t of work that they've done we have a lot of boards and commissions in in this city um and but we have put i think we put in especially complex and important and difficult task before all of you and i just want to again um say how grateful we are as a city and on behalf of the entire community for the incredible amount of work that you've put in um to this and to this report i am excited to dig in further on on all of the recommendations and to think about ways that that we can move this work forward even on issues that right now don't seem like we have any power or that we have any authority to figure out how we can get to a place where we can move some of this work forward um even for things that don't that don't feel possible now none of us could have predicted when we started this this group that um we would be finishing up and giving this report in the middle of a you know national black lives matter uprising and a global pandemic and all of the you know incredible challenges that were facing now as a country and this conversation about race and racism that were that we're seeing now in all parts of the country so it's just incredibly it's just such good timing that we have these recommendations from you all now um when we're all when our whole community is paying attention to to these issues and to these questions it's a really good time for us to to move this work forward in a significant way and i think that everyone on this council is committed to doing that um and we're i'm really excited to have um to have this work and to to dive in more and i hope that as many of you as are um as are willing and are not retired though i hope that we'll convince Judge O'Neill to once again once again delay her retirement for what like the third time um to be a part of the the permanent body that were that were you know established because we could all really use your continued um expertise and and knowledge and guidance to make this work happen but thank you all so much it's been a joy to work with you over the last 21 months and we are so grateful for your efforts and for your commitment to Durham um and to and to racial equity and to having the kind of community that we all deserve so thank you all so much thank you we love you Freeman did you have a comment i did uh your comment actually just sparked a question in my mind i wasn't sure if these recommendations and this i mean with the with the task force kind of like shifting away if these recommendations would live somewhere if the office of equity and inclusion were where we would kind of tackle i guess what we have kind of covered and what hasn't but some way to measure where we are and some of the recommendations that have been made where we have started and then to kind of see where we might need to go going forward it might be helpful to have some department within the the administration focused on this yeah we've had staff um from both the office of equity um the and the um and nis come to meetings and be present for some of these conversations i think it would be yeah i hope maybe tom can give us some thoughts on what kind of um staff support we could get to institutionalize some of the the work we need to do moving forward uh thank you mayor pro tem and uh council member freeman certainly we have been anxiously awaiting this report uh our staff the equity inclusion department in particular has been super hyper focused on our internal racial equity work not so much the external community work uh so we uh we will take this and and you know obviously absorb it take a look at it and look forward to continued conversations with the council about what are the next steps and what are the resources that will be required to if nothing else administratively support the next steps so thank you so thank you very much question do you think that's like a three six or one year process off the top of your head just i'm not sure what you mean by that you know so as for as far as absorbing kind of the report and kind of giving some feedback maybe six months i don't know that it'll be that long uh again we just received the report you know very few of the staff have have had a chance to look at it i've glanced at it but haven't had a chance to read it so i think we you know we'll put a group together to give some thought and come back with some recommendations you know in fairly short order about what that what that might look like thank you i appreciate it i just want to make sure i have a kind of context of what what the timeline might look like that sounds great thank you councilmember thank you uh mr manager and i believe if there are no further comments or we can move on to our next item elaine or carndy y'all want to say a final let's get to work let's do it let's go to work thanks y'all that's it thanks thank you talk soon thanks everybody thank you thanks all right whoo that was dizzying melbourne mr mayor we have uh if you would like to keep presenting that would be great sure uh i think that we have a very quick report from oe wd then the discussion of the violent gun crumb situation uh and i told councilmember middleton i spoke to him yesterday about leading that conversation off and then um and then just a very brief discussion of funding for the recovery and renewal task force proposal that we're going to be getting so those are the items that i have left and then we have the closed session and i'm happy to take over presiding again in the closed session but if you want to um preside over the next three items that would be awesome sure happy to thank you um all right so we'll move next to our presentation from oe wd uh i see andres already ready good afternoon mayor protin mayor members of city council my name is andre pedigree i'm the director of the office of economic and workforce development i'm here to give you an update on the Durham small business recovery fund program uh that uh we started and created at your direction this report is a demarcation of the first 30 days of the program and it reflects the partnership with duke university uh and the city for both a grant program and a loan program it also marks the beginning of our new partnership and our new investor in that county Durham county has joined the fund so uh i don't know where my slides are uh great we can stay right there so as i second thank you right there um as i mentioned this is an update uh for the program on june 8th uh through the 28th we actually launched uh our grant program uh the grant animal program was started on june 8th but the grant program had a 10-day window for applicants to be included uh again the loan program is being uh service on a uh first come first serve basis the key highlight is that we have served in that first month 81 Durham businesses in the city of Durham and there's now 750 thousand dollars of funds on the street and in the hands of our businesses uh i wanted to mention that on this call uh kevin dick who is the president ceo of the carolina small business fund who is managing the fund uh is on board to assist me as well as brian smith on my staff uh who have supported this effort and provided the troubleshooting around it to make sure that we were on track i want to acknowledge that we met our goal of getting the initial dollars on the street by july 10th and again that was a lot of yeoman work uh for uh our team and so again businesses have been impacted um i want to remind you that uh next slide that we made a particular emphasis in this program to touch the most vulnerable smallest businesses in our community again and to remind you that uh our parameters were businesses with less than 25 employees uh less than two million in sales uh but the grant program and the loan programs were further divided the grant program was targeted at businesses making less than 500 thousand dollars in revenue uh they were eligible to apply for the grant program during the first 30 days we had 132 applicants and 78 uh awardees uh with the average award effectively being just short of 7600 dollars the maximum award is 10 000 dollars uh we're really pleased with our effort to follow your commitment to make sure that this program uh met uh some diversity commitments and goals and as you can see from the awardees 62 of the awardees are women-owned businesses 56 percent uh are minority-owned businesses um again this demographic this result is very different than the results that has happened at the federal level and even at the state level and again it's a reflection of the commitment of the council uh and the team to make sure that we did the outreach and the technical support to make this work again I made a note here in terms of um you know in the first 30 days what the declination is the reason for the declines were again one of the requirements is that the businesses had to show a 25 revenue decline as a result of COVID I'll talk a little bit about the that later uh and so some of the firms did not meet that standard uh and we wound up getting a number of applicants um you know for maybe the county and other places who were outside of the city limits uh and again there are some businesses that have made the adjustment in pivots and they're moving forward next slide again as I mentioned the loan program uh is targeted at businesses making more than $500,000 but up to $12 million dollars this loan program is quite innovative again following your direction of council you know the innovations is that this is effectively an unsecured signature loan does not require any personal guarantees nor collateral again that is highly unusual in the small business debt market but again we took that charge and put together a program so 24 applications I think we've awarded six so far and again this is an ongoing basis half of those recipients are minority owned businesses and again we are making every effort to continue to keep women and minority participation levels high the maximum loan is 35,000 but on average we are averaging 33,000 the loans have included businesses in the food hospitality industry personal services and what have you you know the important thing is that we are continuing to look at some of the sole proprietors independent contractors and businesses of this nature as we move forward next and final slide so again we've built in continuous improvement we've listened to many of the small business advocates in terms of how we can continue to refine the the program and so we've made some modifications again the second round pretty much denotes the fact that the county has joined us and that we've made some additional modifications moving the program forward we still have 414,000 of grant monies available again we will now take these businesses these applicants on a first come first serve basis we expect to exhaust those funds again I would ask Kevin Dick to maybe give us a sense of how long these funds would last um one of the other modifications that we made in the grant program originally we allowed the applicants to demonstrate the impact that COVID had up to to April now obviously the impacts of COVID have gone beyond April and so we now have extended it to the months of April May and June the ability for companies to demonstrate the loss revenue during that period and we think that that's going to generate additional applicants to the grant program and then as I mentioned earlier this is now a countywide program where in the first 30 days it was only a city of Durham program we have 1.4 million dollars available in our loan program and another modification that we included had to do with businesses who can demonstrate significant business disruption flood fire things of that nature where it may have interrupted profitability for 2019 in those cases we are willing to take that documentation as well as look at the financial statements the profitable year for 2018 and again finally it is a countywide program I will conclude by saying you know the team has worked hard and we're continually committed to do that