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Good afternoon happy Thursday everybody happy beautiful Thursday this March the 24th 2022 here in the Bull City Durham County North Carolina I'd like to call this city council work session to order at 1 p.m. on this great day we certainly want to welcome all of you here in attendance in person again hi everybody it's so good to see people in the audience hey everybody yes and and those joining us remotely as well madam clerk would you please call our roll mayor O'Neill I am here mayor pro tem Middleton I'm here council member Caballero here councilmember Freeman present councilmember Johnson here councilmember Williams here thank you thank you so much I will now recognize and in my colleagues were any announcement so comments all right Councilman happy ever thank you good afternoon everyone good thank you just real quick under the other matters at the end of the agenda I wanted to quickly talk about some ARPA conversations it'll take maybe one or two minutes thank you so much thank you anyone else councilmember Freeman just acknowledging I noticed there were some first responder activity on Main Street I just want to hope that folks are safe under the fire engines and EMS were out there along with our police so just sending a good cheer or a good well wish to those folks who are involved and then just a note that the youth works application is out and I want to make sure that folks are aware that we do need corporate sponsors and so if you have a company and you are willing to bring on a youth for the summer please do reach out to our workforce and economic development department thank you thank you so much mayor pro tem I think I saw your hand raised thank you madam mayor good afternoon good afternoon honorable colleagues and to everyone watching whether you're in the chamber in the chamber nice to say or remotely hope you're all having a good day first off madam mayor just by way of a bit of celebration this week I had the opportunity on your behalf in the city's behalf to welcome of the council general of Israel to the southeastern United States are not sauteed on and a delegation from a non-governmental organization called shuraka that works to promote peace in the Middle East cross Arab lines of Arab Israeli lines of religious lines of denominational lines and planted a tree got to plant a tree in East Durham Park it's called Tree of Peace which is marked out there hope residents and citizens will get an opportunity to go by I was very pleased to be doing that in Durham and they recognize Durham is a place where we work really hard to make everyone feel welcome and to make everyone feel valued and to honor each of our existence and whatever iteration it comes in so I was very pleased to welcome the council general and to give her a city of Durham pen to wear along with her friendship pen of the United States flag in the Israeli flag so I just wanted to thank our friends also I keep Durham beautiful who provided the tree for us to plant I didn't know you just don't stick them in the ground and pat them and walk away there's who knew there's a science to it so I want to thank our friends to keep Durham beautiful and thank the council general as well for her visit to Durham and the opportunity to welcome her on our behalf secondly and finally we are within the waning hours of our open application period for those that are interested in filling the vacant seat on this council of these seats that do not belong to us that belong to the people of the city and we take this this sacred obligation very seriously and approaching it with great sobriety and filling this seat this seat that belongs to you so if you are still finishing up your application just know that tomorrow is the deadline if you are interested in serving on the Durham City Council to fill out the rest of the at-large term per the vacancy per the resignation of our friend and colleague councilmember Charlie Reese that's it Madam Mayor thank you so much it's good to see all of you thank you looking on councilman Williams thank you mayor colleagues I had the opportunity to spend some time with the folks over at Bridges Point Incorporated the sickle cell agency that provides support and resources for sickle cell carriers and I I'm embarrassed to say I did not know that there were so many folks that carry the sickle cell treat who suffers from the disease and are so limited in the support and resources medical resources that are available to them so I am starting today to name that I hear you and I am committed to finding support for you to the hundreds of residents across Durham and I'll reach out to my council my commissioner colleagues to see if there is any type of Department of Public Health support for them as well but we have a we have a contingency of people in Durham with sickle cell that if you know what they actually go through on a daily basis it we shouldn't lot of happening Durham so I hope that we can find some support for them but just wanted to name it and I'll start that advocacy today thank you thank you any further announcements well I've had I've had the opportunity to meet some more of our city workers over the last couple of weeks as you know as things warm up and as we get back to whatever normal is going to look like I've been blessed to be able to interact with some of our city workers I met with some of our union members on yesterday had a really good conversation with them and on this morning I did a PSA with the water Department of Water Management and let me just tell you we have some very smart people in the that run the city and I'm just so happy and pleased to be a part of it they are very dedicated and I just wanted to give a shout out to all our city workers again today always gonna try to keep them in the forefront of my mind without these able folk we wouldn't be able to do what we do and I'm just always so pleased to meet with them you'll see a public service announcement will be coming up they told me on spectrum that I did this morning for the Ms. Water Challenge beginning in April so we'll see how that goes but they're very professional make me feel very comfortable we only did about 500 takes for about three sentences but you know we get it done and they were so patient so just a shout out to all those that I've met and all those I've yet to meet thank you all for all the work that you do so we will move now to our priority items and I'll turn to our city manager to see if she has any today good afternoon madam mayor mr. mayor pro tem and members of the Durham City Council I do have one priority item for you this afternoon agenda item number 20 which is shared economic prosperity the Durham small business work plan built to last and youth works program update that is a supplemental item that has been added to today's work session and we expect the presentation to last about 20 minutes that is all I have this afternoon you are now here the managers prior to items may I have a motion for their approval move second the move by councilwoman Freeman seconded by councilman Williams that we approve the managers prior to items all in favor say aye aye any opposed the eyes have it and the motion passes unanimously and now we'll recognize our able city attorney's office for any priority items good afternoon mayor mayor pro tem and council members donno tools sitting in for city attorney Kim Rayburg and the city attorney's office has no priority items thank you so much attorney or two you now turn to our city clerk for them recognize her for any priority items good afternoon madam mayor madam mr. mayor approved him and council members I do have a couple items I wanted to update you on the out large vacancy applications and then discuss how to process the agenda item for the April 7th work session thank you so much now entertain a motion to accept city clerk's priority items move second right it's been moved by councilwoman Freeman and seconded by councilwoman Johnson for approval of the clerk's priority items let us have a vote at this particular time all those in favor say aye any opposed hearing none eyes have it and the motion passes unanimously we now move to our second order of business and I will read to you the entire agenda starting first with the administrative consent items the departmental items presentations and public hearings okay and we do have one matter that the citizens that a citizen has pool right okay all right so we have our first item will be the approval of the city council minutes item number two is the participatory budgeting steering committee appointments the department of items beginning with item 3 is a virtual private network VPN access and digital technology performance audit February 20th 22 item 4 which is amending the FY 2021 2022 budget and other grant project ordinances and it will be pulled by Miss Stella Adams item 5 which is FY 2022-23 budget development guidelines will also be pulled by Miss Stella Adams item number 6 the amendment of operating agreement with volunteers of America of the Carolinas Inc. VOAC to provide services for homelessness coordinated entry with diversion number 7 the annual report for the community safety and wellness task force number 8 master service agreements for the 2022-2025 City of Durham Durham Chapel Hill Caldwell Metropolitan Planning Organization DC HC MPO on-call professional services engineering services data collection and community engagement item 9 purchase contract repower of gold Durham buses I don't matter would you pull that please item 10 the award of construction contract for the Eno River force main relocation project to J. F. Wilkerson contracting company incorporated I'd like that pulled as well please sir item 11 award of a professional engineering services contract determines group Inc. for the improvements for access to utility easements and facilities project item 12 February 2022 bid report number 13 amend the FY 2021-22 capital improvement program and amend the design bill services contract with Skanska USA building incorporated from major league baseball facility standards upgrades at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park Madam Mayor would you pull that please yes number 14 lease agreement with Durham County at 2725 Holloway Street for the continued operation of Durham County Amalat substation and emergency medical service training item 15 revised cultural and public art resolution to incorporate membership changes item 16 contract with s and m e incorporated for traffic study at the waste disposal and recycling center madam if you could pull that item yes ma'am presentations item 17 is an update on the Durham safe routes to school program item 18 the 2019 trail implementation program under public hearings number 19 item 19 zoning map change bull city townhomes number 20 just a supplemental item is the presentation shared economic prosperity Durham small business work plan built to last and you works program update all right madam manager here's what I have for the food items and presentations we have put item number 4 by miss Adams number 5 by miss Adams 9 10 and 13 by mayor pro tem Middleton and item 16 by councilwoman Freeman we also have its presentations 17 update on the Durham safe routes to school program 18 2019 trail implementation program and also item number 20 shared economic prosperity Durham small business work plan built to last and you works program is that what you have as well madam manager yes all right thank you so much we will now return to our and review our pulled items beginning with item number 4 which has been pulled by miss Stella Adams and that item is the men the men the FY 2021 2022 budget and other grant project ordinances and we have our staff person here who is miss Christina Reardon did I did I murder your did I kill you got it got very close Christina Reardon yes with budget and management services thank you and it's written is here to ask any questions miss Adams miss Adams is there I believe right miss Adams you have the floor now you have three minutes I believe miss Adams can you hear us ma'am miss Adams she's been unmuted on our side okay miss Adams can you hear us I believe your mic is on on this end if you can hear us if you can raise your virtual hand and you can make sure that our internet is working properly can you say something miss Adams all right miss Adams what I'm gonna do I'm gonna ask me a pro Tim to start with item 9 and then we'll return to you as I see if we can get a technology folk to take a look and make sure that everything's working okay so may a pro Tim if you allow me to pull to look at one of your pulled items which will be number nine absolutely as you direct ma'am absolutely and which is the purchase contract repower of go-derm buses and then we'll return back to miss Adams and we have miss a Tom Devlin here for to answer any questions all right sir you have four thank you so much I'm good to see you good afternoon real quick all my pull items are real real quick questions so it's a good thing to read because when I first saw a repower like what does it repower me and I read to the memo it's exactly replacing stuff so go Durham we strive to get 15 years out of our buses I read that 12 about 12 years is when we need to repower things I know there's some some type of math behind repowering as opposed to repurchasing but it's I just wanted that is that an industry best practice to repower as opposed to just make them go to 15 as a so good afternoon madam mayor mayor pro tem and members of council Sean Egan director of transportation for the city hope everyone can hear so 15 year planned useful life the federal transit administration requires buses purchased with federal funds to be used for a minimum of 12 years what we find is that over the we're trying to maximize the life cycle benefit and minimize the life cycle cost so what we do is a series of three five year life cycles so at the five year we adding up to 15 years total so at the five year point we replace the engine and transmission we have a very demanding duty cycle for our equipment so at about five years we start to see reliability fall off significantly and we don't want to be in a position where a bus breaks down and strands our riders by the side of the road we want safe and reliable equipment so we do that at the five year mark at the seven and a half year mark we do interior and exterior rehabilitation so we repaint we replace any seating that needs to be replaced or carpeting that needs to be replaced internally so that's at the midlife seven and a half years then we come back at 10 years and do the drivetrain again the engine and transmission and at the 15 year point that's when we're supposed to be retiring our equipment we haven't always kept up with this cycle so we had for example last year some buses that have been serviced for over 18 years in our fleet but we've now retired all of our 2003 and 2005 equipment so we're back within our planned 15 year useful life but we need to move forward with this contract so that we maintain that five-year cycle for five and ten engine and transmission replacements best primer ever thanks and for demystifying some of that you know we did we just kind of jump on them and ride them and it's I think it's good every once in a while to hear that's what goes into maintaining our fleet so I appreciate that yeah I didn't I'm sorry I didn't recognize you without the without the headset my bad man and your filter game is strong as well because you look you look different in person it's my first time ever speaking in this chamber so wow that's right well nice to be here I didn't recognize you in the chamber thanks so much man I appreciate you that's it Madam Mayor on that item thank you Councilwoman Johnson and also thank you Madam Mayor I'm sorry Sean I need you to come back hey