that addresses your question. If there is a part of your question that didn't get to, please let me know and I'm happy to be more specific about it. Well, thanks, Bill. I appreciate that. That helps. I guess I, yeah, I know that helps. So I trust that the administration will come forward if they need additional resources and I trust this council understands that there's very little that should be a higher priority than making sure that when our residents call 911 that their calls are answered appropriately. I guess the two things. One, Bo, I just want to thank you for your personal involvement over the last, I guess, month and a half, two months. I know that you have been personally very deeply involved in trying to find solutions to the situation at the DECC and that you've been in a physically co-located there with them for some time. So I just want to thank you for your personal involvement and your attention. I don't know a more competent and skilled administrator in local government and I know that that your direct involvement is one of the reasons why we've gotten back on track so quickly. So thank you for that and I hope you don't take my questions as any kind of criticism or view of the work that you've done. The other thing I want to ask which is not strictly speaking budget-related but is a form of accountability for myself and for the city broadly, can you help me remember when we developed the capacity to automatically switch call response from our call center to other jurisdictions like Lake Wake County? I know that we made some technological upgrades that made that process more or less seamless in terms of folks, in terms of transferring the call responsibility but I'm wondering when we actually obtain the ability to do that in the way that it happened that it has happened recently. Thank you. So the answer to that question council member is the state of North Carolina has a highly coordinated 9-1-1 system. I'm pleased to say I think it is one of the most advanced 9-1-1 systems in the country and it's looked to by a number of other states for advances that are intended to serve the public and provide a robust system. The state has been advancing an architecture for 9-1-1 systems called the EZNet which is a coordinated call answering system that is managed across the state to provide primarily a robust network and a hosted solution outside of 9-1-1 centers that manages the incoming 9-1-1 calls in the community and dictates where those calls go, how they are presented in 9-1-1 call centers and the various factors that affect those calls. That transition has been taking place with all public safety answering points, PSAPs, 9-1-1 centers, those terms are a bit interchangeable across North Carolina with the goal of moving 100% of the centers to this system. Durham was proud to be the first PSAP on that network and we made that transition just about at the same time that we moved into the new 9-1-1 center in the police headquarters, so that was roughly around 2018 and I apologize, I don't remember the exact date that we made the cut over. When we made that transition, one of the key features of that new system is the ability for various 9-1-1 centers to back up other 9-1-1 centers that is envisioned to be used in a variety of scenarios. You might think the most likely scenario would be the incapacitation of a center, in particular this system has been used when major hurricanes have moved in and there has been a concern about the viability of 9-1-1 centers on the coast, has been used to route 100% of calls from 9-1-1 centers to other 9-1-1 centers. That is how the capability came about, that is how we became eligible for that capability and that is the capability that was implemented at the end of 2020 when we hit a severe staff entry. Great, thanks a lot for all that information, I think it is really important that we have this public conversation about what has happened and what we are doing to fix it and I just want to thank again staff for making room this morning for that. Mr. Mayor, I don't have any additional questions except again to reiterate that I am ready to do whatever it takes to continue to solve this problem, trust the administration is doing what there is to do and just wanted to make sure that they know that we are here to do whatever we need to do. That is all, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for those important questions, I am glad that you raised them. Other colleagues, questions for Mr. Ferguson? Council Member Freeman and then Council Member Middleton. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to note, I think I raised the issue a few years ago about our call center employees and just acknowledging that they are not included as first responders and I think that is a miss, acknowledging how much work they are doing on the front line and just how important their job is. I think this last turn of events demonstrates what that looks like and I think I want to lean in on when you said more people left than traditionally leave. I am going to imagine that that has a lot to do with the pandemic and working in an office or in a call center around the clock all day every day and you can correct me if I am wrong but the nature of the work that they are doing is the first respond, as a first responder it needs to be classified as first responder. Thank you. I do not have meaningful data to speak to the higher than usual departures. I certainly would not refute your presumptions about what might have been involved in their thinking on that. Certainly these are critical public safety personnel and I think it is important that we acknowledge their role in providing public safety and I think we try as an administration and certainly within the leadership of the 911 center to acknowledge and speak about the critical role these employees play in providing life-saving services to the residents of Durham. I think we just recently council acknowledged them in a resolution on 911 telecommunicators week and I think any opportunity we have to raise up the importance and the critical nature of this work is one we need to take advantage of. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you council member. Councilmember Middleton. Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you colleagues both thank you so much good to see you and I don't see Randy I want to thank him as well. I want to start off sort of piggybacking on a sentiment that councilor Councilmember Freeman has raised. First I just want to thank those who are working our emergency communication center those call takers. It is hard to describe how stressful a job it is and I've only sat with them for a few times and listened to calls I mean the sometimes the imagination can be worse than what's actually going on in real life and oftentimes they're left to to imagine what's going on I mean sitting there and hearing a scuffle someone calling for help a scream and then silence and you hear somebody moving in a room or a shot and then silence. I just want to thank them they are first responders whether we designate them or not they are the fact though first responders but we know they're also part of a nexus there's there's there's an ecosystem a relationship between them and the resources that they dispatch when folk call in to keep good faith with them we have to do our part to make sure that once the call comes that whatever needs to be sent is is there it's working they're they're equipped they're professionally trained and they're the best in the business. I was really looking forward to this this conversation Bo because this this perhaps you know as you move about the city this is perhaps the most or one of the most anxiety producing issues amongst our citizenry and our residents and there's a lot of things going on you know in the city right now so this coupled with that has been one of the most anxiety producing issues for our citizens so I want to thank the call takers I want to thank the leadership of our emergency communication center and I want to I'm going to draw that and ask a question because one of the and let me firstly say with respect to the money issue you know and this is this is not scientific it's purely anecdotal but the call takers I've spoken to and as they talk about the issues they've had did not raise money it they didn't talk about salary they talked about stress they talked about hours they talked about morale workplace environment they talked about feeling supported to a person and again not a massive scientific study on my part but no one mentioned money at least in my experience. So one of the things Bo I want you to speak to and kind of demystify for the public and for those watching that people think that they say well we go onto the website and we don't see advertisements for the job you all aren't trying to fill the positions so would you explain how the the academy system works and how we actually staff the 911 center and the tick talk of how that's done for folk who say I don't see the job listed and posted. Thank you Councilmember I appreciate the opportunity to describe that so and then I will close with noting a change in that process that we've implemented fairly recently to to address that concern so traditionally the academies when we have traditionally held four academies a year and those academies have have space for for trainees in that process when it is time to start the next academy or several months before the next academy the positions have been posted on our website we have usually received a very sufficient number of applications to fill those academies between the time when we post and receive applications and actually start the academies there is a significant screening process that takes place there is a skills based online screening process there is a psychological background that is conducted there is a criminal background check and all of the and then of course interviews with leadership in the department all all to to choose the right candidates to move into that trainee class this is a position that I think is an excellent career opportunity because it does not necessarily start with a lot of prerequisites so it's a great opportunity for someone who chooses a career path it doesn't necessarily take them to college but really wants a position that has upper mobility in our organization can really create a great long-term career but because of that there is still we get a large number of applications but it is still takes a very special person to be a successful 911 operator so getting through that initial screening process is is a first and not an insignificant barrier once they are through and an academy starts that academy now lasts 12 weeks that is a that is a time period that has fluctuated over the years and we adjust the curriculum in the training academy and the length of the training academy based on the needs and the changing nature of limo one but it has been set at 12 weeks for a number of years then coming out of those 12 weeks you move into the final phase of training and that is one-on-one mentorship on the floor of the 911 center where you are shadowing an experienced