good evening I want to call this meeting of the Durham City Council to order at 7 p.m. on Monday December the 7th and I certainly want to welcome everyone here today all of our my colleagues all of our wonderful staff and all the people who are watching us at home and various in various media we're really glad to have you with us tonight as we as we gather tonight to do our business together it's a good time to remember that we still have many people in our community who are suffering from COVID-19 from gun violence in our community and we remember all of them and think of them and I will ask you as we do to please join me in a moment of silence thank you councilmember Reese will you please lead us in the pledge the flag well mr. Mayor good evening to you good evening colleagues city staff and folks watching at home I when I say the pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much councilmember Reese madam clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul here mayor pro tem Johnson here councilmember Caballero here councilmember Freelon here councilmember Freeman present councilmember Middleton here councilmember Reese here thank you thank you madam clerk colleagues it's now time for amount announced by the council and I just before we get started on those I want to just make two short comments one is tonight we're going to start a new custom which is after every two hours or roughly we're going to take a five minute break to give our closed captioners a break it's really hard to be a closed captioner and they work the work that they do is very demanding and we we've had some long meetings lately and they ask if we could give a five minute break to our closed captioners after roughly every two hours and so hopefully tonight's meeting won't go two hours but if it does we'll take a break and I'm will ask you all to please remind me if I don't remember that but I want to thank our closed captioners for the work that they do and express my gratitude and then the second thing I want to do is just say to two of our close family here at the Durham City Council councilmember Freeman and Beverly Thompson both had difficult losses in their families in the past couple of weeks and I want to acknowledge that and I want to tell you all that we our hearts go out to you both and that we're really glad that you're both back with us tonight and we we think of you with with and we send you all of our warmth and all of our best wishes and prayers and we're so glad to see you both all right colleagues announcements by members of the council councilmember Caballero I just also wanted to congratulate council member Freeman for finishing her masters in public administration at the great institution of NC central that's right so that's a big achievement and lots of congrats on that here here okay other announcements councilmember Reese thank you mr mayor excuse me mr mayor today was an historic day here in Durham and I just didn't want to let the moment pass without congratulating the Durham County Board of Commissioners who were sworn in for a four year term all five of them today they all run at the same time which I think is an interesting idea I often wonder what it would be like for all of us to run at the same time probably best that we don't um in any event um uh the there were a number of historic firsts with those wearings in first and foremost the all of the new commissioners are women which is fantastic and our friend and colleague now a county commissioner I mean the alum was sworn in today as the first Muslim woman to hold a public office in North Carolina and she's just a fantastic public servant a dear friend and really excited about that mostly what I wanted to do is congratulate the new chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners Brent Howard who is one of the folks in our community that I know a lot of people have known for many years and understand her character and what she's about and she is someone I'm proud to call a friend and I'm really looking forward to what the county commission will be able to accomplish for our community under her leadership so I just wanted to make the folks at home aware of what an amazing day it wasn't or I'm also to congratulate the other folks who were sworn in today Heidi Carter Wendy Jacobs who was elected vice chair of the county commission and the other rookie on that board uh commissioner burns we expect great things from all of them as they expect great things from us and it's just another great chapter in the partnership between the city and the county and I look forward to working with all five of them thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member um more thumbs up and applause uh any more announcements council I did I think council member Freeman has her hand up council member Freeman yes thank you I thank my colleagues for their condolences and congratulatory text messages calls and all of the above I really appreciate the outpouring of support for the community I just wanted to say thank you and to acknowledge that doing this work you know is it can be you know overwhelming and I think in the same way it's like having kids you know in both directions you know it's all the work and all the rewards at the same time and I just really appreciate having this opportunity to serve in this city um with this board and this community I'm I am like I didn't know what I had and I just saw saw the character of those around me rise and continue to rise and I just really appreciate all of you and then just in addition just noting um I do want to congratulate our new county commissioners Burns and alum and acknowledging that this is the first full woman board is is phenomenal and I will say that the future is woman and uh we'll we'll we'll bring that on uh conversation on later but um I just I wanted to also take a moment and just say happy holidays and acknowledging that we're in the holiday season and that uh Thursday will be uh Hanukkah I believe the start of Hanukkah and I just want to wish folks a happy Hanukkah as well thank you thank you thank you very much it's almost time to make the latkes yeah any further announcements all right I don't think I see any councilmember Middleton thank you mr. mayor good evening good evening all the colleagues and everyone watching mr. mayor thank you for acknowledging the tough season that some of our family members have had in Beverly and uh councilor Freeman and I want to add my condolences to them I want to thank council happy uh Caviera as well for shouting out uh councilor Freeman's uh uh accomplishment I had a note here to shout her out so let me uh add my words of congratulations to her as well um the future is not oh women life is women the past present and future have always been with itself we thank god for that and I want to um acknowledge the historic day about 80 years ago an american president called this a day that would live in infamy because of what happened at Pearl Harbor uh but I as I you know who am I to argue for american president but I think this was a great day today uh particularly here in Durham and and let nothing detract or eclipse uh the greatness of this day in the moment uh we'll have plenty of time to talk about a whole lot of stuff but today I just want us to bask in the greatness the accomplishment of this day I think it's all together fitting and appropriate uh the Durham county uh would have an all woman board uh what other county in America uh so I think it's fully appropriate and fitting and I want to congratulate all of those brilliant county commissioners all leaders in their own right uh for their accomplishment and I look forward to great things um for our county and I also want to thank you Mr. Mayor for uh pointing out uh the challenges that many of our people are struggling with since our last meeting we know the gunfire has continued in our city I was hoping that with the approach of the holiday season and the weather changing getting colder that there would be a an abatement but this seems to continue um I personally have had to sit and comfort um parishioners from my church who live in some of our public housing complexes uh because of gunfire but on yesterday uh uh one of the parishioners of my church had gunfire erupt feet from her home um in the brightleaf community um this ain't the projects it's an affluent community uh where this occurred and I just want to say that I think this is a an ominous reminder a message to all of us or reminder I should say if something we already knew uh that if you live in the city it is clear uh that there is no zip code uh there is no degree of foliage induced cloistering effect uh that will protect you uh from this issue of gunfire I believe that if we don't get a handle on this issue it will eclipsed the prevailing narrative Durham prevailing narrative of Durham as a city that is emergent and descendant so I just want to to uh again uh stress uh to my government my elected officials and to myself as part of that government uh that I believe that we should be treating this like we're treating COVID uh in place our our city on at least the fact though not declare we have to declare but the fact or emergency footing when it comes to this issue I do want to say in terms of folk who keep writing us and asking us what our response should be um that there are a number of things in the hopper there are a number of things in the pipeline uh that we we articulated as a city uh that I think that we should make sure that we keep giving voice to and reminding folk that we need to be deliberate about bringing them forward um we heard a few weeks ago uh a proposal report about expanding uh Bull City United the Violence Interruptor Initiative uh that is in the pipeline um I hope that we are still being deliberate about fast-tracking that um we heard a proposal that that's aimed at root causes uh um from at our last work session so that's in the pipeline um we know that police on any given day are going to do what the police do police will investigate crime and try and make arrests whether crime whether violence is up or down that's what the police do so whatever the default setting the police are on when they do what they do I think that's kind of a standard that may be a based on of what we do but I think the question is what more uh can we do uh as a city uh I was pleased by the chief's uh a report when last he was before us about centralizing command and centralizing some functions about dealing with gun violence but these things that are in the hopper that are in the pipeline the city or the people of the city are wondering what the state of them is what the state of those things are and what we're doing I just want to kind of tick those things off and remind folk that they are in the pipeline that we need to be working on our violent crime task force or I should say wellness public safety and wellness task force is in the pipeline as well and hopefully they'll be meeting soon I do though for the sake of historical integrity and accuracy want to just remind folk that the initial iteration of our wellness task force had nothing to do with violent crime it was part of a larger project and agenda towards rethinking the way we police ourselves and it was it was a it was a companion recommendation to not hire and more police um it had more to do with violent state violence that police might perpetrate against folk that they encounter more so than the gun violence we're seeing in the city now be that as it may if we're going to now proffer that as part of our suite of responses to violent crime then I hope that we will be uh deliberate and and and and bring it forward with deliberate speed if that's going to in fact be part of our response to current violent crime we have an offer still on the table from ShotSpotter for a free trial that we remanded back if I can use that word back to the administration I don't know if they're bundling that with the NCCU recommendations but that is something we said well if a recommendation comes forward from the staff we would look at it um and and one has not come