we are really emphasizing our outreach and marketing effort particularly to the Latinx community you know we have you know established some partnerships in the community and are looking to get greater participation in that area I want to thank council member Caballero who actually participated in our first Spanish language training program that we did with the Mexican consulate we're going to continue some of those similar trainings during this next iteration in the phase two so let me conclude there take some questions and again Kevin Dick and Brian Smith are also available to support answering any questions that you might have thank you so much Andre any questions from members of the council council member Freeman thank you I just had a couple questions I apologize I didn't see this in the priority items under the city manager and stuff I didn't get to ask them beforehand I just needed I just wanted to know if there was a minimum amount for these the loan in the grant there is no minimum amount for the grant it's up to ten thousand dollars the minimum amount for the loan is five thousand so you you we would give grants of like a hundred dollars well we made a choice there was a discussion about limiting the amount to a thousand or more again we didn't necessarily see the value add to that given that we know that there are a lot of self-employed independent contractors who if based on two months operating expense if it came up to five hundred dollars or two hundred dollars whatever it was we were willing to take the time to review that and provide that grant if they're eligible that that helps that gives that gives me more context the the only other question I have is so from June from the cut off date from the previous time frame to now no applications have been accepted they're not like sitting in a queue or anything so it's completely clear and we'll start well let me just again let's talk about the grant program we created the window in order to make sure that some of the smaller firms would not get bumped out of the program and so that generated I think 132 applicants and again 78 of those have been reviewed and that was cleared we are now taking grant applications on a first come first serve basis and up until the time the money runs out we made that choice because again we felt that there was significant outreach you know so if the individual applies we will put that in the queue we use that in a timely way and reward that instead of the first group that had to wait I think just a week before we got through the 132 application okay so there is a queue for the grant just not the loan no there there's there's no queue you can apply for both loan and grant on a first come first fair first serve basis we will review those applications as they come in both grant and loan now going forward Kevin you can jump in thank you okay can everyone hear me yep we hear you now thank you madam mayor pro tem and good afternoon council members and city administration Kevin dick with the carolina small business development fund um I did just want to amplify what andre was saying relative to the grant and loan processes now that round two has essentially been launched so we publicly noted the program changes and the accomplishments to date this past monday and coinciding with that was the fact that we started to accept grant applications and loan applications under the new rules so as of last night there had actually been 20 grant applications received this week and there had also been a few additional loan applications one thing i'm happy about is that the pace of the loans does seem to be picking up within the first 30 days there were four loans approved and this week three have been approved so we are starting to see a little bit more momentum there and with the grants um i know i think we have about 17 pending applications right now but as i said 20 have already been received um this week so i think that uh with that momentum combined with the fact that we're doing a lot of significant outreach to the latinx community which will really augment the fact that already 56 percent of the businesses that have been funded have been businesses owned by people of color and 62 percent women were already as andre said achieving a lot of the ideals and objectives of the program relative to diversity and we think that will just increase from here now with with that outreach plus the fact that we've opened up the parameters a bit um to hopefully be more inclusive with um with applications uh overall i'm just just noting i'm not thinking about right this moment but at some point there will be some breakdown that does show each of the areas that have been so if you're saying specifically people of color i would love to see the difference between i mean all the work you're doing to make sure that there's let's you know engagement happening or spend as we get engagement happening i would love to see that there's fruits from that so it'll be helpful to see what the numbers are councilman freeman um again we uh are sort of doing this first update uh we will get a much more detailed report uh from carolina small business fund with the full demographics uh we are so focused in making sure that uh we get the money out the door and get it processed and so uh first 30 days in um maybe uh in another 30 days we might be able to have a little more detailed uh report i just want to keep the momentum going um you know one of the other things that we're doing as a part of our program is making sure that we continue to promote the funds that remain available at the federal level so there's payroll protection dollars that are available through august 8th uh and there remains dollars in the golden leaf rapid recovery loan program which is statewide uh again it's my goal to make sure that our firms are getting access to those federal and state funds in addition to our funds thank you councilmember cubby here yeah thanks for the great update happy to help with whatever next round you need um and would love i know that information is coming but it would be great to see um the you know what the outreach in the lot next community has been what the return on that has been uh and if there's lessons learned that can be applied and some of our other uh programs in the city yeah maybe just to give you some additional data brian uh you sent me a brief report uh earlier today could you maybe highlight some of the modifications that have been made to the program that's targeted at the latinx community and again i think that it will demonstrate our commitment to reach out to that community absolutely uh good afternoon brian smith oewd as andrew mentioned kevin a small business and the city are making some additional outreach efforts to reach the latinx community so i'll just give a few highlights about some things that are happening in the next couple of weeks we've translated the information um into spanish the press release that went out on tuesday was translated into spanish and shared with the the hispanic chamber of commerce the mexican consulate bbnt which is now truest q poson newspaper univision el centro hispano and the economic development partnership with north carolina so they all have the information from that press release they've asked univision to potentially do another interview they did an interview on the in the first round so we're going to see if we'll do can do another interview with univision the north carolina hispanic chamber of commerce is hosting a facebook live presentation possibly tomorrow at one but we're still working on the details on that to talk about the second round q poson news newspaper published the press release yesterday and just to give you a little bit of context about how those efforts have helped bbt bbt has already referred for latino clients to apply for the loan after these kind of secondary outreach efforts so it seems like they are working but we have some more work to do we're going to continue to continue that outreach to the latino community thank you thank you just wanted to thank andre and kevin brian and the team this these are very encouraging and it's great that kevin you all were able to get the money out the door so fast thank you for that i know it really helped a lot of businesses and um you know one of the things i hope at some point we'll be able to do is tell some of the stories related to these businesses right now their numbers uh but it'll be great to to know some of the stories and we know that they're not all going to be success stories because this is a difficult time these loans are not you know going to be able to save every business but i know they'll contribute to a lot of successes and i hope we'll be able to hear those in time as well as as get the numbers thank you for your kind for your commitment to diversity that the council has set forward you clearly been doing a great job on that and that's super important so just wanted to offer my appreciation thank you thank you councilmember middleton thank you madam mayor pro tem and andre kevin and brian it's good to see you gentlemen thank you for your hard work two quick questions two quick questions firstly i've heard from at least two businesses that haven't heard anything uh that submitted applications uh for the grant in particular um is is it our policy that whether you're going to get money or not you will hear something yay or nay from us and uh do i need to this afford those businesses you offline perhaps to get some information as to the state of their application sure they should get a yay or a nay uh and again that process is is is is again uh forwarded to caroline a small business fund but if you want to forward it to to brian Smith we'll make sure uh that that's trouble uh that we troubleshoot that to get the answer but everyone will get an answer okay that that's good to know thank you and i will follow up with you second question when we uh when this process first started there was some some consternation on the part of some business owners that we didn't fund it at high enough levels and we made a commitment that we would come back and look at at pumping more money and if we need it as of today there's the money hasn't been exhausted yet but i'm wondering from the the money people the financial gurus what trigger or what's the threshold that these funds uh need to get to or how low do they need to get before we should start considering whether or not we need to have another cash infusion is there is there a trigger amount uh for you folks or is it going to be necessary so uh councilman uh we've been thinking about that and talking about the timing of that we're very interested in making funds available i'm going to ask kevin to maybe because he's closer to the cash flow aspect of that and maybe give us some wisdom in terms of some of the things that he and i have discussed thank you andrey councilmember millington great question um i think that based upon current pace we look at for example the grant program i'll take the grant program first there have been a hundred where there's been a hundred and fifty two applications received and again 20 in the past in the first three days of this week so when we look at the pace of applications coming in as well as the average grant size we would expect to run out of the current allocation for grant monies probably um i would say stretch goal end of next week likely the week after um based just based upon the current pace of applications approval approval rates and so forth um and i say that especially now that we have opened the criteria of it uh at that point um you know i know that uh count uh mayor shul and some and others in the community have also been talking up to some private sector individuals who may want to donate money and so i i guess a similar answer would apply to both and that is probably in the next two weeks will come to the threshold point of if the money's going to run out but i would say at the same time