I am trying to monitor, in addition to paying attention to the meeting, some of the various platforms that this is being broadcast in to try to bring some of those comments into the meeting since we can't obviously hear from folks in person tonight. Here's another comment, getting background noise maybe from technical support staff but not the live feed. I don't know. The good news is the video seems to be working so that's great we got that that going on. And I'm open to suggestions about whether or not we move forward or wait a little bit longer. So, I'm getting indications that they can hear us at least on television. Okay, great. Okay, looks like the they've cleared up the problem. I'm now hearing this. So, we are not in our council chambers where normally we have a beautiful American flag. So, instead I'm going to temporarily change my background to the American flag while while I lead the pledge so now I also have to stand so see if I can. There we go. All right. Okay, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the expertise and thank you for helping us to delay until we could get a little better situation with the video with the audio. Thank you. There we go. So we've we've had our moment of silence. We've honored representative Marion black brother Ray air cart. And our wonder and residents so far who has died from the coronavirus. And now we'll have the roll call. Mayor school here, your pro tem Johnson, here comes member Alston here comes member Caballero here comes member Freeman comes member Middleton here comes member Reese here. Thank you. Thank you madam clerk. We'll move to our ceremonial items and we do have a couple of ceremonial items. The first is National Community Development Week. Community National Community Development Week annually recognize the importance of community development block grant CDBG and home investment partnership programs. CDBG remains the principal source of federal revenue for states localities and their program partners to use an assisting low and moderate income people to prevent physical economic and social deterioration in neighborhoods and communities across the country. CDBG and home dollars allow the city to successfully undertake the south side revitalization project, dense apartments primarily for homeless veterans, the widow school for low income seniors, and the permanently affordable Piedmont rentals for very low income households, just in a few. And here's the proclamation. The week of April 13 through the April 17 2020 has been designated as National Community Development Week by the National Community Development Association to celebrate the community development block grant program the home partnership program. Now whereas since 1975 the CDBG program has provided annual funding and flexibility to local communities provide decent, safe and affordable housing a suitable living environment and economic opportunities to low and moderate income people. Now whereas since 1992 the home program has provided funding to local communities to create decent, safe and affordable housing opportunities for low income persons with over 1 million units of affordable housing, having been completed nationally using home funds. Now whereas over the past five years the city of Durham has received a total of $9,417,000 in CDBG funds and $4,642,000 in home funds, whereas the city of Durham has used CDBG and home funds directly or in partnerships to address issues surrounding homelessness including veteran homelessness to low and moderate income households to develop affordable rental units for low and very low income households to provide repairs to homes of very low income seniors and to help revitalize neighborhoods and to leverage millions of dollars in additional public and private investments within the Durham neighborhoods. Now therefore I, Stephen M. Shull, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina do hereby proclaim April 13th through 17th, 2020 as National Community Development Week in Durham to support these two valuable programs that have made a tremendous contribution to the vitality of the city's housing stock, infrastructure, public services and the economic vitality of our community. Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the City of Durham, North Carolina, this 6th day of April. Can I have the traditional applause? Thank you. Second, we will have National Crime Victims Rights Week. Another important proclamation. The victim services unit of the Durham Police Department offer support and services to victims of violent crimes, homicides, armed robberies, aggravated and sexual assault and other serious felonies. These services include but are not limited to crisis intervention, referrals for community resources, investigative support, assistance with a filing of victim compensation claims, advising victims of their rights, educating victims about the criminal justice system and what to expect. Accompaniment to court and medical appointments. The victim services unit in 2019 served 1,628 cases, three full-time victim and witness service coordinators, service 2,350 victims in 2019. The unit referred victims to outside resources a total number of 4,841 times during the year and services are provided in both English and Spanish. The first National Crime Rights Victim Week ceremony was celebrated in 1981 under President Ronald Reagan. The annual recognition continues every year in the month of April as a way to renew our country's commitment to guarantee that all individuals have the rights and services that they need to recover for victimization. This year's national theme is seek justice, ensure victims' rights, inspire hope. And now the proclamation. Whereas these are unprecedented times in the history of our nation, region, state and the city of Durham as the coronavirus pandemic escalates. And whereas even in times of a worldwide health crisis, the critical work of law enforcement, judicial systems and crime victim rights advocates remains necessary. And whereas crime can leave a lasting impact on any person regardless of age, national origin, race, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation, immigration or economic status. And whereas the formation of the City of Durham Police Department's Victim Witness Services Unit in 1997 demonstrates the department's strong commitment to providing essential services to victims and witnesses of crimes. And to ensuring that crime victims are treated with respect, compassion, fairness and dignity. And whereas the department's victim services advocates continue to render services during this challenging time, supporting citizens and residents in the aftermath of crime victimization. And whereas crime victims whose sense of grief, loss, fear and anxiety is likely further heightened by the effects of COVID-19. And whereas now more than ever the ideals of compassion, respect, healing, recovery and hope resonate now with all of our residents. And whereas national crime victims' rights week 2020 seek justice, ensure victims' rights, inspire hope. The theme for this year provides a timely opportunity to collectively commit to these ideals as a community of focusing on our common humanity. Now, therefore, I, Stephen M. Schulmeyer, the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim the week of April 19th to 25th 2020 as National Crime Victims' Rights Week in Durham. And hereby encourage Durham citizens to take the time to learn more about crime victims' rights and to find ways to nurture resilience and hope in the lives of crime victims and others who are in need of specific support, special support during this time of challenge. Witness my hand, the Corporate Seal of the City of Durham, North Carolina, this the sixth day of April 2020. Thank you so much and thank you all for those who work on the valuable work that is recognized by these proclamations. And now we'll proceed to announcements by members of the Council and I'm going to begin with Council Member Austin who has an important announcement. Unmute myself. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, colleagues. I know we have very important matters to discuss tonight so I will brief try to be. Today I reluctantly submitted my resignation from the Durham City Council.  Almost in an instant people from all walks of life are afraid facing uncertain economic circumstances and looking to all of us for answers. This virus that we don't know than do, but I want the public to rest assured that our courageous frontline workers in health care, public safety, sanitation, transportation and food provision doing all that they can to help keep us going. Our local government and public health staffs are also working tirelessly to keep basic infrastructure running and ease the impact of illness, loss of work, pay and childcare on thousands of residents. We all stand ready to follow the advice of public health experts and give you the information you need to keep yourselves and your loved ones safe. Now it's very likely that after this trying week, I will have to continue our work together in a different role. I'll share more about that role soon. In the very likely event this is my final opportunity to address all of you as a member of the Durham City Council. I briefly want to thank the residents of Durham for allowing me to serve Ward 3 and this wonderful city. I am the lone Durham native on this Council. My roots go back in this area more than five generations, my ancestors were enslaved on land near where I live today. My grandparents cleaned homes in Trinity Park, tended farmland and show for doctors who work at Duke Hospital. My mother was part of the first integrated class to graduate from Durham High School, and I myself attended school in Durham, even when I lived in a neighboring county. Many years later during the Great Recession, I moved back to Durham, deep in student loan debt. I'm sure if I would get a paycheck each month, certain that my credit card would get declined when I brought groceries or beer at one of the only bars in downtown at the time. I could not have imagined then that 10 years later, I would get the chance to serve an elected office in a town that I could hardly afford to live or play in 10 years ago. And that's been a city that holds so much of my love and so much of my history. We are staring now into a kind of unknown. I feel familiar in many ways that history tells us very little about. Many of our residents are sick. Others who are already struggling to pay their rents or afford basic necessities are now facing unemployment. And our city is reeling from shuttered downtown storefronts and an economy in shock. The bad news is, will take a long time for us to recover. The bad news is, Durham is an extraordinarily capable hands that can lead our recovery. And for that, I am personally grateful. To our administration and our staff, all of your work is essential. Even in this moment when people are fixed in government responses, so much of your work goes unheralded. Many of you risk your health to keep our city running. And I know that this crisis weighs on all of you just as much as it does all of us. Thank you for the sacrifices you were making. Thank you for your exceptional work under unimaginable stress. And thank you for making our city what it is. It has been a gift to represent your work to our residents. And to our colleagues. I never took a hug a handshake or fist bump for granted for many of you, because frankly our work is hard, and your collegial collegial nature has always been a comfort. But I wish now more than ever that I could thank you with the kind with the kind of caring gestures that you've always extended to me. For now though I'll say, you are a compassionate and brilliant group of people. I'm proud to have worked together. I'm proud of the work that we've done, and I'm prouder yet to have done this work with each and every one of you. I will miss you all greatly to Durham. I am yours. And because of that I know your spirit. This community has responded to this moment and exactly the way that I expected, and then exactly the way that we needed. You're working together, fighting for each other, and trusting that together we will make it through this current crisis. One month ago at the end of our mayor's powerful and moving state of the city address, which set an ambitious tone for the next year, the student group saying Andrew days rise up. Part of that song goes, and the silence isn't quiet. And it feels like it's getting hard to breathe. And you know you feel like dying. I promise you will take the world to its feet and move mountains. I'll rise up, rise up unafraid, and I'll do it 1000 times again. We could not have known then how poignant those words would be just weeks later. Durham. Right now the silence isn't quiet. It feels hard to breathe. We will take the wall to its feet. We will move mountains, and we will rise up. I want to thank everyone listening. Please stay home. Stay safe. We are with you. I am with you. And thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much council council member Austin for those beautiful words and no one could have said it better. Wonderful expression of where our city is at this time. We will miss you tremendously. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And I'll just contact with you as you move to represent our city in the legislature and you're going to do an amazing job.  I hate to go. Yeah, but it you'll you'll still be with us and you'll be doing amazing things and thank you for those fantastic words. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Announcements by members of the council. Anybody who wants to raise your hand so I can see you. Okay. I don't see a hand up. I have a very few words. Just want to just to mention that we have received public comment for this meeting. I appreciate our city clerk opening a portal to allow a public comment in the form of emails. They all involve one topic, which is the topic of curbside service for breweries, which we will we can we'll when we get to a later part of our meeting we can certainly discuss where we are on that. But I did want to mention and appreciate that we have the public comment available. I want to report just a little bit to our council and to our city where how we're doing in this fight against the coronavirus. In, in many respects, as hard as this is. And one very important respect we're doing well. In the past week, our daily rate of in coronavirus case increase has gone has fallen from about 12% per day till about not to about 8% per day. We are the large county in the state that has the slowest rate of growth of coronavirus cases which we can be very proud of. Travel endurance down more than 40% people are taking the stay at home order very, very. They're doing very well with it and taking it very seriously and social distancing and it's making a difference. We are flattening the curve. How do we compare to other regions around the country and around the world I think it's very important to know so. We know that we're no, we know the worst are places like New Orleans and in New York. And we know that Washington was a hotspot for a while, although it's it's improving our rate of case increase on the 27th day. Since we began having cases for 27th day, our rate of increases about the same as South Korea, one of the places in the world that has done the best with the coronavirus. So if we continue to do this work well, if we continue to stay socially distanced, I believe in our public health folks believe that we can continue to flatten the curve. The modeling from Duke University Health System says that we estimate the peak of our cases to be between April 24 and May the 2nd. And that has been consistent in the modeling that they have done. This is a very hard time. And again, Councilmember Austin said it better than I can, but it needs to be said again, our hearts go out to everyone in Durham who is suffering in some way because of this coronavirus. People have lost their jobs all over the country and right here in Durham. And I know many of us have gotten emails of difficulties accessing the unemployment system and you know all kinds of difficulties that people are facing. To the businesses that have had to shut their doors temporarily and hopefully only temporarily our hearts go out to you. There's so many people in Durham who are suffering because of this and we all want you to know how much we care and how much we're trying every day to get our city safely through this. And to tell you all that the more quickly we can get through our peak and the more we can flatten the curve, the more quickly we can reopen our businesses and Durham can be back in business again. We hope that this won't be long, but it depends on us if we can successfully social socially distance and we can stay safe and we can flatten the curve. We'll keep our medical, our healthcare workers safe. We won't overburden our hospital and make it impossible for each of us to get good medical care should we need it. And we will be able to more quickly get back into business as a city and that is that is our aim and that is that is something that we have to do together. But we are doing amazing work and we every one of us is working hard to do what we need to do and giving the gift of distance. It's a gift now. It's a kindness. I want to say that I believe deeply in this separation of church and state. We don't have prayers at our council meetings and I do want to note that this is an important week for many religious people. This is the week of Easter. It's the week of Passover. And I wanted to just tell our community that I've asked one of our council members, a pastor himself, Mark Anthony Middleton, to compose a prayer during this week for our city that our churches and synagogues and mosques can share this week. People of all denominations and he's agreed to do so and I really appreciate that. I want to ask everyone to please stay at home. Please do what we need to do to keep yourself safe and everyone else safe. Give your love from a distance. Take care of the elders. Be safe. We can do this together. We can fight this virus together. Each of us can act so all of us are safe. All right. And now we'll move into priority items and I'll ask first is there a prior is for the city manager any priority items Mr manager. Good evening everyone members of council have some remarks in a few minutes but for now I have no priority items. Thank you. Thank you Mr manager. Madam attorney. Good evening Mr mayor members of city council. And a mayor item city attorney's office has no priority items this evening. Thank you. Madam clerk. Good evening everyone the city clerk's office has no items. Thank you madam clerk. Good evening everybody and now we'll move into our first item which is the report on the city's response to COVID-19 and I'm going to turn this over to the city manager. Thank you again mayor members of the city council. Before we move into the more structured discussion on a variety of the COVID-19 topics I would like to take a few minutes and provide some prepared remarks. The city of Durham was hit with a malware attack on the evening of March the 6th which significantly impacted our data and communications networks. This malware attack was followed very quickly with the realization of the impact COVID-19 would have on our community and the way many services could safely be provided to our residents. These back to back events have challenged us all beyond anything we could ever have ever have experienced or even imagine. The city of Durham staff has always been at the pinnacle of public service professionalism and capabilities. Every time the bar has been raised our staff has responded with resolve innovation and dedication to public service. And I want to use this opportunity to express my gratitude and appreciation to all of our employees and their past present and future commitment of service to our community and the residents of Durham. It is truly my honor to be a part of a part of them. Today we have approximately 1250 frontline employees working every day and receiving premium pay. We also have 700 employees telecommuting tele teleworking every day to keep Durham running. And at the same time we have continued to pay and provide pay and benefits to an approximate 220 full-time and 250 part-time employees who are ready to support our services when called. As has been said we have a long road ahead and no one knows for sure where it will lead and who will be impacted. I have never been more proud or confident that our employees will respond and be up to the challenge of keeping our community safe ever working to recover and return Durham to the community that we love and cherish. Thank you. Mr. Mayor we have a number of staff people who are prepared to respond to a variety of issues that you have asked us to address this evening. I don't know if you have a particular order that you want them addressed. I will defer to you but if there are they are they are ready and I can jump back in whenever that comes. I think you'd wanted to hear about some operational issues. I know you want to hear about the EOC first. Yes. I was I was thinking we would first hear about the EOC, then about the operational issues and then the any order that you wanted to call the departmental reports. Is that okay? So the first speaker will be Jim Groves. Mr. Mayor, council members, this is Jim Groves. I hope you can see me okay. Yes we can Jim. Thank you sir. So one thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to talk with you this evening. I'd like to give you a quick brief of what we've been doing in the EOC and maybe actually share what the emergency operations center is for the folks that are listening in or tuning in. And kind of go a better understanding of what that is. The EOC or the emergency operations center is a centralized function that provides interagency coordination that is supported by executive decision making in support of emergencies and disasters. So really what that means is the EOC is structured to promote communication information sharing and a better way that we can understand and coordinate and collaborate together to respond to any emergency or disaster. In Durham County, our EOC is structured to really promote accountability and action. We have it structured similarly to the incident command system or ICS where we have an EOC manager that's responsible for the daily or the operational period actions that's going on within the EOC. You may know that Ms. Leslie O'Connor has been taking care of those duties since the beginning of COVID. Within the realm of the EOC manager, they are supported by the public information officer within the EOC, the liaison officer within the EOC and then a safety officer within the EOC. And they also have different chiefs and that's not a rank that's a title within the emergency operations center, but they have an operations chief that really does the hands on work of what we've been asked to do. We have a planning section chief that is constantly looking forward 12 to 24 hours and finding out and determining and planning for what we need to be doing before the next operational period begins. We have a finance admin administrative section chief that is looking at the total funds that we're spending on resources, on personnel, on supplies. And then lastly, we have a logistics section chief and the logistics section chief is really looking at those resources and resource management that we need to bring every effort that we can to respond to whatever event that we're dealing with. Each of those chiefs has a large staff that's working within to accomplish these tasks. For example, in the operations section, we have a human services branch, we have a public safety branch, and we have an infrastructure branch. And within each of those branches, those people are working on specific tasks. For an example, one of the interagency groups that under operations is the homeless population and how we're dealing with that with COVID. And also food security and how we're dealing with that. And then also we're working with the public schools on on the things that are going on with them and the children being out of school. The EOC is typically set up for any type of hazard that we may need to respond to. But specifically for the COVID event, we're operating just a little differently than we typically do for public health. Usually when we activate emergency management is set by ordinance to be in charge and running this. We know that public health and this is a public health event really is the subject matter expert. So within our activation of this EOC, we are fully in support of public health and anything that they may need. So our main job is to get the cadence of the operations to make sure we're getting briefings done to make sure we're giving situational reports to make sure we're sharing information appropriately across all different areas of the city and the county. And then we also have a private public nonprofit to just make sure folks kind of know really what's going on. That's a really high overview of what's going on with the EOC. I can tell you that we were monitoring the COVID before it ever came to Durham County. We activated the emergency operations center before COVID was in Durham County. We did the state of emergency to make sure that we were prepared for anything that may happen as a result of this. We continue to do long term planning. We're looking weeks in advance to think if this thing really goes out of control, although the message that you shared, Mr. Mayor, that we are really low on the curve, which is beautiful. And that's the way that turns around. And so we're planning on weeks that if it does not stay to that trend, we're prepared and we've got a plan to be able to do that. And then obviously we're filling questions from management and from elected officials to make sure that they are able to share with their constituents as much as they can. Happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you so much. And thank you for your leadership. And thanks to Leslie, who's been wonderful and all the folks in the EOC. And I know this time you've had a, usually the EOC is a kind of tight act. I've been in there during, during a previous emergencies and everybody's sitting in the same rooms, real shoulder to shoulder. And this is a whole nother ball game for you all as well. It is, sir. And you know, we had to activate our emergency operations center actually in the HHS building this time because unfortunately the our existing EOC is just not set up to be able to facilitate social distancing like we need to. So we did move over to the ABC classrooms at HHS to be able to accomplish that safely for our staff and support staff. Alrighty. Thank you so much. And I'm now going to ask council members if you have a question for Mr. Groves if you could raise your hand. And I hope I'll be able to see it. Council member Reese. I think I've unmuted myself. Mr. Mayor, there have been a couple of comments from members of the public on the Facebook stream about that are folks that are concerned about the fact that during public schools ended, at least for now, it's meal program for kids in the public schools. Today, I believe they gave a number of meals to kids. And now we're the parents are getting guidance about other programs. I'm wondering if, Jim, if you can talk a little bit about what the folks at the EOC know about the options that are available to families right now. So I can share with you that we have been in close communication with the schools and the support agencies and the volunteer agencies that may support the feeding for the children. We have a phone call plan with them tomorrow to try to facilitate a successful outcome with this so we do not have children and families going unfed. But I think that's the best information I can share with you is we have a similar team and interagency task force that is working with the public schools that includes volunteer organizations nonprofit organizations. And anyone any subject matter expert that we think that we can bring to bear to have those conversations to try to develop a solution for this. Let me just add, Jim, thank you. It's today, as council member reset during public schools gave out meals. They have been feeding about 5500 children a day. They gave out meals. My understanding is today to last for the week. You know, lots of food with stable, stable shelf life. And I know that the Durham Public Schools Foundation is working hard to step into the breach when with their public schools announced it could no longer do this because of lack of personnel. The Durham Public Schools Foundation is stepping up to work with the public schools to organize the feeding of these children. It's going to cost a lot of money. And there are people who are contributing mightily. But I will say to members of our public one way you can help is to contribute to the Durham Public Schools Foundation is going to be working to feed these children as Jim said, it'll take a lot of partners but they're they're planning to step up and and and lead this effort and have done a lot of really good work to do so. Councilmember Reese another another comment or question. Yeah, Mr. Mayor just wanted to say how grateful I am for your leadership on this issue. If I if I'm correctly informed I believe your family has posted a $10,000 match. So any members of the public who want to support feeding our Durham Public Schools families, but also maybe make it a little bit painful for the mayor. It's a great opportunity to to hit where it hurts and do it for our kids. And so I intend as soon as we're done here today and intend to do my part on that. So thank you, Councilmember. Thank you, Councilmember. Other questions or comments for Mr. Groves. All righty seeing none Jim thank you. Mr. Mayor thank you for the opportunity to address you and the council. We really appreciate what you're doing. It's hard and you've always been such a good leader. Thank you to you. Thank you to Leslie. Ari everybody over there has just been doing great. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Mayor next I think we're going to have both Ferguson talk a bit about our outward facing operations. Welcome Bob. Thank you mayor members of council good evening it's I want to thank Jim Groves for his report and also add my sentiments to those the city manager Tom Bonfield who expressed appreciation and an acknowledgement of the privilege that it is. To be part of this team right now and to work with the employees who are doing such great work that's it's really been a privilege and one group I just wanted to make brief comments about before my report. One of the groups that's probably not getting mentioned as often is those some odd 250 employees that Tom said are at home and not able to tell the work as well as a number of tele workers who is really gut wrenching for them to not be reporting to work and some of the reports that I'm getting. From department directors is how they are being asked repeatedly by some of those staff when can we come back and when can we get back in the field. And while we know it was absolutely the right decision to keep them home. I want to reiterate that many of them perform extremely important and essential services for the citizens and residents of Durham. And we will be returning them as quickly as it's safe for our community to do so but I wanted to acknowledge that some of our heroes are the ones who are sitting at home and helping us not to spread this and I just wanted to point that out. Briefly I've been asked to just give a high level overview of what departments in the operations portfolio are maintaining in terms of services right now. And to note a few that have been suspended. This is not a comprehensive list. Just tried to pull out the highlights. And I'd also know for anyone listening that this could change over time. We are constantly evaluating what services were able to continue to provide and what the community needs right now. But acknowledge that that could be changing in consultation with the manager and the leadership on the council as we move forward so. Briefly and in no particular order I wanted to walk through the departments in the operations portfolio there are nine departments I'll be reporting on eight and I know that the police chief Sarah on Davis is on this call as well and she'll provide any information from the police department separately so beginning first with the public works department for services that we are definitely maintaining and continuing to provide. We are still providing emergency street and concrete repairs. We are providing limited litter collection and bus stop cleaning just at those high use facilities. There is and this goes for several departments including water management parks and recreation we are providing limited construction inspection and plan review to support the ongoing residential and commercial development activity in the city. The city public works services that are currently suspended are permanent and long range concrete and asphalt repairs stormwater maintenance services are suspended. All capital projects and I'll repeat this when we get to general services but any large capital construction projects underway in the city have been paused to ensure the as many people as possible are staying home. Obviously with all of our facilities closed all of our walk in customer service has been suspended at any city facility and field investigation of any stormwater complaints has also been suspended. Moving on to water management and those services that are ongoing obviously all our water and wastewater plants have to remain online and all the maintenance at those plants must continue. We are modifying shifts and schedules to limit as much employee to employee contact and exposure as possible. The water distribution and sewer collection system maintenance has to continue to make sure that that system provides safe water and safe sewer services to our city. But again we have reduced staffing to only perform reactive maintenance or work activities that are required by our collection system permits. The building and meter reading is continuing our list station maintenance is continuing as well. And previously I mentioned that development support continues a few things that we have suspended that are in the water management area of services, any in home water use assessments have been suspended. If we're not going online or we will do telephone consultations with people who have questions or concerns. Likewise, we will not go into homes right now for water quality testing and sampling but we can take samples for people who have water quality concerns from an outside hose or faucet so that is something that continues. As has been widely publicized there are no service disconnections for non payment going on right now no late fees for anyone who is struggling to pay their bills at this time. Moving on to solid waste garbage and recycling maintain a normal service and normal collections we have reduced staffing on trucks from three to two for our rear load trucks to ensure appropriate social distancing. Our transfer station and convenience center remain open but only to those customers who have contracts with us. That means that we're able to accept that waste without any person to person contact we did have to suspend kind of retail people who just use the convenience center for household trash or small customers so that we could eliminate that person to person contact. Our customer service operation remains functional those employees are working from home in our composting operation continues. We have suspended yard waste collections and bulky collections as well as bulk cardboard collections. We did that specifically to make sure that we could have enough staff to maintain the garbage and recycling collection. Those services will be restarted when we are able to provide the manpower to do so but likely not until the state home order has been lifted. Moving to general services. Some of our unsung heroes in this unfortunate time have been our custodians and so we have had to maintain a core custodial services at critical facilities where we still have daily staff activity. And we certainly have very enhanced cleaning protocols that our custodians have put into place. Likewise the staff at our cemeteries continue to perform burial services only limited services but still a very necessary service. As well in general services the monitoring of critical building facilities and checking on buildings that have been closed and are not being occupied by normal employees were doing basic checks to make sure all those buildings maintain operations and we don't have any maintenance problems in those buildings from home a number of our staff continue to work on all the various projects and portfolio in this portfolio and all the real estate work the general services manages and we are also right now doing some limited monitoring of litter and landscaping in the landscape division of general services. Also keeping an eye on litter and maintenance downtown and right away but most right away maintenance right now has been suspended. Finally our urban forestry group is providing emergency response but but not some of their poor basic services. So the suspended functions in general services includes construction projects all projects managed by general services all the capital projects and enhancements that they manage have been suspended. Most of our landscaping service as mentioned previously mowing and litter cleanup have all been deferred. Urban forestry their tree planning work and they're not urgent tree requests are deferred. And obviously there's no KDB activities going on. I would note here and again in parks and recreation that at some point right away maintenance and parks mowing and maintenance. While currently not considered critical services may become critical service as the growing season continues this does become a problem for site distances along the roadways as well as functional basic use of the parks and so several weeks and we may move some of those employees into a limited operational role but we'll be evaluating that. So moving on to parks and recreation as well. You all know that there are very limited ongoing functions. The only facilities that remain open our parks trails and greenways. We are not doing any core parks maintenance at this time but again that's something we may stand up in a few weeks. We are working very hard in a virtual environment to continue to do all the wonderful things that DPR does on a normal basis. So the marketing staff is working hard to make sure we're promoting leave no trace programs for people who do use the parks since we don't have normal loader pickup. Please take a trash with you and DPR is working very hard to push those messages as well as the important critical social distancing messages that we need to have going in our parks. Likewise DPR has created a number of virtual programs so if you go to DPR's YouTube channel you can and follow us on social media. You can see exercise classes activities that parents can do with their children. We have a virtual egg hunt that DPR is planning that I'm excited to learn more about. We have very limited park inspections and limited development review activities. As far as suspended functions most of the core functions in DPR have been suspended to include drop in programs leagues and activities. They've all been canceled until further notice we canceled all special events through at least the end of May 2020. All rentals and activities have been canceled at any DPR facility until further notice. Recreation centers and pools are closed city lakes are closed and many park amenities including skate park tennis courts pickleball disc golf courses restrooms dog parks shelters athletic fields and basketball courts are all closed. That has remained an area of concern for us and so I take this opportunity for anyone who's listening to please respect the stay at home order. Please respect that those facilities are not to be used at this time and we're taking additional measures to secure those facilities to make sure they're not not being used. Our fleet department continues to provide core basic services to all the departments with vehicles in the city. So their maintenance and repair vehicles especially to essential public health and safety vehicles continues as well as a special disinfectant and cleaning protocols for those vehicles. The course fleet continues to acquire and distribute fuel for all the important city fleet. Lower level maintenance within the fleet department has been suspended until further notice. Moving to the public safety departments. Our fire department are critical first line responders during this time and very grateful for all the precautions and excellent service they're providing. As as expected fire suppression and emergency medical service technical rescue hazardous materials vehicle accident and other rescue type responses have all been maintained. However, we have been following the direction of the county medical director and have changed our EMS response protocol for fire personnel. We are being dispatched only on critical calls at this time not to a non emergency or non critical calls and of course have a great deal of protocol that they are following in those scenarios to keep our first responder firefighters safe.  