so I just had a question and you know we're trying to convert a good chunk of our fleet to electric buses and those are a lot more expensive up front but are there the same kind of ongoing maintenance costs that we see with the diesel buses like do they start to look better when you factor in all of the upgrades and stuff that we have to do with the diesel ones over time so what we expect with the lifecycle cost of the electric vehicles is that we won't have at these large outlays at the five seven and a half and ten year cycles there will be costs associated with battery pack replacement the industry is still working its way through this the technology is still new so it's not entirely clear a what the right timing is for those battery pack replacements and then what the cost associated with those would be but the ongoing maintenance cost and fuel cost is much much lower for the electric equipment it doesn't have all of the moving parts that require maintenance the way that a diesel bus does so our hope is that over a 15 year lifecycle the savings in maintenance repower rehabilitation and in particularly fuel these days with gas and diesel prices where they are moving to electric should yield significant benefits for us and provide a comparable overall 15 year lifecycle cost with significant air quality emissions and noise pollution benefits that all sounds really great thank you Debra Duregan this is in a complicated way I just had to take a moment of personal privilege while you're here when I came back from DC last week I wrote the bus to my house and I wrote an electric bus and there was a rider who verbally assaulted one of the drivers while I was on the bus and I was tired I had a hoodie on I had shades on I had my mask on and I just looked like a regular person just sitting there quiet and the the person you know started just cursing out the driver I want to say that the driver was so professional he handled it extremely professional and when I got off the bus I gave him my card and I thanked him for a service so I wanted to highlight that customer service experience and I also want to highlight that our drivers go through a lot folks in Durham please be respectful and the bus was really really cool and I think he used the last amount of the battery to get me home so I shout out the transportation thank you guys thank you anyone else okay we're going to return back thank you mr. Egan I didn't recognize you with your eyeglasses we're gonna return back to pulled items number four and see if we can get miss Adams on the line which is the amend the FY 2021-22 budget and other grant project ordinances miss Adams are you available we'll see if you will okay here we are if you can unmute I think you may be able to speak at this point I've asked her to unmute madam mayor but she hasn't I think you're ready to proceed miss Adams miss Adams can you hear me she says you you may be unmuted now madam mayor she is unmuted all right miss Adams she's speaking but we can't hear she's speaking try to speak now well all right we can hear you we're gonna have yes we're gonna have you on council when William speaker phone he actually has his phone up to the mic going on school so if you could just speak we should be able to hear you miss Adams that's one second and to my colleagues I'm the newbie so pardon this informality yes ma'am Egan is here to address some comments as to item four so if you would allow him to do so and thank you for your comments on that items miss Adams and we'll come back right we'll come back to you good afternoon again Shawnee again director of transportation what you have before you in the grant project ordinance is funding for the safety and state of good repair of our system so for example the repower item the replacement of engine and transmissions that work has to take place across our fleet to ensure the safety and reliability of our equipment the federal funds are matched with city tax funds that are raised through the city's 3.75 cent property tax rate this does not include funding from the county half-cent sales tax that is a separate source of funding this is part of our ongoing safety and state of good repair program at the same time we have most certainly heard strong community support for improvements on the route nine we have requested in the FY 23 county transit work plan additional services and additional funding to improve service on the route nine and we're working closely with that team to add future funding more hours better frequency in the coming years for route nine so we want to make sure that this can move forward so that we ensure the safety and state of good repair of our fleet but we're very aware and we've heard loud and clear the the interest from our community in more and better service on route nine and we'll be working to advance that through the adoption of the county transit plan hopefully later this year if any further comments from council all right we will move now move to item five FY 2022-23 budget development guidelines and Ms. Adams you may speak to that agenda item at this time I know John allure is also on the line if there's any questions as well but I'm happy to answer anything Mr. Allure if you if you have any comments we are ready to hear those sir I think that you also we can see you but we can hear you but you can hear us obviously okay let's see Mr. Logan you try and say something again I saw the mute button did come off still having technical difficulties yeah he's just texted that he's passing it'll have passing the baton so thank you I will say that yeah I'm sure that what he I imagine what he would say is that we could we would be happy to add kind of those that language to the guidelines and make that revision before the council meeting on Monday thank you so much we'll look forward to the other decision I don't matter if I might I firstly I do want to say in defense of the staff in the city the the language of equity is ubiquitous in our in our strategic plan and the way we score things for the budget as well so this this this particular document instrument you know is in no way it's a pretty kind of set piece that we get each year but this is no way is reflective of the absence of equity or the you know the the presence of an equity lens we talk about all the time and it informs all of our work so there there are a number of other places to look to be assured by that I don't know that this necessarily constitutes a directive to the staff to change the budget guidelines you know we can certainly talk about that as a council but but I would say I agree with Ms. Adams of as always with she's a gadfly for us and making sure that we remain focused on equity but it's in there it's in the scoring it's all through this process I this is you know I I was going to pull this one anyway because I think this this item warrants I think at least some kind of highlights or or a primer before we just pass it on consent you know we usually used to kind of massaging this a little bit and I noticed that there there may be a tweaking at least room to tweak the tax rate and I think that certainly warrants kind of the the thinking or the the tick-tock behind it rather than just passing it by consent particularly for for residents who may be watching and wondering what their taxes are going to look like and how we're going to proceed so I was just wondering if staff wanted to give us a kind of a tick-tock as to how we got to this particularly iteration of it of the guidelines sure yes and we I do want to say that the text I just got from director or was that he wanted to say exactly what you said so which is that we do have some equity tools that we're using in the budget this year and both in our CIP scoring and also in our budget requests but as far as this document this was created after your you remember your budget retreats that council held over four days and so it's kind of a direction to staff for the manager's proposed budget on what should be kind of included in that budget and so as far as the tax rate goes the the the one change that council is considering is the in the general fund there is language in here that says the general fund which is currently at 30.95 cents may be considered to fund additional structure and salary adjustments and those would be for staff got you okay thank you for that I I just know that this this is a I mean we in the scrutiny that miss Adams put on it is is only you know indicative of how the rest of the people when they see these guidelines that this is kind of one of those threshold kind of moments when it comes to although we haven't ultimately passed a budget yet but one of those kind of aha moments this is what's kind of frame so I just wanted to give staff an opportunity to bring any any potential highlights get manager please think yeah thank thank you madam mayor I would not add a lot of comments but what I would bring to the attention of the mayor and council is that we did have a couple of years when we were very flat with our compensation for our employees because for good reason that good reason being we were in COVID we wanted to ensure that we could vary that we were fiscally responsible with the resources that we do have while we value our employees we know that sometimes that value is in the form of compensation and we want to make sure our employees are very well compensated what you have in your budget guidelines is a may because we are still developing the budget and we would not propose an increase in any amount if it is not required or needed in order to balance the budget but you you you will recall we made a significant investment very well deserved in our public safety public safety departments that is going to require us to bring an additional item in the tune to the tune of nine million dollars into our base budget just to cover those market adjustments and as we look at some of the other frontline workers as well as others who provide service in this community because they also have not had a significant any significant increases to the base salary over the past couple of years we are working very diligently to manage our budget within the tax rate that has have already been that that is the 30.95 cents you see there but we did want to have some flexibility to move that slightly if we need to and obviously if we did make a recommendation for that it would be just that it would be a recommendation for your consideration and your approval which is why we did not have an amount in there because we're still hopeful that we'll be able to incorporate all of our priorities and not have to have that adjustment. Thank you so much for that madam manager and and let me be clear this this this you know my my invitation to kind of make these statements on record is more about transparency and understanding for the for the public's sake not that you know we're not going to dot our eyes across our T's and that we understand you know in city halls speak that it's recommendations and the parameters but I but I know you know when folk who aren't plugged into this stuff don't do it every day when they hear stuff like oh they're going to vote for the guidelines they're set already I just wanted to be you know as we go through each step give an opportunity for the very excellent meticulous work that the staff is doing to be highlighted and showcased as much as possible so thank you so much for that on the great guidelines thank you thank you madam mayor thank you madam manager all right we will next to turn to item number 10 which is the award of construction contract for the eno river force main relocation project to jf which was in contracting company that has been pulled by mayor pro tem middle yeah the floor sir thank you madam mayor who who uh chair munrone mr c resource person he's aren't virtual so that may be don't can you hear us can we look like he can't hear you all right but we can't hear you hear you are you not muted are you yeah it's clearly the russians I um well if he can't um and there's no one in chamber I'll I'll until we get the technology worked out I'll I guess I can just suspend or all right would you like to move to the next item which is item 13 which is amend the FY 2021 22 capital improvement program amend the design bill services contract with skanska right USA building ink for major league ball baseball facility standards upgrades at the D Durham Bulls athletic park also pulled by your mayor pro tem you have a floor sir thank you madam good afternoon sir good to see you you you can probably anticipate what my question is going to be but I'll I'll put it on record anyway so the original project budget was five million 220 thousand and now it's it's it's being estimated that's going to be more than 100 percent more than that um I know there's math and science and good reason behind it but I you know I just so for our residents and constituents that might be watching this meeting and looking at this agenda explain to us why there's so much more money needed than what was originally projected good afternoon uh john pot just wiles with general services department yeah um it's a it's a good question it's a big increase the the big reason is and we're you know we're seeing this in a lot of our construction projects that go to bid this past year or so is just a very volatile construction market so things are a lot more expensive than they were um that's that's one reason another reason is that the design has just evolved over the past year we're working within a existing ballpark existing building and we're um we're sort of uncovering unknowns that we didn't know about before so like we need additional shoring to you know avoid utilities throughout the sidewalk um there's we're not able to use existing ductwork that we were kind of counting on using or counting on using some of the existing lockers that we're no able no longer able to use so things like that um but the big i think the big reason is the uh just the construction market in general so i mean you mentioned ductwork and stuff this and is this a fair characterization this is this isn't like primarily being driven by like osha concerned i mean this is major league baseball that's right the standard is correct so that's right so the um it's part of a restructuring of the relationship between minor and major league baseball clubs and so there's new requirements that must be met um at the Durham Bulls athletic park and this is happening all over the country as well so we're not we're not alone in this um they are not it's not optional it's a requirement if we want to keep our franchise with the with the Durham Bulls then we have to do it so um you know since the facility was originally designed for single-a minor league baseball and now it's a triple-a um you know where bulls currently play at um there's extensive upgrades that must be performed these include addition of a new batting tunnel um also you know renovations to the office and the player locker rooms uh upgrades to the um reconfigurations of all these spaces basically we're you know we're we're completely gutting the underneath of the Durham Bulls stadium all the all the back of the house area that you don't really see um except for a couple of spaces we're we're pretty much gutting the whole thing and having to redo it to make these allowances these requirements for these upgrades um let's see also includes training room upgrades and all the associated HVAC the plumbing electrical uh and just the architectural finishes uh there's also uh women locker rooms that's added for female umpires trainers and coaches and there's been some other projects at the Durham Bulls athletic park to improve sort of the fan experience over the years but this is really the first project that's come around um to address some these back of house issues and we do have someone here from