forward yet but I do intend you know I think we need to have an up or down vote on that proposal I think the people of the city deserve to hear us respond to that offer that was made to us so I don't know when the staff is bringing it forward but if they do not I think that this is an issue on which I don't need the staff to make recommendations to me you know to do whatever we whatever we need to do to save our lives I think that's something that we should vote on so I will if the staff doesn't bring that forward call for a vote on it up or down whatever it is so those things that I've ticked off I guess and if I have I hope I haven't missed anything basically now represent the lion's share if not all of what we are looking at over and above what we normally do from a policing response to address the issue of gun violence in our city my sense is that the the most amount of we've coalesced pretty much around violence interruption expanding expanding both City United I hope that we will be moving quickly on that on par with our moving with COVID as we deal with COVID and in the other emergency that affects the quality of life of our city we're through the looking glass on this this is a a a right now issue I want to again as I closed I stated I would support just about any initiative root cause and tactical short term initiatives as well because the problem is just that serious while we wait on the vaccine of root causes if I might borrow that language we also need to be talking about what does our mask look like what are the short term things we can do right now as a city to deal with this issue I believe the time is now and we're the people in the seat so it falls to us to address it thank you Mr. Mayor God bless everybody happy holiday season to everyone and I appreciate your time thank you thank you very much council member are there any further announcements okay we'll now move then to priority items by the city manager madam manager welcome good evening mr. mayor madam mayor pro tem and members of Durham City Council I do have two priority items for your consideration this evening agenda item number eight twenty twenty one long session legislative agenda attachments number five through number seven have been added agenda item number 24 the unified development ordinance text amendment omnibus changes 15 TC to 0000002 pursuant to council's request additional information has been provided in attachment number five that is all I have thank you thank you very much madam manager madam attorney any priority items tonight good evening mr. mayor madam mayor pro tem members of city council it's good to see you all this evening city attorney's office has no priority items thank you madam attorney thank you madam clerk any priority items tonight greetings mr. mayor and madam mayor pro tem and council members I have two priority items on both of them were disposed of at the last work session the Durham affordable housing implementation committee appointment was referred back to the city clerk's office at November 19th work session and that we are the ones COVID-19 response the discussion occurred at the work session and those are my priority items thank you thank you madam clerk all right colleagues will now move to our consent agenda against the consent agenda consists of items that the council has previously worked on and it can be approved by a single vote of the council members of the public or council members are able to pull items from the consent agenda and if if so then they will be considered at the end of the meeting I'll now read the consent agenda item one approval of city council minutes item three Durham housing authority board of commissioners appointment item four Durham planning commission appointment item five FY 21-22 budget development schedule item seven revised safety and wellness task force bylaws item nine October 2020 bid report item 10 condemnation action for replacement of the stage coach road lift station item 11 proposed lease agreement with kids properties LLC for the police department motor vehicle impound storage facility item 12 agreement for North Carolina Central University police department extended jurisdiction item 13 contract st 306 road rebuilding 2020 item 14 contract st 311 street repairs and repaving project 2021 item 15 contract sw 76 sidewalk repairs 2020 item 16 contract sw 78 street maintenance concrete repair 2020 item 17 contract sw 78c request for qualifications for inspection services for various city construction projects item 18 Lakewood Avenue sewer and NC 54 waterline replacement project city contracts number 16 892 dash amendment number one item 27 program year 2020 amendment to workforce innovation and opportunity wio a contract with Eckerd youth alternatives you have now heard the consent agenda and I will accept a motion now for its approval second moved by council member Reese seconded by council member Freeman madam clerk will you please call the roll mere shul hi mere proton johnson hi council member caballero hi council member freelon hi council member freeman hi council member middleton i vote hi council member Reese hi thank you thank you very much madam clerk the eyes have it in the motion passes unanimously we'll now move to our general business agenda item 8 2021 long session legislative agenda and i believe that miss wallace is here with us good afternoon mr mayor members of the council uh karmisha wallace and i um have on the agenda tonight the uh proposed legislative agenda which includes some advocacy items for the 2021 long session um for the viewing public uh i'd like for people to know that the legislative subcommittee has met twice uh to discuss the proposed legislative agenda and as of the last meeting of the legislative subcommittee um we had i think two items that um we had not made it the council has not made a decision as to whether to include those items on the legislative agenda those two items are the items pertaining to potential uh local legislation pertaining to the city of durham and unfortunately i think council member Reese you are not able to join us for the city council work session as certainly the chair of the legislative subcommittee so i will certainly defer to you if you have anything else to add to that uh i was able to uh thanks to the the miracle of modern technology i was able to uh to uh incorporate all of the things that were said and done into my brain um really enjoyed uh the conversation and i don't have anything else to add to it this time uh kermit you should thank you thank you thank you very much miss walis um colleagues i think that we have uh unanimity on the agenda except for the two items that we had asked our staff to do some research on but i'm gonna i'm gonna ask miss walis and and and council member Reese if they would agree with that yes yes that's my understanding mr mayor all right so colleagues we have two items that are that we had asked for research uh one one of them is the the charter provision on council vacancies and the second was the um remind what's the second item remind me what that is again the second item miss walis what was the second item remind me again for that second item is about uh the local charter amendment for flexibility for providing grants oh that's right thank you all right uh colleagues uh i'm gonna ask uh council member Reese would you like to offer anything uh on these uh as the chair of our committee get us started on this discussion and perhaps provide some perspective on on these and your thoughts about the staff's recommendations or the staff's research sure um first of all i want to thank our staff for putting together the information that we got on that um our city attorney's office and miss walis have done a fantastic job in teeing us up to have this conversation um i uh i i look forward to hearing what other folks have to say about these i've i've had in the past i've talked about my concerns about moving forward to the to the legislature with um with the proposed charter amendments but um i will i look forward to hearing what other folks have to say about it and that's all i really wanted to add right now mr. mayor okay colleagues any other comments general comments before we'll we can take these issues up one by one all righty why don't we start then with the uh mr. mayor i was trying to seek recognition i'm sorry go ahead council member that's okay thank you um and i'm pleased to serve as vice chair of the committee i was present at the uh uh discussion at the last uh work session uh the two issues uh matters that were considering or two that i had raised and i just want to reiterate that i essentially i raised them because as i look at uh the agenda the things that we're proposing to take to the legislature all of them i think aligned with our values as a city and i certainly support all of them the interesting thing is that you know when i talk to residents of the city it's very rare that any of those things that are on our legislature legislative uh menu if you will come up from constituents either an email a regular conversation the two things that i did however recommend do actually come up or did come up and one that's our ability to have agility to help small businesses and people in our community uh through grants um and i i want to thank the staff for the really the incredible amount of research they did to do diligence they did um i don't think that's a really controversial ask to to see if we can have more agility like a sister city to help uh people that are struggling uh the other uh issue was a surrounding uh our agility not to um take away from our menu of options when it comes to filling a seat but to add to them not to do any violence uh to our ability to engage in the selection process but covid taught us some things i think that this pandemic put us in a situation where because we could not engage in the type of outreach and have the type of uh in-person community input particularly for those that are technologically challenged that we could not have that during this selection process i think um it would behoove us uh to have as many tools in our toolbox to protect our democracy and expand our democracy so i think i'm not calling for uh any violence or destruction of the selection process but an augmentation to it that would allow us uh to have an election to fill a vacancy without any fear of of retribution or censure or sanction uh from the state legislature um for a number of what we got letters from uh people's alliance from the Durham community affairs of black people uh and just regular citizens who wanted the the opportunity particularly given what the challenges the pandemic presented to fill the seats that ultimately the people of this city own every one of us sits in a seat that is owned by the people of the city um so having a situation where they could assert their ownership rights during an election if we cannot do a selection process successfully i think to me is just as natural as breathing that seems to me to be in an or a very organic ask of our legislature um i i i'm not really fearful i mean this is Durham when have we ever been afraid to ask the legislature anything or or or and we certainly don't have to lift up our heads or raise our voices to get the attention of our legislature as a city i mean that you can go down the list of any number of things we've asked that i think could awaken some some some concern you know of a legislator if they were so inclined so i think that uh you know of all the things we're asking these are the two i actually heard from people about um and in so far as you know we're reflecting the the desire and will of the people of this city um i would uh uh support they're being placed on the agenda i don't find them controversial at all thank you mr mayor thank you council member do you also want to address the uh the other change regarding the grants oh absolutely i think i thought i did i i think uh you know covid taught us that um you know to a person on this government we want to be as responsive as possible to the to the needs for people i think to a person we