call taker and telecommunicator and then you are actually taking calls with that person at your side and it is only when you have successfully completed that process that you're released onto the floor as a as a full-time call taker that period of time can fluctuate some people move through it very quickly and very successfully some people need an extra amount of mentorship obviously it is critical that we not release that person until they are fully prepared to do that job so so the whole process from start to finish can run five to six months that can change depending on if someone misses some of the classroom time they may need some expert classroom time so so that is the very long process historically we then made sure that we were only opening up the application process as we were getting ready to prepare for an academy but we did hear a lot of public sentiment like hey I'm interested in this job and I want to get my name on this so we had some internal conversations in coordination with human resources over the last month when we heard those concerns and decided that we would instead move to a system whereby we do have an open registry now you can apply at any time for this decision you're notified about what the next step in the process will look like in the time frame for that process but so we do have an open recruitment on our website that will allow you to apply for this position we have also made sure that we are being more assertive about creating opportunities for people to come to us from other agencies so we have a number of listings that I think came out of these conversations for people who may be accredited in the same way that we accredit and train our call takers from other urban agencies and that we have a better pipeline now and are continuing to work on that pipeline to get to get people in who don't necessarily have to go through that five-month training process so those are a couple of things I'd encourage anyone watching this meeting to go to our website if you're interested in a career we have we have a number of positions posted now and I think we're going to try and do a better job of making sure that those opportunities are clearly accessible to anyone who might might want a career in an emergency communication. I'm glad to hear that thank you I'm wondering very briefly I know that the police department and fire department have had these ongoing campaigns and efforts to share information and have been proactive and going out into the community churches schools high schools are we planning anything any type of campaign to educate the public on these career opportunities and for high schoolers or high schoolers or going out into the community I know you're already stressed in terms of people but yeah there's a way we can be helpful and maybe being having campaigns similar to other departments in terms of educational recruitment that that's absolutely something we've talked about over the last couple of weeks we don't have firm plans to announce on that yet but I think we recognize that not only might there be that opportunity but there really might be some excellent opportunities to coordinate with some of those departments you mentioned uh and you know and share multiple opportunities when we go out into the community around areas of public safety uh and and really you know get people excited about this career so I appreciate that suggestion and it's definitely something we've been talking about well I know I know six highly influential and prominent people in this city that I know would be willing to help out that help out with that and spread the word and if you're watching you know we're hiring so final question in terms of posture and readiness and responsiveness of the department um anecdotally somebody calls we've heard case somebody calls no answer voicemail multiple calls um no response does that happen and what does that mean if and when that happens I want to be clear there is no voicemail uh in the Durham 911 center there is no technological capability for anyone to leave a message we want please help us spread the message that anyone who has a report of something like that we have the ability to research any call that comes into our 911 center we've been doing it every single day we've heard similar conversations and concerns we are we are anxious to get to the bottom of any of those we we have successfully understood what happened it can be when someone has talked about a message we haven't really successfully understood exactly what occurred there but um well for for instance in one case we found someone who called from a cell phone who told us that that they dialed 911 and ended up getting a message what what we learned was that call the cell tower redirected that 911 call caught that 911 call was coming from different jurisdictions they ended up in a different jurisdictions 911 center because their cell companies sent them there those things do happen we are constantly trying to understand that where things are within our control we have the ability to understand our systems and adjust our systems when they're out of our control we have the chance to to advocate to cell companies report it to the state so so all information is good information when someone has that experience second to your second comment about calls not getting answered we have your call will will be answered by our 911 so that call will stay in queue um we the the a high majority of calls are being answered by our call center in 20 seconds or less uh and and we are constantly you know looking at the numbers to ensure we have staffing at high volume times to make sure that wait times are as low as possible but i want to say that circumstances exist and happen when calls have to wait because of the number or the nature of calls that have come into the 911 center in a particular period of time when that happens please stay on the line your call will be answered a 911 operator so um our efforts will continue to be focused on staffing at levels to make sure that the wait times are as low as they can be but there will be circumstances when there are longer wait times and we ask people for their public safety please stay on the line we will answer the call and and that call will stay in our queue until it's answered no messages no rerouting those calls will stay in Durham we will answer them well thank you so much that that that's uh good to hear and good to know and there's still a lot of work to be done so please convey our thanks and support to the staff and those folk that that work uh in the center um you know oftentimes when the darkness descends the voices that we hear on those phones are the first indication that you're not alone and that help is on the way so we appreciate uh greatly what you do thank you mr mayor thank you council member any other questions or comments colleagues mr Ferguson thank you so much for being with us i just want to say you know one of the many many years ago when i was managing my own small company uh and and learning about management um we used to talk about a manager uh the best managers were like helicopters you could stay up in the air and you would get the big perspective up there but you could also quickly get down on the ground and into the details and the best managers could do both of those things well and i just want to say i really think that this is such a good example of the way in which you have handled this of that uh that type of management you've got the big perspective you've done a great job of explaining it uh but you've also been down in the details uh with mr beaman and the members of his team and i just want to appreciate you for that i know uh it's been a it's it's been hard but i think council member risa said it well already about our our our extreme admiration for you uh and the job that you do i also want to say colleagues i think some of this is up to us now in terms of the messaging we we know the situation you know a a a reporter recently uh you know heard from one person who had to wait 67 seconds um and then um you know i won't go into the whole thing but you know this reporters are going to find people who are complaining we know the facts now and when people call us we need to give them the facts and we need to be very very clear about what's going on in the nine one one center uh people people can be assured that we are not one one center is answering all the calls that there is no voicemail uh that uh a a uh the the vast vast majority of the calls are being answered quickly uh and we need to make sure that we get that message out part of that's on us all right uh mr fergus thank you very much for being with us we really appreciate it and thanks to mr beaman and team thank you mayor and and i just want to uh appreciate uh you and council members your your support and your expressions of appreciation to the staff are have been palpable uh and and uh we appreciate the partnership if we continue to look to some concern but thank you all right colleagues um we'll now move on to our next item and i'll introduce mr allure to give any introduction that he would like to give let me just remind everybody that um these are you know we do have in our on our ipads for the special meeting we do have the um the slides available uh for the next presentation as well thank you mr mayor i'm going to yield to claudia hager for introductions this hager before you get going i just want to welcome you uh we're really glad to have you we are uh really pleased that you're in the position that you're in we know that our county commission colleagues have unanimous uh faith in your abilities and um we just want you to know and i've said this to you before but i want to say to you in this context uh anything that we can do to support you as a council or as individuals don't hesitate to call on us um and i also uh know that our our city manager feels the same way so we're really glad you're here and we want to be supportive of you in any way that we can well thank you so much mayor and i have felt the outpouring of support from your some of your council members as well as of course manager page and your staff so i appreciate all of that support and it's a pleasure to be with you this morning to share about a pilot program recommended by the department of services um board it was also approved by the Durham county board of commissioners to address economic support for our long-term homeowners at or below 30 of the average median income i know this is a priority of the council um as well as commissioners as we try to have a portfolio of options to support our residents who may be in economic need um dwing brenton our Durham county tax administrator will facilitate the discussion along with ben rose um our department of social services director um janine gordon um the assistant director for um dss will also um share in the conversation um i will turn over the discussion now to dwing i like this first slide good morning mr mayor uh madam mayor protan members of the council it's good to be here this morning i appeared before the council last year when we came up with a new program another option to the grant