from Skanska um to if you want further information on sort of the the general price increase in the construction market he might be able to give more information on that sure if you'd like to share I'd be more than happy to okay hey how are you welcome thank you for having me um I didn't have anything specific prepared but as as John mentioned um and as you see every day in the purchases you're making at home um material and cost escalation has been a significant concern since the start of the pandemic we saw throughout 2021 a period of hyperinflation that we'd only seen four times previously in in the 19 since the 1900s and those periods usually lasted four to six months but this one has lasted 18 months and then we started to see a taper off at the end of last year when things were starting to get under control with the uh pandemic uh the the escalation rate was decreasing and we were anticipating that this year we would have uh on the neighborhood of hood of four to eight percent escalation where a typical year three to five unfortunately Omakron hit and that has started spiking pricing again along with the um and now conflict in Ukraine adding more instability there's just a lot of uncertainty in the material market and availability driving pricing up um we're now seeing uh escalation of 25 percent over the past uh year or so just and that's as John said driving a lot of the pricing thank you so much for that and and you know to be clear I I I understand the the dynamics of the market and construction cause going up but I I guess what I I think is important to delineate for our constituents and folks watching is that yeah construction costs more but this is also being it's not like the ballpark's about to fall apart it or I don't think uh you don't want to go over say that but but that delineate for our our constituents and residents that this is it's not only construction cause this is also being driven by standards that major league baseball has uh prescribed in order for us to keep our franchise which is one of the jewels in our crown absolutely uh as as John said you know we have a locker room currently but major league standards say the locker room now has to be bigger so you can't just go into that ballpark and make one prute room bigger without making another room smaller that major league baseball also says has to be bigger right so uh working within that existing facility as John mentioned and trying to fit all those pieces is also why we're forced to add an addition on to the for the bed batting tunnels to provide that requirement as well all right well thank you I appreciate the uh the information and I I I'll yield there thank you madam mayor thank you thank you councilwoman johnson thank you madam mayor um so I had a long conversation with Wanda about this item um and was able to get some a little bit more details in terms of the amount of money that we're spending that we're already spending before this 10 million dollars um comes into the equation on the ballpark um I right now do not feel like I could make a convincing argument to this community that that spending another 10 million dollars on these renovations in order to continue to spend significant amounts of money every year to maintain the ballpark to pay for the debt and the operations um that that's a good use of public money and I'm wondering if someone I really need someone to help me understand like how what what is the case for this and and what are the consequences if we don't do this so we lose the franchise then what are there are are there alternatives to us taking on um this this responsibility the the bulls have an owner for example major league baseball is requiring this are they are they providing any funds to teams or you know to make this happen I would really like to figure out a way that we don't have to spend 10 million dollars in public money to continue spending millions of dollars in public money to to maintain this operation and maybe there isn't a way but I want to plumb the depths of our options a little bit so there aren't a lot of options that I'm aware of I mean these are these are requirements that we have to do if we want to keep the bulls franchise it's my understanding um the the Durham bulls are chipping in uh toward the project um but since it's a city facility um the the majority of the burden falls on the city for for this um so as part of the um the original item that came before council earlier in the spring um for the design the pre-construction contract with scansco um there's also a cost share agreement with the bulls so I didn't go into detail in the agenda memo but um it's one of the attachments it the cost estimate shows the portion that we're paying of the cost estimate and again this is just an estimation estimation of the cost so we won't know the true cost until it's bid but this is our hours scansco's best guess what it's going to cost um so the bulls are contributing about one million of the total two point ten point two million of the projected construction cost where the city would be paying nine point one and so these typically these are four um things that are above and beyond what are required by the MLB uh through this this agreement so it's things like you know if they want additional lockers or they want a little bit better lockers than what we would typically have and they're paying for those upgrades um if they want you know nicer ceilings or light fixtures something that's just nicer than what might typically be provided they're chipping in for that um if they want um let's see sorry I have to look at my notes there's a few other areas there's like a bat swing area and the video coaching area so there's certain things that they are paying for that's above and beyond what's required um and are they they're there there's no funding I'm assuming since you didn't mention it from major league baseball to help people meet their requirements it's just here's a mandate and you need to retake your team away that's my understanding okay um and do you have a sense of I mean this this may be beyond kind of y'all scope but what is the financial benefit to the city of Durham of having the bulls in the bull stadium in actual like dollars like of economic activity what do we get from it I could not answer that um perhaps someone else in the administration could but I don't have that information okay and if we were to not provide the required updates and major league baseball says okay you can't have a franchise then what we just don't have it I don't know that either okay anybody know good afternoon jean approach general services department uh if we do not complete the the requirements of major league baseball that flows through minor league baseball then we would not be able to continue to host games at the Durham Bulls athletic park we would not be in compliance with the franchise agreement and we would not have a franchise agreement in order to um enjoy baseball um I would I would like to know how much that would cost us in in dollars I know that there's sort of a larger civic um goal of you know having the Durham Bulls and that that's a it's a point of pride for the city and and and that is worth something but I I would like to put some numbers on what we lose if we lose the franchise if that's possible we can work with our partners at the bulls as well as others to pull whatever economic impact information we can in order to have that to have a full complement of the impact okay that'd be great thank you and then in my conversation with the with the manager there was also some discussion about our lease with the bulls and the requirements of that lease this may be a city attorney's office question what what kind of um what kind of requirements do we have as a result of that lease and what would be the consequences of of breaking that by not doing these upgrades and Don O'Toole city attorney's office I don't have that information Fred Lamar probably is the one in our office most familiar with that I'm sure that we can work with general services and have that information for you as well thank you thank you um yeah I would just I'd like to know all the options before we move forward with putting a whole lot more money into what is already kind of a money suck a beautiful money suck thanks y'all yeah what's the timeline that we're dealing with here so if we don't move forward today then what are what are we up against the timeline for fulfilling the standards the requirements so it's a it's a stepped sort of requirement the absolute deadline I guess is opening day for 2025 so there's there's no compliance thresholds for 2021-22 but then beginning on the opening day of 2023 the threshold must be within 30 points so it's a it's a penalty point sort of system so we have to be within 30 points by the opening day of 23 season and then the compliance thresholds declined to 20 points the opening day of 24 2024 and then down to 10 points on the opening day of 2025 so what we have now is a is a is a project that gets us with you know within those 10 points of compliance by next year so we have time for you to get the information that council member councilwoman jonesa requested without getting to a point where we're losing the franchise well we need the funding for the project now because it fulfills all this one project is designed to fulfill all the requirements we need so it's not a it's not a stepped project over the over the course of the next few years it makes sense to go ahead and do it all at once to to get it done if that makes sense note it it'll it'll cost more to divide it up among different projects over the next few years thank you councilwoman freeman thank you madam mayor i just wanted to offer to staff um a comparative and just acknowledging that richmond didn't do the upgrades and they lost the braves their downtown suffered a huge loss and so i think that that could give you some numbers to look at councilman may approach him middleton thank you madam mayor um and i i appreciate the um um council member johnson's uh important questions about revenues and economic impact but i i just want to be clear the bulls ain't going nowhere um and uh it is it is a huge uh jewel uh in our crown i know for a fact of speaking to uh business owners in the downtown area i mean when people come to those bulls games it drives so much other economic activity from restaurateurs to our parking um and whatever and and it's a money it's a revenue generating uh operation and i think long term globally whatever we spend uh to do the upgrades and i think it's important that we have an explanation of what these upgrades are and why we're spending the money but i i am in i don't even want to send the message that we're even considering um letting the franchise go at all i don't want to telegraph that in any way um i do want accountability and explanation for the money that we're spending but i i just want to make it clear that i don't this you know this that's the non-starter for me at the even consideration of of losing the Durham bulls um here in Durham for all types of reasons economic and otherwise so thank you madam mayor councilman cover your thank you i appreciate all my council colleagues comments on this um i also appreciate the um i think it would be important regardless of the economic generation that is brought by the Durham bulls at the end of the day it is a private franchise and it is public property and uh the the city the taxpayers own that and so i think it is an important um there's been plenty of cities who have decided not to do publicly funded um athletic venues exactly for these types of reasons so i think it's important for our public to know it is an economic generator but there is a cost for that economic generation and folks deserve to at least have an accounting of it thank you council council just uh just to add to it uh probably i believe there's a billion dollars of development that's coming in that area and i'd like for the city to be a partner in that so um as your i think what councilwoman johnson is asking for i think it's really good to um to know you know what parts of the city or what assets in the city you know are doing for us economically that's definitely my lane of interest um but i'm looking at it on the positive side i'd love to know in addition how that could actually supplement what's happening over the next five to ten years so but i'm i'm with you mayor pro 10 any further discussion so one of the things um that the staff did not speak about um is the bidding timeline and as the council has discussed um some some members have discussed this particular item it is actually on this cycle uh it is you know the options that we have at the end of the meeting is to leave it on consent or place it on um you know gba for further discussion but also as the as the city attorney and the general services department director talked about providing additional information um i would like that to be in the context of how quickly that additional information could just could be provided compared to um the schedule that is proposed in this particular item for the bidding so if you want to go first department and and i don't know about the city attorney's ad thank you i am not quite sure how long it will take to assemble that information i can we can work really hard to pull something together in timeline for um a monday night discussion or to keep this on the schedule if that is the preference um we are constrained and concerned about the ability to get to market to get bids in order to be prepared to start this project at the close of the season so that is another thing that's driving our our timeline for the construction donald tool city attorney's office i'm emailing with mr lamar and he's actually looking at that right now and so i'm sure he can work on the same time frame as general services madam mayor i for me it would be just good to know i don't want this to be a constraint ultimately i'm going to support keeping the bulls so keep that in mind madam it's just point of clarification so we're taking this off of consent just pending what on on our next meeting what is it that we want to know how much money we make from them or i just want to be clear that what we are what we're asking the staff to bring us what i understood is that we would pull together information about the economic impact that the bulls have in our community and you think you will be able to have that available by monday hopefully by the monday council meeting 11 the monday of our next city council meeting i think i can try really hard in the next couple days to see if we can meet that um information supplement by working with some other partners i don't have that information myself i will have to rely on others to help with that you said sign this factory now that's again don't let me hold you up i rather ultimately i'm supportive so please don't you know later you can say hey councilman williams this is what we found out but that just focus on councilmember johnson's request i think that was the same request yeah the overall economic impact and i would also i mean like to see and um the information about what we're spending that what the city is spending on debt service maintenance and what we're getting in i know there's a there's some cost sharing and there's some um something else i forget but yeah what what is coming in what's going out and what's the economic impact so that we can say this is why we think this is so that we can say to the community this is why we think it's worth it it's not just so that we can say during bulls it's because there's an actual benefit that's occurring to our community and i don't feel like i can make that argument right now thank you councilwoman freeman thank you madame i just want to make it very clear that regardless of the impact analysis that