We are still able to offer a smoke alarm and CEO alarm delivery but we are not going into homes we're not making contact with residents not able to install those as is our normal protocol. So the functions they have suspended again the first responder EMS role has been scaled back to only be for critical situations. A number of educational events that our fire department does so well have all been canceled by our station visits have been canceled the number of other community outreach activities as well as our ongoing recruitment efforts in the department have been The last department I'll report out on is emergency communications 911 this group with the help of our excellent technology services department made a tremendous recovery from the malware attack. And pleased to say that all of their systems remained operational but through tremendous efforts of a number of staff. Now, our 911 system is fully functional has remained fully functional and is not seeing any service related reductions due to We're taking a number of measures to protect our staff and ensure that protocols are followed that keep them distant we've not had to scale back and will not be scaling back any 911 services. They remain a critical part not just a responding to this emergency but also providing good information to first responders and fire EMS and the police department who are heading out to calls to make sure that they know if they're heading to a coven related call and to take appropriate precautions. So Mr Mayor as I said earlier, police department is on this call they're the ninth department obviously playing a critical role and they'll report out separately but that concludes my comments I'm happy to answer any questions now or follow up council later there's information. Thank you for that great report let me know. Mr manager. Yeah, let me just jump in real quick if I could. In the interest of time I didn't have each of the deputy city managers, you know, prepare remarks about their operations I thought most of the pieces that council members in the public would be concerned about. Mr Ferguson could cover. But I did want to mention certainly in a lot of a lot of behind the scenes things going on with technology solutions paychecks are still getting sent out, you know bills are still being paid all the telecommuting work that's going on that most people don't know happens they just take for granted anyway. And then in the community building portfolio, you'll hear more about the the work that we WD is is doing with small business. We are still fairly fairly operational in the development services arena both in the planning and the inspections departments. They are doing the thing online. We still have inspectors going out because there's still tremendous construction activity going on. And then you'll hear from community development shortly but also even neighborhood improvement services is looking for opportunities to continue community engagement virtually. And there's quite a bit going on there too so that the danger in starting to report about who's doing what is you always leave somebody out and I'll hear about it first thing in the morning but I did want to know that came at the top of my mind. Certainly, Bo is prepared to respond to any of those operational questions as the as in my thank you. Thank you very much Mr manager and thank you both for a great report and now I'm going to ask for questions. Council member Reese. Mr Mayor, both fantastic report. First of all, I just want to say how much I appreciate the continued service of our frontline employees who are making the city work at the most difficult time in our history, really an unprecedented series of events. I'm just so grateful to them and to the rest of the administration for everything they're doing right now. A couple of questions did come up that I wanted to ask you about first of all, with respect to solid waste. We've also currently suspended bulky item pickup is that right. That is correct. And with respect to yard waste pickup. I know that we've suspended that are we still charging that monthly fee right now. We have suspended the monthly fee. And I'm not aware of any concerns about that still being billed but if anyone does receive that bill please let us know we'll make sure and try and figure that out but as it was our intention not to be building that monthly That's great. Thank you. That's what I thought. Parks, the parks and wrecked apartment specifically about our greenway trails and parks. Have, have you has that has the department received a ton of feedback or any feedback really about folks not exercising appropriate social distancing in those spaces. And to speak anecdotally, I don't have numbers about how many complaints have been received. I know that they have received complaints specifically it has primarily seemed to be around athletic courts which we have taken additional measures over the last four or five years to notify and then physically restrict those facilities where at all possible. I can't speak to the volume about I know the city manager and the mayor and council have also received concerns that have been forwarded to myself and the department so would encourage people to continue to do that as well as to use the police non emergency number that has been advertised as a place for people to make reports we will when when resources are available and we can dispatch officers to locations where people have a concern. We can investigate and deal with that as appropriate. This isn't, I don't, I'm not sure this is in your portfolio a question about transportation. We'll have a presentation about transportation. Great. I'll save my, my questions till then. Thank you very much again appreciate all the amazing work. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, are there any other questions. I apologize. I was meeting myself. I apologize. Councilmember Middleton you're up and I think Councilmember Caballero did you also have a question. Okay. Councilmember Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I got nervous there for a minute seeing your mouth move and I couldn't hear anything. I'm going to keep my distance. Thank you. I like it better that way when it doesn't come out. Good evening colleagues and to all watching. But let me just add, and to the city manager and to the mayor, let me just add my words of commendation and just utter respect and all at the job that the staff has been doing since the declaration of the state of emergency. This staff has borne the brunt of the nuts and bolts of how this city keeps working since the declaration and, you know, these are these are challenging cons but but someone once said that the true test of character is taken during challenging and this this city workforce this municipal workforce is just is making us all proud. I do want to ask about our do we have everything we need in terms of PPE personal protection equipment for our front line workers and do we see any issues on the horizon with making sure they have what they need as they go on to situations. I'll address that now and I think there may be some other folks who can also contribute the want to give a shout out to the great work done by our risk management division under deputy city manager want to page they have been closely tracking the CDC guidelines on PPE as it existed at the beginning of this event and as it has evolved over the couple of weeks and continue to push out immediate updates to departments as to what the CDC is recommending for PPE. At this time we we have had all of the core basic protective equipment that we need, but we continue to track as many governments do, you know, the potential for shortages. And we also are making sure that we have good guidance from risk on on what is required and not not, you know, participating in the exhaustion of those resources from the medical community who also needs those so I am at as of today not aware of any shortages in departments, working very closely with purchasing and risk to make sure we have the appropriate gear, but we will continue to track that and there remains an area of concern, as you've heard multiple reports about, but we are not immediately in a dire situation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll say it again. Are there any more questions for deputy city manager Ferguson. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've been on a number of the calls with you see folks over the last couple of weeks and so I don't have a question but I just wanted to add my voice to the course of appreciation and thanks for all of the work that the staff has been doing over the last couple of weeks. And being on those calls it's been clear there's an incredible amount of work that's been happening and the collaboration between the city and the county and the public schools has been really strong. I know that those are the kinds of collaborations that we need right now and they're they're saving lives because we were able to act quickly and in cooperation with our other local governments. We are more better able to fight this to fight this pandemic and we see that in the evidence that Durham is is doing better than a lot of other communities in the country. And so I just wanted to extend my appreciation as well to all of our city staff and staff from the other organizations that have been working so hard to give us to give us the services that we need in this time and to make sure that we're doing the absolute best we can to slow the spread of this disease. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Any other questions or comments for both? Well, I do have one thing that Charlie's comment. I want to try these questions made me I have heard concerns about social distancing on the American tobacco trail. I've been on the American tobacco trail quite a lot over the past couple of weeks. I haven't seen a lot of problems myself but I have heard from other people. I don't know what to let we have those great signs that we put into parks for social distancing and I just we may have enough of them on the trail but I do want to just flag that that's something somebody might want to look at especially with the ATT. Other trails that I've been on have not been as crowded but that might be something you want to give some thought to. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other questions or comments for both? I'm sorry, Council Member Freeman. I know questions, but thank you for your work. And I apologize. I have to use myself when I know I'm a soft talker so I just want to make sure that you can hear me. Okay. Just noting, I do realize that the differences for people that are unhoused have been raised as a question and I just want to make sure that that is addressed and I'm not sure if that's something Tom or Reginald want to address or if it's Bo, but I just want to make sure that is raised. We actually have a report on that a little bit later in the meeting. We're going to hear from community development on that important topic. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right. Anything else for Bo? Thank you. Thank you. We really appreciate you. Mr. Mayor, I think it might be good to move to the transit piece now and have Sean Egan talk about that before we have Chief Davis talk about enforcement. All right. Sean, welcome. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak about the important work that we're doing in transit here. So during this event, across Durham, go Durham bus and go Durham access para transit continue to provide transit service for essential travel, enabling those who work at our hospitals, nursing homes, grocery stores and pharmacies to continue to serve the Durham community while also providing travel for people to access critical goods and services during this emergency. Two weeks ago, we began using rear doors for boarding the buses, while also suspending fair collection, making bus a free service for the essential employees caring for our community during this event. We also implemented new sanitation measures for both our vehicles and facilities on our buses, interior passenger areas and driver compartments are clean daily with Lysol. This includes seats, windows, floors and handholds. Durham station is being cleaned daily and the platform is pressure washed and workers are cleaning all door handles and knobs once an hour during operation with sanitizing wipes. We've modified go Durham bus service to reduce the impact of this event on our employees who continue to work tirelessly for our community. Go Durham service now ends daily at 930pm and service frequency has been reduced on several routes including the four, 5k, seven, 10b, 11, 11b and 20. With these changes, we continue to provide more than 80% of our regularly scheduled service. This enables us to avoid crowding and maintain social distancing on our services where ridership remains at approximately two thirds of normal levels. We would like to take a moment to recognize our employees, go Durham operators and all of our frontline colleagues face the same pressures as everyone else right now. They have families, kids out of school, loved ones with health concerns and many may know someone already impacted by COVID-19. Despite these pressures and despite understandable concerns, our workforce is showing up out of a sense of duty to our community. In recognition of the extraordinary work our bus and paratransit operators and the support staff who make our service possible, we are providing premium pay for our workforce during this event. A 5% pay increase is in line with the premium pay made available for city employees working in the field through this event. We are most grateful for the dedication and professionalism of go Durham bus and access staff who make essential travel possible during this time. With that, I'll take any questions. Thank you very much, Sean. We appreciate it so much. I'm going to now ask if there are any questions for Sean. Council member Reese. Sean, thank you so much for that report. I've been so impressed with the steps that go Durham has taken during this crazy time to make sure that that backbone of reliable service remains in effect for the folks who need it. So many of the workers who have been deemed essential by our stay at home orders are low income workers who rely heavily on our bus service. And the fact that go Durham has remained largely up with a tremendous amount of continued frequency is impressive. Also impressive are the measures that the department took to create more separation between operators and passengers with respect to rear of the bus loading and of course going fare free. I want to say my biggest praise though as you did for our operators who are just doing an incredible job right now operating that lifeline for our employees, the folks in Durham who need that bus service the most. And I just want to thank you for your leadership on that. I had a question that was a little bit related to parks, but I wanted to ask it of of you Sean. One of the suggestions that I've heard a number of times over the last week or so is that in response to what the mayor has heard and I know I've heard it although I've not seen it personally and I know a number of us heard is overcrowding and lack of social distancing and some of our parks and greenways. If the city of Durham would consider closing any city streets in order to give folks more opportunities more places to be outside to walk and to run other than the existing greenway trail system wanted to listen to your thoughts