that we have to assess what the future demand is because at that what we don't want to do is is collect more money or make a recommendation that you all put more money forward and then there not be demand so i think it i think the outreach efforts that we've been talking about will tease out if there are more businesses who have not applied yet who uh still may be in need of to possibly qualify as far as the loans are concerned um roughly 200 000 has been approved um there's actually uh roughly about 1.6 that's still going to be available with the county contribution as well in terms of actual loan and some of that money we're using um for administration and technical assistance to businesses after they get funded so remember that's an important part of the program in terms of actual loan monies 1.6 is available so i i'm not sure really at the the pace of loan applications that that 1.6 will be will come to that limit anytime soon i wouldn't but i think with the grant program our threshold point is probably in the next few weeks but again assessing and making sure that there is um significant demand above and beyond that is applied by the grant laws to rub for me i mean we we were admonished at first that we definitely didn't have enough money and i what i what i'm my concern is if we see a slow down and demand that that's not necessarily reflected that we've done such a great job at penetration but i'm wondering if those businesses are still around uh that they've survived this period so i i want to make sure that whatever that if if we if we make the political decision that we're going to put more money into it and you're talking within two weeks and i would disrespectfully put to the mayor my colleagues that we probably need to have that conversation sooner rather than later uh to prevent any type of gap or lag time if we're going to do another cash cash infusion for those businesses who so desperately uh needed um so i'm i'm glad that we're still somewhat flesh now but i'm i'm concerned that that fleshness if i might might be reflective of those businesses no longer even being in existence so i want to act with all due uh deliberate speed and making sure that if we are going to do another bump that we we have that conversation sooner rather than later uh that's above my pay grade as to what we'll schedule that but i'll leave that to uh leadership thank you very much gentlemen i appreciate you thank you madam air for example thank you councilmember um mayor shul and i think kevin were you trying to say something no okay mayor shul thank you i just wanted to respond to councilmember middleton who's raised a good point and appreciate the questions that he had for kevin and andre um i think that the the problem is going to be that or let me just call it the challenge is that if we that the area where we'll need more money in anytime soon will be in the grand area which we aren't able to provide and that's why we're thinking about trying to raise some private funds and so um i've been in conversations with andre uh and kevin and also brian has been on the calls now with this group of people um some local business people who are interested in trying to help us raise some private money um but it sounds a lot i i think that you know what i'm hearing is kind of what i've heard also last time we had the conversation which is we're not quite ready to dive in yet because we need some more analysis of what we think the demand would be and uh and i i hear uh what you're saying mark anthony about you know a gap in time to threaten businesses and i think that we we need to kind of measure it with the help of of kevin and andre and brian what the what the demand is going to be and what our target should be for trying to raise more money thank you mr mayor so madam mayor pro tem now i would like to uh just make a point um based on what the mayor said and and just offered this not necessarily as a prescription but just as um food for thought as you consider engaging the private sector community excuse me i know one thing that worked seemed to have worked pretty well in raleigh is that at the time around the time of launch um and and raleigh ironically bigger market but actually a smaller amount of money was committed for grants so i think they kind of knew going in that private money would be needed and and so what happened is that around the time of launch the mayor did a call to action engaged the chamber and one local pr firm to help out in terms of corralling businesses but there was sort of a singular unified message um and that resulted in roughly five hundred and fifty thousand uh to six hundred thousand dollars in private sector funds being raised that augmented the eight hundred and fifty five thousand at the city of raleigh put forward so in essence there we deployed about one point three million in capital and uh our funding there's actually still a little bit of private money that we're still processing there we'll probably fund roughly 200 businesses um with that amount but i say all of that to to mention that there was kind of a coordinated approach um it's definitely great to have a groundswell of individuals in the community that not not only want to give but also want to enlist businesses and individuals to give but just a coordinated approach and kind of a singular message is what i'd recommend um that will probably would probably be most palatable to the business community and and cause um you know a pretty good uh rate of return in terms of the time spent so i just i just offer that as a as a thought and a way to proceed if you should need to uh raise additional funds thank you kevin that's helpful mayor shul thank you kevin and that puts me in mind of another aspect of the timing which is that right now the campaign to support the digital learning and digital equity for our students is happening and that's a private campaign uh you know privately funded to try to raise a million and a half dollars uh jeff durham from our chamber commerce is the co-chair of that and so one of the things that we talked about is since that needs to happen right away uh that we didn't want to and the people you know who work it on you know think about raising this money and that money also didn't want to get those things in competition with each other at the same time so part of the idea is that that campaign's going forward while we learn about the need for this and then we'll try to figure out some sort of unified effort like kevin's talking about so that's kind of what i know about the private fund and let me let me take a minute actually to acknowledge one company called no novisai they have done an employee match program and already donated to the durham fund so i didn't want to publicly acknowledge them and and maybe use them sort of as a an example for other private companies to follow that's great yeah it's great to see company stepping up like that and we'd love to have more participation other thoughts or comments from council members our council member freeman go ahead yeah thank you i i appreciate that um explanation it helps to round out i guess where we're going and i want to make sure that we're pushing in um because from the presentation we just received we acknowledge how all of this is weave together and so the digital divide is really um undergirded by the economic instability of families and so just noting like if you are a you know a uber driver and you have kids at home it helps to be able to kind of sustain your your work so that you can stay home and we want to make sure that we're telling the story that we sit all together as opposed to one versus the other so the business community understands how they're all tied together um which is why the race equity aspect that this is important of acknowledging just how much um each of these all if you just if you just pick one area and don't address the others they kind of you get off kilter and out of balance anyway thank you thank you council member middleton for distinction on where our money our municipal money can flow not the grants but my question was universal whether it's grant or loans i just don't want that to sneak up on us now i don't know if we're going to make the determination that we need to replenish that plot that pot uh for loans as well but but if that becomes imminent i i i want us to be in a position to move as quickly as possible so you know we look to you gentlemen to whatever that trigger is um letting us know uh you know that we're protein and threshold so we can we can facilitate that conversation sooner rather than later if in fact we're going to uh dedicate more money towards loans so thank you thank you for the clarification thank you council member um thank you for the presentation and for all the work that you're doing to get this money out into the hands of folks that really need it during this crisis we appreciate your work and look forward to hearing more um as time goes on thank you yeah thank you for your time thank you madam thanks yeah um all right our next item is our discussion on gun violence and i'll just turn it over to council member middleton to get us started thank you excuse me council member middleton yes i apologize i'm trying to be sure that chief davis is on she was having a difficult time uh getting the link and i don't see her here karmisha do you know she was able to find get the link i'm communicating with her on that now so maybe we could jump to the other item first while we're trying to wrap that up if you don't mind is it okay mr mayor um great so that's the funding for the recovery and renewal task force okay thank you um and i think uh mr mayor that you're our speaker on that i am thank you colleagues i don't uh i want to you all i sent the the letter that was the attachment to this item just to explain to you all that where we are uh with the a potential budget request coming from their recovery renewal task force as time has gone on uh the task force the various round tables have realized there's certain things that are important that they would like to see funded uh some of these things are things that you know about ppe for vulnerable populations that kind of thing uh others are specific businesses uh in restaurants you know we've gotten some emails for example restaurants want uh certain things paid for to help them do outdoor dining um and then in addition to that there are the big things that the emergency operation center folks have been dealing with over a period of time such as uh and and our own community development department's been critically engaged in such as uh how do we how we uh handling our how we're dealing with our homeless population to keep them safe and housed uh over time we just spent we just okay a whole bunch of spending today to do that uh there are issues of quarantine hotels and they're just a whole lot of potential expenditures and what we wanted to do was try to instead of hitting council and the county commission piecemeal with these things try to pull them together into a way that could be understood coherently uh and that would give the council and the and the county commission uh choices and an ability to prioritize so we've asked the um the the recovery renewal task force to pull together a budget at a very high level not to vet it in the way that our staff will typically vet uh because this is not their expertise but to come up with the things that they would like to see funded uh and to try to prioritize them and especially to prioritize those things that they think are are very immediate needs the most immediate needs um uh there have been a couple of things that have been very immediate needs that um i have asked tom to approve within his approval his budget approval limitations there have been two things one is language access uh the city has funded language access for the recovery renewal task force uh and also um the some initial publicity publicity for the back on the bull campaign so that