program so we're excited to bring this program to the council we've presented to the county commission as well um this program is a grant-based program if you will go into the next slide i'll cover a brief outline of today's presentation so very briefly i'm going to cover the existing state property tax relief programs we've we've discussed those in the past quite a bit so any questions you might have feel free to ask them but it would be a brief overview i'm going to cover the the current deferral program that we came up with last year as an alternative to the grant-based program and i have some stats on the deferral program as well then we'll talk about the mecklenburg county homes program which is the model that we are following here with our new program proposal and then i'll go into the specifics of our homeowner grant program that we are proposing to the county commission and the council as manager hager mentioned to uh to help economically support our long-time low-income homeowners and we feel like this program it's exciting we're excited to offer it to the community and we're excited to present it to the governing boards next slide please the brief overview of the existing programs we have the homestead exemption we have the circuit breaker deferment and the disabled veteran exclusion those are income-driven programs you have to make uh less than 31 five a year to qualify but they also are age-driven you have to be at least 65 years of age or totally and permanently disabled to qualify for at least the first two the homestead and the circuit breaker the disabled veteran there is no age requirement and it knocks off 45 000 from the tax assessment so those are the existing programs at least the most popular programs we have about 1800 homestead exemption beneficiaries we have the circuit breaker deferment being a deferral program it's not as popular as the homestead exemption i think we have about 27 beneficiaries of the circuit breaker deferment but these are the big three programs that we have then on the next slide you'll see i discuss this a lot with the council with the with the commissioners last year we wanted to simplify we wanted to provide a simple way to get word out about these programs if you if you come into our office if you're into any county tax office the application can be intimidating it's a multi-page legal application we wanted a better way to help people ascertain whether or not they might qualify for a program and it's also a good mechanism for our staff but when people call in and they may express trouble with their tax bill we can run through this pre-qualifier and see if they qualify for any of these popular programs and you can see it basically takes a multi-page application and it condenses it down to just a few checkboxes or multiple choice questions and at the end when you click on submit it will run it'll run a program in the background and it'll let the person know if he or she might qualify for any of these programs so this has been a really nice addition to our website for the community and it's a good way for us to get the word out about the existing programs next slide please so last year we were working a lot with the coalition for affordable housing and transit on a grant-based program and i'm not going to go in depth on this we discussed it a lot last year but basically it's for people that earned 30% or less of the area median income the AMI and they met and they had other opportunities here you can see through all these or statements there were other opportunities to get into this program that they would be awarded a grant by the participating jurisdiction meaning Durham County City of Durham fire district um this this program basically allowed the taxpayer to pay 1% of their household income and property taxes and the remainder would be covered through a grant program next slide please as an alternative to the grant program we came up with a deferment program so instead of the participating jurisdiction awarding a uh a grant to the qualifying taxpayer we had to come up with this alternative and we mentioned last year this program this deferment program we wanted it to be just the start you know this this was just the start of the conversation but we wanted to offer it as an alternative and what it what it does is take takes the population 30% of AMI or lower they can file a basically a perpetual payment agreement with Durham County Tax Administration and through that payment agreement we would allow them to pay only 4% which ties back to the circuit breaker income level we would allow them to pay only 4% of their annual household income towards their property taxes the difference between the 4% they pay in the total tax bill would be deferred instead of a grant being paid uh this this program deferred that balance with interest with advertising fees etc soon as as uh running in uh correlation with this program we made an effort to solicit private contributions to help those participating in this program with the cost of that deferral the and you can see down here the last bullet that the equity in this program is that it does tie back to the circuit breaker the circuit breaker requires 4% of income and that's where we got the 4% of income for this program as well now the particular stats of this program it uh you know in its first year I think um you know it it wasn't incredibly popular being a deferral program we are we have gotten more interest this year and I think it would continue to grow um but for 2020 the stats we had private contributions so the the the Durham community they contributed $3678.81 and private contributions to help those in this program offset the cost of those deferred taxes we had we received seven applications for this program seven applications of those seven two of the applications were approved and those two approved applications they have a deferred balance of $1,796 and 72 cents so you can see that the amount of private contributions that were made for 2020 property taxes from from the Durham community they would pay off the deferred balance of the program participants and that's what we wanted on a much larger scale and I think we it would grow over time but that's the basics of the program we came up with last year next slide please so the proposed program is a tax subsidy program that would be administered the application the eligibility would be managed as a welfare program as a tax subsidy program through DSS Department of Social Services there will still be tremendous coordination with my office in Durham County tax in certifying values and certifying tax bills and making sure that program applicants for this program aren't receiving other benefits so there's tremendous amount of coordination still but the application and eligibility determination would be through DSS and this is this fits in line with the nature of DSS so it fits very well within this department and that separation between the tax office and DSS is a positive for this program next slide please so the model we're following the Mecklenburg County passed this program it's called the Holmes program in the fall of last year so about eight eight or nine months ago they passed the Holmes program that's where we're modeling our proposed program after and there is a link provided here and we can send that out as well but it's it's prominently displayed on the Mecklenburg County website as well next slide please it's just a map of county tax rates in North Carolina the darker the shade the higher the county tax rate next slide please the Mecklenburg County Holmes program just the general qualifications for what Mecklenburg County is doing or at least did in 2020 the grant funds and again much like our proposal is a cooperation collaboration between Mecklenburg County DSS and the Mecklenburg County tax collectors all of this so the grant funds for a qualifying applicant they'd be paid directly to the Mecklenburg County tax collector to offset part of the property tax bill application in review that's all managed through DSS the amount granted for the Mecklenburg County program the amount granted is equal to 25 percent of the tax amount due on the last available tax bill not to exceed $340 so there's a cap on the Mecklenburg County program of $340 the household income for this program must not exceed 80 percent of area median income and for this program they required a three-year residency to qualify and you know likewise there is no age restriction it doesn't matter what age you are if you meet the other qualifications in Mecklenburg County you could apply for this program so our program that we're proposing here in Durham subject property has to be within Durham County right the income we are suggesting kind of follows the the grant program we were looking at last year it ties back to that 30 percent of AMI so the income must be 30 percent of area that the household income must be 30 percent of AMI or lower to qualify for this residents can't be receiving any other state tax relief program such as the ones I just showed earlier the homestead exemption the circuit breaker deferment disabled veteran we're trying to capture a population that can't get assistance now the homeowners to qualify for this program they should have owned their home as a primary residence for at least the last preceding 10 years to qualify for this and again going back to the grant program that we were looking at last year so we got a lot of these qualifiers from the cap to assistance we've increased that over what Mecklenburg County was doing our proposed cap to assistance would be $750 of the total tax bill so a little more benefit to this program here next slide please and just an example to show you what this looks like for you know different home values different ranges a home value I'll take the middle one a home value of $100,000 she says combined when we say combined city and county the combined tax bill is $1245 and 90 cents 50% of the tax bill would be $621 and 95 cents so the amount granted in this tax subsidy would be $621 and 95 cents now you move on through that that spectrum of values there you get up to $150,000 you can see that the grant subsidy is a little lower than 50% because of that cap the cap kicks in once you get to that higher value next slide please the budgetary impacts we've got on here the Durham County $750,000 the city of Durham $500,000 for a total $2122 of $1.25 million to help fund this program and we have an additional note here at the bottom that additional funding needs will be offset by ARPA funds or fund balance so that need arise and we've got a you know mid-year adjustment we're looking January 22 it's going to be a constant monitoring of this program to see how it's doing and in that mid-year adjustment review it'll be January 2022 next slide please so how are we going to market this I think we have we have a lot of organizations here in Durham that will really help us get the word out about this program so what we're looking to do obviously an insert with the tax bills that's a low-cost option that hits every single property owner in Durham County we'll do a an attractive a well-worded insert