about that. Sure. I mean, as was mentioned earlier, we have had a number of citizens expressed their concerns about the American tobacco trail, for example, and crowding there and what we're really focused on right now is getting the message out and supporting that message that people should be taking trips only for essential travel and then also maintaining social distancing so that of the places where we've heard reports the tobacco trail is the the highest volume of reports that we've heard so far. So we'll be looking at additional measures that we can take to do that in terms of closing roadways. There's not a clear roadway that runs parallel that would be appropriate for closing for the tobacco trail, but we'll continue to monitor areas where we see that we've also made a series of changes on our roadways for pick up and drop off zones for our restaurants for example for carry out and we're continuing to see good utilization of that but we haven't seen as much crowding on the roads themselves so we'll continue to monitor that and as appropriate we'll look at the example of some other cities have taken. We've been in discussions with our colleagues in the National Association of City Transportation Officials around the country and we're working closely about to monitor best practices and we'll implement them as appropriate here in Durham. Thanks Sean and you reminded me of one other thing I wanted to mention that I'll be done and that is how great flam that the city suspended the paid on street parking. During this period to provide some additional space for take out parking for downtown restaurants and also opening the gates on the city on parking decks I think those are those are really important steps right now where we are hopefully obviously it has encouraged a lot of people to come downtown except to pick up food which has been great. I know a number of us have been through downtown by car during this time and it's really it's really wild to see what the city looks like in any event Sean I just wanted to thank you for everything that you've really been put into the fire very quickly and I just want to say I'm really grateful for the way you stepped up the challenge and helped leave the department in this difficult time. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you Council Member. Council Member Austin and then Council Member Middleton. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Hi Sean thank you for your work. Just I understand the social distancing measures you're trying to cultivate with the changes in the service and you know the reloading for the buses are folks who board the buses being asked to kind of self regulate your social distancing or is there anything going on to separate passengers. So right now we're doing that with signage we're also doing that with voice announcements on the buses asking people to maintain that six feet of distance and then we've put up signage around our system before people board as a reminder to do that. So we're continuing to try to find creative ways to get that message out but it's not something that we're asking staff to enforce where we're asking our riders to maintain that safe social distance. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I think you're muted again but you had already. You know the DNC for frankly Doctor's Office Council Member Middleton, thank you. I'll let you work that out now. Sean thank you so much. I want to associate myself with the Council Reese's comments. I think aptly captures the characterization of how important transportation is and our ridership here in Durham. So I want to associate myself with this comment that you have a specific question I know we've observed in other cities around the country that transportation has public transportation I know we've observed in other cities around the country that transportation has public transportation oftentimes has been a challenge for social distance by virtue of volume. Obviously we're not in New York. We don't have that type of ridership. But I think all of us were just struck if we didn't see that that Facebook post that video of that operator. I think it was in Detroit who posted this very, very. Visceral appeal about someone that was coughing on the bus. And I'm just wondering if our operators. I think it's great that we're paying them at a premium. Number one, our operators being provided with any type of PPE mask or gloves or anything like that. And if not, do we have any plans to do that? So as both said, we're working very closely and monitoring the recommendations from the CDC and looking at regularly assessing the level of risk of wear as well as the equipment and the recommendations. So right now, some of our operators may choose to, to wear a mask and gloves, but we're not, we're not issuing masks at this point. We'll continue to monitor that as the situation develops and monitoring the availability of equipment. But we're right now, we're allowing that where the operators decide that they want to bring that. So as we monitor is the only metric availability. I mean, we're not looking for any, anything else other than availability to decide whether or not we're going to issue them. Is that fair? I think that the guidance is evolving as Poe mentioned from the CDC as well about how to gauge the appropriate level of risk. So we'll continue to work with our risk management division on that. Sure. We also address the paratransit operators in the precautions we take there. Sure. So what we typically do is offer door to door service for our paratransit customers. What we're asking them now is to. Is if possible to go curb to curb to try to limit the amount of. Contact or interaction between our operators and our riders on the service. And to try to limit the amount of time and. Maintain as much as possible. The appropriate distance. So we've got a very good response from our paratransit riders. Our access paratransit riders have disabilities that require additional assistance. But they also understand the risk. And the concerns and the importance of social distancing. So we've got a very good response from our access paratransit riders. And they understand the importance of social distancing and are aware of that. I'm sure staff will check me but I think the CDC just recently said that they advise Americans now to start wearing masks in public. I'm pretty sure that was the CDC. I'm sure I'll be checked. I don't know how that will factor into our our our decision in terms of our operators on go Durham. But I have no doubt that we will be proactive and we will be doggedly determined to do everything to protect them as they do this vital work to keep in the city going. So thank you so much for for the work you're doing under just incredible incredible circumstances. Thank you. Thank you, councilmember. Other questions for Sean. Councilmember Caballero. I just wanted to clarification are none of the. I understand the go down Durham operators for regular services. But what about with the paratransit. I'm just thinking about the extra. You know, I'm just thinking about the use of the information with our disabled residents. So I don't what I guess what I'm asking is, are there different standards for each system. So there are, yeah, there, there are different. There are different levels of interaction on the two systems. So I think as we move into. for our Roger and Max's staff. Thank you. Other questions for Sean? Sean, I do have one. Just two. I think that the new CDC guidance, which recommends people wearing masks, whether they're basically in six feet of someone else or think they might be or will be, is important information for us. I would like to see our bus drivers wearing masks. I think that that is the current guidance, and I worry about them so much. We still have, I think, 14,000 boardings a day if I'm not mistaken. I know not each boarding is one person, but thousands of people a day. That's a lot of people for our drivers to come to contact with. So I just want to offer that. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to clarify that the CDC recommendation is for people to wear cloth masks in public, not the medical masks in 95 or surgical masks. They're asking that we reserve those for health care workers. There are some folks in Durham who have been sewing cloth masks for donation to the community, and I'm happy to get Sean and other folks at the city in touch with them to make sure that we can get some cloth masks for our employees. Thank you. Anybody else? Councilmember Cavietto. Yeah, additionally, there is mixed. So the CDC did recommend facial masks, but there is one risk, which is that folks tend to touch their faces more because they're not used to wearing masks because they're not health care workers. So it's just equipment they're not used to dealing with so that it has been one of the risks associated with it. So I just wanted to raise that as well. So if folks are wearing masks, just to be even more careful because you are more likely to touch your face. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. And Sean, thank you. Appreciate you being here. Thank you all for all your good work. We really appreciate it. All right, Mr. Manager, who's next? I think next we ought to have Chief Davis talk about the police response and enforcement if that's okay. Great. Chief, welcome. Are you with us? There she is. Can you see? Hello, Chief. We can. Good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you too. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide an update about patrol operations in the Durham Police Department during this current crisis. So I'll start with saying that first of all, about three weeks ago, we began assessing our response to calls for service in light of the recent emergency orders related to COVID-19, which were initially enacted by the city and the state in collaboration with the Durham 911 Emergency Communications Center. We have worked to establish new call-taking protocols. The modifications allow for effective screening of all calls for service, dispatching only calls that require the presence of a DPD police officer, and less serious offenses such as stolen property reports and incidents where a suspect is not on scene or handled by a phone. Under COVID-19 information only calls are vetted by designated 911 call takers, and if appropriate COVID-19 related calls that require an officer's response are dispatched to patrol. Durham One Call has also assisted with vetting information only calls and responding to citizen inquiries, hence avoiding the disruption of 911 emergency call taking. Also a series of internal communications have been distributed to all patrol officers as a companion document to the state and local orders to guide our officers in the application of each order enacted by the governor, the city, or the county. As stay-at-home orders are amended, the Durham Police Department's internal guidelines are immediately updated to incorporate changes in our enforcement methods. Calls for service continue to be moderate and officers have been effective in utilizing distant verbal commands or public announcement systems, our PA systems that are in the vehicles, to communicate with people violating any aspect of the stay-at-home orders. There have been no COVID-19 related violations that resulted in citations or enforcement action at this time. Officers have encountered only a few small crowds in the earlier stages of the first stay-at-home order about three weeks ago. However, over this past weekend between April 2nd and the 5th, the Durham Police Department responded to at least 10 incidents of individuals congregating in groups of four more to play basketball, soccer, or related sports, and a call related to a barbecue or cookout of sorts on a parking deck in the downtown area. Officers also responded to an incident where about 15 people congregated socially at a private residence. This call was originally dispatched as a noise complaint, and then once the officers responded, realized that there were several people at that particular location. In all cases, officers responded and reminded the congregants of the city's state, the city's active stay-at-home order and compliance follow-up without incident. This weekend's calls were an obvious uptick of the number of people feeling the need to get outside, socialize, and return to normal. But while they may have felt their actions were innocuous, this type disregard of the city's stay-at-home order could ultimately have great consequences. Officers responded to only a few calls where citizens reported businesses not in compliance due to the number of patrons at the business location. Upon arrival, officers reminded the violators of the active state and local orders impacting certain business operations, and then owners quickly comply. Officers also have a letter with my signature basically to provide to owners or businesses that are in non-compliance or violating the current stay-at-home orders. We have not had to issue those letters at this time, but they've been updated recently and we are prepared to post those orders when necessary. Throughout this crisis, it is our priority to maintain a healthy workforce to continue the highest levels of response and service delivery to the community we are sworn to serve. However, we need our citizens to do their part in slowing the spread of COVID-19. We will continue to provide updates and pertinent public safety information through a myriad of social media streams to encourage everyone to stay at home. Ideally, through continuous communication and reminders, we hope to leverage voluntary compliance amongst the masses. Our message to the public at large is to exercise good judgment and comply with social distancing and that we should all be ambassadors for ensuring compliance of the existing stay-at-home orders so that we can all return to normalcy in a very, very short order. I don't have anything else. I do want to thank the administration also for recognizing essential employees with premium pay and additional leave. I think it meant a lot to our frontline officers and they are very, very grateful for that consideration. I also want to thank our officers while I have this opportunity because the men and