we could kick that off so we could kick that off in in in uh good fashion uh but those are the only things that have been spent uh the second the the money of $13,800 i believe is the number uh was spent out of our our covid relief funds that that the council voted for uh tom did that on his authority but we don't want to do that in general we want the council and the county commission to be able to make decisions about these things other than those very small uh immediate items so i just sent the letter and just wanted to say today that you all should expect that that will be coming and to explain that there'll be some things that for example the restaurant request in fact downtown durham ank has already buying chairs it's buying tables it's uh you know uh looking to borrow tables and chairs for outside dining the city is already providing barriers uh through you know as as we know for this outside dining so some of these things which look like requests now will actually not end up being things that we need to fund but of course our staff will help us with that so i just wanted to inform the council that met and mayor pro tem and um ask if if there are any questions from my colleagues or any any comments that anyone had at this point i think we should see these between in the next two to four weeks great thank you mr mayor council member middleton one question is do we anticipate that uh from the task force would that be drawn down from the five million dollar pot if the manager spoke of creating for covid response or is this a separate part of money that's a great question i think that so i think that there are a lot of moving parts still so for example you remember collin mentioned that there's additional esg money coming if some of this is related to housing the homeless it may be that there would be esg money that would contribute to that um the county has cares act funding which we don't so i think some of the things might be funded through cares act funding that we don't have um and then some uh could certainly be funded and i think our main source of this and i think uh you know tom can uh confirm this but i think that our main source of this of any additional funding that we would provide would be through the uh money set aside for the covid fund tom would you agree that's correct and as indicated to you in a response to an email uh mayor uh to date i think we have spent about a little over six hundred thousand dollars in the um internal you know costs related to a variety of things that likely will go up some more maybe not quite as fast as it has uh we believe that that those uh those expenditures are eligible for FEMA reimbursement or a percentage of them are uh however that is not guaranteed and uh has a a fairly long duration before we get confirmation of that so i would also want to uh caution that you know that money was put aside not just for community needs but for potentially internal needs uh that we that we find you know around a variety of issues it's not personnel it's not any overtime it's it's all hard cost of things so uh that you know that's just kind of weird but right now that that now for a little bit less than four million is uh is the money that we have allocated for these variety of issues internally and external that that we know will continue to arise thank you councilmember freeman thank you i just just wanted to make sure that those expenditures that are covert related uh they are of the six hundred thousand i'm assuming that that's either it's come into council or there's it's someplace public where we're acknowledging this cause that's happening or occurring yes i mean it's not anything at this point that required from a purchasing stand but well in some case it might have required my emergency purchase authorizations but it's everything from extra ppe to uh you know sanitizing equipment sanitizing situations some modifications to uh to uh you know service areas and things like that but we certainly have a document the documented list of all that that we can share but like i said as of now we've kind of put that in the not not taking it out of that uh covid response fund but it's in a kind of the the FEMA reimburse and a reimbursable account uh as a as a potential source thank you thank you any other questions from council members all right thank you tom thank you mr mayor for um that information and update so karmisha do we have any update from chief davis and have we lost mark anthony chief davis is in um i sent her a default link but it's not um don't see where it right it's recognizing her she might need to be yeah she needs to be promoted to a panelist i see her in the attendees list okay so the clerk can take care of that yep there we go thank you and i see mark anthony i think he has a cell phone but not his video okay can you guys hear me yeah yep we hear you do you hear me uh okay that's my sound it's not great okay is it breaking up kind of it's breaking up a little bit yeah no you sound like you're on another planet i've been told you sound like my high school guidance counselor that's actually a little better now can you hear me is that better that's better yeah okay great um so councilmember middle you can go ahead and okay i'm i'm sorry i may need to turn your phone off you still hear me yeah we've got an echo now okay hold on one second if you mute your ipad well that that's actually the sound sound the music hold on one second turn your phone off that's gonna you know what i'm gonna do watch this can you hear me yep can you hear me can you hear me yes yeah we hear you great all right all right lost my notes though all right am i on now okay are we i mean are we on our agenda item that agenda item now am i too sorry yeah okay go give me thank you go right ahead no no you're good thank you madam air pretend and thank you uh mr mayor and i want to thank uh uh chief davis for joining us good to see you thank mr manager um a couple of weeks ago i asked uh this council uh and the mayor uh for the opportunity to um have a conversation about gun violence in this community i think it's rather fortuitous uh that grinn holderman uh spoke about the impact of gun violence um specifically on the black community and paraphrasing her she said the situation is unacceptable um and i agree with her and i agree that it's an equity issue so i want to thank this council uh and the mayor for for allowing us uh to have this conversation um i don't want it to be um um an abstract conversation i there are some very specific things that i'd like to say uh to this council first thing i want to say is while i have the the unique privilege of being part of this body uh today i'm addressing you not just as a colleague but as one of your constituents um because i don't know where else to go and i don't know who else uh to talk to and i want to try and convey uh some of the profound pain and hurt um that tens of thousands of our constituents um are experiencing on this day and in this season not just uh with with respect to covid but with respect to gunfire as well i miss seeing you in person and uh mr mayor the last couple of times we saw each other in person the last two occasions is one we were at a wake for 74 year old called that authority who was killed by gunfire just trying to enjoy the fourth of july holiday and then serve the next time i saw you in person i was at a candlelight vigil for a 12 year old tyvian mclean who was killed by gunfire on nrc i i don't know where else to come and i don't know uh who else uh to appeal to uh as an activist you know i was trained that when we protest we protest to create tension to ultimately bring about change and to force an audience with those in power and to bring our petition and our concerns to those in power and who have decision making power um you're it uh in Durham so so as a colleague i'm appealing to you today but i'm also appealing to you as a citizen as a resident as a black man um as a person who has had some of the most painful conversations i've ever had uh since being in public life that includes during my time as an elected and not being elected i um i think a good on ramp is what the uh racial equity task force reported to us and what some of us in tone today i want to talk about uh our failures and where we've come up short and i include me in this i i mean we in the collective sense our failure failure and where i think that we um have missed some opportunities but thankfully i think we also have an opportunity to to to move some things forward uh and to create some real change in our city when i um one of the things i love most about Durham is we don't mind our business there's no particular segment of our community that experiences a problem unto itself um if you mess with our lgbtq brothers and sisters in Durham you have a problem with all of them if you mess with our immigrant brothers and sisters in Durham they don't respond Durham responds our black community many in our black community are suffering and are afraid for their children to come outside um are afraid to just do the things that many of us take for granted so that section of the community is in trouble um and we need the help of our government uh today one of the things i i i'm most proud of is the ability to rattle off what we do as a government substantive things real things and one of the things that that i found myself able to do uh is when we've had discussions or when i've been engaged in discussions about hey what are you in Durham uh doing about uh the immigration issue and the immigrant community um and i smile and i start going into our quiver and i pull out faith id and i say our uh law enforcement community honors faith ids no matter what our government's doing our federal state government's doing uh it was an issue i know mr mayor you carry one it was an initiative that that i had an opportunity to work on uh during my days with Durham can with the North Carolina Latino congress and making those a reality um i i bring that up i bring up new visas i also am able to say that we were right on the threshold of funding um a a an immigrant defense fund with real money to the tune of half a million dollars as a matter of fact food on my family's table uh is placed on my family's table by that very work a dear member of my family works with the organization that we want to partner with um i'm able to say those things substantively that that's what we're doing despite it being within the federal bailiwick despite what they're doing in rolly here's what Durham is doing uh concretely uh to deal with the issue of immigration when they ask me what i'm doing about gun violence or what we're doing about gun violence the conversation goes silent um i don't know what to say uh other than uh we're putting together a task force and we're looking at ways to do things other than using police because we can't police our way out of it and i have to be honest with you as my leaders as my elected leaders um the task force was something that was proposed over a year ago um we didn't fund it i'm part of the week we didn't fund it um we kind of stopped talking about it until zion pierce was killed and we brought it up again um we put together some bylaws and we voted on it i didn't vote for it because i said i thought it was important that the other people that we named in that vote had an opportunity to talk about it it went to that other group a vote as of now but the county has been delayed because some of the things i thought would happen happened because some people felt that there wasn't enough there weren't enough people involved in the discussion to begin with when it comes to people that were even championing it championing it at the beginning or not having issues with it because they feel it was too top down um but we voted on it anyway we sent it to them so to this day um the task force while it's coming has not met has not been populated has not been set it's it's embarrassing um and it's disrespectful