i think this should move forward and so i would be fine if it was on gb on the consent agenda or gba either way i think we need to make sure that we're taking care of our facilities that's a given as the d-pack and we're looking to bring on the wheels um skating rink so we just need to make sure that that's covered the contracts that we have in place allow us to to receive the revenues that we're getting and so i don't want to make that an issue where we have where it might fall in jeopardy and so i do i do want to make sure we uphold our contracts um even though i know we're asking our attorneys to look at them but it's important to know it should move forward thank you and i'll just add by saying that i do understand um the need for accountability and that things have really uh increased as we all know from the price of gas to food under construction overall it's a very difficult financial season um for us as a city and for people in their individual lives however as i was sitting here thinking about the Durham Bulls i cannot remember time as that that has not been a part of Durham you know there was a movie made about the Durham Bulls Kevin Costner i mean Durham Durham gets his reputation a lot of it is derived from his relationship with the Durham Bulls i cannot imagine a time so that that that heartfelt tie for a lot of Durhamites including myself um you can't monetize that that's a part of who we are it's part of what makes Durham great so there are sometimes um where the the reputation and the tone of a city to me that sounds like no no Durham without um Duke University or no Durham without North Carolina Central University you just can't imagine that so um i am sure that there are lots of Durhamites who who who have that similar state of mind however i do recognize that there is a need for accountability when we talk about these types of things but um the Durham Bulls here to stay i i would agree unless something really drastic happens i can't see that happen let us now move to uh number 16 i just wanted to say one last follow-up thing if possible i'm sorry on the agenda item we were just discussing oh yes i just wanted to add one thing i just want to be clear from my perspective i just want a general accounting i think this is i think folks and i and i get why folks are feeling this way there's clearly a lot of emotional attachment to this issue but people need to understand what that emotional cost is and i think that that's a fair thing to bring up and i think it's a fair thing to understand as someone who has to help pass a budget uh and what is i think it's it's personally helpful to understand the narrative around it our public our residents should have an understanding yeah if my assumption is going to be it's probably a very great positive economic benefit that story should also be told at this point what i'm hearing from staff that is unclear on our ledger what it costs to have it versus not and i think that that's an important thing to share regardless and i i enjoyed the room you know everybody understands the emotional realm we're dealing with but it's still important to understand the money attached to it thank you Madam Mayor if i might um if i might i pulled the item i was the one who pulled the item so i i am well aware of the the need to be transparent and need to give a financial account that's why the item was pulled we're all fiduciaries um but i i would venture to say that understanding the nature of the brand of a city is not a motion that that it transcends emotionalism understanding what something means to generations of folk um that's not emotion we're all you know intelligent conscientious fiduciaries of the city and all of us understand our need to give nobody's saying spend money no matter what you know what it costs just throw money at it um and i'm listen before those numbers come back we've heard projections and we've heard reports before about the impact of the Durham Bulls uh on our city and and both you know empirically and anecdotally from merchants that work in that area and business owners that that operate downtown so there's no doubt in my mind that a case is going to be made for the economic economic vitality of this but i i do want to you know just just you know this isn't about emotion nobody's just ranting or throwing emotions around this is about the brand of our city we're not only fiduciary fiduciaries were brand ambassadors as well and i just want to i want to let everyone know that when i engage in discussion and debate with this council my operating assumption is that each of us are concerned about transparency each of us are concerned about the cause and that each of us have an eye on that that's a given for i don't even have to deal with that that's my assumption uh when we engage in these debates uh in discussions which is why i pulled it thank you madam mayor councilwoman prudence thank you madam mayor and i just wanted to just delve a little deeper appreciate council member i mean mayor pro tem um middleton clarifying that the emotion is not just the part of this conversation i think it's also important to acknowledge how many jobs are tied to that and how many people actually work there and so i wouldn't i think it's going to be difficult for the staff is to actually assimilate the actual number um beyond just you know the the facility itself of of the worth and value of the organization that's been here for what almost a hundred years so i i push back on it because i know that folks look at the dollars and cents as if that's the end all and be all but it's not and we know that that there's a lot of layers to the conversations and it's really disheartening to hear it's kind of flatten that way that's all thank you thank you all we knew move now to item 16 which was pulled by the councilwoman freeman contract with s and s m e s and m e ink for traffic study at the waste disposal and recycling center councilwoman freeman you have the floor thank you i just had a quick question in regards to actually requesting an air quality baseline study as well and i'm not sure if s and m e can do that or not but i do want to make sure that i ask the question while you're moving forward with this study okay uh good afternoon wane fenton assistant director of solid waste uh that is not a part of this but we can certainly make inquiries and see what could possibly be done to include that that's all thank you thank you all right we're now at the time where we're going to take about a five minute break so that our our technology persons can check on our own features and then we will move into our presentations uh following that right so we'll come back it is 2 13 let's come back at 2 20 let's come back at 2 20 everybody somewhere in there testing testing testing testing so i know one of the division's most important projects over the past few years has been the development and implementation of the equitable community engagement blueprint what is the blueprint and why was it needed the blueprint is a document that we created about four almost four years ago three and a half years ago in response to a few residents coming to a city council meeting and um asking and really i mean really demanding city council to do a better job of engagement specifically around the the belt line project whenever the city makes decisions in those projects it can have really positive impacts but sometimes if we're not careful it can have negative impacts and that's where engagement comes in it's really important to make sure that we're you know engaging residents to make sure that we see all sides of what's happening and can do our best to mitigate any harm i was looking for an opportunity and an old friend of mine suggested that i apply at go Durham the community really relies on us on go Durham public transportation well i like driving a bus because of the friendly culture i love it in the morning when people greet me good morning they give me a free me wave they appreciate you and that goes a long way being a bus driver and go down anything can be achieved here um you can come in at the bottom and you will be able to excel in a fairly short amount of time here i started as an operator and i'm here now as a operator training specialist so long as you stick to it you can't excel the perfect candidate that would excel at go Durham is someone with tenacity someone with drive someone who wants to make a difference for their community you have to be people-oriented you have to be experienced and you have to be on hands ready to go but with the proper training it's just like driving a car so as a new driver with road training come in and you see me and i'm going to make sure you have all the tools to succeed they give you a lot of input and they work with you step by step so you won't be alone in this do anyone considering working for go Durham you won't regret it please come please apply we would love to have you join the go Durham team North Carolina Constitution requires that the courts be always open we had to figure out how to protect people's constitutional rights i ultimately decided to get vaccinated one i felt it was safe two i have a public facing job it was quick it was easy i had limited to no side effects and to me that's a fair trade-off for staying healthy stay up to date on your COVID-19 vaccine find out when you're due for your booster visit myspot.nc.gov testing and testing recording in progress okay we're back all right we're gonna briefly return to item 10 the award of the construction contract for the eno river fourth main relocation project to jay of wilkerson contracting company enkham mr grielly has joined us thank you so much i think this item was pulled by my mayor pro tem middleton and i'll turn it over to him to mr grielly good afternoon mayor mayor pro tem members of council i apologize for the technology challenges that we were having today here to answer your questions thank you so much uh don i appreciate your uh leaning in and actually coming to the chamber from where you are that's commitment thank you um very quickly the um yeah item 10 okay i have to get my uh bearings so i am i am jf wilkerson contracting enkham very very pleased that they're using a certified firms for ub their ube goals but i and this question actually might be better for some of our for some of our equity folk um again our equity our equity goals again in previous conversations not in this conversation our equity goals are about um minority and and women owned businesses but it's also about derm as well you know we we want to empower some of these type of businesses in derm and and i noticed that the companies are zebulon and young zilla they're from the certified list that's not a bad thing and i i'm sure there are trucking companies in derm but i guess my question is about the list for our certified firms on the ube list when um we award contracts can the company just look at that list and i'm looking at you but i know some other folk may jump in on this yes on this answer can you just pick anybody from that list as long as they're on a certified list or or do we encourage folk to to lean towards derm companies if they're on uh the list matter manager thank you for that question i knew we might tag team a little bit here so the hub um database is a list of qualified firms and in order for a majority firm uh to meet the goals as long as there is a qualified firm um certified firm used then the goals can be met with that certified firm we do provide a sub list to two majority firms so that they may try to reach out to the to individuals that can do the scope of work to bid on the project as you will note these are construction projects so regardless of who the who the subcontractor is it still has they still receive bids from them so the answer is they can select and come to you know come to the table with um someone that has been selected that is certified and if it happens to be someone from our local community then you get to you know two for one but they're not required to pick someone from the local community and they also are looking at the bids that they receive for that scope of work absolutely thank you madam manager do we do we know what and if we don't know this this is something we can we can you know research what percentage of of um interest or companies on the certified list are in fact Durham companies are local do we do we know that we we certainly do know where their headquarters is located because it you know it's probably about 4 000 certified firms on the hub list and and they're you know their name of the company their address their contact information email addresses it's it's all there so the answer is yes we do know where they're from where they where they list their headquarters to be okay and is is how well represented is Durham on that list that's generally speaking um do we know I think the representation um is dependent upon the scope of work so in some scopes of work we may be represented well and in others there may not be anyone in Durham that can provide the scope of work you know certainly want to be very clear that the staff members that work in the space you know they are trying to assist firms um and sometimes these the bidding phase it has has a certain limitation in time and they want to make sure that they are providing firms that actually do the scope of work that the prime contractor is looking for because as I mentioned the list is pretty long it's like three you know 4 000 businesses so they go into those business into that list and they look for a subset of firms who may may be helpful and this is presented to the to the firms during their pre-bid conferences and in the packages so that it kind of you know is all up front absolutely well thank you for that amount of managers absolutely no shade towards aughtry instruction company or covenant trucking company whatsoever and I'm glad that we have as part of our internal architecture at the city folk who are looking to make sure that these companies are representative and you know we've got more work to do to build capacity amongst our own local interests and companies or what but we're on the we're certainly on the right road now I just want to acknowledge that work um on behalf of our people thank you so much now for coming and good to see you in person thank you guys take care thank you madam mayor thank you sir we will now turn to our presentations we have three this afternoon and we will take them in the order that they are appear on our agenda uh the first one item number 17 is an update on the Durham safe routes to school program the second will be item number 18 the 2019 trail implementation program and then item 20 to share economic prosperity Durham small business work plan built to last in youth works program and we'll start with item 17 the update on Durham safe routes to school program Mr. Dale McKeil yes good afternoon I'm Dale McKeil I work in the transportation department and it's great to be with you in person today um mayor uh mayor pro tem and members of council um Durham has has been doing work in the safe routes to school area uh providing bicycle education um teaching children how to walk and bike safely and promoting a walking and biking to school or at school for a number of years um the partnership for a healthy Durham led a lot of these efforts but a few years ago the northbound department of transportation put together a grant program that provided us an opportunity to expand our program to give it a little bit more stability and the city um put out a request for proposals and reviewed some applications that were received and ultimately awarded a contract to bike Durham to provide these services and John Tomage the executive director of bike Durham is here today to talk about the work that we've been doing in this area good afternoon uh madam mayor