had expressed a desire to do grants more so than loans if we could i think this this tweak to our charter if it can come to pass would give us that agility to do just what we all of us said we want to do and certainly when we heard from our small business community um there was a desire for us to if we could to do more grants than loans and we wanted doing a hybrid uh of course we're always going to have a Durham work around but if Raleigh found a way to do grants without sanction and without fear of any reprisal then then i'd like to have that agility as a city as well i mean why whitman i want to have that thank you mr mayor thank you council member all right colleagues why don't we uh start with the council vacancy um uh question uh you have heard council member mentalton are there other thoughts that people want to offer on this the idea would be to provide the option for the council to um for the council to um either either choose to a point or to have an election uh and you see there's some uh suggested language is a potential charter change in our in our packet any comments colleagues mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um i don't object to the substance of either of those requests i do however share council member risa's concerns about the current composition of our state legislature and um calling any attention by them to their ability to modify our charter um i trust our delegation to advance the things that they um think would most benefit Durham um and i remember hearing at um talking about at the meeting having a conversation with the delegation about that as well i'm wondering if that if we were able if anyone was able to reach out to any of our delegation members about their thoughts i didn't accept that i did talk to uh about that specific thing but i did talk to uh the head of our delegation uh the senior member uh senator woodard about the in general that we were going to be bringing he knows that we're bringing these things he actually has listened into some of our meetings regarding the agenda and he's had uh he's started to have actually some staff uh at the general assembly maybe his assistant i'm not sure look into some of these as well already so he's very aware of the fact that we're going to be asking for their guidance on what we think is movable or not movable great yeah i mean i don't know then what the whether those things being in our agenda or not like what the relevance of that is in terms of what we're asking them um for because we're really asking them for advice on all of the items that we're putting in the agenda in terms of whether they think they're movable um or not so anyway i'm not i'm interested in other people's thoughts on whether that should be a formal part of the agenda or if we should have some if we're you know if we should say hey we'd like you to look into this and give us a recommendation on whether or not you think it's um a good idea as a separate question from our legislative agenda so my uh my one thing i'll say about this is that just to remind everybody we made this agenda before november the fourth and we did so not knowing what the potential makeup with the legislature would be and we we knew that they had a time that we wouldn't and so we we made an agenda of things that we were excited about and so i think you know my sense is that if we want to put this on the agenda for this is something we're in favor of we should do so and then seek their advice once we we get to that meeting and i know they'll be candid with us and we'll we'll help us figure it out great the comments colleagues just want to make sure putting advancing it through the agenda doesn't then mean that it goes past our delegation right there everything that we put on this agenda will be something that we discussed with our our delegation at the upcoming meeting great i'm comfortable with it then uh other comments colleagues councilmember carvillero i just want to say i'm i'm fine with it moving forward because there's going to be an opportunity to to get feedback from our delegation and it's not done here so all right thank you um any other comments colleagues okay uh then let's move uh councilmember middleton i'm sorry thank you thank you miss mariam and thank my colleagues i i think yeah all of it's going to be i mean everything we put on is going to be vetted by our delegation i do i do want to you know if if you know the next time we if our legislature passes another crazy bathroom bill or something and we're afraid of arousing their ire we may not want to do any more statements of resolution or support on controversial things if if we're concerned about inviting scrutiny from them or or action against us we might not do any more amicus briefs on any controversial subject because they'll look at who supported you know who submitted supporting griefs in may i mean this is Durham i mean i you know we we we know that we're on their list and our chart we're a creature of the state my definition our charters a creature of the state they don't need to be prompted uh to do anything if they want to do something uh to Durham's Charter so i just want to say for the record i think it was counselor um Freelon who a couple of meetings ago uh Ed Maugham just reminded us of the fighting spirit of Durham and how we got to go in there and shake things up in the legislature i'm pretty sure it was counselor Freelon so i just want to echo uh that sentiment uh that we you know we issue statements all the time uh as as a council that sticks our finger in the you know i have not just the local legislature but the federal government so i certainly you know i'm comfortable with the sensibility of these particular recommendations and it's what people asked for uh uh in Durham so um you know let the chips fall where they may but i have no fear thank you mr mayor thank you council member other comments on this one all right let's move now to uh the issue of the grants and i know our city attorney is with us and uh madam attorney uh you all have done some research on the grants i think it might be useful if you would address that with us sure mr mayor and actually senior assistant city attorney christa kukaro is with us this evening and christ has done the lion share of the research on that issue so i'd like to turn it over to her if that's acceptable that would be great miss kukaro welcome thank you good evening mayor mayor pretend city council um glad to be back here discussing this with you all you should have received the memo in the packet hopefully you've had an opportunity to review it i think i gave a brief summary of it at work session recently um and i'll just run through quickly the the highlights i think a lot of what prompted this conversation was a charter provision in raleigh upon which they based their grant program for cobit relief as council member middleton was referring to earlier and so what i did is researched other cities and towns charter provisions across the state didn't do nearly as many as with the election but i looked at 15 about 15 of the cities in our area and then big cities outside of our area and i did not find um charter authority similar to raleigh or really any charter authority um that that might give the authority to to give grants um and so durham does actually have some language that allows us to give a contribution to charitable organizations it doesn't elaborate on what that means and in the memo i've described that that probably we could probably follow the irs's definition on that but again there's some vagueness there that doesn't give us the clarity that we're probably looking for um in in this and so additionally in the memo what i talk about is um the constitutional considerations so when we're talking about giving grants we have to consider our local authority that's given through the charter and then also um authority that's given through state statutes by the general assembly and the constitution of course and that's where we run into a little bit of a problem um and problem might be dramatic but um that's i think the the biggest hurdle in any of these programs grant programs that we might be talking about um when we're talking about this constitutional consideration really what we're talking about is the exclusive emoluments clause of the constitution and the public purpose clause and there's been a lot of research that the school of government has done on this but i think ultimately when we're talking about giving money to entities we have to make sure that it's fulfilling a public purpose otherwise that public money could be construed as a gift um it's not being used for the public's benefit and unfortunately when we're talking about grant programs there's no clear line um when is it a gift what is public purpose and we so we really have to consider case by case when we're talking about developing these programs that's what we had to do earlier this year when when the city was developing its COVID relief program so in terms of what we might be able to do um we know that Raleigh relied on each charter language each charter language really has a community development focus so that could work in some context it's not a surefire kind of airtight language that we might be able to use but we can you know our office can work with with council and the delegation to come up with some language that might be similar to Raleigh's but again i think the biggest takeaway that that i want to offer is that we have to consider the constitution in any of these programs that we might be developing in the future and the charter provision charter change may not be enough to get us over those constitutional hurdles thank you very much miss kukro and thank you so much for all the work you did on both of these i think you i think you looked at something like 50 cities for the for the um there's my memory correct on that that i believe the memos is 50 cities for the charter provisions thank you very much for that and for these excellent memos um all right colleagues discussion of this uh of this item councilman middleton thank you mr. mayor and thank you councillor kukro for for just the incredible work and and the primers that were provided all the information i'm really really impressed with the work product that you produced so let me thank you um just a couple of questions so is it a fair and accurate characterization that Raleigh's language is unique amongst all other cities that you looked at there's just something germane to Raleigh's charter is i think that's an accurate characterization of Raleigh's language i didn't find anything as substantial or similar um to Raleigh's language right and your your your admonitions to us about a question to us about um constitutional hurdles and and the things we have to check off moving forward those things apply to Raleigh as well when they or did there's something about their language that exempted them from those considerations i mean Raleigh has to consider those things as well correct that is correct and to your knowledge has Raleigh uh been subjected to any type of censure or sanction or challenge to their action not that i'm aware of okay um all right i'll yield back thank you mr. mayor that's all i have for it right now thank you councilmember councilmember reese thank you mr. mayor i want to thank the city attorney's office and miss kukrow especially for all the work that they did getting us to this point also appreciate the spirit that animates this proposal it really is i think about giving us as much flexibility under our chargers we can possibly have i totally get that i think the other thing it's important to remember about both of these proposals is that is what mr. mayor you were saying earlier and that is in just two days we're going to sit down two days wednesday we're going to sit down with our legislative delegation and hash this out um and so this document will reflect kind of our thinking but the result of that meeting will determine what actually gets put forward from a legislative perspective by our delegation and so i think it's really important to think of this