um from my point of view to to bring it up when i'm talking to grieving families when they ask what is my government doing about gunfire um by contrast um colleagues when this covid pandemic struck us and we realized the gravity of that moment mr. mayor you proposed populated charged and convened a renewal task force and recovery task force that has had multiple meetings already that that task force almost with lightning speed and was firm resolved was impaneled and got to work because we realized the gravity of the moment we realized how significant the significance of the trouble we were in i believe sir and colleagues respectfully that that same resolved has to be brought to this issue of gunfire and let me say right out right right at the outset i don't think we can police our way out of it so i'm going to agree with those who say this isn't something that we can police our way out out of or arrest our way out of but i do think there are some things we can do um we often hear that gunfire or guns are a federal issue and they are of course uh and that washington and raleigh oftentimes constrained what we can do i would respectfully submit that uh immigration is also a most decidedly federal issue we don't grant citizenship at the municipal level or state level but we as duramites have found a way to inject ourselves into that debate anyway we have found a way to stand in solidarity with our with our brothers and sisters in the immigrant community notwithstanding it being a federal issue i would respect that i would respectfully submit that we ought to look at gun violence the same way yeah we know it's a federal issue we know it's a state issue but have we done everything we can as a city and i believe the answer is no and i believe that until we do we will not have the moral authority to stand before families that have been ripped apart by gunfire and comfort them and be able to say that we've done everything we can do even if even if you argue that anything that we do and i'm going to talk about some some specific things and now then i'll yield even if you argue that anything that we propose would not have directly impacted uh tibian or or zion or any other number of people even if you propose that it still gives you the moral authority to say we have tried everything we can as a city we have thrown everything in our toolbox at the issue like we've done on some other issues here in Durham so at the very least we can say we're working to create a context where these things are less likely and i do not believe we have done it as a city and i am appealing to this council as my elected leaders and as friends and as respected colleagues that we bring the same level of resolve to this issue that we've done to others what might that look like i believe uh uh uh mr mayor and colleagues that there are some actions that we can take now and and again we spoke into the argument being within a federal bailiwick versus state we know that we get into federal business all the time and other issues also want to talk about the evidentiary argument what i'm about to propose if we suggest that uh well we're not going to do some things because the evidence doesn't support it or we don't know if it's going to work um then i would respectfully submit that in the same breath the moment you entomb the evidentiary argument was standard then it then it then it behooves us to look at evidence of things we have done we have tried you're going to make the evidentiary argument then what does the evidence tell us about the two and a half million dollars we spent on participatory budgeting does it warrant its its its continuation and when we look at it purely from an empirical point of view did it do what we wanted it to do and if it didn't do what we intended for it to do and we decide to double down that would be weird because then the question becomes why are we doing it if we didn't get the results that we wanted but we're going to spend more money on it two and a half million dollars for that five hundred thousand dollars for the the the the immigrant defense fund where's the money what what what do we tell black mothers who have been blowing our phones up what what are we where where are we spending the money on them right now in the in the in the near term tactically right now um and respectfully you know if we if we talk about shared economic prosperity well we've got a jobs plan that will show fruit 10 years from now or five years from now if if we're spending money in the right now on other things and not on gun violence in this city and we say to black folk well get a job the jobs are coming and this will give these young men the same thing to do something to do so they won't pick up guns and we don't have jobs for them ready right now to me that that's the equivalent of saying to our immigrant brothers and sisters well you know what when the federal government fixes the immigration issue that's when things will get right in the meantime we have no business spending city money on the defense fund because it's a federal issue intellectually there is no distinction for me if we got money for those things we ought to have money for some other things i believe that we as a government should be immediately immediately looking at city funds to expand violence and corruption you want to defund the police and you want to spend on root causes let's spend the month what root pick the root cause tell us what root cause we can do right now i have a recommendation there are organizations in our city that are working on alternatives to incarceration alternatives to to a traditional policing the the the violence interruption model that the county funds to bull city united we ought to be looking right now to expand that with city funding we ought to be looking at an experimental deployment of shot spotter technology that could potentially save lives because nobody called police and responded show up or could muscularize our investigative capabilities to take repeat shooters off the street if we seriously believe that most shooting are done by by by the same group of people then it can be argued that if we take those people off the street then we possibly could affect future shootings if we really believe what we say that's the same people doing it and if we can muscularize our investigative capabilities to do that i i cannot somebody needs to tell me why that's not worth five hundred thousand dollars or whatever it costs the possibility of saving the lives of black children who are being trained like soldiers to duck and cover to get into bath tubs to get off of their bikes and hide behind trees like they're in afghanistan or a rat but we've got money for other things where is the sense of urgency for black lives in the most progressive city in the south where is the money in here and in the now i'm asking us in the in the short term in the near term to look to look at funding uh uh uh responders that are unarmed right now in the nearer sense i don't think this does any violence to the mission or the task of the wellness task force that we're putting together um because let's be honest the trajectory of the wellness task force uh for many is to look for alternatives to policing let that work go forward but right the the however the work on gun violence right now is not at odds with the wellness task force both things can happen concurrently but we need the same type of of urgency around this issue as we do covid if that looks like a gun violence task force mr mayor or if it looks like repurposing the the the violent crime uh task force which are the meanings i go to oftentimes we just get reports from what people are doing perhaps that organization needs to be tasked and refocused but i come uh as someone who has performed the funerals of gunshot victims of someone who has tried to who has sat with families and tried to make sense of the of the of the utter nonsense of it and i'm also coming as someone who is able to rattle off a number of initiatives in a number of areas when people ask me about them but i am silent i am deathly silent when it comes to what this city is doing concretely about gunfire and it's embarrassing and it's heartbreaking and as our racial equity task force said it is unacceptable it is unacceptable so so i i i i put that to you all um respectfully um i think that the time for us to to prioritize and i know it's a priority for us personally as there are black mothers who sit on this council there are fathers who sit on this council there are lovers of Durham uh who's bona fide progressives who sit on this council uh but i think it is time for us to to to not be anesthetized or lull into thinking that we're hitting the mark in all areas because we're not and it's okay for us to be honest about that um it's okay for the racial equity task force to call us to the cartoon but but people in this city are absolutely heartbroken we are heartbroken and and we are tired uh and and we are we are we are not uh under any illusion that we're doing everything that we can do as a city and we're not going to throw up our hands and just say oh it's a federal problem because we don't do it on other issues where is the money and what can we do in the short term right now other than just tell black folk get a job or or the or the pathology that you're dealing with is somehow we don't say it explicitly but our inaction some people are beginning to read that as well that's just the way they act until they get their own act together that's just the way it's going to be and i know with everything in me that's not the way we feel that's not who we are as a city and that's not who we are as a council finally i know that this is not just a government issue i know that this is not just a we can't police our way out of it um there have been black mothers that have called and sent messages um and one black woman in the city i don't have permission to use her name now but perhaps she'll allow that moving forward that put a challenge to me and some other black men in this city um so so today i want to let you know that outside of my government i think we lost um connection with council member middleton i would just uh echo um council member middleton's comments and that i've had those phone calls and it's been hard i'm back i'll let you continue thank you outside of my government work uh sorry for that go uh the devil's business outside of my government work uh i am organizing uh with a number of black men in the city uh to organize 1 000 black men who are making a commitment to stand between our young people and violence in this city uh to buttress organizations that are already doing things i want to thank people like john rucks i want to thank on marbez Lee i'm going to thank uh antonio jones uh who i've been in conversation with we are outside of the government uh uh and let this word go forth now we're organizing 1 000 black men fathers uncles husbands uh educated not educated from the streets uh bougie some got records some don't have records it doesn't matter where you've been or who you are we're calling on 1 000 black men to join with us and stand uh in solidarity to place ourselves literally and figuratively between our children and gunfire in the city because we know this isn't just a government issue we know we can't police ourselves out of it but but but we know that there's some things we need to do as a community the question today Durham city council Durham government is do we have a partner in this work or are we on our own that is the question are we going to throw everything we have as a city the kitchen sink at this problem without resorting to the uh arguments about it's a federal problem or or or or evidentiary arguments which do not seem to hold sway with other areas uh that we decide we want to do something in where's the money where's our result so i'll in there for the for the sake of our children for the sake of the honor of our city uh for the sake of our