women of Durham Police Department remain out there on the front lines. They have been on wavering. They have been committed and to some degree heroic to continue to work without complaining. And I really, really do appreciate them and honored to lead the Durham Police Department. Thank you, Mayor Schull. Chief, thank you so much for a great report. I've been really worried, and along with our bus drivers and others, I've been very worried about our police officers, especially reading about some other cities. The number of police officers in Detroit that have come down with COVID-19 or been quarantined, the enormous number of officers in New York. And I'm hoping that because you got started early and we got started early with the training and the distancing that we can protect our officers. But it's been on my mind a lot. And I'm glad that I know our officers are out there and I'm very appreciative of them. They are appreciative of you too. So, Council Members, questions for Chief Davis? Council Member Rees. Hi, Chief Davis. Thank you for a great report. Thank you. I just wanted to say how grateful I am to you for your leadership of the department. Really, this unprecedented time in our history. I've been following along with the daily incident reports and seeing the staffing levels where they are is a testament to the type of people that are employed by the Durham Police Department and your leadership. And so I just want to second what you said about our patrol officers who are out there every day. I also wanted to thank you on Friday afternoon. You posted a really fantastic post on Facebook about how the stay-at-home orders are going to be enforced in the city of Durham. You identified three things, the first of which was the very first question I got from someone on social media about the stay-at-home order, which is, are people going to get pulled over and asked to pay their papers? Right. Show me, show some kind of certificate that they're allowed to be out driving. And what I said then is amazingly enough exactly what you said, is that that's not reasonable and articulable suspicion to engage on traffic stop. And so I just wanted to thank you for that and for the really solid way that the department has operated during this wild period in our city's history. I did want to ask one question about, related to the question that was asked about bus drivers. What is the current protocol for our officers in terms of wearing masks when they engage with members of the public? Well, you know, on the national stage and recommendations initially were sort of, like, you know, misleading in a sense because even some of the professionals, the researchers and all of the folks that we depend on to give us good advice, have sort of shifted gears in what we should and shouldn't do. And once the message came that an asymptomatic person should be wearing a mask, we began making sure that all of our officers, we started early making sure that all of our officers had PPE so that they could put masks on when they needed to in response. But now they are wearing their masks during any type of encounter with the public. We've had some recent incidents where officers had to wear masks where they would just basically respond into a noise complaint or something of that nature. But we have instructed them to keep their distance and even though it seems to be a little bit impersonal to be 15 feet away from a collar, and unfortunately in talking from the car, we have instructed our officers to use the PA systems and do everything that they can to communicate, be diplomatic in their communication. And hopefully people will understand what that distance is really all about. That's great to hear. I didn't have anything else I wanted to say except say again thank you for everything. That Facebook post was awesome. I'm just saying thank you for doing that. Thank you. Sorry, every time Mark Anthony wants to speak, I mute myself. Mark Anthony, Council Member Milton. I won't read too much into that. Chief, thank you so much. We're finding out here in Durham, sure enough, what the country already knew about you, about the level of leadership. And I mean that, that you bring to the job. And unfortunately sometimes the better parts of leaders don't show up until times of challenge and controversy, as Dr. King said. And we are certainly benefiting from all that you bring as a leader. And I'm glad to hear the conversation about PPN. This is something I'm going to stay on and not only with the bus drivers and front line workers, but the police department in particular. Something that really struck me. There are more New York City police officers that have contracted this virus than the size of our police force. That's right. And just let that be a marinade on that for a minute. And it would be a nightmare scenario for our department to have this thing just run through it and the ranks of it. So I just want to lean in and just one thank you for all that you're doing on this time of crisis. And just again, lean in on letting us know anything you need in terms of PPE and making sure that our departments and front line workers have what they need. To keep them protected as they do their job. I'm going to ask you quickly without compromising any operational security or anything. Are there any enforcement posture changes or priorities that have been again, without if it goes into operational security, don't answer me. But are there enforcement priorities that have been outlined that would make it less likely that they would have to come into contact with the public unnecessarily? Well, you know, one thing we keep reiterating to our officers is that there will be no call that won't be dealt with. We will absolutely respond to every call, whether it's by phone or in person. So what we've tried to do is sort of set up a strategy so that officers did not have to have encounters of individuals who just simply want a police report. So it shifted out the manner in which we're responding, but the actual volume of our calls we're still we're still receiving about the normal range of calls for service. The calls have changed just slightly, but officers interactions in the manner in which they address various types of even criminal activity is different. And the level of communication is probably greater than it has been in the past, basically to try to mitigate a situation without making an arrest if at all possible. Right citations, if that's the best way to resolve an issue. Unfortunately, we're still the police and we still had some incidents that we've had to respond to, but my priority and my concern is the health of the organization so that they can continue to respond to the citizens of Durham and wanting to make sure that they stay healthy and their families stay healthy and none of that is compromised in their work. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Council Member. Any other questions for Council Member Austin? Good evening, Chief. Good evening, Mayor Prottin. I don't have any questions. I just want to kind of echo my colleagues in their gratitude and just share. We have some family that live outside the United States and they live in an area where, you know, many of the folks in their neighborhood and people that they know have just left kind of with their lights on. They've left everything in their homes, left their pets and just fled. Not necessarily because of COVID, fear of COVID-19, but because of fear of how we would be enforced, how orders would be enforced. And so I just want to kind of again echo my colleagues and appreciate your work and your leadership and how you've responded to this crisis. So thank you so much for your work and I appreciate you. Thank you. Best wishes to you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Mayor Prottin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chief, thank you for your work. I just wanted to also appreciate you and your leadership during this crisis and all the work that your staff are doing and especially your enforcement priorities, making sure that we're getting compliance without using, you know, the sort of punitive measures that I think folks in our community have been concerned about. So I want to appreciate that approach from you and also just to bring into the conversation that our county jail has been working really hard to reduce the population in the jail so that they can do social distancing, releasing folks as much as possible pre-trial and letting people who have any sort of medical complications out of jail. And so I just also want to appreciate any work that we can do as a police department to make sure that, you know, during this time, the option that we, you know, are not increasing the jail population by, you know, by putting people in there who don't necessarily need to be in there. And I know that that's what we try to do all the time. I feel like this crisis has kind of heightened a lot of our existing priorities around, you know, transit being affordable and, you know, people having access to great space as well as those, you know, public safety priorities that we're dealing with those issues as much as possible without sending people to be in a situation where they'd be less safe in a congregate living situation like the jail. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. I cast member Reese. Something and then someone said something and I remembered it. Chief, as you know, North Carolina has a very odd law about not wearing masks in public and I've had more than one person reach out to me and say, you know what, I know that recently, I know that the CDC guidance has changed and encourages folks to wear masks when they're out in public. But, you know, I'm not comfortable doing that. Right. It was two black men who approached me and said, how do I navigate this situation? So I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you think your officers are going to handle those situations during this time when a lot more people are going to be wearing masks? Well, I think my response will be during a time that we're all dealing with a pandemic, a person wearing a mask doesn't stand out as is being, you know, a person that's suspect or anything like that. I really don't think it's on the front of lobe of my officer's thoughts right now. Everybody's wearing masks and we want them to be to be able to protect themselves and protect the public. So I don't think that that that issue has raised a concern with us just yet.  We're seeing a lot of that. And I haven't, I haven't run into that as an issue just yet. But I guess individuals who have felt some type of apprehension about that in the past may be a little bit concerned. But that might be another tweet that I might have to send out in response to frequently asked questions. Can I wear a mask to protect myself? Absolutely. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate that clarity. Thanks. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. So I wanted to thank Council Member Reese for bringing that up. It's also something that's been on my mind and something that I think our General Assembly delegation should bring to the governor. And as we have one of the soon-to-be newest members of our General Assembly delegation here wanted to make sure Council Member Austin had that on them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I do want to note that I very much enjoyed seeing one of Charlie's kids run in here and give him a hug. That doesn't happen a lot of council meetings. So that was a very... It's bedtime. So, you know, gotta do it. Yeah. Okay. Chief, thank you. We appreciate you. Thank you for being here. And let us know how to support you. Absolutely. Thank you all. Thank you. All right. Mr. Manager, who's up next? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I thought it might be good now to transition to hear from Colin Davis who's leading the task force at the EOC on homelessness. Right. There have been a lot of questions about that. And hopefully Colin can answer most of those for you. Thank you. Good afternoon or evening, I guess. Good evening, Colin. Good evening, Council. So as you know, we are working diligently to take care of our community members who are experiencing homelessness at the same time we are handling a COVID-19 pandemic crisis. We've been looking at various ways of resolving numerous issues because we have to look at the homeless population as really several distinct groups. We've got an unsheltered homeless population, a sheltered population of people who are homeless, and then another group of people who are being exited from jails, prisons, hospitals who have nowhere to go that would ordinarily go into a shelter system. And then within each of those subpopulations, we've got healthy people. We've got people who may be symptomatic. We may have people who are testing positive for COVID-19. And then we've got another group who are medically vulnerable. And those are the people who are defined by CDC guidelines as more vulnerable to negative outcomes of this virus. So the EOC, the team in the EOC has been looking at how to handle all these various things. As you're aware, our shelters in Durham are predominantly congregate living facilities. Some have a few private bedrooms, but they still share congregate kitchens where everybody comes together and cooks, or you've got a whole bunch of bedrooms in a very close borders. So we have been working through trying to reduce the number of people in our congregate shelters to achieve social distancing. We have been in the process of trying to set up hotels to be able to further create that self-quarantine, self-isolation to create that distance and allow people the space they need to prevent illness, and also have a place for people who are being discharged from medical care to come back to somewhere where they they'll have a place to recover should they not be sick enough to remain hospitalized. So as we continue to work through this, we're working with the food task force to figure out feeding, figure out how to get the hotels online, and how to staff the hotels to ensure we've got adequate safety measures to take care of, take care of the community as best we can. With that said, there will probably be some people who