more as a process um and on that basis though i do have uh some some question about whether or not this would actually do anything to let us do more stuff um if it did if it doesn't then it's harmless and if it does it helps someone so i don't have any problem moving this forward it's fine um i think uh so that's my perspective but thank you mr. mayor thank you councilmember any further comments colleagues um i think that we have a consensus on the two items but i think we ought to go ahead and vote on our agenda as a whole uh and um i'll accept a motion now that we uh accept this agenda with these two items is there such a motion moves or may i believe councilmember freeman i'm sorry councilmember freeman i'm sorry apologize go ahead no problem thank you i i actually just wanted to um to address the formality in the document itself before we move forward with the vote um just noting on page three there were some notes specific to staff that were included and i just wanted to make sure that they were removed because it's not germane to the agenda um the legislative agenda itself and i i did note specifically for miss wallis um the two items are on the bottom of page i'm not at the top of page three and item 16 and just noting that ashville and evison should be removed and um the reference to representative price and representative butterfield yes i've made those changes after you and i discussed it on friday and so the delegation will get the final version of the document thank you thank you councilmember and miss wallis um colleagues uh can i have a motion on this agenda i'm stated for our motion i'm sorry second moved by councilmember middleton seconded i believe by councilmember reese um madam clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese hi thank you thank you madam clerk the motion passes seven to zero all right uh we will now move to i can get myself together here we will now move to our general business agenda public hearings and the first is item 22 landscape manual for Durham revisions and uh we will first uh hear from our staff um good evening may show mayor pro tem johnson and members of the Durham city council and banding culture senior planner representing the planning department uh what's presented tonight are the revisions to the Durham landscape manual last year members of the department were tasked with updating the manual since its initial adoption in 2005 and last revisions in April of 2013 um through the efforts from members of the planning department the department of general services landscaping and urban forestry division and the partnerships with various members of the Durham environmental coalition we are hopeful that you'll support these changes and adopt this document through the course of the revision process there were four areas that we felt needed to be addressed to bring the manual up to the current industry standards one were text revisions two udo amendments and new planting installation certifications three plant chart revisions four revised planning details and examples and five was future updates for the text revisions the text in the manual was evaluated and updated to reflect the current best industry practices remove recommended practices and revise the manual to only reflect required practices and techniques we did add however some eco friendly tips to promote ecologically sound installation and maintenance practices in addition to the water rise and water conservation tips uh that currently reside in the manual regarding udo amendments and new planning installation certifications through dialogue with our environmental coalition partners there was a push to utilize more native species in Durham which promote better wildlife habitat and ecosystems versus using non-native native vegetation we recognize that the Durham that the landscape manual would not be the best tool to ensure these practices were met therefore we made recommendations for some udo text amendments made such as utilizing all native species and tree replacement and preparing buffer revegetation and mitigation areas also we made recommendations to uh for text amendment to require that a licensed landscape architect or licensed landscape contractor certify that the correct planning practices in the manual have been utilized which will help ensure that the livability of plant materials these amendments should be coming to the governing bodies in the near future for revisions to the plant tables we reorganize all current plant tables and condense from eight large tables consisting of 248 pages down to four tables consisting of approximately 142 pages adjusting the graphics for better legibility in order to provide the user with a more efficient process for plant selection the way this was accomplished was to group all native and non-native species together adding key symbols for identification removing the individual named cultivars removing ambiguous designations and streamlining the water wise planting conditions and cultural cultural notes and information invasive species list was also updated reviv current allowed vegetation against local and national plant data and as a result we expanded the prohibited plant list in the manual based on recommendations from urban forestry staff the Durham Environmental Coalition and NC State University resources for the planning details and example graphics the manual contained poor quality graphics details and illegible tax and the goal was to update those with clean and more illegible details that meet the current best industry practices and standards based on dialogue with our environmental partners for future updates the planning staff is committed to revisiting a potential landscape manual updates on a five-year cycle now which is much more frequent than has been performed in the past this will ensure that any invasive species that move for a potential watch list to an actual invasive list can be placed on Durham's prohibited list within the manual and as in landscape industry practices and standards change we can update the manual accordingly to remain current and thank you very much and staffs available for any questions may have thank you very much mr. Koltra colleagues you have heard the report from staff and i'm going to now declare this public hearing open i'm going to first ask if there are any comments or questions for members of the staff all right seeing none then i'm going to turn to the folks who have signed up to speak on this item and i see the the preview prior to the meeting there were six people who had signed up to speak on this item and i'm going to give each of the speakers three minutes they are and i'll read them in order ricky white katie rose levin and roi marie hill fazan synti colstat and janet grubber there may be others who would like to speak on this item as well who are here in attendance and if you were a person who would like to speak on this item but has not signed up to do so we're happy to have you speak please just raise your virtual hand or put your information in the chat but i'm going to first start with those speakers and i'm going to begin with ricky white madam clerk can you please make mr. white available to be heard i think i can be heard now good afternoon mr. white and you have three minutes we're glad to have you great it's really good to be here i'll try to keep this short i am here representing the lb creek watershed association i'm the executive director of that group uh first of all i wanted to really commend the process uh that went into both um this particular issue that y'all are voting on and the next one in terms of the text amendments uh the staff were very open uh to a process that included both the environmental community and the development community and i feel like we uh all came together didn't get exactly what we wanted but i feel like we were kind of headed in the right direction with these changes and with the landscape manual revisions in particular so i'm just here to support that work i think it was the work of a lot of folks that volunteered to make the community better through uh ensuring that we have better standards for plant species and even if you're not an environmental advocate i think it's important to know that these invasive species don't just come up the works in our natural areas but they go your neighbor's land and they create problems for from landscaping perspective not everybody wants english ivy in their yard and so i think it's just a really good policy a really good way of doing things and i'm happy that um that uh the staff is proposing and i hope they'll support it thank you very much mr white now we'll hear from katie rose levin miss levin welcome and you also have three minutes thank you city council i don't know if you can see me um so i just wanted to once again echo what ricky said about the staff's willingness to meet with various members from the community as well as organizations i really do want to lift up some of the folks the during the environmental coalition is not an official group it's just a loose group so the people who participated in this are the new hope autobahn society trees during the north kind of invasive uh plant species council and others i can't remember them all uh this is the way it should work and the thing about invasive species is that they can be a public health concern so a lot of these um these issues that we're working with really do have to come back to the quality of life for dermites so um just encourage you to vote pro for the landscape manual updates and look forward to talking a little bit more about the text amendments later so thank you thank you very much miss levin uh now we'll hear from ann roy miss roy are you available to be heard oh yes welcome and you also have three minutes hi thank you uh thanks city council i'm just here to support the updated manual as well i appreciate everybody's support on it and work they've done and i hope that we can vote it through thank you very much thank you very much miss roy uh next we have marie hill phase on miss hill phase on are you here with us miss hill phase on are you with us tonight madam clerk do you see miss hill phase on amongst the attendees mr mayor i don't see miss hill phase on all right all right thank you very much uh then we will move on to uh synthy colstad i see miss colstad also put in the text that she sent an email of support and doesn't feel the need to speak um all right thank you to miss colstad who we know over many years has done a lot of work on the ground literally on the ground in this area knows this uh as well as as any of us i think and when i've expressed my appreciation of this colstad for that over many many years and finally um we have um janet grubber miss madam clerk could you make miss grubber available to be heard i think she can you hear me yes we can welcome to get three minutes okay thank you i would just like to echo um the comments that came before me and i'm a member of trees drum so and honestly i signed up in error because i thought i was registering just to attend the the meeting not to talk so anyway i won't be talking much longer than this but other than to say thank you city council and for being responsive to emails that um trees drum has sent and also again thank you to all the people who did the hard work of editing the manual and we will appreciate a vote hopefully in favor of the changes proposed in the manual thank you miss grubber thank you we're glad to have you here by a mistake or on purpose thanks how many time and i've seen this car since and also said she did not need to speak but we're glad to see you here representing the headwaters group of the theoretical is there anyone else who would like to speak on item 22 all right uh i don't see anyone and so now i'm going to uh ask my colleagues if there are any comments that you might have or questions for staff um madam mayor pro tem and then council member milton thank you mr mayor i just wanted to appreciate the work of our staff and all the community members who have participated in putting together this document it's um just an incredibly