members of council madam manager thank you for this opportunity to present to you the work we've been doing with Dale uh and Sean and the transportation department uh over the past year with the safe routes to school program and thank you for this opportunity to hopefully bring you a bit of joy today because of all the benefits that a safe routes to school program offers uh joy for the elementary school students is one of the the most rewarding for those of us uh working on this program the only thing I'll point out here because Dale covered uh this is that we have an oversight relationship the city of Durham and Durham public schools through uh Dale and then on the school side Matthew Palmer and their new transportation planner Kristen Brookshire we meet with them biweekly to review the direction and the implementation of this this program through this grant there are really two complementary components uh the walk bike and roll to school events and the bike safety classes and I'll I'll share our experience with those with you but it's also evident to everyone involved in this that the third leg of the stool are the infrastructure improvements that need to occur to make sure that there is safe walking and biking infrastructure for for the students and and the families to feel comfortable for their their kids to come to school bike Durham is a local uh Durham non-profit organization that works on sustainable transportation you can see our vision and mission here today in the chamber is our board member Carmen Kwan who is the chair of our education committee that uh we house this in uh we do the work with uh an employee part-time employee Jacopo Montobio and some contractors including Stephen Mulaney who also works uh in the schools and has been an outdoor educator for for many years uh and uh educator is best Baldwin and and Ruth Brown and we're currently recruiting for additional paid and volunteer safety educators to be able to expand the offerings in the schools walk bike and roll to school events are one of the key uh elements that we're able to offer and it's related directly to the key objective which is to see more students walking biking and rolling to school that requires the safe routes that there are sidewalks and places where kids can walk and bike and cross streets safely it requires a culture of walking and biking to school and it requires the skills on behave on behalf of the students and so we're working on building that culture through these events and the skills for for the biking the let me point out in October the first time we did this uh on a large scale and we had good participation from 13 elementary schools over 5000 students these were both walk to school events and walk at school events there are some schools where uh it's not really still safe to get from off of campus on to campus because there aren't sidewalks connecting to the the school and in those cases there were often walk events that were organized on the campus of the schools this year may 4th is national bike to school day throughout the month of may and on that date we'll be working with elementary schools our target is to engage 20 schools in the the activities and more than 7500 students eastway elementary likes to do it big they did it just before Halloween this past fall and so kids were in costumes there was music they started at the save a lot across the street and went around the block a big parade with with the teachers the administrators principal brooks parents it was a great great morning we're also working this for this spring with cc spalding uh we've made a connection with the recreation department at North Carolina Central University so students will go off campus to walk around north a section of North Carolina Central and back to campus and Merrick Moore we're working with fire and police to be able to close a section of cheek road for that morning so that the students can walk through the neighborhood off of campus and and back to the school and again we hope to have 20 schools involved with that this this may the bicycle safety skills course is the other key activity that we offer we've been at Merrick Moore spring valley and eastway in the fall we're just finishing up at creek side elementary this this week and then we'll be at glenn and and you know valley and we may be able to be at a fourth school this spring if we bring on those educators and work out the schedule one thing to point out is we're prioritizing the schools that have high proportions of youth that are families that are eligible for the free and reduced lunch in this first year there have been we also need a willing partner on the part of the school and a PE teacher or PE coach who is enthusiastic about bringing it in so we've we're prioritizing those schools if you're familiar with Durham schools you'll notice that a couple of those don't fall into that category and but we're still working to to go to those schools first the bicycle safety course is we see students four different times whether that's four days out of the week or once a week out of for four weeks depending upon how school structures their PE class there's in-class elements there's on bike elements and they walk away from the end of the time with some some skills that they're bringing back home this is the testimonial from one of the students at Merrick Moore and one of the things we love about this is he talks about bringing this back home to his family and his cousins and encouraging them to get on their bikes at home so even though he's at Merrick Moore Elementary where there is not safe infrastructure to get to that school he is still being able to use these skills at home we also we know that some of the students don't have access to bicycles and we've started a program in cooperation with the bicycle co-op where we're able to through the school either the PE coach or a counselor identify students that need bicycles and are able to match many of them up with with bicycles at the end of the program just a couple more shots of kids on bike and doing the course getting instruction getting the helmets learning how to pump up a tire learning how to put on their helmet and put on a safety vest the learning that the importance of being visible and making sure that your bike's in good condition before you get out on the road we're also getting great feedback from the the PE coaches that we're working with this one in particular one of takeaways here is her last statement about looking forward to having this program back next year that's what we love to hear but we also don't want this to be just a one time a year that we're able to interact with students these are skills that require practice to stay good at and to refine so we're hoping to work through deeper relationships with some of these schools so that the kids have more touch points throughout the year and also exploring ways to do activities outside of the school so at Eastway Elementary at the end at the conclusion of the in-school program coach Watson suggested that we do an event on a Saturday at the school we invited the neighbors at Franklin Village and we had about 40 different families show up that that's Saturday and go through the skills course there as well some of the more students that had been in the school but then there were other students that were either other ages or there were siblings of those kids who were in the school or they were from the community some of the the activities coming up next I've mentioned both this May is the walk bike and roll the school and we hope to have 20 schools and maybe up to 14,000 students involved we are identifying some Spanish-speaking educators bilingual educators because so many of the DPS students come from Spanish speaking families and so we hope to add that very soon um we will be doing summer programming so many of the DPS students are going are able to go to their school throughout the summer for extra enrichment activities or because they had that year of zoom there's still a lot of ketchup um and so the bringing PE and bringing the bicycle safety education into the summer schools um and then finally uh deepening the relationships with schools raising the awareness so that more schools are looking to be engaged with us uh and and leveraging the interest that we're seeing from the administration the educators the families uh to be able to get some of those physical improvements so that more families can actually feel safe having their kids walk and bike to school thank you very much there's different ways that you can follow the work of bike Durham and this program and we're happy to answer any questions councilwoman Freeman that was absolutely great thank you thank you thank you uh and I have to say that I have to appreciate Jim McDuffie for introducing me to the bike walk day over 10 years ago and my only one request over the years has always been do we have to do it all on one day because I've only been able to get to y smith and eastway on that day um I really um appreciate this project coming forward and I'm glad that there is funding and I just want to make sure that it's clear that when you're talking about infrastructure specifically it's not limited to just sidewalks and um bike lanes that it also includes bike station repairs and so the one that I know that is available in eastern is at shepherd's house church because a well a private citizen installed it there and so I don't know if there's a map that shares the bike stations that are also available publicly but I know that those private ones have been the only ones I've seen in eastern so if you do know of some if you could share that that would be great um and that was my main question also just to keep on the praise and saying thank you for doing what you're doing I know that it's not just bikes it's pedestrian safety but the bike piece is helpful for the kids thank you thank you just a quick question um good to see you in person beyond zoom um do we have do we have kids that you know of that are in need of bikes that um or do we have a pipeline of donation opportunities just to get more kids involved uh yes so what through the schools we are working with as we are partnering with the school offering the the training um using either counselors or their their p.e. coach to identify students that who might need those and we've been working with the bicycle co-op there are other organizations in the triangle that including our own police department at the christmas time that work to um either purchase bicycles or have donated bicycles outfit for for distribution to kids um but we're specifically trying to uh do that in conjunction with this um the program and the kids that we're interacting with and make sure that they get a bicycle as well as lights and a helmet um so that they have all the safety equipment thank you so much and uh I we were sharing uh a few zooms together and I reached out and asked you to call me but I realized that I'd logged in mistakenly under my restaurant name so um that wasn't a restaurant asking you to call it was me so I'll reach out to you that was my mistake and I now I know why you never called all right but thank you sir I think we had someone that was going to say something if you wanted to come back to the mic sir you may I was going to share with um council member uh freeman that there was a repair station installed at uh holton uh resource center that's been probably nine nine months ago or so and so there are now two in in uh east arm but it is a good suggestion to better publicize those locations councilwoman coverer thank you uh good to see you um and I hope you invite us I like to do the the bike walk things at the schools it's fun um club boulevard has it's been many years since I've been at that school but it was always a very fun uh thing to do and I it is um I think I went out to merrick more this past fall and it is a good you know reminder that are a lot of our schools are not safe to get to and they do not have the infrastructure um and we need to do a better job about that so I I appreciate the program I look forward to joining you all in May and uh we need to do a better job making sure our kids can access uh our schools so that they can bike and walk and we will as we get the dates and times for the different schools we will certainly extend invitations to you all to join those as you can anyone else councilwoman johnson thank you madam mayor um thank you for the presentation I was also able to go out to merrick more um for the for their day last last fall and it was it was a great activity to have happening during the pandemic too for kids to be able to be outside and have fun and and hang out together um in a in a situation where school has become um a lot more controlled like they have to you know be social distancing and um so I think they really enjoyed it like it was a lot of fun um for me as well and for for the teachers and they can be able to go outside and just enjoy you know being together outside they were super excited about you know being able to run around and they're always really excited about free helmets and getting to check out bikes and yeah so this is just a really good program I'm glad that we're supporting it and y'all seem like a perfect organization to take this on for us um to thank you for your work and look forward to um being able to attend these events again thank you it's been a good partnership thank you so much that was a great presentation and thank you for all your hard work it's this is a feel good one so thank you thank you so much we'll now turn to our next presentation just item 18 and 2019 trail implementation program this Lindsay smart good afternoon I'm Lindsay smart with the city's parks and recreation department thank you for having me here this afternoon to review the 2019 trail implementation program for the next 15 minutes I'm going to go through a little bit of Durham's trail history um and bring into focus some efforts that are um more current and going on now and then we're going to look to the future for what's next with our trail program our first trail opened in 1985 and it was the lrb creek trail phase one and since that trail opened we have built just over 31 miles of trail when we when we think about mileage of um of trails in Durham we do it we also do a comparison based on population and so when we look at the um 31 miles of trail and our 2019 uh excuse me 2020 population estimate was 283,000 we also look around the triangle to see what our peer communities our neighbors here are doing and in the triangle there's almost 245 miles of trail collectively between these four different municipalities and towns so that's pretty interesting we did notice that we are starting to fall a little bit behind though some of our neighbors here in the triangle so that initiated us to look at the progress that we've made since 2011 when the 2011 trails and greenways master plan was adopted and so since the adoption of that plan we have made great progress we have built um about six miles of trail listed here we also have received federal funding for three trail projects that are currently underway the downtown rail trail the extension of the third fort creek trail and the r kelly Bryant bridge trail and in 2017 deputy city manager Ferguson created the trail action group which is an inner departmental group of um technical staff that are all that all overlap um construction and delivery of trails in Durham so we've made great we have made great progress since 2011 on advancing the Durham trail program we when the tag group the trail action group was initiated we pulled together all of those technical experts to discuss barriers to construction why are we doing such a great job yet falling behind some of our neighbors here in the triangle so the tag group got together for a series of meetings