own humanity let us meet this hour with righteous zeal and do all we can to save these black kids lives in this city god bless nerf god bless the mclean family thank you mr mayor thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you council member um chief davis did you want to respond well um thank you um mayor pro tem uh i don't have very much to say um thank you for giving me the opportunity to to speak and um thank you council member middleton and um just want to reiterate that we can't you know do this work by ourselves we've been in painful conversations as well as it relates to some of the shootings that have occurred and i wholeheartedly agree that if we could find other support mechanisms to assist in this overwhelming burden of of trying to intercept gunfire even as if it's from community sources like 1000 black men to help with our young people or just community members or other types of programming the Durham police department would be mostly appreciated is shocking to see our young people impact it the way that they have been in the last um you know a few weeks innocent people um just having to live with gunfire and and not in our hot spot areas just in other areas of the city the the level of brazenness uh of shootings you know in the middle of the night is has um sent shock waves uh to other citizens throughout the city and it's very disturbing so um thank you all for the opportunity and most of our concern has to do especially as it relates to crime right now is our aggravated assaults our aggravated assaults right now is driving violent crime about 30 up in aggravated assaults other violent crimes are down however this is uh enough to really change uh the quality of life you know in our in our community so um thank you for the opportunity mayor pro tem to speak thank you chief um tigriana did you want to finish your thought that you were making earlier i was just trying uh just kind of give middleton a chance to get back on the lawn yeah he's back i just wanted to give you the opportunity to keep speaking if you wanted to i'll just if there are any other um comments from members of the council mr mayor thank you minor mayor pro tem i really appreciate uh what council member council member middleton said and the heartfelt message that he's bringing us um i know this really is from the heart and it's moving to hear it and um i think that the a couple of comments just uh you know the interesting thing i think is the point that that you made about the uh the task force the coveted task force the recovery renewal task force i'm you know thinking about that you know what i thought about wow as hard as it is to move stuff on coveted it's easier than to move this um and uh you know to to to take some actions that i think are effective um a lot of what i say is i was trying to think of what you said was so good about and so right about uh being proud about when people say i mean people say all the time i you all get them you get the millions of emails saying what are you doing on this you know uh usually with some name calling or criticism to go with it and then i can always offer well you know what are we doing on affordable housing here's what we're doing you know what are we doing on you know COVID-19 you know you name but i agree with you mark anthony that mainly what i say when people say uh what are you doing on gun violence is i do several say several things i'll say one is uh we have a really good police force we have a really well-led police force and that is you know i i believe in them and i want to follow their lead and they have my support that's my first thing i say second thing i say is is what you also mentioned which is um we have a community safety task force that's going to be doing work and it's going to be figuring out things that can help us uh be alternative kinds of responses that can keep our help keep our community safe and both of those things seem good right and true but i also really understand your point that um it doesn't seem like from that it doesn't seem like yeah that's immediate action that we're taking and i think that's important uh and so i appreciate you bringing that perspective um you know it seems like the the tooth and let me just say one more thing and i think that the you know the thousand black men uh is awesome and uh those kinds of efforts on the part of community groups and individuals and so many people in our community that are trying to do good things like that are just so critically important um the the two things that i heard specifically in terms of specific comments uh are the shot spotter technology and the violence interrupters and um so uh i guess i would say i would argue with you a little bit about the the evidentiary test i i feel like we at least yeah i think we try to apply it all the time i don't know how well we always do with it but i think we're constantly trying to look at did this work some things we can easily measure some things is harder than i think that we we um we try on that a lot and uh you know i'm not i'm not going to make an argument right here for against shot spotter but i do think that the evidentiary information is important and that's also true for violence interrupters or whatever else we try um you know specifically violence interrupters right now are in a very difficult situation that because of covid the county has really shut down their violence interrupter operation which we've heard we talked about the other day at the violence criminal prevention roundtable which is a problem um you know i think it is part of our problem um and um we were at the uh you know we saw the the the uh the bolstered united folks yesterday uh at the vigil but by and large they've been very uh they haven't been intervening uh because of covid 19 and and the the not you know not being out at individual you know knocking on doors and those kinds of things and i think that's been a big problem for us so um i think that one of the things that you said uh i think would be you know i think about we have we have groups that exist we have um the crime cabinet uh we have the gang reduction steering committee and um you know maybe the thing to do is to try to uh talk to them about what are some of these what are some immediate actions immediate immediate always too fast what are some um actions that we can take expeditiously that would help us because i think a lot of these people um you know these are folks that are thinking about it a lot and uh you know we can ask them what do you think that we ought to do that would be immediate and you know what does it cost so i just want to um acknowledge the importance of what you're saying uh i think i should say one other thing too the other thing that i say a lot is another thing that you said is you're right i say all the time you know guns you know the federal and state gun policy is killing so to speak and i do believe that's true and i don't believe that's an excuse i believe that you're right you know we need to say that when you said it all the time um but we at the same time we need to be taking all the actions that we possibly can so i appreciate your remarks um i think that you're right that uh we need to be thinking now about what are some of the things that we can do that we're not uh and uh and i think we ought to figure out how to impanel the right people to think like this is my thoughts thank you mr mayor other council members or council member middleton do you want to respond madam mayor pretend if i might thank you ma'am mr mayor thank you so much and and i want to be clear sir i'm in no way eschewing evidentiary standards quite the contrary i believe in evidence i believe in science my point is that i watched um powerful people and i'm not talking about this council i'm just talking about in general i've watched powerful people implement ideas that they believed in evidence notwithstanding because they thought it was a good idea they thought it was what the moment required now i'm going to talk about our council um the evidence did not really support us spending two and a half million dollars on participatory budget but we had the political will to do it now we have evidence and the result was 60 percent of the participants were white that was not our intent that's not what we planned that was not the plan for participatory budgeting it was supposed to bring more people in who didn't normally participate so we funded a supplemental white voter initiative to the tune of two and a half million dollars so now that we have evidence what what will we do with that evidence now because if we double down then that suggests that this isn't about evidence it's about what we think is important and what we want to do and all i'm simply saying that if that's going to be the standard then we can't turn around and make the evidentiary argument against something that hasn't even happened yet because we just don't want to do it that you you can't have it both ways either we're going to let evidence be our god small g so to speak across the board or we don't get to weaponize it only for the things that we want to make happen or don't want to make happen and all and listen i'm so into evidence that if it don't work don't do it anymore so i'm listening shot spot is not a panacea it's not you know if it doesn't work if we don't if it doesn't provide listen we're grown we can stop doing it we can stop spending money on it but i think it's real suspect if we continue to spend money on things that the evidence shows that did not attain the results we wanted because now that brings other things into play that that calls into question what our motors are and what we're doing all i'm simply saying is that if we can find money for things that clearly are not linked to evidentiary uh an evidentiary standard uh uh or maybe they are uh then i want the moral authority for this council for this government i want us to have a moral authority to say to people whose kids are dying and ducky and cover that this one action may not have stopped this shooting or maybe it would have we don't know no evidence either way but at the very least we can say we've done everything we can and that's a different standard that's a different position to be in when you're trying to comfort someone when you can say you know that you've done everything you can as opposed to comforting them knowing that you have not died of api across every tea that's uncomfortable i'm talking it's embarrassing to be in that position for me uh personally so whatever my voice is worth whatever i've just vowed whatever capital i have i'm going to spend it on this issue and and i just want to say that that i am in no way suggesting that we should a shoe or do away with evidence i'm actually saying let's if we're going to claim evidence and let's let's let's do it across the board with everything and not just cherry pick issues so thank you thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you ma'am madam mayor pro tem has asked me to take over presiding so i'm going to do that she has to get one of her children on a zoom other comments councilmember reese thank you mr mayor i appreciate the opportunity grateful to my colleagues for the conversation we've had so far and mr mayor i want to say how much i appreciate your thoughtful response to the councilmember middleton's call to action this afternoon um i guess i want to get to some specifics um i'm very excited about the possibility of supporting uh violence and eruption work as a city uh obviously as you mentioned mr mayor that work is on hold in fact the the staff of bull city united just finished their COVID outreach this week um that's all you may have noticed some of the folks at the at the vigil last night were um exhorting people to remember social distancing i believe their training was very fresh in their minds um and and they were putting it to good use already uh and so in the near term those folks will be hard at work uh doing