comprehensive report reading through it i learned a lot about um landscaping and invasive species and i do have some ivy in my backyard that i wish a former resident hadn't planted um so i just wanted to appreciate everyone's efforts and um also the work of the jcc pc which i know has been pushing um a lot of these different kinds of issues for for a while um from the elected side i think that it's great when everybody comes together and makes um makes something really positive happen for the community so just wanted to express thanks to everyone who participated in putting this together thanks thank you madam mayor pro tem council member milton thank you mr mayor i just want to echo the mayor pro tem's uh words just an incredible uh piece of work on the part of the staff uh this this has come before uh me a couple of times on before mayor pro tem left uh the jccbc joint city county planning commission and i know councilor reese as well i i i have become such a much more interesting person because all the stuff i've learned about landscaping uh in dealing with this uh this matter so i just want to uh thank the staff an incredible piece of work i look forward to uh passing the revisions thank you mr mayor councilor roger's say that you are already fascinating if you've gotten more interesting man unbelievable the jacket it's a jacket all right uh council member reese thank you mr mayor um i just want to echo what everyone said uh this is a great example of kind of inside outside advocacy and what it can do and what it can deliver for the people of this city um you know over the last several years you've had a number of elected officials uh both at the city and the county level who've been pushing for these kinds of changes and you've had outside organizations like trees Durham and others who've been pushing outside the organization for these changes and what we see in this agenda item and the following agenda item is the fruit of those efforts and it's the kind of work that Durham has done very well uh over the generation on an on a whole host of issues and i'm glad to see it here i just wanted to say one word about invasive species mr mayor um earlier today i learned a valuable lesson about the power of invasive species and how how unfortunate they can be our home lost power at about 5 30 in the morning um which has all sorts of problems when your children are supposed to go to school online um and the power company later told me that the technician came to our home and learned that an invasive species of ivy had made its way up the utility pole and worked its way into the equipment at the top of the pole over a period of many months and this morning at 5 30 it finally did enough damage to um to turn off the power of my house um i don't know what i did to upset this particular uh brand of ivy this particular breed but um suffice to say i learned a valuable lesson uh about uh how uh unwelcome these invasive species can be um and looking forward to supporting the measure so hopefully other families that don't uh set off their alarms at 5 30 in the morning and wake up their kids like my did thank mr mayor thank you for sharing that story council member that illustrative story any other stories any other comments colleagues council member freeman thank you i just wanted to also um thank everyone for working on this and acknowledging that it's very uh detailed and extensive and acknowledging that there are so many different species that should be here um and those that should not and i really wanted to um welcome so many voices um or to the conversation or to the council meeting this evening acknowledging i haven't seen many of these faces in so long it feels like uh you know the opportunity to speak to them and say um hello and how are you and then also to say i would love to catch up with you all and then i i just wanted to note that i'm i'm grateful to um the leadership of chris and i'm sorry not chris to ricky and um and to um katie and acknowledging that these invasive species are here i would love to hear about what your plans sound like around addressing the existing invasiveness and communities like my own um where folks might not be able to afford to remove it and so i it doesn't quite fit into this conversation but i'm going to squeeze it in on the tail end because i'm not at those jcc pc meetings and um just note that uh that i i appreciate the work thank you thank you councilmember freeman we are here for you anytime you want to come you are more than welcome they are crazy exciting let me tell you i am dropping though um councilmember middleton i i do like hearing about all of those pieces in part so it is since i'll be i'm like you dropping off his chair uh it'll be the meetings will be a lot better going forward so i don't know if you all have noticed but in my non-something years on this council for some reason i've never found myself on jcc pc i know it's important work and i'm glad someone else is there to do it uh okay um so i i notice uh a comment uh councilmember freeman from ricky white in the in the chat you might want to check out with ricky all right colleagues um i'm just add my congratulations and to the detailed work the consultation with the landscapers as well as members of the public interested native plants i think a lot of us met with the autobahn society and others about this and it's great to see this come to fruition i really like the principles of eco-friendly landscaping i thought they were great and and i do want to note uh that the formerly ubiquitous landscaping cliche the bradford pair is now a relegated to the not allowed list i will just remember many years ago in the city of durham planted along carolina avenue when i first moved here uh a lot of bradford pairs very pretty in the spring uh during a cc tournament week uh but not very uh long lasting and um it was it's just interesting to think about how over time and by the way those trees were planted by a city employee um one ed harrison uh you all know uh former city council member from chapel mill uh but times have changed and the bradford pair has found its rightful place among the not to be allowed all right council members any other comments if not we can go ahead and close this public hearing um and i will ask for the one motion that we need which is to approve the proposed revisions to the landscape manual for durham so moved mr ma'am moved by council member resecuted by council member caballero madame clerk would you please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor protan johnson hi council member caballero council member freeline hi council member freeman hi council member middleton i vote i council member reese hi council member caballero did you want to vote i thank you i think it cut out i apologize yeah we couldn't hear you for a minute thank you madame clerk the eyes have it the motion passes seven to zero uh we're now at item 23 but i do want to call attention to the fact that there's only one item between us and my favorite item of the year item 24 because united unified development ordinance text amendment ominous changes 15 also known as mic stock and um but we'll we'll we'll we'll get through item we'll get through item 23 uh and on our way to item 24 all right unified development ordinance text amendment trees and landscaping tc 2001 and uh we're first we will hear our report from staff thank you very much uh mayor and council members michael stock with the planning department and and i'll try to move fast for this so we can get to the early hanukah present for for the for the mayor also before i begin staff would like to note that all the required notifications have been performed for the planning department public hearing items that are in file for review in regards to tc 2001 that text amendment proposes revisions to various provisions of the unified development ordinance regarding tree coverage landscaping and street trees based upon work with trees Durham the amendments allow tree street trees in the right of way for new streets this new requirement also coincides with the review and update of the Durham landscape manual as you've just acted upon additional amendments are proposed including an update to the tree coverage requirements for non-residential development and that was an item that was expressly requested by city council from a past um text amendment action um also an update to required mix of tree species and other technical updates or corrections uh client commission recommended approval of this item and the board of commissioners had already considered this amendment as November 23rd meeting and meeting and approved at five to zero as a reminder two actions are requested uh first on the statement of consistency and then on the ordinance for adoption itself thank you and be happy to answer any questions thank you very much mr stock colleagues you've heard the report from staff and i'm now going to declare this public hearing open and first i'm going to ask if there any comments or questions for staff by members of the council all right seeing none will move to our speakers uh there are so far there are three people signed up to speak on this item susan schneider joanne knopley and immanuel brown and i'm going to ask the three of them to speak and each of them can have three minutes if there's anyone else that would like to speak on this item please raise your virtual hand or make yourself known in the chat and we're happy to have you speak as well all right we're going to begin now with uh miss schneider miss schneider are you available to be heard mr mayor miss schneider is not in the queue okay thank you very much then we will hear from joanne knopley is miss knopley here i don't see her either all right um and then uh we will hear from immanuel brown is mr brown here i don't see him either okay um if they i think sometimes people sign up when they think they're just making a comment but that's okay um and then uh so i do see two people sign up to uh raise their virtual hand kati rose levin and ricky white let me just see if there's anyone else in the group uh and we'll begin with miss levin miss levin welcome uh and you have three minutes thank you very much um i just wanted to one say thank you to the staff particularly mike stock who's been on this odyssey with us for about four years these all originated from a report that came out from duke university that showed that communities of color and term have no trees while predominantly white and wealthy communities do this is a system of environmental racism and structural racism that was established during the redlining practices in the 1930s and it matters because um having tree cover doesn't cure ills but it sure does make them better um it reduces asthma heart attacks it does reduce crime uh even in chicago when they tracked where individual shootings where they were less likely to happen where there was tree cover um it increases math scores reduces adhd adhd a new report just came out that it helps students and transition to schools which i think is particularly important during corona and uh during the pandemic access to outdoors should be for everyone and sometimes people just can walk out their door and that's where their access is so restoring the equity of access to environment is really important and we see that with all of our communities whether it's bradtown walltown americmore or trinity park um old west Durham and forest hills requesting and during developments not just for affordable housing which is critical but also for environmental protections as well so these changes have uh taken over four years their database their collaborative and they really are taking Durham a step closer to addressing environmental justice uh environmental justice in the united states was actually started by poor black folks in north carolina and i'm really excited that uh Durham is taking the step forward to try to create equity uh to try to address climate change through forest preservation to require street trees be planted next to street where they were forbidden from before and in