to identify those barriers and really focus on implementation what's what is the future hold for us how do we overcome those barriers so we had participation from 10 different departments most nine different departments as well as the Durham Chapel Hill Carboro metropolitan planning organization so thank you to the city manager and all of the deputy city managers for loaning us your staff this was a very um comprehensive and time-consuming process we met over six months to identify barriers and talk to everybody who is somehow related to any project delivery here in Durham to come up with a short list of those barriers those challenges that we need to focus on overcoming to be able to advance the trail system here and we came up with this list of five lessons learned um right-of-way acquisition design constraints cost project cost estimating compared to bids that we get back when we advertise the project funding strategy um you know diversifying funding strategy and permitting challenges all of that information went into the development of a scope of work for this 2019 trail implementation program i am the Durham Parks and Recreation staff liaison to the trails committee of the Durham open space and trails commission so as that in that role as liaison to the DOS trail committee i met with DOS to also get their input on this scope of work so while the technical team that you saw the photos of before while they were working on drafting scope of work the trails committee also participated in that and i brought all of that information to the technical team and we developed the scope of work to them beaker services for an engineering and planning team to help us deliver the scope of work so the three large elements of the scope of work that are that make up the trail implementation program are an overall trail network review and the strategic corridor feasibility and implementation program document the first element of the scope of work is the overall trail network review and so this is the overall trail network from the adopted 2011 master plan there's 96 miles of trail recommended in the city that we are still working towards and most of the trail trail recommendations are along bodies of water which create a lovely user experience for the trail users but we start to get into some design constraints because Durham is in the Falls Lake watershed and the Jordan Lake watershed which are both to impaired watersheds so one of those lessons learned from the earlier slide was some design constraints well here's some reflection on that being having such a great trail user experience by being along these bodies of water in nature a little bit more less urban stimulation more recreational feel we then have more design constraints because we are in those watershed those constrained watersheds the overall trail network was also evaluated for opportunities and constraints and redundancies since 2011 the transportation department and other partners have made great strides in building sidewalks and develop and put installing bike lanes and shared lane markings and different bicycle facilities so we so there was a comparison for where we have recommendations for shared use trails and on roadways that have recently received sidewalks and bike lanes because it wouldn't be a good use of of city funds to take out what we just built in the take out sidewalks and bike lanes that we just built and put a trail there so looking at that redundancy and where have safer bicycle and pedestrian corridors already been created and so where should we then focus dollars out so we should then focus tax dollars elsewhere while all of that was going on the overall trail network was being reviewed and evaluated by the consultant team i met had a series of meetings with the DOS trail committee and they selected the nine priority trails that would be studied as part of this program and we these are the nine trails excuse me the downtown rail trail connector to the r kelly brine trail the piercantown trail extension the lion park american tobacco trail forest hills park connector trail we need to have a naming meeting to shorten some of these names this slide in itself could probably take about five minutes the rockwood trail the north prong creek trail campus hill connector trail third fort creek tributary trail the warren creek trail extension the sandy creek trail extension and the panther creek rail trail so those were the nine priority trails that dos identified and put forth for the scope here for this implementation program and these nine trails were studied in in great detail for again those lessons learned those barriers to trail delivery there's a pretty good geographic distribution around around durham um those nine trails were in addition to geographic distribution those nine trails were evaluated for constructability and community context factors because geographic distribution is not the only important criteria to consider for building out durham's trails so there are um so the trail constructability factors that were looked at is hydrology wetlands stream crossing structures along the trail topography and land ownership some of those are those kind of repeating themes here of those five lessons learned or those barriers to construction um so we're looking so those nine priority trails were evaluated for constructability to overcome those challenges community context factors were also a big part of this feasibility um and evaluation of these trails key destinations trip generators network connectivity multimodal hub safety and equity the consultant team performed site analysis for those nine trails they walked as many of the corridors as they were able to access um without trespassing on private property we told them that they should avoid doing that so they walked as many of the um corridors as they could and they also performed desk review of all available data for um environmental constraints and connectivity and all of those um factors that we just saw on the previous slide they delivered a very technical document to us that we needed the whole technical team to get back together to review and the the alignment evaluations that were delivered in that document one example is shown here this is a section of the extension of the sandy creek trail opportunities and constraints and um other alignment information was all detailed throughout a map with several pages of of information that that went with a whole bunch of these maps so i'm going to walk through the nine priority trails to give some context and background to each of them and um and then we'll talk about the entire document so the downtown rail trail to the r kelly bryant trail connector is approximately point six miles as the crow flies to connect the eastern termini of the downtown rail trail that that termini is currently at avondale drive and we are this trail connector would connect that trail to the northern termini of the r kelly bryant bridge trail that is currently in design and that northern termini is at drew grand b park so this priority trail project would connect those two um trails that are um in design the piercent trout piercent town trail extension is approximately 1.5 miles and the it extends from the current termini of the current piercent town trail it extends north um through nc central university continues north to make a connection to the haytie heritage center the american tobacco trail forest hills park lion park connector that trail connects the tuska luca lakewood neighborhood through west end neighborhood to lion park through forest hills neighborhood through forest hills park and connects to the american tobacco trail and that's a pretty key connection as we have some park projects going on right now that we are making sure we accommodate this future trail alignment in as part of those projects the rockwood trail this project connects um beyond the intersection of 15501 business the Durham Chapel Hill boulevard and university drive and then travels southeast through rockwood park and to connect to the third fort creek trail that is currently in design right around the weaver street recreation center and weaver street park north prong creek trail the campus hills connector is approximately four and a half miles and it begins down at meridian parkway and travels north to campus hills recreation center and then continues um up to dakota street the intersection of dakota street and austin avenue and that intersects with the southern end of the current or the r kelly bryan bridge trail that's currently in design the third fort creek tributary trail is our only true east west um alignment that we have um for a trail corridor in um in these nine priority trails most of the other trails follow bodies of water and therefore um primarily run north south or northeast northwest to southeast this trail will connect to the existing third fort creek trail to the american tobacco trail near Fayetteville street and the warren creek trail is is our northernest most trail um in this group of nine priority trails it will connect the southern side of west point on the eno park down to horton road and make the connection to the existing warren creek trail the sandy creek trail extension is approximately two miles and there's the existing sandy creek park and sandy creek trail is in the middle and we asked for the consulting team to evaluate a northern extension up to the albular trail near cornwallis road and there's potential to run it further north up to carman boulevard and also evaluate opportunity to run that trail southward across 15501 which is one of the reasons that we have a very high cost estimate here and to connect to the existing new hope creek trail and we at first we were met with some exasperation from the consultant team asked trying to figure out how to get across 15501 in there and we said yes that is a big priority is to figure out how to cross that that um that roadway and connect to these trails down here so they they looked into it and they figured out a way and the final trail of the nine priority trails is the panther creek trail it's about six to seven miles as the crow flies from eastern durham near junction road and travels um east northeast out to falls lake kind of near cardinal point and that is along the former panther creek rail line i think that was the name of the rail line it's um along a former rail line through there so all of the evaluation of the overall network as well as the close um evaluation or a more detailed look at the nine priority trails all went together into um the implementation program document and while the technical committee and dost and the specifically the trails committee of dost reviewed all of that analysis and all the recommendations the consultant team started to begin um started to develop the funding strategy and implementation strategy for all of those nine priority trails so the implementation and funding strategy for the nine priority trails includes alignment options they were tasked with figuring out at least two alternate alignments for every trail every one of the nine trails um opinions of probable costs i will note that those are twenty nineteen dollars um so those because those estimates were put together um in 2019 for us so all of the cost estimates on each of those slides will have you know have to have a year of expenditure inflation added to them the permitting need permitting needs for every um each of those projects as well as a funding strategy historically the city has funded a lot of our city trails with federal funds us department of transportation federal funds that are available through the ncdot prioritization process it's a competitive scoring process and we've been very lucky to um receive a lot of that grant funding but we have to diversify our funding strategy because not all of our trails not all 96 miles of trail would be competitive for that process so how else so the consultant team was tasked with how else we could look at delivering our trail projects here this is a lot of text on it this is a high level summary of those nine priority trails and the funding strategy so the consultant team looked at each of those trails and compared those the alignments and all of the constructability factors and community context factors and compared it to the way ncdot um spot the strategic prioritization office this is a office of transportation how they score projects so where the project appeared where a certain project appeared to be competitive for that scoring it's put in this category you know the strategy is to pursue the federal transportation funding we have a high likelihood of having receiving those funds receiving federal funds for these three trail projects the rockwood trail and the north prong creek campus hill connector trail um did likely would not score well through that competitive grant process so the consultant team is recommending that the city consider funding those two projects with cip dollars um and not pursue ncdot funding for that and then the last four projects down here the third fort creek trail warren creek trail the sandy creek trail and the panther creek trail those all are recommended to be developed with city cip dollars as well as private partnerships and through development agreements with developers who develop land in the along those corridors the next steps in this process is to um develop a public engagement strategy um and figure out how how best to engage the Durham community on nine trail corridors and um so develop an appropriate strategy and plan and then start to conduct that equitable public engagement with a focus on those nine corridors and continue those conversations in those neighborhoods while us different funding cycles start to come up so that we can have that public input and priorities from the neighborhoods so that we can meet those funding cycles and then begin to incorporate public comment um and influence influences into the decision making for priority trails and exact alignments trail amenities and different um elements of the trail that the public can comment on and give us direction on and continue to prioritize projects and those design elements as we continue to have those public conversations so with that thank you so much for listening to this Durham trail program story and i'll take any questions thank you councilwoman freeman thank you miss smart that's a great presentation i really appreciate the overview and the work of dust and so many folks in the community to pull that recommendation for the nine trails as a priority i do want to just um ask a couple questions um and i'm i'm just just thinking about it uh off the top of my head just listening and thinking about some of the things that have been going on the 31 miles that we were talking about does that include all of our i guess is it including roadways that would be safe for dirt bikes or four wheelers no the 31 miles are just the shared use trails like the tobacco trail like an eight or a 10 foot wide trail that's available for all non motorized users okay and um just noting the i know there's a area by east end park there's two there's two specific areas the first is the area where the bridge is broken and i think it's kind of like just marked as not like as a don't use but people are still using and um i'm just wondering if that is included in the north throng or north throng trail as a as a repair at all it is not that bridge is actually not along any of our trail corridors it's in east that bridge is in east end park and it's important it's an important project for us to replace that bridge so it would just be a replacement not a part of any of the trails correct okay and then um just acknowledging that there's a huge swath of land um back there behind the east end across the way off of austin avenue are there any plans to address that at