that particular work um i think um but i think as soon as we're in a position to feel those resources into the community again i'm i'm strongly in support of that i also agree with councilmember middleton that we uh don't necessarily need to wait for the task force to be formed start meeting to recommend things to start preparing for something very similar to the kahoot service in oregon uh that substitutes um sending our police officers into certain situations with uh different types of professionals i think those are things we can start planning to do right now uh the the problem we have is without knowing the extent to which the police department's time energy and money is spent responding to those kind of calls it's very difficult to figure out what what we'll need in terms of personnel resources training etc but i think we can start to answer those questions uh and begin to move forward with that i definitely support that with respect to shot spotter um i as the mayor said i don't necessarily think this is an appropriate place to talk about whether or not shot spotter is a good idea but i will say that when i uh took the oath of office for the second time back in december i made it clear that i was willing to leave um i was willing to keep an open mind about things that we had made decisions about as a council previously shot spotter is a great example of something that i have real concerns about that i think um other communities who have tried it have seen success but others have seen uh not success but having said that um if the administration believes it's an important use of resources and wants to come forward with that recommendation i'm very happy to take another look at it um and that's what i think about shot spotter the one thing i wanted to add to the conversation is i think it's possible to believe that participatory budgeting is a good program that did good things in this community and have flaws and still believe that and still believe in science and evidence and i think you can do that um and have that belief based on the fact that it brought an unparalleled number of people into the budgeting process um it generated tons of great ideas about how the city could be spending its money and is funding some of those ideas those are good things and were were there problems with it absolutely nobody's happy with the democrats or the people that actually ended up voting for those projects and that's work we have to improve on um but i think it's possible to believe in evidence and believe that the evidence is that there were some great outcomes uh from participatory budgeting i think it's possible to uh to support participatory budgeting and propose other measures that aren't supported by evidence uh and not have to question each other's motives about why we're doing either of those things i think that's possible um and while i've been told that uh i i have i'm reliably informed that this work is not about our feelings it's about the results i do think it's possible for us to consider in our minds and to make assumptions that people are operating under good motives and trying to do their best and that's what i try to do in my work mr mayor so with respect to the specific suggestions that councillor middleton made i think i made my opinion on those pretty clear i'd love to see us move forward on a number of fronts um and if the administration uh believes that shot spotter would make certain parts of the city safer i hope they'll come forward with that and we can have a full discussion on that again as we did last year um that's what i wanted to say about that thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember reese uh anyone else like to comment at this time mayor pro tem back from the back from the putting the kid on the uh we figured it out we're trying we're trying zoom piano lessons so wow we'll see we'll see how it goes yeah um thank you i just wanted to um say a couple of things about a couple of ideas that councilmember middleton brought up um violence interrupters specifically um is something that i feel is a is a great intervention to um to stop violent crime in communities it's i hadn't heard that they had had to cease most of their activities due to covid so that's um i'm sorry to hear that and i think that we you know need to need to figure out how we keep programs like that going during this period because we know this pandemic is is going to be here with us for for a long time and i'd hate to see these kinds of programs completely go away uh the role of the task force in in thinking about how to how to do violence interruption and how to um enhance our program that we have right now in the county i think it's going to be really important and i'm hoping that there'll be people who are both who both have experience with the criminal legal system from being justice involved or being advocates who will join that um who will join that task force and be able to help us make decisions about um about how to how to continue that work how to make the the violence interrupter um work more more effective it's working now i think that um they've had some good outcomes but i think we can always do better and if we want to have a serious and scalable impact on gun violence that we need to to figure out how to make that program um even more successful the second thing um was about the crisis response and that is something that i think we can move that that is something that i would support moving forward with in concert with the task force as we agreed at our last budget meeting um that we were going to move forward with making appointments and and assigning people to do this work after august whether whether or not the county had agreed to join in that we would hope that the county would agree to come on later if we chose to do that in that time the school board um has decided to sign on and appoint five people so we would have 10 residents ready to ready to engage on that task force um if we were to if we were to move forward and i think that the city should be working to set up the infrastructure um that we need to make that program possible um at the same time as we're constituting the task force and figuring out ways to get effective resident feedback so um if we if we need to think about as i think we do need to think about creating a joint city county office of community safety or office of violence prevention um as they have another in a few other cities that are um that we could ask our administration to all right to start thinking about that and i and i think that they are already probably thinking about that given that we've signaled a desire to um to move in the direction of of having a robust um non-police response to crisis services um so i think that that that also though i i don't know that that um i don't know that that directly get the the crisis response question directly gets to the point of preventing gun violence it's it's more of a it would free up police resources in some ways that don't necessarily need to be spent on um on non-violent issues to deal with violent issues if we um if we were able to divert you know say 20 of 911 calls that police are now responding to to a crisis service um but both of those both of those um ideas that council member Middleton brought up i support and would support moving forward with with both of them to the extent possible given COVID and um given what i feel is a need to have community community engagement and feedback through the task force but i think we can be moving we can be moving simultaneously we don't have to we don't necessarily have to wait for the task force to be fully constituted and make recommendations there are some things that we know we want to move forward on and we can move forward on those so thank you mr mayor council member Middleton thank you mr mayor um and i'm going to thank i'm going to thank all of you for for the spirit of this conversation um but i i think i i need to i need to respond to councillor reese because i don't want there to be any misunderstanding going forward from this conversation um i am in no way questioning anyone's personal motives what i am questioning is the stated intent stated outcome of initiative relative to what actually happened and i will not have this conversation obfuscated or obscured by by by any suggestion that anything other than that was intended i support and supported participatory budgeting it's a listen my whole life adult life is about increasing uh uh participation of participation in our democracy i mean that that's one of my core values but it was slated as an equity initiative it was under the general rubric of equity everybody watching this broadcast knows that white folk do not have an issue with access we listen to a whole racial equity task force presentation about the systemic barriers to black people and people of color participating in our economy in our credit markets in our democracy baseball well you name the area in american life and we know that there have been systemic and institutional barriers that's what i'm talking about we we build pb as a way to combat some of those barriers that have kept folk who didn't normally participate and to give more voices uh more access to voices who did not traditionally uh participate to have 60 white participation and me to call it out and to suggest that that's somehow me talking about personal motives is is is is misses the point of what i'm saying i'm talking about what we build it as how much money we spent on it our will to to to forgo what the staff recommended which was about 700 000 dollars and jack it up to 2.5 million dollars of course good ideas were generated i voted for some of those ideas look listen housing increasing housing stock is a good idea the question is how much of that housing stock is affordable you know we can have a million dollar houses uh increase the housing stock but if it's all above that price point then then the point is is that we got some great ideas how many of those ideas came from folk who normally don't get their ideas heard who normally have a problem with having their voice uh uh uh heated that was the point i honor and respect every single person on this council i have said time and time again you're all superheroes in the progressive world each of you have your own claim to greatness in the progressive world i've said it time and time again i'll keep saying it this is not about personal motives this is about our activities as a government as the final arbiter of policy in our city and that's what i was appealing to you as if if it came off as a personal thing please forgive me uh but let me be clear i'm talking about what we stated our intentions were and what actually happened that evidence that science that's what i meant that's what i said i stand by it and let let let there be no confusion about what i meant or what i said um thank you mr mayor thank you very much council member uh mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor i have some i have thing i don't want to continue this debate about participatory budgeting because i feel like this is not the place but i do feel like council member middleton has brought up several times his assertion that pb did not meet its goals with regard to equity and i think it would be good to put on a future work session agenda um a discussion or conversation with our pb staff and with our budget director about the evaluation that they did of the program um at the end of the cycle and their recommendations for um for how to change the make changes to the program moving forward there were a number of goals for pb with regard to equity that were met the data that that is being cited right now about the number of people who voted um was was incomplete leaves out the majority of people who voted with paper ballots and the majority of our during public school students who we don't have have racial data on um but our our pb staff and steering committee and budget