generally to look towards the future of where we need the environment literally to protect our lives and that it should be accessible to everyone so a big thanks to like charlie was saying the internal advocacy from elected officials government agencies and staff such as mike and then also to all of our advocates on the phone and who've written from all parts of Durham to help make this happen so i really appreciate y'all voting on this putting this together this is a really big step forward and thank you thank you so much miss levin we appreciate you second will be um ricky white mr white welcome and you also have three minutes great thank y'all uh again katie rose uh does so much better than i could do at explaining this i just second everything that she said super supportive of this work i want to just point out that she has put a ton of energy into into this effort along with staff and i just want to thank her for all of her work on this and uh ask the gel support um this really important change uh which maybe seems small but is really going to help us change the face of the city and help us with climate change issues going forward thank you so much mr white is there anyone else who would like to be heard on this item this is a public hearing item i don't see any other virtual hands raised all right um colleagues uh i'm going to now declare this public hearing closed and bring the matter back before the council for any questions or comments you may have and then we'll vote on this any comments or questions colleagues madame pro tem thank you mr mayor um i am also really excited about this item and wanted to thank the staff and the community members who've worked on it as well i remember reading uh that paper from duke about the lack of trees in communities of color and Durham and being um really really interested in in fixing that problem and you know learning how big of a problem that was so i'm glad we're taking this step um but i also wanted to bring up a couple of trade-offs that i see us making just so that we're clear about them the first is that you know there are some comments about the the saving of land for street trees um actually meaning there's less land to build housing and so we're we're making a conscious decision to reserve some of that land knowing that it might um it might make it harder to build housing that building fewer housing units might um might make the housing units that are available in whatever development is being considered less affordable and so i just wanted to um to point that out i we have a strong affordable housing program here in the city and we're investing millions of dollars and have invested millions of dollars over the last few years in affordable housing i feel like this is a reasonable trade-off to make but i just wanted to make it clear that it's there um the other thing that i wanted to comment on is that in the context of a consumer market for housing anything that you do to make housing more desirable raises the price of that housing um and so we are you know also i'm also concerned with the the impacts on prices in areas where we might choose to add green infrastructure like street trees like bike lanes like trails and we've had this conversation specifically around the the beltline trail and other trail projects that you know that there's a concern that neighborhoods that have been disinvested in for a long time that certainly deserve more investment that when they receive that investment it can sometimes act as a as a factor in displacement um and so i just want to you know i i plan on voting for the item i support this but i think that these are things that we need to take into consideration as we continue to think about planning and growth and development in the city and continue to invest in affordability and in providing more affordable housing to mitigate any negative impacts of these kinds of policies on our residents thanks thank you very much madam mayor pro tem councilmember freeman thank you mr mayor and i want to appreciate madam mayor pro tem for highlighting those facts and just acknowledge just a just a tag line of just realizing like this is why our shared prosperity conversation needs to match our affordable housing conversation acknowledging that the cost is not going down and we want to make sure that folks have access to to the capital and to the resources so that they will be able to afford their future here in Durham and so i look forward to to continue to work towards the shared prosperity that will increase some incomes for folks who who will need to stay in this city thank you thank you very much councilmember are there any other comments or questions for staff i'll just add a few comments um one of which is already mentioned that like most good things that we do uh this is a trade-off this is not without cost um in addition to the to the discussion that we just had the things that madam mayor pro tem pointed out we also know that there's cost of the city in terms of maintenance and i appreciate the specificity with which staff has laid out the cost each year for the appropriate city review inspection and long-term maintenance and care of the trees in the right of way which would be a city responsibility but in my mind this is clearly worth the cost um i think it was maybe six years ago that several of us and i want to shout out cavett french who's not uh speaking tonight but was really um several of us sat down she was really our early leader we would meet at her house on her back porch uh to regularly to meet to begin to figure out how to sustain durham's tree canopy and to make it more equitably distributed the it's the the maps already been mentioned that the incredible correspondence between the neighborhoods that were redlined and the neighborhoods that have no tree canopy or little tree canopy and we wanted to change that maybe a year later we were joined by katie rose levin who's spoken here tonight and we formed trees durham and katie rose has been just a remarkable and persistent leader um i really really want to katie rose say to you that we would not have done all the things we've done on trees the last few years in durham without your leadership and i want to appreciate it yeah and i also want to talk about uh another terrific leader that we have in the city tanya dotlick of keep durham beautiful who's been the partner to trees durham in all this work um we had a few clear goals at the time and i think tonight marks the culmination of one of the most significant goals we laid out the requirement for street trees in the right of way and new developments it's taken a long time to get here uh but thanks for the good work of our staff and i want to also include our public work staff because as we know a lot of the complications uh regarding trees and trees in the right of way are things that the public work staff has to deal with but a lot of the things that these complications have been ironed out and i think we have this very good amendment in front of us uh and this follows our earlier passage of other improvements in our trees ordinances within the last year uh mr stock pointed out at the same time of the last three or four years we doubled the number of trees we're planning for about 750 a year to about 1500 per year and this is a great increase many thanks to the general services department keep Durham beautiful trees Durham for this work and just this past weekend i was out with keep Durham beautiful and trees Durham and a local church we planted 17 fruit trees in redmipe and redmipe park beautiful uh gotta be beautiful fig and and pecan trees and that is a it's really been great to be involved in that our tree planting has been done through a racial equity lens and i'm really proud of that the way the city has been consciously planning trees and previously underserved neighborhoods i do still believe that we need to get from the 1500 a year to 3000 a year this can't all be city money it's gotta be uh as it is in many other cities private money as well we know for example in charlotte where there are plenty many more trees than us uh that private businesses have stepped up to help with that but we've still got a way to go when i continue to believe that we are going to be able to hit that goal but what we're doing tonight i think we really need to celebrate as a milestone accomplishment these things sometimes take time this is one of them it has to go through through jcc pc after all and uh it's just uh great that we're here tonight all right uh colleagues any other comments any further comments okay then i'm going to ask we need two motions uh the first will be to adopt the appropriate consistency statement as required for ncgs 168-383 seconded moved by councilmember re seconded by councilmember freelon madam clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freelon i councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese i thank you thank you madam clerk the eyes have it and the motion passes seven to zero um colleagues our city attorney has asked me to read more of these motions than i usually do so i'm going to do that motion two to adopt in order submitting the united the udo incorporating revisions to article eight environmental protection article non-landscaping and buffering article 12 infrastructure and public improvements in article 16 design districts is there a motion to approve seconded by councilmember middleton seconded by councilmember reese madam clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freelon i councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese i thank you thank you madam clerk the eyes have it and the motion passes unanimously all right uh colleagues will now move to the moment we've all been waiting for uh item 24 you know five development ordinance tax amendment on this change is 15 tc2 0002 also known as mic stock i forgot my tada uh but um i'll do it for omnibus i'll do it for omnibus change is 16 i promise okay councilmember reese is celebrating uh properly mr stock welcome uh we'll now hear the report from staff thank you very much michael stock again with the planning department the tax amendment tc2 0002 proposes technical revisions and minor policy changes to various provisions of the unified development ordinance the amendments are identified as necessary corrections clarification for organizations rather minor changes to clarify the intent of regulations or codify interpretations of regulations order fuck minor policy changes some of which are not solely technical in nature highlights include revisions to the rc district remove core and support references ts up uh applicability to schools and and to within the county updates to repairing buffer requirements additional srp standards for sites with emergency services and clarification to buffer boundary buffer standards in regards to the comments regarding the changes to to the text for national register eligibility with development plans um staff has provided response memo that's in your end the pack and i believe uh uh city manager page had mentioned that at the head of the meeting um uh that was uh in response to commissioner miller miller's uh concerns about that uh and commissioner miller was provided a follow-up regarding that memo um plan commission did recommend approval um and the board of commissioners considered this amendment at this november 23rd meeting and also approved it five to zero again there are two actions requested first uh on the statement of consistency and then the ordinance for adoption again thank you and i'll be happy to answer questions thank you mr stock uh and uh colleagues you have now heard the report from staff and i'm going to declare this public hearing open uh and first i'm going to ask if there are any questions for staff by members of the council mr stock i have a question um when it when the the omnibus the 16th omnibus package which you mentioned in the memo to mr miller or regarding mr miller's concerns when will that be coming to us approximately um we're actually we're actually wrapping up that internally uh this month um i've