all i'd have to look more specifically at some of those parcels i don't remember the different alignment all of the different alignment alternatives for the i think it's called the downtown rail trail r kelly brine bridge trail connection which would come through there um so i'd have to go back and look at that but i'm i will say that that would actually bring you through so you could come from east way into east east east end park and then go straight into the tail end of the beltway or the green beltway that would have you and so it would be great to have that included in some way shape or form an update so thank you i think that was all i had i would also i think that's all i have thank you just understanding the cost breakdown the consultants generated this as a um uh what it may cost to do this is that correct correct each trail each trail okay all right yeah thank you madam mayor and good afternoon lindsay a great presentation uh good to see firstly i want to say um we we didn't it wasn't lost on me the uh nod to parks and rec uh the show in your presentation i saw my man ron swanson in the in the uh slide uh saying as a permit by the way parks and rec is probably the truest depiction of what it's like to work in local government that we've ever seen on television so i would commend it to everyone um i wanted to ask the um the first off there's no better position i think into the entity than dost to kind of quarterback this for us and kind of direct this but i am curious as to with the identification of the priority trails did we just totally outsource that to them and they just came back with the list or how much engagement was there with them on their methodology in terms of identifying these trails the nine priority trails are included in the 2011 master plan so they were selected through the public the broad public engagement process that was conducted in 2009 and 10 for the development because that plan was adopted in 2011 so through those years when that public involvement was conducted the all of those trails are in the master plan they're part of the 96 miles of trail in that so they weren't new trails that were identified and drawn and selected by dost we looked at the uh the five priority trail brochure from 2014 dost reviewed that that was endorsed by council um as the next five priority trails back then so dost reviewed that as well as the 2011 master plan and suggested those nine priorities got you and and and i'm glad you said it because that gave uh you've given voice to the larger um engagement process because it just reads like dost chose these so it's important i think that that um you know it couldn't be a better folk to run point for us but i'm glad you spoke to the larger uh engagement uh that went into identifying um the list the um the numbers that are attached to each trail the the um i guess it's speculative at this point what it might cost each trail extension are those numbers those are just construction numbers are those numbers taking to account the possibility of having to pay off you know a choir land or eminent domain or paying for is that just construction numbers those numbers are all in for design acquisition and construction got you i think that's it for me great presentation i i will say that um you know it's nice it's important i think when you live in urban environments to have areas that are oasis and respite and in green and open for folk for our health and for our sanity as a city so this is incredibly important uh and crucial work to maintaining that important balance as a great american city we know but we don't want it to be all concrete and skyscrapers so thank you for this incredibly important work that's really for us that's a woman jocelyn thank you madam mayor um and thank you lindsay could you tell us a little bit more about the ncdot spot process and what we would have to do to get that grant funding and any limitations on it like could we get funding for all three of these projects we have to pick it's been a couple years since i worked in the transportation department so i may not be the best staff to answer that question um every 18 months to two years ncdot does a prioritization process and it's a scoring process and municipalities all submit their priority projects to the durham chapel hill carboro metropolitan organization and then the mpo as a whole takes all of those projects and prioritizes them for submittal to spot so it's sort of two that first round is prioritization i don't i don't know if there's a that's not true excuse me a few years ago when i worked for the mpo in the transportation department their uh mpo's were limited to i think 24 projects that they could submit and that could be outdated information at this point but there was a there was a cutoff for how many projects could be submitted to ncdot for each round of the prioritization and so that's 24 projects um for all of the communities in the mpo and i'm sure you're aware of all of those so the mpo does a prioritization process with within itself to identify the most competitive projects to put forward if you put forward projects that aren't very competitive you're you're sort of losing that slot and the consultant team for this implementation program was tasked with looking at each of those nine projects and developing alternate alignments and some of the alternate alignment options could be an opportunity to be more competitive if we move to trail a different direction or we kind of change the trail corridor a little bit we might pick up points from that from that competitive process that was the goal um we the those alignment alternatives focused on a funding strategy not necessarily community context factors because that's something that the city has learned the way that ncdot prioritizes projects through that scoring process doesn't always align very closely with the values of of durham and so we wanted to maintain the integrity of the trail corridor that was identified through that public engagement process for the 2011 master plan but also say okay if we if we deviated from those values and we went to just focus on getting more points for the grant process to get a project funded what would that look like so that's included in the document thank you that's really helpful um do you know and like a ballpark number is fine how much funding there is available for like in an 18 month cycle i don't know okay one of our recent calls that we had related to the downtown rail trail um members of the transportation department were on that call and they said that spot six they're actually not taking any new projects they're trying to fund more fully fund existing projects because a lot of bids are coming back higher and so ncdot is working with all the municipalities to more fully fund that the existing process okay thank you yeah i just i know ncdot is having a lot of their own budget issues lately and so um and you know these are real big numbers it'd be really great if we could get some um some state support and yeah figuring out how we can be our best chance to get that seems like yeah the right absolutely the right strategy um and i'll try not to be too skeptical we should definitely try um to get to get this funding and yeah just trying to get a sense of like how likely it is thanks councilwoman come by here thank you um good to see you lindsay thanks for presenting here um i just wanted to thank you and dost i know you all do a lot of work around this and i'm excited i will say as an npo member i i know what's happening with ncdot so i i do have some concerns around the funding for those specific trails i'm glad that we are diversifying um our funding sources so some things can move forward even if other things can't and again just thank you for the excellent presentation and all the work anyone else i didn't say thank you and i apologize thank you for this thank you for your time i'm drinking coffee and it's not working so councilwoman freeman thank you madam mayor i just a couple more questions and just just um i don't know if there is already an existing map that shows alleyways but if you could direct me to that that would be helpful i'm sorry i couldn't hear your question i'm sorry alleyways so i'm talking into this mic instead of this one the if there's an existing if there's an existing map that shows the different alleys across the city i'm just trying to get a feel for how much of the urban side of this open space conversation we're still missing it's acknowledging that in i think 2019 we added scooters to the mix and so in addition to bike and walk we've got scooters four-wheelers and dirt bikes and they all need some place to ride so i just want to make sure that the network is really robust and there's a real opportunity on the east side of derm where i'm talking about where the east the east end park is and the connection coming from the r kelly bridge straight into the the belt line so i just want to make sure we maximize our opportunities to councilmember johnson's point i think we can we can gain quite a bit of points when we start to add in the environmental aspects of how we can mitigate a couple of things so i look forward to those conversations thank you well i learned a lot today from you miss martt i appreciate the lesson and all of the information about the trails today i do share some concerns about where we're going to allow our atv riders our four-wheel riders every summer uh as it gets warmer we see more and more of them on on our streets and it would be really nice for them to have a safe place to ride but hopefully i'll be meeting with the Durham parks and recs they have a couple of other things i'd like to talk about so i can at least get up to speed um i was always a worker with Durham parks and record recreation department as a child i was a tennis court attendant and uh swimming i'm allowed in a lot of a pool so Durham parks and recreation says i've always been near and dear in my life so i look forward to talking with you and learning more and thank you so much for your time today thank you and your presentation thank you for everyone's time all right we'll now move to item 20 our presentation on shared economic prosperity Durham small business work plan built to last and u works program update i'm miss andrew pettigrew good afternoon andre pettigrew director of the office of economic and workforce development um madam mayor mayor pro tem and members of city council and city manager i'm here to provide an update on the status of the oed small business work plan uh in addition to that uh we are providing an update on our summer youth works program which uh applications are out now uh adria graham scott will start our presentation and provide that update i'll follow up with the update on the work plan as well as an update on uh the built the last innovation lab and i believe that stella adams may also be available as the board chair to provide some comments good afternoon madam mayor mr mayor pro tem members of council um my name is adria graham scott i'm with the office of economic workforce and development and make sure i can move these slides this should take me okay okay i want to move it all right um as you know i provided an update for you um that was essentially in a synopsis of an assessment that was provided to us by rti as a third party evaluation organization that came in to look at our youth works program and determine the efficacy of the program and um i provided that information to you when we last met about a month ago today i'm giving you a brief update on that but just as a summary to look back on what we covered then to just set the stage for what we're doing going forward i just wanted to recap some of the things that went well with our program we served over 375 participants we had a number of workforce and and professionals engaged almost 400 395 and overall i think we received really high marks on our program structure and the content where we had some real challenges were with our organizational platforms and so i call those the pain points and that's the areas that we've been trying to focus on in our our launch for this year um looking at some of the process issues and to resolve them so that our participants will have less complication in terms of being a part of the program engaging in it and moving forward with it so part of the problems that were identified some of the process issues that were identified was the fact that the enrollment process the onboarding process was pretty complex requiring up to six different applications and so which we're trying to streamline that we've already opened our interest form and at about 11 o'clock this morning i took a look at our our enrollment and we were about at seven a little over 750 about 760 applicants thus far and so our goal is to reduce the number of those applications that our young people will have to apply as they move into the program the second real area of concern was around the stipend payment process and that of course occurs at the back end and so we are in conversations with a couple of our program partners in an effort to try to reduce the complexity of that and hopefully with the reduction of the complexity we also will reduce the timeline and be able to get stipends to our young people in a much more efficient way our program is still going to be hybrid this year with all of the uncertainty around our health landscape we are still looking to try to ensure that we are maximizing the benefit of providing as many options as possible to our young people so we will offer them a hybrid program this year and last year's program if you recall was primarily virtual and one of the challenges we had then in launching something new and trying to make it work was the number of platforms that we had to integrate in order to make the platform the program virtual 100% virtual so there were several different platforms that had to be integrated together caused a lot of confusion ultimately they were overcome but in this iteration we are working to reduce that so that we only have one platform to work with other things that were identified were the fact that we have a limited program dedicated staff our staff is all has to deal not only with the youth works program but also with other program challenges and so we are not we don't have dedicated staff to this program and one of the things that was pointed out by RTI was the fact that if we can get this program up and running on a 365 day cycle that it would be a much more efficient program and I agree unfortunately because our time has to be split between other commitments we're not able to do that with our current staff levels so it'd be great to have a person or two that would be dedicated specifically to running youth works we did a brief review of various programs throughout the country and identified Detroit as one of our areas that were similar in terms of the goals that we were trying to achieve and the way that the program was run this was pre-covid we took a visit to Detroit and we met with them and went through their process and we learned there that they had at least two and a half dedicated staff all year around and then when the program would ramp up just as they were about to start the summer they bought on a cadre of individuals which we also will be doing this year as well. Last year of course again in in deference to the public health situation we had limited in-person options so this year again we're hoping to increase that option and some of our employers felt like it would be a benefit to have even more engagement with our young people and so again we're hoping to to change that dynamic this year we're introducing the option of having a job fair and that would be an in-person and a virtual we'll do both but that will give employers an opportunity to engage with our young people in a more