department have done a full analysis in um cooperation with north carolina central university have given us a number of um proposals for improving the process and of course they're you know going to have some there will be i know an upcoming um some advice to us from the pb staff about how to manage the next cycle given coveted and all of the kinds of community engagement that we um that we normally do that are going to be um not possible during the pandemic but yeah i this issue keeps coming up and i would like to just have some time on an agenda to give our community accurate information about pbs metrics goals what happened this last cycle um and how we plan to improve upon our work for future years um and i'll just propose maybe our administration could um find some time to do that on an upcoming work session or if there's already a plan for the pb staff to come talk to us about the next cycle we could build the discussion into that um into that conversation thank you very much uh councilmember cabrillo thank you mayor uh real quick i would appreciate that conversation on pb because at least with latinx participation and some of the best participation we've gotten in any city programs so i i also uh look forward to that conversation additionally i'm happy to work with council member middleton since he did raise the immigration defense fund about all the background work i did as an individual all the meetings i held uh that i i was very um meticulous and the process that i followed that took me two years to get to and happy to work with you in any way i can to move the issues that you are raising here that clearly you are extremely passionate about and i think we all are passionate about um so happy to work with you on on any of the work that you would like to do around that uh i definitely am interested in violent the violence interruption that many folks have also said that they are committed to figuring out how the city can move forward it's something that i have a a lot of interest in and i think um i believe could have a deep impact in the violence that we're seeing in our city um so just wanted to leave it at that thank you very much council member middleton thank you mr mayor thank you council copier i accept i i would be more than willing uh to work with you i do not doubt at all uh the the amount of work and and and diligence and passion uh that you brought to the issue i want to be just like you on on the on this gun violence issue and i want i want the same type of passion and diligence uh brought to this issue so i i i accept uh without hesitation um i also uh uh want to associate myself with the mayor pro tem's comments in terms of having the review of pb um i also want to say for the record that i am i i want the same type of scrutiny uh brought to shot spotter if we should decide to do it and let the whatever the evidence or data is on that initiative um that is not aimed at necessarily um increasing democracy but literally saving black babies lives so so whatever level of scrutiny we bring to that i'm willing to have that same level of scrutiny brought to shot spotter and the evidence says that it's a bust then i'll be the first one to call for it uh to be discontinued but i think our children are worth it i think they're worth the experiment and i think it's with well due respect at this point in our development as a city i think it's a far more important issue than participatory budget which i support and i will continue to support so i welcome that same level of scrutiny brought to any initiative uh that we we uh initiate as a as a council so i thank the council for the discussion thank you and also in addition to that pb thing i'd also like to schedule what we're going to do about the violence thing which was actually the root of this conversation when what you know what we're going to do about moving on violence and corruption what our plan is in terms of funding some of these initiatives in addition to getting the record straight about pb i'd like us also to kind of be mindful of what the original purpose of this conversation was thank you mr mayor thank you uh colleagues i'll i'll plan to talk to the city manager about both of those discussions um let me just tell you all that um my um my attention span and my ability to keep going in this meeting are reaching a certain limit so uh i'll just say that i really appreciate this discussion i thank calzmer millton for bringing it to us i'll talk to the manager about uh scheduling additional thinking about it and um i think with that i think we'll move us on to the closed session so um can we set the agenda too please yes i'm sorry we need to press calzmer freeman and then we'll set the agenda thank you and we also need to hear about the appointments don't we yes thank you i i just wanted to um to just offer just a point and noting in the comments that uh councilmember middleton made it to start it was to speak to us as a constituent in the community and i just wanted to say that i i i too feel that failure and i want to apologize to you and to every um family member who has experienced this gun violence um in our community as we've all failed as a as a council to respond in a way that's actually measured to what's been going on knowing that the we're losing children and those children have friends and their friends are experiencing this trauma in a way that we have to we'll have to we'll have to count a balance and i am grateful that uh we've had this conversation i feel good about where we are i don't know what the next steps look like but as a representative of you in this community i would like to say that i i appreciate you stepping forward with the thousand black men and i would do whatever is necessary to support moving forward whether it's shot spotter or the violence interrupters or um any other great idea that comes forward that hasn't been tried i'd be willing to try because i have i am just sick of losing children in this community and that's not just physically it's all it's mentally it's spiritually it's just it's but i'm at it i'm at what's in on this and i know we can do more and i know we could do better that's it thank you thank you councilmember uh mr madame clerk do you want to talk about the appointments sure good after count good afternoon council mr maier i wanted to go through them fairly quickly you've decided to re advertise the carolina theater board of trustee position as well as the homeless services advisory committee there was consensus on uh nominating angela lee for her her reappointment and then appointing Joseph Jordan and Siria Estrada. There was also consensus on Terrell Armstrong to the Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. And you were able to agree on the open space and trails nominee of Mohammed Badshah, as well as the housing appeals board nominee of Madeline Miller. There are two items, the Durham Convention Center Authority nomination. There were three persons who wanted to re-advertise the position and then three who had selected Ashley Farrell. Would you like to know who chose which plan of action? Madam Clerk, I'll change my vote to Ashley Farrell. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pruett. And is there anything else, Madam Clerk, that we didn't do? There's one more for the Recreation Advisory Commission and there was quite a distribution on that. Karthik Sundara-Morthy received two votes from Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Caballero. Sterling Frierson received one vote from Council Member Reese. Larry Coleman received two votes from Mayor Shul and Council Member Freeman. And then David Lacey received one vote for Council Member Middleton. I will change my vote to Mr. Sundar-Morthy. Okay. And if another person would do that, then okay, Council Member Reese, okay. Okay, great. Yeah, I thought he was a good candidate also. Mr. Karthik Sundar-Morthy for the Recreation Advisory Commission and we're all finished. Thanks, Madam Clerk. And please thank Laverne for us. Definitely. I don't think she's- Thank you, Mayor. I'm here. Thank you, Mayor. I'm still here. Laverne, I'm sorry you're still here. Oh, no, no, no. It was interesting. I was listening. Even the stuff that Mark Anthony was saying? Yeah. Okay. It was interesting. Thank you, Mr. Everybody. I hope everybody's doing well. Night, Laverne. Good night. Thank you, Laverne. Miss y'all too. Thank you. No problem. No problem. Mr. Manager, shall we settle the agenda? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I believe I've got this right. Been a long afternoon, but items for consent. I have items one, three, four, six through 21 and 25 through 44 and GBA public hearings item 45 through 47. I think you're on mute, Mr. Mayor. I'm sorry. 22, 23 and 24 are taken care of, correct? All right, dispose or 25, 22, 23, 24. Okay. You've heard the manager's proposal to settle the agenda. Can I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Council Member Reece. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reece. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously and we have settled the agenda. And now I believe, please help me, you all. Is there anything else that we need to do before we move into closed session? I don't think so. All right, Madam Attorney, could you propose the language for us to move into closed session? I will, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon again. So it's in motion to go into closed session for attorney-client consultation to discuss the newly filed case of Tony Scott, Jr. and Tony Scott, Sr. versus the city of Durham at Owl that was filed in the Middle District of North Carolina. It's a federal court case. The file number is 120-CV-558. So moved. Second. Is there a second? Second. Moved by Council Member Freeman, seconded by Council Member Caballero that we move into closed session for the purposes outlined by the city attorney. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Member Rees. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. What's our process now, Madam Clerk, in terms of the meeting, closing the meeting and so forth? Mr. Mayor, I am removing the individuals who are not in the closed session from the Zoom meeting and it'll take me a moment. Thank you. You know when it's done. Okay. And Diana, do the folks who are broadcasting the meeting need any additional time to make sure that their broadcast is terminated? I do not see anyone who's broadcasting on the Zoom meeting right now. And would you say that our, we're not live streaming it? I mean, you know, all the things that the city's doing is not happening either, is that correct? Well, I haven't.


This is a mathematical snack from the Association of Teachers of Mathematics. I've got a hypothesis that says three times around your head is the same as your height. So I've got some representations of people that I'm going to test this theory on. So I measure around the head of my wooden person and it measures 9.7. And I record that on my table. Three times that head measurement would be 29.1 cm. So now I want to know the height of the person and my wooden person has a height of 31 cm. I'm going to repeat this and measure the head and height of my other people and record these on my table. Here is the data represented graphically with axes of three times around your head and the measured height. This is a very small sample of data using any representations of people. You can extend the sample to include real people, for example friends and family members. Here is a different graph looking at the difference between three times around your head and the measured height. The wooden person is smaller by a difference of 1.9. The fact that it's smaller means that what we're going to do is put across here. So the point is plotted at 29.1 and negative 1.9. And now I'm going to plot the other differences. Use the data you collect and any graphs that you generate to help you draw any conclusions about the hypothesis.