will remain unsheltered during this process. We like that or not, that's just a fact of the matter as we work through the coordinated entry process to achieve social distancing that are required. So at this point we're we're hoping to start moving some people. Tomorrow the procurement of hotel rooms has taken a lot longer than we ever anticipated. So this is kind of where we are now as we have a plan in place. We're working to execute the plan and hope to be rolling shortly. And we have moved about a dozen people who are considered the most medically vulnerable out of the out of one of the congregate shelters to a local establishment, a local hotel that is able to accommodate them with appropriate social distancing so that they won't get sick. Our hope is to prevent as many people from getting sick as possible. Thank you very much, Colin. Colin, I have a question in terms, thank you for your work. I know you've done a great job and I've been following this and Mayor Pro Tem has been on the on the twice weekly calls concerning the work that everyone's doing around homelessness has been amazing. I was on one of those calls and have been keeping up with us an amazing it's amazing work. One of the things that you mentioned and I I had been my understanding not from discussion with you but from the discussion with another member of the EOC that we're going to try to be moving people out of urban ministries and actually empty urban ministries to get people adequate socially distanced and into the hotels this week. And then now I've heard today and it's you've confirmed that we're not going to be able to do that and and I know that part of the part of the understanding is that the county has to sign a vote on this contract and that that's one of the things that's holding us up and I've asked that they have a special meeting as soon as possible to vote on this contract so that we can get people moved. When I think about our vulnerabilities as a community to COVID-19 there are several areas that I'm particularly worried about. We've talked about for example our transit system people cluster buses. I'm very concerned about our construction sites. I'm concerned about our utility tourism but nothing is am I as concerned about as I am about the many medically vulnerable people who are in our shelters and so assuming the county could speed up its approval process and get this done this week in terms of the contract with a hotel how fast are we ready to move once we have a contract in place to get people out of a situation where they're not able to socially distance and into the hotels. The process I've been talking and working with the executive directors of the two shelters in the city and they've been working on logistics and assigning rooms and we'll be ready to rock and roll pretty quickly as soon as that contract's executed possibly the same day I believe is possible depending on I don't know dates or when approvals would happen and I know that Drew Cummings and I in the EOC we're all looking at ways to expedite things and try to find ways to move this through as quickly as possible because all of us are sitting here looking at a potential you know high-risk situation where one person in a congregate place gets sick and how quickly could 70 people all of a sudden be sick at the same time and possibly overwhelm a medical system and none of us want that to happen so we are pushing as hard as we can and I believe that as soon as that document's ready I think we can be ready to go and have been working with Sean's group with transportation and working with Go Triangle to arrange logistics for that so there's a lot of logistics that we've been working on as we work through this and every time we come up with a solution and a plan there seems to be a new question that comes up that needs to be addressed and answered and worked through to make sure that everybody's works well so we are moving as quickly as we can with as best diligence as we can to make this happen. Thank you. Well I hope the county will expedite its process again I think this is really at the top of our list and somebody mentioned I think maybe council member Reese that Sean Egan had been thrown into the fire pretty fast you have too Colin you haven't been here very long and now you're dealing with something unprecedented so I want to thank you for all the leadership that you're showing and appreciate you being at the emergency running that for the emergency operation center thank you and as now if if council member Freeman she had asked a question about this earlier and she may want to have another question at this time council member Freeman do you have any questions okay maybe not so anyone else with questions at this time for Colin council member Middleton and then council member Reese thank you mr. Marin thank you Colin welcome you get to the good part thank you I just wanted to um be clear and the mayor kind of provided an on ramp for my question that the when the obstacles you talked about regarding the hotel room is it plural or is the only obstacle just the county acting on the contract I want to make certain that we're not signaling that there's reticence on the part of hotel operators or or anything of that nature or is there no I think I think there's challenges when you're working through a contract of moving this many people and figuring out terms that will work that are amenable to both sides and I will say the team worked we made some decisions Friday we worked all weekend on getting a contract put together and I think we have terms agreed to this afternoon that's pretty fast for zero zero to a full full contract ready to roll I think and we are trying to work through that I think when we're looking at additional hotels hotels rightfully are saying you know if you're going to move people who are potentially sick to our facility we really want to make sure you're taking over an entire wing or enough of the building because we really don't want to have a group of people who are sick or potentially sick commingling with another group of people who are healthy that sort of defeats the purpose so we're looking through all these different pieces of the puzzle while trying to ensure we keep the process moving right so is it safe to say that those issues we are not at a point where enough of those issues have been worked out and there is a contract pending we're just awaiting action on a part of our colleagues at the county are they still working those issues out I believe I believe all the issues of the contract language and terms were were worked out today I'll have to double check I was in I was in a meeting and then had to leave that to jump on several other meetings I believe when Drew was finishing those discussions with the hotel lawyers and their team and the county finance and lawyer team but I believe they got to a point that they've got something ready ready that everybody can sign off on absolutely listen I know you've got a lot of balls in the air absolutely keep us posted thank you so much oh absolutely appreciate thank you councilmember councilmember reset did you have your hand up for welcome board collin nice to see you in this context and thanks I've been reading the reports and I've been following along with your work during this crisis so they just want to thank you for the just the energy that you've poured into trying to take care of our neighbors um who currently don't have a place to live it's it's obviously something that's very important to come out excuse me singled out these folks in his original state home declaration as much as in need of support from all of our local governments and I'm proud of the work that you're doing to make that happen two questions uh first of all with respect to our population our neighbors who are currently experiencing homelessness what for the most part what is their um health care situation how are they receiving care um right now most of their health care is done through some of the non-profit health care for the homeless providers uh lincoln health care does a lot of their health care I believe Samaritan health does some there's probably a few others that I'm forgetting I'm still new to the area so I don't know all the homeless health care providers but those of the two um alliance is helping with the behavioral health care portion of this as well okay and is that one of the things that um the current effort is doing is in case there those connection those linkages aren't there on an individual basis are we helping get those folks hooked up with appropriate health care services of this right now yes that's part of the homeless not the homeless service providers are working on that one other question I had um has to do with um the Durham rescue mission do we know what kind of social distancing practices um masks loves PPE what what what's happening at the rescue mission right now I don't know definitively I know health department has been reaching out and working with them on social distancing and checking in to make sure they're following best practices other than that that'd be a better question answered by the health department at this point okay um the last thing I wanted to say is I'm I'm almost certain that councilmember Freeman is having some kind of technical difficulty down there um can you give us a nod or a thumbs up or something councilmember so we know like is did you want to ask a question and but I'm all done thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember and I was sort of thinking the same thing uh she wanted to use her chat box maybe she uses her chat box and I'll ask the question oh yeah councilmember Freeman do you want to use your chat box no I'm good thank you okay good go ahead I specifically I think um two of my questions were asked and I appreciate that from my council colleagues uh and around that congregate living facility situation I also want to make sure that um I do want to find out if there's a report coming on the assisted living and other facilities as well in the city and then it would it would be nice to know what the coordination is with the health um the health department on the homeless shelters that are in city limits because um there's no update that's included it's not included in our current like sit reports when we receive them and so just want to make sure that I bring that up but then on the whole hotel procurement side I didn't know if there were any other RFPs or procurement opportunities that were made available but I do want to make sure that we're not forgetting to keep our equity in mind and and reaching out to facilities and organizations that may not be normally reached out to and um just just keeping that all um at the forefront thank you councilmember I want to make a couple of uh comments about that those are important questions um and I think it would be good and I'll just flag for uh the city manager if we could get uh some information from the EOC or you know just just a very short written information about how they're dealing with the congregate sites the and not just the homeless shelters but uh the assisted living facilities and so forth this was mentioned on the on the the call tonight but I think that what councilmember freeman's asking about I think is on a lot of people's minds it's not just homeless shelters it's everywhere when we have group living and there's a lot of good work being done around that but I think it'd be good to hear a report on I know collins work is specifically around the homeless shelters and I also want to mention that I've been concerned about also in addition to urban ministries and families moving forward the Durham rescue mission and so we have they're not members of the continuum of care but I know that the health department and I've been asking about this on our calls the health department has been the health department has been reaching out to them around best practices and I'm hopeful that that's all taking hold and I'm I'm I'm planning to be more in touch myself with the folks of the rescue mission to talk about how they're doing and with our social distancing practices but call do you have anything to add about the rescue mission sure we've we've been talking to them and I know that some of our non-profits have been in contact with them and talking about how to utilize space and I believe that rescue mission has several congregate facilities but they also have several properties where they're able to achieve some self-quarantining for folks at this point the if one were to fully empty their congregate shelter into a hotel it would be a monumental task in an extreme expense so we're trying to use you know what they have available within their within their purview and the thought is we'll get another hotel for those who are exiting the medical system who are sick who might not be able to go back to rescue missions so they would land in that place until they were healthy enough to go back to rescue are you in pretty good contact with them I have not had time to but I know Julia with Julia gamble yes has been working to them and we're planning to reach out to them all right thank you and also in in just a one of the things about the feeding that's going on just to comment on one of the questions that councilmember freeman had I know that people are very much reaching out to minority caterers and restaurants to try to fill the feeding need which I think is very important I know there's a lot of attention to that from their public schools foundation and from the folks who are thinking about how to feed our homeless population as well and agree that's really important any other questions or comments for collin just specifically around the question of what the coordination looks like from the city in the in the county is there a weekly call is there like a daily rundown are you getting a report how's that working or for me getting a call on okay so I actually go to work every day in the EOC so I'm a city employee working out of the EOC with all the county emergency response so when I've got health concern questions I can walk you know a couple tables over and stand six feet away and talk to health department officials and say what's your guidance on this here's what we're thinking of doing for a housing