with the tax bills community-based targeted partnerships social media traditional media community access points um public private partnership with community organizations just everything that we can to try to get the word out about this program and one option I didn't list on here was um an obvious inclusion of this program on our tax assistance evaluator that we have that I explained earlier in the presentation so having that on there as well next slide please okay and with that I'm happy to take any questions about this exciting program from the council Mr. Brinson thank you we really appreciate you being with us um our Mr. Rose uh or Ms. Gordon also going to present or are they are you all mainly here for questions Mr. Rose mainly here for questions okay great thank you all right um first of all I want to thank you Mr. Brinson for this and for I'll start with a question or two the evaluator tool is I remember when you first presented it and is it widely used yeah I have engaged the traffic on it in some time but we we have gotten many many comments from the public and from staff and I have seen that other counties have adopted this evaluator tool and that's that's what I love seeing is Durham leading the way right coming up on these initiatives so it's a widely popular tool that's great I think it's really really a good tool uh the the deferment program that we that that you all started last year I assume with this program that would no longer continue to operate is that true I think we would phase that out since this is a pilot program it seems like we would phase that out beginning with the 22-23 fiscal year but uh quite obviously if if someone can choose to um qualify for a grant based program it seems more attractive than a deferral program but it will be a a slow phase out we want to make sure this program sticks and it's the best thing is the best thing for the community before we phase out the alternative option but certainly if anybody applies for the deferral option we'll say hey why don't you take a look at this program as well okay with Charlotte with Mecklenburg I'm I'm not familiar enough to with the county to know but uh does that mean that Charlotte and assume there are other municipalities within Mecklenburg uh did they also participate now that I did not research I all I saw all I saw was the program through the Mecklenburg County tax collector uh you know my assumption would be would be that they do but I um I don't have facts on that okay um and the uh is the county commission um I know the county commission is deliberated on this uh have they decided that this is the program that they're going forth with answering yes um and I was responding to um councilman Reese's question in the chat yes the board um has uh moved forward with this approach um we plan to adopt our budget on the 14th one of the things that um anytime you have a pilot you have an opportunity to tweak it and the way it works the DSS board recommended this and and the commissioners um either have to adopt what the board does or it has to go back for deliberations through um the DSS board so from our procedural perspective so what we are planning to do just with all DSS related programs is to gauge um interest uh levels of um interest as well from categories that are above the 30% of although they are not going to be ones that we can fund and then mid-year determined if we have the capacity to go higher because the challenge is knowing how many will apply um and also in looking at levels that's another area that our board had concerns about it was an opportunity to go above the 750 dollars and this level is consistent with the program um that DSS offers for other types of home subsidies and Ben can weigh in more should have probably let him join in that's quite quite all right so yeah so the DSS board does meet next Wednesday I saw that was a question from council person Reese the um the DSS board is really in a what they're in what their position in role I believe would be in this is to basically just authorize the department to do the program I think the governing bodies um would you know would set policy and and parameters um the DSS board would simply support and endorse um us doing that now of course if they felt that there was a parameter or policy that was too extreme they might push back a little bit or something but for the most part the DSS board is very supportive of this program and I think is open to you know as as we say it's a pilot and we do that intentionally to to be open to changes modifications or whatever might be needed to make it more successful thank you Mr. Rose I like your vacation spot there I'm there in my mind I'm with you so uh is there a number that I know I know that I've heard this before but I've lost this in my memory the number of households in Durham of homeowners who are below 30 of am do we have that number uh and especially those who would be eligible uh having been in their homes for more than 10 years I don't know that we would be able to know that but do we have any any any any any information on that available Madam Madam Hager you want me to answer that okay we we expect a total population to qualify of approximately 3200 households going off memory here we can provide the exact number but it's around I want to say 3200 potential households that could qualify for this thank you Mr. Brinton and that would be above and beyond those who have qualified for the the other programs that's right that's right okay all right all right colleagues um other questions for Mr. Brinson Mr. Rose Ms. Gordon Mayor Pro Tem sorry y'all thank you Mr. Mayor um so those 3200 households are is that uh like are those people who definitely own homes and have been in their homes for two years or longer like how do you or 10 years or longer how do you all come up with that number that's the number that we came up with last year and working with some city staff and working with the coalition using and that that's part of the challenge with this program is that we're going into an unknown you know we would estimate about 3200 households uh could be a little more could be a little less we just we don't know exactly at this point but in working with city staff and working with the coalition last year we ascertained about uh when we exclude the homestead beneficiaries about 1800 people we came up with you know 3200 that would seemingly meet the qualifications okay um thanks y'all I want to thank you for um moving forward with this it's something that we've been talking about for a long time um and something that I think is really needed uh for the community as you move forward and refine the pilot I think uh raising the AMI is going to be really important for us moving forward um there aren't a lot of people at 30 percent of AMI who can afford to own a home um and the home prices in Durham right now are just astronomical I mean and anybody who's at 13 30 percent of AMI or below is probably going to have to be in their house for more than 10 years because they wouldn't have been able to afford to buy anything in the last 10 years um the the home values on the slide in your presentation starting at going from 50,000 to 150,000 um is just not where we are at all um I think the you know the least expensive house I've seen sold in my neighborhood was a land trust house that still sold for over 150,000 um this year so I think we you know just in terms of I know it's a pilot and I'm excited to see the results um but as we move forward I think that we need to be we need to be able to reach more people um and help more people with this program and we need to think about like where Durham is now in terms of what homes are costing and what people's taxes look like um and it's and it's changing really quickly too you know our our median home price um has risen more quickly over the last five years than the previous five years and given the trends of folks moving here I think we can you know and the new companies that are coming to Durham I think that we can expect that to continue so I want I want our relief efforts to match the the the situation in the community um and to be you know and to be scaled up to two levels that are really going to be able to impact a significant number of Durham residents um and help people help people be able to stay here um especially as we you know as we continue to grow um I'm I'm really concerned and I know we're all really concerned about continued displacement and property taxes aren't a primary cause of displacement um repairs and maintenance are are what we see as the as the primary cause um but property tax relief can be really important for folks um and so I'm really glad that we're that we're moving forward with this and and hope to hope to see it grow and scale up in the future thanks. Thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem I was just looking at the the the AMI chart 2020 uh for for a family of two the 30 percent of AMI was about $22,000 uh so that just I think puts a fine point on what you were saying. All right colleagues other questions and comments for Mr. Brinson or Mr. Rose or Ms. Gordon uh Councilmember Reese. Thank you Mr. Mayor I want to thank uh the folks who came from the county to present this program. Mr. Brinson I appreciate your personal leadership in providing and working with the SS and also Mr. Rose and working together to put and working to put this pilot together based on some existing programs and other jurisdictions. I wanted to take just a moment to underline for folks who may be watching how extractive and regressive our current property tax system is. This is a system that extracts way too much money from low wealth communities of color and Durham and across North Carolina. We could as a as a city come together as a community as a city and a county come together and craft a much fairer property tax system in which the folks who can better afford to shoulder a higher tax burden could take more responsibility for putting money into our meeting our public needs. Unfortunately state law and in part the state constitution prevent local communities like Durham from doing that and so we are forced to find what our illustrious mayor has called Durham workarounds. The city began the process of trying to do that with our with our longtime low income homeowner grant program in three communities in the city where the city has previously made significant investments in affordable housing. Last year the county proposed and the city approved with my vote but with my strenuous objections. The deferral program that Mr. Branson mentioned earlier I agreed to vote for that even though it was awful because it was at least marginally less extractive from low wealth black and brown communities here in Durham than the current system but I think the the the deep concerns and ambivalence about the program I had are belied by the statistics about folks who have applied for or accepted the program. I'm really glad that that we have moved on or will be moving on to a better program. This the particular proposal that that the county commission will consider as part of their budget in this upcoming cycle is a