already had staff meetings on it to kind of start going over that list um and we should be getting it to jccpc um at their next meeting in february so you should planning commission should see it in march or april and then you should hopefully get it um depending upon how the scheduling works um sometime either um spring or summer so not too far off as as as things would happen all right thank you uh and in in in that omnibus you are planning to address um can you talk about the concerns of of can you reiterate the concerns of uh planning commissioner tom miller and the way in which you're seeking to address those sure um there were two concerns raised um one was that he felt that the changes we were making to the existing conditions list regarding recognizing uh national register uh sites or those eligible for um national register uh was um redo um was limiting or or or reducing the the extent to which we um historic sites are recognized um and he pointed out that there were different maps that uh the state historic preservation office maintained um we we reviewed that and and it's all about um health things are listed or referenced and we do reference the additional uh Durham architecture uh inventory and a Durham archaeological inventory in that same list um and those are the same information that has been given to the state and reflected on their maps so um we we cover we believe we cover that concern and that we will look in the next omnibus to see if we can uh make that list of existing conditions a little to clarify that list of conditions and to incorporate those references a little more clearly um the second was to um his acknowledgement of um other other lists at other historic uh stakeholder organizations put out um he referenced the uh 2013 preservation Durham list um and uh we recognize that that's those are important lists too and so we are we're committed to him um and to the uh plan commission and and to you folks um that we will also add language to that uh list um in the next omnibus to address those organizations and those lists that may be put out for and there are other organizations to open Durham uh open Durham and there might be other lists not just the uh list that that was referenced in his memo so we want to kind of take a look at that and and make the language more all-encompassing thank you mr stock i appreciate that and um and so and that'll be approximately the spring then i'm sorry spring or summer of next year yes spring or summer okay great thank you very much and thank you for addressing those i think those were very important i appreciate mr miller raising those um and i'm glad you're addressing them thank you you're welcome all right colleagues any other questions or comments for staff at this time before we ask if there are any speakers to this item all right uh then i'll i don't see anyone signed up to speak if you were present and you would like to speak on this item could you please either raise your virtual hand or make yourself known in the chat i see mr tom miller uh if there's anyone else who would like to make themselves heard tonight on this item please uh either raise your virtual hand or or let us know in the chat okay uh madam clerk please make mr tom miller available to be heard and mr miller welcome and you have three minutes thank you mr mayor thank you members of the council i appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight uh i am speaking on behalf of preservation Durham the Historic Preservation Society of Durham and not in my capacity as a planning commission member i'm sorry to approach you with so many hats on um with regard to the changes that might just discussed uh we are extremely grateful to the city council for your consideration of our concerns uh we look forward to the next omnibus change to the udo uh because it will include the 2013 african-american historic sites inventory we think this is really important and i think it addresses the public history component of the racial equity task force report which we are very committed to at preservation Durham with regard to the more technical change that i uh discussed um the udo today uh essentially requires uh properties that are listed in the national register are eligible to be listed the proposed change uh to the udo would be properties that are listed or properties that are study listed but drops the properties that are eligible to be listed now mike points out that uh a great many of the properties which are currently on the shippo maps is eligible to be included uh come from the Durham inventory this is true uh the inventory was created uh gosh almost 40 years ago and and hasn't been updated since uh but that's not the only way properties achieve what's called a determination of eligibility by the state historic preservation office and get on that map uh as a matter of fact a great many properties have been added to the uh to the map and i'm referring to properties uh usually this happens when the dot does a um a widening project like the one on highway 55 through east Durham or on highway 54 through southern Durham uh they do um the higher historic preservation consultants and those consultants submit reports and from those reports properties are sent to the ship of uh for inclusion on uh for a determination of eligibility those properties are on the maps today but are not included in the uh items eight and nine in the current list i also point out that there are properties in the research triangle park which are enjoy a determination of eligibility uh which are not included in eight or nine so the Durham inventory in the county inventory are not the only way uh that determinations of eligibility are made and get on to the maps um so we still hope that the resulting ordinance will contemplate properties that are listed properties that are study listed and properties that enjoy determination of eligibility all three appear on the same maps that are published by the ship of four Durham so that's our request to you is to include all three of those and we also look forward to including our 2013 african-american historic sites inventory so important uh for Durham in how uh we deal with and shape our uh own perception of our public history thank you mr mayor thank you for the opportunity to speak to you i'm available for questions thank you very much mr miller um mr stock you've already spoken to the to the item but let me just ask another clarifying question if i may you've already spoken to the fact that the the 2013 african-american history list will be taken up on the in the 16th omnibus can you speak again to and i know you you addressed it originally but uh could you speak again to address the uh second point uh that mr miller has addressed uh regarding the the list the eligibility list and so forth um i'm actually going to probably much to share saris chagrin deferred to sarah yang she has a little bit more background knowledge on historic preservation side of things no problem thank you welcome is yang good evening mayor and members of council sarah yang with the planning department um to address the concern so um i actually was just chatting behind the scenes with um uh another member of staff who worked for shippo for many years um and she was able to clarify for us that um shippo has a study list and then they have what is called a determined eligible through environmental review and this is what um commissioner miller was talking about so these are reviews um that are commonly called you may have heard the terminology section 106 review um and those reviews actually come uh shippo sends those folks to us um we on staff carla rozenberg of our staff reviews those so we are aware of those that is something that we could look look to codify um in the next round of omnibus um in general i think that um broadening the reference to consulting um with the mapped resources that shippo has um i think would be something relatively easy to do that might be more all-encompassing so the intent was not to eliminate anything the intent was to come into um closer conformity with the terminology that shippo uses so we can certainly look look at that terminology again next round thank you very much miss yang colleagues any questions or comments at this point i'm uh councilmember freeman thank you i just i just really wanted to um just highlight the i guess the glaring miss that might have happened had um uh preservation during stepped in to say because i know that i was not paying as close attention as i probably normally would have but i appreciate um tom miller pointing those points out about the african-american historic sites and also just noting that it's not just the african-american but it's the middle class or working poor um community of white folks as well that the history gets lost if when we're not paying attention um acknowledging that that's where the development uh over the last 10 years has kind of like decimated some of the older houses and just noting that this this kind of lack of i guess value in the history of those who are african-american or middle class or working poor um isn't as uh i guess as as much of a factor in i guess planning and zoning as it could be and so i'm not sure how to address it but i would like to um to have more conversation with with our planning director around what it looks like to make sure this this isn't this isn't something that's left on to or left to uh individual residents in the community to come up with because i mean tom's expertise some of his expertise um in real estate and development is is quite unique in our community and without you know our staff paying attention to stuff stuff like this i'm i'm concerned so just noting to raise that thank you councilmember thank you any other comments or questions colleagues councilmember middleton thank you mr mayor um i as a member of the jccpc i've had an opportunity to vet all of the kind of the wonky technical aspects of the amendment so i'll just use this moment uh for for celebration and commendation just want to thank uh the staff uh sarah and mike tremendously for the work um that's been done on this i am also excited about taking up the the taking up of the 2013 after the american listing in the next omnibus um consideration i also while i have the opportunity i want to thank commissioner miller particularly for his work with the friends of gear cemetery um and the the the work and there's a lot of people involved in the work but but i know uh commissioner miller commissioner miller uh is involved in that work and and i just want to thank him and the rest of that team um you know the sacred um only remains sacred if you treat it like a sacred and so the work that they've done is an important important honoring um and recovery and restoration of a very very vital part of our history for so many people in our city so i thank him for that work and i look forward for uh closing out mike stock would evoke thank you mr mayor sorry colleagues i got lost in something there got lost in my technology for a minute thank you councilmember and i really want to second what you said about uh mike stock's work on these things they are they're legendary all right any other questions or comments any other questions or comments okay if not then we have uh i'm going to declare this i believe i've already declared the public hearing closed but if i have an i will uh and uh we'll now move to uh the first motion to adopt the appropriate consistency statement so we'll talk about consistency all right moved by councilmember freeman seconded by councilmember middleton madame clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton i will die councilmember reese hi thank you thank you very much madame clerk the second motion that we need is to adopt an ordinance amending the udo incorporated revision cell shorten this a little two article three article four article five article six article eight article nine and article 12 so moved red uh moved by councilmember freeman seconded by councilmember middleton madame clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton i will die