engaged and deeper way and the last thing is around the staffing and recruitment this is of the volunteers so the employer volunteers were you know they were very committed to being a part of the process it was just a very difficult dynamic had nothing to do with the employers more so with just trying to work out the logistics of putting everybody where they had to go so this year we're using a different platform for that purpose and I hope that that will help to alleviate some of the difficulties that were experienced at that point. Some of our providers from last year include the ones that you see on on the screen now today I'm happy to say we just released our RFP for our program providers so that there may be some repeats that you see there or some new new people that will be participating I've been getting calls from lots of program providers and so the RFP lays out what the structure of the program is and what our expectations are and so we're really excited about the opportunity to to review what our community partners can bring to the table and bring to our young people it's okay I get it yeah okay I'm sorry I got all right this is the structure that we've set up for this year's program last year we had several sessions and those sessions were divided just using time and so some of the feedback was that there was an overlap of some existing programs and so some of the young people were not able to participate when they wanted to or some of them started and had to to leave so what we did we were very intentional about trying to take split split off the older group from our youth so from 18 to 24 we're going to start them in late May and again that's intentional because if they're in college they're probably out by late May and those who are not in school you know this gives them an opportunity to engage with employers earlier and so hopefully they'll have a chance to work all summer long so you'll see that that program session has started earlier thus far we had about 160 18 to 24 year olds who've applied so I think that's right about where we were sort of in our sweet spot where we were thinking we would have about 150 in that cohort session two and session three are both running concurrently and again that was intentional we worked with DPS they're running their remediation program for the month of June and so we weren't able to we didn't want to start in June and cause the same type of conflicts that we had last year so we felt comfortable that if we began in July that we'd be able to navigate in between sort of all of the other programming that's occurring this summer a benefit of the youth works program is that once again this year we're doing 20 hours per week I'm hopeful that you know as we move the program forward that will change but the benefit of it is is that there are several different programs that are being launched one especially with DPS they receive funding to do specific programming this summer and so this will hopefully keep us from conflicting with one another and enable some of our young people to take advantage of both programs this is just an example of some of the different ways that employers can participate with our program very similar to last year you know there's an opportunity for them to come and talk about their careers through career panels we have we want to make sure that we're tying training and education to everything that our young people are hearing about not just that they're hearing about these various career opportunities but what it takes to get them there and we're hopeful this year to have some work site tours we're in discussion with a couple of our our partners down in RTP and so we're hopeful to be able to schedule some on-site tours more to come on that mentoring of course is always an option and we welcome that from any of our employers who are willing to work with our young people on a more in-depth basis and something that we're carrying over from last year was the pitch challenge something that the young people seem to really enjoy I know in one case they actually played the little shark tank music and so we're really we're going to bring that back because it seemed to be very popular and a great way to help to enforce partnership teamwork creative thought and problem solving and so any support that our industry leaders would like to lend to us in this in this space we certainly welcome it and that concludes my portion of the report if there are any questions thank you very much enjoy your presentation we do have a question councilwoman Freeman thank you I appreciate the presentation and I just wanted to say as I said this morning in our workforce development meeting I want to thank all of our staff and our partners for getting it right and acknowledging I just left the rural summit for North Carolina and there's a lot of folks across the state who are experiencing shrinkage and decreasing populations and it's due to the fact that I I assess that it's due to the fact that they haven't engaged their use and they're not trying to find ways to read read and or to make sure that there are folks who are formerly just as involved can re-enter society with a job and so I really wanted to just take a moment and say thank you and thank you for the work I do have a couple of questions you mentioned you you mentioned Detroit and two and a half staff members would be the difference between doing year-round support could you I didn't hear a cost with that and I didn't know if that was something you were planning to bring forward or not but it would be great to have year-round support acknowledging that as you're building this pipeline these students are going to need support throughout the year to acknowledge if they're going towards actual careers or towards college how we can support them and then make the connections with our corporate partners thank you councilwoman Freeman for those comments and that question I don't have an exact number for you we did put forward a budget request but it did not include an FTE and so this is something that we have been debating and discussing internally for a while because a number of our programs have a nice dovetail with what we're trying to do with our youth works program and I think that the previous mindset was that we could leverage off of our existing programs and to help make this run but to your point about really focusing and our resources in a laser-like fashion that makes it the most efficient program possible that's where that FTE makes a difference and we are trying to make it work with what we have but certainly those additional resources make all the change in the world because the types of things that we're doing we're trying to address some of the issues you're talking about recognizing from our other areas of programming we're dealing with individuals that are facing barriers to employment we're taking the knowledge from that and we're kind of using the youth works platform as a way to help address some of those things and start catching some of those issues at the root cause and so it's a great platform for that they can't do this type of thing with DPS because of other restrictions but we can do it so if we're really wanting to do this to its maximum benefit those FTEs make a difference thank you and I would say that I think it's important to acknowledge that DPS is 321 program is going to really sharply depend on how we get this up and running if we want to be a really good partner to our DPS school board who implemented this then we need to really figure out how to make sure we can address I know I said in the previous conversation a thousand students but there are way more than a thousand students that need to be served and I thank you for that thank you I'm just going to reintroduce myself to the audience Andre Pettigrew Executive Director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and I'm going to provide an overview of our small business work plan the work plan has these five priorities and I'll go through each of them and give you an update in terms of what we're doing to implement this in support of our small business community again this slide is just to represent the context of our work the work plan was developed before there was COVID-19 however COVID-19 actually really put a focus in on the need to support small business but in particular black and brown small businesses who were disproportionately affected by COVID it also talks about the fact that we realize that there is a role for the city but we have a number of partners both public and private that are doing this work and the ability for us to share information leverage our resources and coordinate the effort is something that again is a positive byproduct coming out of COVID the third point here is again the integration of new resources the federal government through a number of dollars at COVID again CARES funds ARP funds around lending but there's also been dollars directed at supporting technical assistance and again being able to again share leverage and again define the ecosystem the entrepreneurial ecosystem which is a set of resources and partners who support our private businesses is a part of the effort again this is a five-year effort in my mind I think the investments that we as a city and we as a community make to sort of rebuild the ecosystem to do the outreach and provide the resources to support small business it will take that and again I think we're in the second year of that in terms of this work plan again when you think about the impact of COVID 41% drop in business activity for African-American businesses 800,000 women have left the workforce as a part of the effort again a lot of our work is towards women entrepreneurs as well as entrepreneurs of color again there's a major restructuring in terms of supporting small business so priority number one is around technical assistance some of you may know we have had the Durham Small Business Advisory Council as a part of my office they tell me for almost 15 years we continue to manage that but because of COVID we developed something that's called the Durham Collaboration the Durham Collaboration in addition to the traditional small business development centers some of the CDFIs a number of banks joined us in other organizations like the chamber the black chamber we are on a call during COVID at the height of COVID we're on a call twice a week again comparing notes sharing resources and figuring out what we need to do as a community currently we meet weekly doing very much of the same thing in fact this sort of collaboration which I'm going to say was informal was also one of the sources for how we were able to get this community navigator program I wanted to spend a little time talking about the SBA community navigator program E3 equity for every entrepreneur Ford Cities is a successful contractor Ford Cities is a technical assistance company that works nationally with cities and building small business equal systems they're headquartered here they've been doing this work since 2014 and again the city and the county met with Ford Cities in developing a strategy around this grant this grant is is really all about coming up with processes to formalize the set of resources and essentially tracking what small businesses are receiving in the community as well as tracking the outcomes outcomes include the technical assistance but one of the most important one is the amount of capital they receive how many business startup how many how much resources equity as well as debt they receive because we were able to take the work that we were doing informally included in the proposal Ford Cities has won this one million dollar grant over a two year period they will serve as the hub the hub essentially is the center they are responsible for doing the training within the spokes as a hub and spoke system and I'll talk a little bit about the spokes but they will serve as the hub doing the training the coordinating as well as the performance metrics required as a part of this grant the Biden administration set aside a hundred million dollars to try to address the negative impacts of the ppp program payroll protection program and the emergency disaster economic program the idle program again the report came out very early that black and brown companies small businesses did not receive the dollars that were targeted in this program the Biden administration's responsiveness as part of the art program was provide a hundred million dollars to in fact strengthen ecosystems in communities we are one of 50 organizations in the country that got this grant there were over 700 applicants for this grant and so again the city and the county are strategic partners we are not receiving any of the dollars but we're strategic partners because again the work that the hub Ford Cities and the spokes will do is important the partners there are listed in the diagram North Carolina Central's business school as well as Durham Tech Small Business Development Center and there are four new technical assistance providers who have joined this program and they're not new in that they've been operating in our community they're new in joining this program because of the emphasis on equity Provident 1898 Knox Street Studios Helios Foundation and Infinity Bridges are the spokes that are defining the core of this ecosystem we know that the ecosystem is much broader and much bigger than this but each of these groups are going to be working again in a much more formal fashion each business that is looking to get support services will be assigned a navigator that provides an assessment of what they need and will literally escort them through the process and not lose them one of the difficulties in supporting small businesses is that there is a lot of stuff there and quite frankly you got to do it efficiently because their business is the thing that really matters and so the ability to again assign an individual within these organizations to follow them through the maze of TA you know financing seminars and what have you is important on the back end of this forward cities will begin to provide a report in terms of again the number of people the type of support they receive and the outcome again I'm very optimistic about the ability to do this it's a pilot program the issue of sustainability and who will run this after two years is something that is a part of the evaluation there'll be a recommendation that comes out of this report in terms of how this should be funded who should be the principal you know hub and spoke of this and and so again I'm very optimistic about this approach and again happy to know that Durham is one of 50 organizations or communities to receive this I made the same mistake I'm going to get out of this so the second slide is really around our our our seeds legacy program again as I listened to the budget retreat a number of you had raised some questions about the seed legacy program and again this is a program shared equity and economic development that we are doing in partnership with the national league of cities and the democracy at work institute this program has been going on for two years again we were interrupted by COVID but we did not stop our work again we have worked with a focus group of 24 businesses in our community that have been in business for more than 20 years in that during that period we actually provided some one-on-one counseling as well as continuing to sort of work with them because again at the height of COVID every community was concerned about losing businesses that had been around a long time the legacy pilot program we're launching next month the legacy pilot program is a business retention expansion and succession planning program we will identify 15 to 20 of these firms in our community to provide them with a curriculum that is a master as masterc