vastly improved project to more fairly align the property tax burden here in Durham and alleviate that burden for folks who can least afford a shoulder it and I want to thank Mr. Branson, Mr. Rose, County Manager Hager and our and our colleagues on the county commission for moving this program forward for approval as part of the county budget. I fully support the city's funding of the portion that's estimated for city taxes that will be required to implement the grant program. I also want to to associate myself with the remarks of the Mayor Pro Tem about the fact that as currently conceived the this program will help precious few folks in our city. The folks that it does help will really need the help and that's why I support it but I think many more people in our community need access to this program that are not able to get it under the current guidelines and so I want to encourage our partners at the county to strongly consider increasing the income eligibility level to 60 of area median income and to increase the cap on the particular on the individual grants to something more than the neighborhood of a thousand dollars. Obviously that makes the program more quote-unquote expensive from the perspective of the two local governments who will be administering it but I think that more fairly meets the needs that our community faces when they when we try to grapple with what is fundamentally an unfair and regressive underlying property tax system. So I know that our colleagues in the county commission have not approved the budget yet that there is still a chance that they will change that they will make some additional changes but more mostly regardless of that I look forward to the opportunity to engage with our county partners over the next six months to figure out how it's working what changes can make the program more effective and to hope that we can continue to have these kind of robust conversations. Mostly what I feel today is gratitude a sense of hope and a sense that this can be a much better program if some small tweaks are made to it and I hope that in partnership with the county the city can can advocate for that between now and June 14th and the county approves its budget but also of the next six months as we as this pilot begins to operate in the city and county and we learn more about where the real needs are as a community. The last thing I want to say is that it would be irresponsible not to lift up some of the long time advocates for a countywide program who are now seeing their vision put into set into public policy but the city and county levels specifically Dr. Jim Zabara who as far as I know was the first person to come forward with this kind of proposal here in Durham was certainly the architect of what we have tried to do at the city and whose proposal from whose proposal many of the many of these particular conditions are drawn we'll just say Dr. Zabara also supports increasingly income eligibility to six percent of a in mind raise raising the grant cap to a thousand dollars and also Larissa Seibel who's been a stalwart advocate for additional grant support for low-income communities because she understands better than I think most folks at least as far as I know the really regressive way that the property tax system works in communities like Durham that's probably more than folks needed to hear from me but I really grateful to the county and hope we can continue to improve this program going forward thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much council member I realized that I had forgotten one question I had Mr. Branson on the slide about the cost the 2.2 million dollars it's referred to can you talk about that a little bit manager Hager did you I'll weigh in on that that we took an incremental approach in how we funded the program in that if if of the 3200 applicants applied and they were eligible for the 750 dollars it would be closer to 2.2 million dollars what we did was put an amount in the budget of 750 thousand for the county and a placeholder of 500 thousand for the city so we can see what those patterns were and that's the the the gray area of all of this but we have a backup plan it's one thing to have a strategy and you don't have the full funding there and not have a backup plan but we do so in talking with city staff and leadership that strategy was to appropriate either ARPA dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act because this would be an appropriate economic support program and so that would be around or we could use our fund reserves there are fund balances to cover it so this just helped us to do that delicate balancing act with the budget looking at the patterns at Mecklenburg County you know they budgeted 250 thousand dollars they had I think maybe 170 residents who who did apply and so they had only used about 170 thousand of those dollars about a month ago so we we were trying to figure out an approach to move forward because it was in a pilot phase but have a strategy as we work through the year to add additional dollars which also sort of speaks to the issue of our ability to you know raise the level later in the year if if we determine in the initial phase of the pilot that is is an option the yeah so so that sort of gives the rationale behind it. Thank you very much manager Hager I appreciate it. Councilmember Freeman. Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you manager Hager for the presentation and Mr. Brinson and thank you Ms. Gordon and Mr. Rose for being here I I'm sorry I just wanted to ask a few questions is this limited to 2020 taxes? The program as proposed would be for fiscal year 2021-22 so it'd be for 2021 taxes. Okay I was just making sure and then just noting there were a few eligibility requirements in the Mecklenburg program that I hope didn't transfer over and I'm just noting the few that you listed there aren't any other eligibility requirements? No I think what we listed on the slide would be our main qualifications and I'll ask DSS to weigh in as well if there if there are any other qualifications that they would look for in this program. So I mean basically the qualifications would be given to us and we would enforce those qualifications and then we would do the process to verify those qualifications so if it's 30% AMI we would have to go through the income verification obviously we'd be working with tax and drawings folks in terms of the verification of tax data and so forth so we would enforce what the guidelines are given to us we would have to develop the process in which we verify that information and then get payment out. Thank you and I just wanted to make sure before I noted a few things I will I will note that I appreciated council member Reese noting that Jim Savara Dr. Jim Savara brought this forward I appreciated the opportunity to work with him as the chair of the Northeast Central Durham Leadership Council prior to being on on this on the council on the city council I I just wanted to say that along the same lines as we were talking about earlier and supporting our staff I think this is important to make sure that we're supporting some of our most vulnerable residents in our community just just noting that gentrification has been pushing a lot of folks out of their homes and so as much as possible I think the 80% AMI and the thousand dollar cap is more amenable but I would like to know what it would look like to even cover up to 1400 dollars and I don't know what those numbers look like so I'm not suggesting it but I would like to have an idea of whether it's you know astronomical or not and so if you could share that that would be really really helpful I don't want to advocate for more when it's not possible but and I do want to say there was was one other thing I wanted to note that as long as we're setting this program up acknowledging that folks are having difficulty with their taxes it might be good to partner with someone in the community around around just supports that are in place you know making sure that if there are other opportunities or other resources that can be aligned with it I'm not sure that DSS does that on the housing side and I just want to make sure that that's all in play and and we would agree we actually have talked about once the program rules get finalized how we can partner with certain community agencies for access and support as well so yes that is definitely I think the the ERAP model can kind of become a model for other programs like this where we are it's not just about being in DSS it can be housed throughout the throughout the county I'm re-investment partners is one obviously that comes to mind because the rest was mentioned earlier we've definitely have partners out there I think we could connect with for access points and processing and outreach and I think just noting along those same lines the the same ERAP conversation around the software making sure that it's something that folks can all you know have access to the follow along with their families that they're working with whether it's through a doctor's office or you know like any agency that's involved with the families and I will note that this this is a really phenomenal opportunity right now to show what's possible in acknowledging just what council member Reese mentioned around how regressive our tax system is and noting that there are folks on fixed income it's not limited to people of color this is this is people with disabilities this is people with family members who have disabilities this is this is everyone in our community who has experienced the hardship of COVID in addition to the hardship of being low income and so I want to make sure that we're not missing all the populations of people across the city in the county who could benefit from this thank you thank you council member council member Middleton thank you mr mayor and good afternoon everyone manager Hager I did this is my first opportunity to I think greet you formally in your new role in the public setting so I want to say congratulations to you and your assumption of leadership and to celebrate what you're being in that position means to so many little black girls and boys in our city watching what's possible so congratulations to you and welcome to the rest of the team welcome good to see you all and thank you for the work you do I want to associate myself with all of the comments my colleagues have made I too celebrate the shepherding that that Jim and Larissa have done in this project but I also want to acknowledge the black women and men activists that I met over 20 years ago working on this in East Durham and Northeast Central Durham along the Fayetteville Street coordinator along with the Fayetteville Street corridor that had been sounding the alarm about this issue any inexorable marked identification in our city for decades first off I'm excited about this there's rarely a pilot I'm going to meet that I don't like you know I'm all four pilots so and I also want to associate myself with with the the need and the the ammunition of getting our AMI levels that we serve higher because this for many of us in the community this isn't just about keeping some