councilmember reese hi councilmember freelon hi thank you thank you madame clerk the eyes have it motion passes seven to nothing i want to thank uh tom miller uh for being here and helping us uh with these and i want to thank the staff for their response to mr miller uh and we look forward to some of those changes and on to the 16 again i want to thank you mike mike stock for the work that you do every year on these under this changes i know they're difficult and we appreciate thank you all right colleagues um now we'll move to item 25 coronavirus aid relief and economic security the cares act public hearing on an approval of first amendment to the f y 2021 annual action plan a 2025 consolidated plan uh and we will hear from staff and i'll see mr johnson this with us uh good afternoon a good evening mayor and mayor pro tem and members of council reginal johnson director of the department of community development this item is actually the first amendment to our uh 21 annual action plan in the 2020 2025 consolidated plan and i do want to ask uh before i turn it over to uh miss will mcconnions to share that uh on this particular item uh in order to comply with americans with disabilities act and the u.s department of housing and urban development requirements for providing accommodations communication access will be provided for the duration of this public hearing and we just ask that everyone please speak at a normal uh speaking place um miss monica mickey uh is our sign language interpreter and so she's on the screen uh as we speak and with that uh i will turn this over to uh uh miss conures of community development staff to read the um particulars uh before we begin the public hearing miss conures miss conures are you with us i don't see her mr johnson okay but i bet you could carry the ball uh yes sir i can hold on just a moment all right mr mayor you asked us to remind you about the captioning breaks and we've got one in about 15 minutes thank you madam mayor pro tem i appreciate the reminder okay the purpose and i'll begin mr mayor if you don't mind sure i see miss conures is now connecting mr johnson if you want to turn it over to her do you want to do that uh yes i would like to turn it over to her okay miss conures are you with us can you hear me now yes we can welcome we're glad to have you all right i had a slight technical difficulty okay understood so you won't be able to i won't i won't have access to video but i have audio good evening mayor shill and members of city council i am wilma conures planning and performance administrator the purpose of this public hearing is to receive citizen comments on the proposed amendment to the f y 2020 2021 annual action plan and the 2020 2025 consolidated plan for coronavirus aid relief and economic security known as cares act funding the cares act public law 116-136 was signed into law on march 27 2020 to provide additional funding for communities in their efforts to prevent prepare and respond to the coronavirus pandemic known as COVID-19 the city of Durham expects to receive 2,716,217 dollars in community development block grant referred to as cd vg cv 2,662,668 dollars in emergency solutions grant referred to as esg cv and 70,340 dollars in housing opportunities for persons with AIDS known as haqua cv funding which totals five million four hundred forty nine thousand two hundred and twenty five dollars the additional supplemental funding through the cares act requires an amendment to the f y 2020 2021 annual action plan slash 2020 2025 consolidated plan this first proposed amendment addresses a total of one million eight hundred seventy five thousand three hundred and twenty four dollars and outlines the current and proposed uses of these funds the remaining balance of three million five hundred seventy five excuse me the remaining balance of three million five hundred seventy three thousand nine hundred and one dollar which consists of one million five hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and sixteen dollars in cd bg cv funds and two million sixty thousand two hundred and eighty five dollars in esg cv funding will be addressed in a second amendment at a later date the proposed amendment was made available for public review from october 21st 2020 third november 20th 2020 on the community developments website and was also distributed via general listserv the citizen participation plan contained in the adopted 2020 2025 consolidated plan requires that a public hearing be conducted for formal amendments that add delete or substantially change the consolidated plan or the annual action plan notice of this meeting was properly advertising both the herald sun and the kipasa newspapers on november 25th 2020 posted on the community developments website and was also distributed via a general listserv comments from this public hearing and a summary of written comments received from citizens concerning the proposed amendment will be included in the final document no comments were received during the comment period in closing after this public public hearing has closed we ask that city council vote to approve the draft first substantial amendment to the f y 2020 2021 annual action plan slash 2020 2025 consolidated plan forced a permission to HUD thank you thank you very much miss con years we appreciate your work on this colleagues you've now heard the report from staff on declare this public hearing open and i'm going to first ask if there are any questions for staff members of the council miss con years i do have a couple of questions when is the second amendment that you refer to when is that next amendment approximately are we going to hear that i am going to defer to mr johnson okay i would say mr mayor i would be sometime in the spring of the year we don't know exactly of course it depends upon some details we have to work through if you recall a good portion of the money that we have here was contracts that you all approved in the summer and what we're doing now we use our local dollars dedicated housing fund because the HUD allowed us to do that for covid funds and this will uh public hearing will and approval will allow us to get reimbursed for those funds got you so unlike some of the other cares act funding this money doesn't all have to be spent by December 31st we've got a whole second part of this money that will be spent at a later time uh that's correct so you this too this money comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development we have a different set of rules when they say cares funding then when it's popular lid talked about cares funding this different set of pot of thank you for that clarification um all right uh colleagues any other questions for staff at this time my councilmember freeman just a question regarding so noting that these are reimbursed funds as we go forward i don't know if there's a tracking mechanism or not or if that's something you're doing manually but um just noting that if there's any way to tell between how much is going towards public fund or public housing versus um private housing that's like beyond section eight or someone with a voucher and just being able to track that um internally i just wanted to councilmember we'll have to look at look at that that's actually a more appropriate question for dss uh department of social services because the large part if you remember of these funds we actually are administered by the department of social services for emergency rental assistance thank you so we're gonna follow up with them but uh i don't know uh i would have to find out for them what level of detail they have in terms of persons houses and then i guess along those same lines if it's possible to make sure that we're also including um i know with the hopper funds and specific like dollars there's a lot of um of demographic information that's included but just noting that in addition to like race uh gender um income just being able to make sure that we're uh addressing the folks at the at the margins the most i just want to be able to track back to that so thank you okay thank you councilmember colleagues any other comments or questions councilmember carriero i just wanted to appreciate uh councilmember freeman's questions it was something i had i remember the conversations you know a lot of this money we dedicated to rental assistance over the summer and just i would like to see how that money has been spent and where it has gone so when staff can get that from dss uh that would be great thank you very much councilmember any other questions or comments colleagues is there anyone here who would like to speak on this item if so please raise your virtual hand or make yourself heard in the chat all right uh then i don't see anyone uh i'm going to declare this public hearing closed and the matter is back before the council we will need three motions to approve this motion one we'd approve the draft first amendment to the 2021 annual action plan in 2025 consolidated plan for submission to the u.s department of HUD is there a motion to that effect so move mr mayor second moved by councilmember freeman seconded i believe by councilmember middleton madame clerk will you please call the roll mayor stool i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freelon i councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese i thank you uh the second motion is to authorize the city manager to execute all administrative requirements with tractional documents for the implementation of the amended annual action plan for activities are currently underway and being proposed with this cares act funding madame uh is there a motion so moved second moved by councilmember freeman seconded by uh mayor pro tem johnson madame clerk will you please call the roll mayor stool i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freelon yes councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese i thank you thank you madame clerk the eyes have it and the motion passes seven to zero the third motion is to adopt the city of durham u.s. department of hud and urban uh hud community development black grant coronavirus project ordinance the amount of two million seven hundred sixteen thousand and two hundred and seventeen dollars move by madame councilmember freeman seconded seconded by councilmember freelon madame clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freelon i councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese i thank you thank you madame mayor pro tem thank you madame clerk the eyes have it and the motion passes seven to zero uh the fourth item fourth motion will be to adopt the city of durham u.s. department of hud emergency solutions grant project ordinance the amount of two million six hundred sixty two thousand and six hundred sixty eight dollars can i have a motion move by madame move by councilmember freeman seconded by councilmember freelon madame clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freelon i councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese i thank you thank you madame clerk the motion passes seven to zero and finally motion five to adopt the city of durham u.s. department of hud uh housing opportunities for persons with aids coronavirus grant project ordinance the amount of seventy thousand three hundred and forty dollars so move by councilmember freeman is there a second seconded seconded by councilmember freelon madame clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freelon i councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember reese i thank you thank you very much and thank you mr johnson and miss cognor so for bringing us this item very important work thank you thank you thank you colleagues we will not have to give a rest to our closed captioners but we appreciate them uh and i want to appreciate you colleagues for a good night uh at the Durham city council and our staff uh there being no further business to come before this body uh i will declare this meeting adjourned at eight fifty seven p.m. good night everybody night everybody night thank you all right thank you mr mayor thank you staff