people in their homes this is about the the very fabric of the neighborhood and and we are watching gentrification you know just relentlessly march forward and I'm not saying this is too little too late because this is important for the folk that they do help but but we know the assault that black wealth has taken it doesn't always have to be as dramatic as a Tulsa running folk out there neighborhood sometimes it's a drip drip of increasing taxes without being able to participate in a thriving economy as well so you've got this kind of conflation of a number of things so but the people we help in this particular program I just want to just just echo some of the the anxiety that folk have in the community that this is is a lot slower than the actual level of loss we're seeing in our neighborhoods and I just want to echo that as we work on these tax programs I want to challenge my friends at the county and and again my colleagues here at the city that we need to think about Marshall plan type investments in our neighborhoods and in in in in our legacy black neighborhoods and seriously muscularizing our shared economic prosperity plan as well so we'll have folk who can afford to fix their house who don't have to sell our house because uh taxes and because they can't fix a leaky roof we're not going to be able to save our neighborhoods just through programs like these alone we know that but they're important they're really important and in our you know statutory environment there aren't many levers we can pull up buttons we can push as a government but I'm proud that we as a government are pushing the ones we can and pulling the levers that we can so uh full throttle on this pilot and the program and and doing all we can but I also think we need to be prepared to talk about what a radical rethinking of budgetary priorities and and and a radical infusion again a lot Marshall plan type proportions into some of our legacy communities here in the city if we're seriously going to do battle against the winds of gentrification that are blowing but thank you so much excited about the work fully support good to see all of you thank you mr mayor thank you very much council member other comments colleagues or questions uh for mr brenton of the team council member caballero thank you and thank you so much for the presentation uh I really appreciate all the comments my colleagues have said I look forward to a more aggressive program in the future I think there's consensus that um we we don't believe that this is enough while we appreciate uh the the move you know movement in the right direction um and just wanted to share that thank you council member colleagues are there any other questions or comments um I do have a couple uh first of all I want to agree with my colleagues that I feel strongly that the council would support a higher threshold a higher aim I am am I threshold so I hope that as our county commission colleagues are considering this that you all will convey to them our our emphasis on that here in this meeting I think we're very I know that we as a council are very interested in in this program and supporting it and making it help it support as many people in our community as we can I think so I hope you'll convey that the second thing is I want to say that I think this is a really big step we've been trying to figure out a way to make this happen for a while and mr brenton had applied his creativity to it last year uh but I think what we have here now is really much much better uh and I think that I appreciate the creativity that the county has applied to it now we've needed to wait for you all since you all are the the tax collectors um and uh we have been uh we're excited now that this program has come forward I will say that I do think that part of the success of the program is going to rely on outreach and organizing and that I am very hopeful that our community development staff our neighborhood improvement staff uh our our uh the folks that we have we have folks in in budget who work on participatory budgeting or out there in the community with so many people out in the community as do you all uh in the county I think that that uh organizing and outreach is going to largely determine the success of this program uh at this AMI level and um I am really hopeful that we in the city can strategize that our staff will help us strategize about how to do that outreach to find the people who are at the 30 percent AMI level uh and to get them into this program we know that a lot of them are not going to be able to be be reached by uh digital means uh we're going to have to have really uh strong outreach on that and um but it's a it's an opportunity I think this is a tremendous opportunity I think we can help you know if we could if if of those 3200 uh a thousand homeowners we're able to take advantage of this that would be great if 2,000 were able to be able to take advantage of this of our lowest income homeowners that would be a tremendous win and so uh I'll pledge myself to to that uh outreach and I know that my colleagues will as well but it needs to be on the ground and I hope that we'll all be thinking about that together uh other comments colleagues or questions uh for the team from the county uh council member Freeman thank you mr mayor to that point that you just made I think it's also important to make sure that you align funds uh to that conversation so that those folks who are um getting out there on the ground whether it's a community health worker or an agency or organization um that cost is also important to know for this important work all right um anything else manager hager thank you we appreciate you and please pass on to our county commission friends our appreciation for this program and our hope that we can deepen the uh that that we can that we can increase the AMI uh and and hopefully the subsidy level and that please let them know we would be supportive of that and that we're great we're grateful to them for bringing this to us and to you all so thank you so much thank you mayor one final question miss hager um how do you feel about the fact that that your two top social services people always seem to be at the beach you know I want to be like them when I grow up okay all right well only in the morning there pardon me would you say Ben only in my mind the real backdrop is that's one of my virtual ones I know I know but I will say mayor that um it's reflective of their attitude they always see a positive outlook and um I will also share you don't have the benefit of knowing ben rose and miss denine throughout our fiscal year often they come back and say county commissioners we need to expand how we're helping our residents um we need to meet the needs differently and so um I I feel good that you know whether we where adjustments happen now or later as we see the patterns we will be responsive because that's the style and approach that um ben rose and his team already always does so I I feel good that we can incrementally get to a different place as we see see those patterns but I will convey to our board um the council's concerns and support thank you thank you very much madam manager and I agree with your assessment of your social services folks we've had that experience with them as well so thank you all right thank you very much to our county friends and uh colleagues it's now 1106 um I just want you all to know that at 1140 or 45 I'm going to leave this meeting temporarily to go meet my new granddaughter uh and mayor pro tem we'll be presiding at that point I will be back at one o'clock however and so we'll we'll we'll press on um I do feel do you all would you all like a a small break a five minute break be good I see some knotted heads uh we'll be back at 11 11 and I would just uh ask you to remind you to please meet your microphones mr mayor you're muted no wonder mr alore wouldn't answer my question thank you council member I was wondering where he was I'm sure he was wondering where I was uh colleague sorry we have three more topics today but I wanted to know uh before we get going mr lord do you have any comments and are you satisfied with what we've done so far very satisfied and just to to lead off with the other business there are no presentations here staff is simply available to to answer any questions or offer any insight that you may need thank you all right colleagues um the first of our topics is the city long term homeowner tax grant and um the council wanted this on the agenda because we have heard from other neighborhoods who have a strong interest of being included in the long term long term homeowner tax grants and um I will defer to any of my colleagues who would like to start this discussion off with any comments or questions council member freeman and mayor pro temp thank you mr mayor I I just wanted to know I was asking earlier about whether or not the county's program would go back to 2020 specifically for this reason acknowledging that there are many cities uh legacy neighborhoods that won't be included in that tax program and so just noting that this is an opportunity to just kind of wedge the gap so to speak in expanding our current grant program I would love to include um those neighborhoods that have risen up like wall town and uh brad town and uh south side and north east central germ I think are already in it and I think that it's important to note that there are extreme pressures on the areas in our city that have experienced the most gentrification because of the lack of infrastructure being put into or lack of dollars being spent in the neighborhood to keep the infrastructure in place that they feel like they're being missed and so I know we heard from miss venessa and miss constants frequently over this last few months in the budget cycle as they participated in so many of our you know engagement projects and learned about all the things that their neighborhood was missing decades and so just noting and noting I'm having some internet trouble can you still hear me we can't we can hear I just wanted to just make sure that we we we acknowledge that there's a there's a subsection of folks in neighborhoods that have not experienced the same type of supports as trees you know being lining their their streets or um sidewalks or bus stops and I think as a gesture at acknowledging you know just that and in many of those areas we can we can just expand our grant this year and make sure that they they feel that we hear we're hearing thank you thank you mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor uh so we've talked several times about making this program citywide um and if I recall correctly the reason that we weren't going to do that was because we felt like it was better to get the county in on a citywide um program and given the so so now we we have that right the county has proposed a citywide program but I think we all agree that it's not adequate um to meet the need in the community I'm hoping we can revisit the conversation about making this program citywide and I know that there was also some concerns around legal justification from our attorney's office around um making sure we could define the program as uh that it had a clear public purpose but I think that given that gentrification is spreading to all areas of the Durham community that it's not just the neighborhoods around downtown where there have been significant city investments that we could make a strong legal argument for there being a public purpose to assisting low-income homeowners in all areas of the city um I know the program is already underway applications are underway uh for this year but I would support um expanding the program regardless of geography uh under the current income and um ownership eligibility that we have and that would cover um that would cover wall town who specifically requested it along with the other neighborhoods that council member Freeman referenced and any other you know person who doesn't have an organized neighborhood organization um to to come forward um yet I know there's lots of people in Durham who could use this support um who don't have the kind of you know great organization that we're seeing from from some of our communities so I just want to make sure we're I want to make sure everyone has the opportunity um and I think that we should reconsider the citywide program thank you madam mayor pro tem um maybe this is a good time to uh bring in our staff uh to remind us about the parameters of the current program and um what the eligibility what the eligibility is and the uptake on the program mr mayor and council I believe mr johnson is prepared we've had conversations internal to bring this historical context to the to the topic so mr johnson thank you madam manager thank you welcome mr johnson thank you madam manager thank you mr mayor reginald johnson director of the department of community development for the city of Durham uh one of the things that I'll do is just refresh our posture in terms of the council approval for the program if you will recall the city council approved the three-year pilot for the longtime homeowner grant program uh the three years ended last year but you also remember that this the department presented an interim report and the council asked the department to continue for one additional year that's this year uh so that's the the posture of the uh program in terms of uh the the approval of governance uh in terms of the eligibility our program does go up to uh 80 percent AMI uh yet one has to have lived in their property since july 1 2020 uh and have experienced the increase in property tax obligations based upon 2016 property tax assessment and your 2019 property tax tax assessments uh we only include the properties that uh located in south side northeast central Durham the southwest central Durham target areas and the properties in northeast central uh Durham and southwest central Durham target areas must be located within proximity to a city of Durham housing investment that occurred between 2010 and 2015 uh if you just to remind you uh we have uh I think in last year it was uh we ended up with about 40 40 applications uh the year before that I don't have my report in front of me well actually I do the year before that it was uh 24 approved applications I'm sorry and uh the year before that it was 2018 and when I said 24 that was an interim report that we provided to the council I'm sorry what did you say for the year before that I'm sorry was uh 24 when we presented the interim report to the city council it was uh in no 2019 it was uh 24 uh approved applications at the time and uh thank you mr johnson and can you uh the was there a certain period of time that you had to have lived in your house I can't remember yes you had to have uh lived in your property since July 1 2012 2012 okay all right I think you said that I missed it thank you so that would have been if we use the same parameters you would have to have been in there for nine years yeah roughly and the um okay uh the there uh there is also a the city attorney's office uh weighed in pretty heavily about this when we set this up originally and uh I wonder if it would be useful at this time to refresh us on why the why this program was structured as it was uh yes sir uh I agree with you uh mr mayor and I will defer to our city attorney's office because that was a key aspect of the program that we do have uh and uh uh miss uh kukaro can respond to that thank you so much thank you welcome miss kukaro thank you good good morning I guess still um christa kukaro city attorney's office um I'll just as as you requested sort of remind the council of the origins of the program and its legal underpinnings um at the time of its creation so when it when it was created the primary legal underpinning uh was the correlation if not causation of between the city's investments in affordable housing in or nearby these neighborhoods and the increased property tax values um I think at that time there was a lot more speculation about sort of the constitutionality of this program and so that was the way in which our office was able to support the defensibility of the program um so that's what we have at the moment is um this this uh parameter essentially that requires that there would have been city investment in a neighborhood um or nearby to a neighborhood it's a 500 foot uh distance requirement um to support in um the program for these neighborhoods that it currently supports thank you miss kukaro you said that uh at the time there was more constitutional concern or is that means there's less constitutional concern about now or is the what does this dance in the department now do you have any other thoughts to offer us sure um uh mayor pro tem sort of touch on this the question of public purpose um you know I think based on research that our office has done input from the school of government I do think that this program fits within authority that the city and the county has generally speaking for supporting quote unquote welfare programs as that term is used in our state laws um and within the authority of kind of community development programs overall so um there is authority to do this type of program um you know I think that there's some questions obviously about sort of adding other neighborhoods um and our office does have some concerns there I can talk about those now or if you want to sort of continue to ask different questions why don't you talk about those now that'd be great sure so given the parameters of the existing program as it's set up with this um with this parameter of city investment in or nearby the neighbor to the neighborhoods um adding additional neighborhoods that have not had that level of investment would be an arbitrary decision um and I think it would be um hard to defend which is not to say that the requests are um don't have merit um I think if this if the desire is to add additional neighborhoods I think that the program would need to be reevaluated and retooled significantly in order to accommodate those requests um and our office would recommend additional changes in the sort of processing and administration of the program specifically where the payment is made to for example thank you um suppose the program was city-wide was with those with the suppose the public purpose uh led us to determine this should be city-wide I assume then that we wouldn't be adding particular neighborhoods um we would be making a substantial change um I assume that wouldn't create the same problems it wouldn't create the same sort of arbitrariness problem that you're talking about Mr. Mayor you're muted now I can hear uh-oh how about now guys can you hear me I can hear you before to okay I think Pierce might have a okay council member preline can you hear me now not probably um okay I think he'll figure it out miss cook around uh what are your thoughts um I think a city-wide program would be permissible under the statutory authority that the city has um again I think that it would need to be sort of evaluated to figure out it's the current parameters and um are what the the city chooses to do of course that's a policy decision for the city council um again our office would recommend some specific changes such as where the payment is made to right now the payment is made to the homeowner um we believe it is a much more defensible process for that payment to be made to the tax office um so there would need to be input um and kind of feedback I think internally in the city to sort of figure out exactly how that um program would be administered but from a legal standpoint there would be there is authority for a city-wide city-wide program thank you that's very helpful one more question for Mr. Johnson um Mr. Johnson remind me now of the uh the are we covering both the city and the county portion of the taxes now for the uh yes sir mr. mayor we are covering the city and the county portion okay and what has been the approximate uh cost of this program to us so what I will do is to share the uh we budgeted about ten thousand uh dollars I think the last report that we made for the council at the time we had shared about that it was about seven thousand dollars in actual disbursements and uh in terms of cost there was a significant administrative cost if you remember the uh report that we provided right thank you council member caballero yeah just to follow up um mr. johnson would the administrative costs go down if we were not it just listening to what um christa kugaro just shared with us around the payment piece of it is that is that a part of it is that we're carrying that burden of distributing money to residents and would that burden shift if it if we change the the payment mechanism so the the way I understand your question you're asking if administrative costs will go down if we change where the payment is made to I suggest that it would not okay the things in report that we had mentioned when we talk presented to the council before is that uh we expanded the program it's going to have significant uh more administrative costs but that's not the the where the payment goes to is a small part of that thank you council member other comments or questions at this time colleagues council member freeman thank you mr. mayor I appreciate the uh the additional questions and comments I just wanted to just note how the context of the conversation is shifting um it's a great idea to move to citywide I just want to be clear that the the impetus of of especially noting the specific neighborhoods comes from a kind of equitable acknowledgement of how the history of this city has played out for folks in neighborhoods that are of color specifically black and so I'm supportive of either option I just want to note that the the kind of equitable push that I'm sitting on is in making sure that there's specific um relief for folks who have experienced um the harms that have been noted in our uh racial equity task force recommendations and many other racial equity conversations and so I'm like I said before the defensibility conversation is is understandable I'm supportive of moving into citywide but just noting that that's not equitable and I just wanted to just make that clear distinction thank you thank you council member other comments at this time or questions colleagues well um I'll tell you I'll talk about some of my uh that thoughts that are going through my head and these are just that um you know I think about uh the the uh what miss kukaro said and I think that she's considering this in a legal sense the arbitrariness of adding certain neighborhoods I think that that implies to our city attorney staff you know that it's hard to defend uh you know should someone say and I think it's quite possible in this circumstance someone would say you know uh I don't want to be paying more taxes because someone else is paying less uh our city attorney's office had what they thought was a defensible program now I'm hearing that there's a citywide program what I'm hearing from the city attorney's office is they believe a citywide program is defensible they don't feel like adding neighborhoods without some pretty clear criteria our defense is defensible um and so that's one thing on my mind another is that I do worry about the about adding particular neighborhoods and not adding others you know for example um you know adding wall town uh but not adding crest street uh you know because crest streets not as organized and hasn't come to us recently is problematic to me and I know that we can all think of other neighborhoods in town who uh are uh similarly situated and so uh I'm I'm really thinking out loud here about some of the things that have been going through my mind that are now especially going through my mind as we discuss this uh I agree that I think it's really important to try to expand these uh low-income homeowner tax programs and I think that uh we had a good discussion of you know one good avenue that I think will bear fruit uh with the county uh especially in future years as it's expanded um so uh you know I love the idea of going citywide with this it does seem like it's a big lift and this is June 10th um you know to have both the uh administrative structure figuring out what it would cost us knowing all those kinds of things by budget time seems very unlikely so um I'm I'm struggling a bit with it uh looking for guidance from my colleagues and I appreciate any other thoughts that you all have to offer or uh yeah so any other thoughts joy and I see the manager as well but a manager um Mr. Mayor I would just like to add a few comments at this time please do we were certainly connecting uh two discussions today related to a citywide program and a very limited program uh one of the or some of the attractiveness in my opinion is is manager of the program that we saw earlier citywide is that we are relying on administrative structure by an agency that is set up to do intake and uh verification of information to qualify individuals for a program and what you all saw is that those parties that are you know that are offering that pilot are starting with you know 30 percent um with you know with an estimate of about 3000 potentially applicants that could come in at that level um for that program uh I just wanted to highlight here that you know an 80 percent citywide program um could have a significant uh increase in in applications um as you have mentioned uh without us having had an opportunity to determine potentially how many people that might be and what type of administrative structure uh it would take realizing that doing it at the city is going to be much less efficient than having an organization that is accustomed to doing that type of intake and application review even if the city paid for it or paid those administrative costs it would definitely likely be more efficient if another agency handled it uh in our internal discussions uh Mr. Johnson spoke about the the application of his resources just to the 40 applications that they have to process um internally is is pretty significant so uh I certainly support uh tax grants I am extremely excited to be able to work with the work with the county and the community uh to to make some better decisions uh about where we invest our funding to help residents but I did want to enter that uh thought into your discussions at this time thank you man of manager for that uh those comments and that uh reality does colleagues uh councilmember Caballero yeah I just really wanted to appreciate manager Paige's comments um I'm where you are mayor shul I'm I'm very torn one of the other things that I'm hesitant is we are covering people's portion to the county and if we expand that to citywide I just see that I'm assuming it's the same parameters that we currently have that hasn't been determined um and I guess it just kind of goes back to we have I really want to lean in on my county commissioner colleagues because we have a program you know the the criteria that the city has for its program I think just needs to be carried over to the county program and I think that if we really want to see um I think setting those that criteria to the the program that we just heard about it lowers the administrative burden which means more people are going to get helped it can be you know applied to all the communities that have you know either organized or not that we know are struggling with their property tax bill and I feel like trying to you know push this program that we always knew was so narrowly confined just it doesn't solve the problem that we know exists and so I'm just frustrated because I think there is a solution the solution is to do what we heard about at a much more aggressive level because it hits everything we needed to hit and it it it hears what residents are saying that have come from wall town that have come from Braggtown who have said you know we need some serious help here and so I just want to name my frustration because I think what we're talking what we're doing right now is just forcing this conversation um and it doesn't get the relief that we know we need so I have one thought um I'm sorry councilmember middleman didn't mean no I'll yield mr. mayor this is a this is one thought that I have um I wonder if an idea of since the county commission is this meeting um I don't know if they have another work session prior to their budget passing their budget but one possibility might be for us to if we so choose to pass a motion asking them to extend the you know formally asking county to increase their AMI level to 60 which would be a huge increase in the eligibility um and it would um yeah so that's one thought I have you know is to is to as as councilmember cabello said lean into this I think that would be one way of doing that uh is for us to make a formal request and then tell them that we would be willing to uh you know from our end do what is necessary especially in the first year um apparently um the um according to how I heard the county the ARP funds are are ineligible uh there's an eligible use so that's one thought that I have and I'll now ask uh let me just say also I'm going to be leaving in a few minutes I only have one higher priority than this um that's to meet my new granddaughter so I'm going to take that opportunity for the first time um but uh I'll uh councilmember councilmember melton I see mr. mayor you touched on the AMI question raising the AMI I'll yield okay thank you all right other thoughts colleagues at this time councilmember freeman thank you I just want to know how that impacts our current application and the folks who are seeking relief this year because I believe the conversation with the counties for 21-22 and so that's not going to take effect this year true which is why I think it's it's probably most um even though it could cause the defensibility issue I think it's important that we take that stand acknowledging how um even if crestry were included in that conversation or or other neighborhoods it's specific to the issue of who's been experiencing the gentrification because I think even right now in crestry the one unit for $60,000 is not likely to stay stay on the market very long um this is a this is a pressure that most of the low-income homeowners are facing especially in communities of color and I think we are we're trying to solve all of the problems when this specific one was brought to us by walltown and you know brigh town and I I truly appreciate the council of our city attorney's office but I think on this one it's important that we do take a stand acknowledging that the previous parameters may have cost some folks their homes and I really would like to do something this year so I just want to share that piece so thank you and I share your concern other thoughts colleagues anybody have a way out of this conundrum council member mayor pro temp thank you mr mayor um I don't know that I have a way out of the conundrum but um given that the application process is already ongoing um for 2021 taxes uh it seems like the administration could take some time to figure out expanding the program for the next round of taxes and we could consider a citywide program that would begin that would begin with 2022 taxes that doesn't solve the immediate problem but it does give us a a way forward um and a and a path to resolving the administrative um concerns and at the same time we could continue to impress upon the county um that we really feel that the community needs more relief than they're currently offering and change our plans if that county relief program which would of course would which would be better than what we could do if that if that county relief program were to be adopted then we could then change our plans um but that in the absence of that that we should consider moving forward with the citywide program for the next tax year thank you mayor pro temp other comments council member freeman just a point of clarification mayor pro temp are you suggesting that we don't do anything this year to change it yeah i'm suggesting that we leave the program as is this year um and that we pursue an expanded program for next year so the application period for this year is already open um it would be around the same time next year that people could apply for the expanded program meta manager i would uh interject at this time that we have a plan to bring um the results of this year's program uh to the council after your um vacation like we did last year so because as reginal mentioned when he came um when he spoke earlier this year was the one year extension and it was at the time that you saw the results of last year that you added the extra year on to the pilot so that is why we are actually in this year with an application process open uh so it's kind of like we're right now in the middle of you know we we're in the middle of a process but we would be bringing the results of how this process how many people applied how many grants that whole report that will be coming in the you know in the fall as soon as you all are back from vacation and that analysis can take place so that would be a time to discuss what happens next for the program that we actually are administering under some fairly specific guidelines that we're voting on by the council which you know which certainly can change but that's what currently currently exists thank you meta manager um mayor pro tem i'm going to turn over the chairing to you okay and uh i'm sorry i know we h