for this group of people is this going to create more problems than it solves or will this work and brainstorm through those pieces uh generally speaking at the end of every day I send an email to uh Karen Lotto and Reginald Johnson to update them on on issues that may be of concern that would get raised to uh to Mr. Chadwell and ultimately to Mr. Bonfield a lot of conversations back and forth thank you is there anyone else with questions for collin thank you so much we really appreciate you being here and we appreciate your work thank you thank you happy to help all right I believe Tom that we have uh we have a presentation from Andre Pettigrew and one from Bertha Johnson those are our last two that's correct Mr. Mayor and you know we don't know that I'd characterize them as presentations right maybe uh maybe updates around particularly like the next the small business discussions that are going on yeah in very preliminary stages but I know it's uh at the top of mind for a lot of folks so Andre if you're uh connected could you uh jump in and give the council an update thank you thank you Tom welcome Andre thank you mayor thank you Tom Andre Pettigrew the director of the office of economic workforce development I just want to give you a quick overview of the activities that the city has been involved in through the office of economic workforce development in support of the recovery and the resiliency of our business community again this is going to be a long challenge but I'm happy with where we are today as we try to support our residents as well as our businesses to access the information and the resources that have come about through the federal let cares legislation it's critical from where I stand that we ensure that our businesses are informed with the right information in a timely and accurate way we've had accomplished this by essentially working with a number of our partners and stakeholders we're one of the organizing members of the small business advisory council and coalition this is a group of stakeholders who provided their technical assistance financing etc etc in fact we have modeled this response after the response that we created you know responding to the bright leaf explosion these are a group of providers including workforce providers that have worked together to be responsive to employees as well as business owners they include the small business development center at Durham tech the small business technology center that the part of nccu the institute's women's center the greater Durham chamber the greater Durham black chamber as well as downtown Durham Inc we meet three times a week virtually to ensure that we are updated with the most current information on the various programs that are available and being sponsored through the SBA we have hosted a number of webinars to support our community these webinars are again critical because again the new legislation is fairly complicated there are a number of moving pieces and much of that work is is actually those resources are going to be delivered through our banks and through our certified development financial institutions we've identified a number of issues and tried to resolve them one of the issues really has to do with how do we prepare members of our community who are either very small businesses or independent contractors who may not have all of the information that's required to submit their application to the SBA to qualify for these services and again that technical assistance again has to be delivered remotely that's why the seminars are such an important part of our work other city agencies who are joining oewd as a part of this includes the department of equity and inclusion Deborah Dowell's organization is one of the resources and again working with us to ensure that our hub companies and organizations are receiving services and the Durham Workforce Development Board is there because again as these businesses have had to shut down their employees have been laid off and getting access to workforce development services are important we have tried to sort of make sure that the information was readily available on the city's home page we have a tab very prominently displaying both the resources that are needed for the unemployment insurance as well as small business resources through the SBA we have created a new portal oewd we have been working on a new website and i want to direct you to a new website that we have posted it's a portal that provides a comprehensive set of resources and information for our community it's called Durham Business 360.com that's Durham Business 360.com that site is up and activated we'll be doing a push email to make more of our community aware of it it's been specifically designed to highlight the set of resources available everything from applying for the various SBA packages but also how to run your business consistent with the stay at home orders and things of that nature so again trying to become a resource relative to all this is really important the three hundred and eighty billion dollars that are part of the CARES program are resources that include loans forgivable loans and grants that are essentially flowing through banks and certified development corporations and technical assistance is being provided through small business development centers and small business technology centers again all of these programs essentially have been overrun with applications the SBA program the payroll protection program was just started taking applications on friday there was a bit of confusion on friday because some banks were prepared to take applications others were not seeking you know more direct information however i understand that on friday there were between three to five billion dollars of applications that were received during this program and so again we still are working with the banks to sort of make sure that there's consistent information more importantly accurate information for folks to file again let me maybe move over from small business to talk a little bit about the work that we're doing at the nc words career center the nc words career center is actually closed to the public all of the career centers in the state are closed to the public and they are working virtually so the focus clearly is on the spike of folks who have been laid off who are now eligible for unemployment the the division of employment security which is a part of the state manages the ui program the uninsured program the division of work for solutions are there are partners in managing the career centers all of the division of work for solution staff have now been deployed to support the processing of ui claims again the websites have crashed there's been difficulty re reaching people on online or by the telephone the best way is to get these resources via the via the online website at ncworks.gov so let me maybe in there and maybe take some questions that you might have thank you very much andre colleagues questions of councilmember freeman thank you i appreciate you sharing that information andre the business support that you mentioned the council and coalition is there any um uh hispanic there's a hispanic um business association in derm and is also the derm professional business chain are they both included in that conversation uh we have not included the hispanic group again that's uh a group that we need to sort of rope in uh and happy to you know get that contact information to include them uh in our meeting uh the derm business chain um i think is has been on the list but i don't think they've been on the calls that we have again we'll we'll reach out we're trying to include as many people on this call uh and connect folks to it so again we will look at representatives from both of those groups and then i just wanted to to repeat you said the derm business 360 dot com was going to be for specifically the sba payroll protection or is it something separate um no the derm business 360 uh dot com website is the oe wd websites that can repurpose the future of the full range of support services uh that small businesses can access uh in regard to covet 19 it does include information uh around the sba programs but it includes both state and other programs that are out in the marketplace and then i just uh want to well too more and i'll let one of the colleagues come along come in um specific to NC works in the division of uh workhorse solutions so for people without internet access or computers if the phone if there's a phone number or email address can you is that available on that same website or is there a different website sure uh you can get to this information but the most direct way to get the phone number as well as the website uh for all of the nc work centers is ncworks dot gov ncworks dot gov and do you have like any handouts that might be available i've had a few small business owners reach out to me in regards to trying to figure out how they're going to manage and especially uh folks who are uh contractors so really small businesses of one or two just trying to figure out how to be supportive um as they may have to cut internet access right um because of the social distancing policy uh all of the partners are working remotely and so um the information much of it is pdf available in other words you could print that off but um we do not have uh a uh you know some physical handouts at this time we we did not design this program uh based on that but again i will bring this issue back to the group and let's see how we might be able to to do it and where we might be able to post and display the information thank you all right thank you as a member caballero yeah just to follow up so the hispanic chamber association would probably be the best one and that's regional it's not Durham based um questions i have is what kind of what the webinars and the outreach what kind of multilingual resources are you putting out there what what type of webinars are you doing in spanish and other high use languages we know that um our immigrant owned businesses are struggling a lot of them aren't going to be able to access the same resources in the same way we don't know how to do it so they're they're you know lacking um language and cultural um or i i guess they have cultural and language barriers and so just want to make sure that we're actually being we're getting ahead of it and not just reacting to it and then um um additionally i know that the um lccu the latina of cooperativa is not actually doing the sba loans which would be one of the kind of go-to for us in Durham um and i have resources that they shared with me about where they suggested that hispanic business owners go to and happy to share that with you but um i know that there's a huge need i know a lot of folks have questions and i know quite frankly there's a lot of panic right now right um so in terms of uh the spanish translation uh met with nis constant stance on their group uh they're assisting us to do uh some of the spanish translation for some of the content that we've developed um again we're behind there all of the workshops or webinars that have been done have been done in english and of course they're posted uh and happy to use this channel to create a spanish version of uh indian all of the seminars uh that is an opportunity that we think are really critical to supporting uh the latinx community uh and i think we can can respond to this fairly quickly so again uh would love to reach out with you directly to again get some details and get them engaged thank you thank you mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um and thank you andrey for all your work i have a question about the workforce development side i know part of the cares act um is an extra six hundred dollars of unemployment insurance and that folks who aren't covered by north carolina's unemployment insurance policies like the um like gig workers and self-employed folks are eligible for the federal support um but you mentioned that all of the nc works sites are now operating remotely so i'm wondering what we can do to make sure that any laid off um workers in durham or part time folks who have seen their hours reduced or gig workers or self-employed workers who are now covered who might not have this information um about the new benefits how we can help get that information out to our residents right um again uh we need your help to help us get the word out our strategy has been primarily remote again the city's website uh the banner page has had this information posted fairly prominently and so citizens can go there and get a lot of information uh the durham business 360 website actually has specific information for small independent contractors one of the issues that we've identified is that there are a number of people who in the past would not have been eligible for unemployment but they now are eligible and again the gig workers uh the sole proprietorships uh the independent worker where we talk a lot about the hairdressers and the barber shops uh these people are now eligible and part of this in terms of working through this network is getting the word out and the websites are uh an ability for people to self-serve uh again if you spend some time on that on on our new website you'll see that a lot of the information is there uh we'll be sending a press release out tomorrow uh promoting uh this new website to get the word out as a again source of information uh for our community and all of our residents thank you that's helpful um could someone in your office um or somewhat make a like an infographic or something that we could use to promote to send out um that would be helpful and like not to folks thank you all right um other questions for andre uh andre i just a couple things i wanted to add thank you so much for all you're doing um the um so colleagues uh as i think all of you all are aware Duke University is putting um a million dollars towards of their five million dollars towards the work of uh supporting our small businesses and they are very uh they want other corporations to pitch into this fund this uh the uh fund that they're setting up and they very much want uh both Durham city and county to pitch in as well uh and uh i've talked briefly about this to tom andre i've been on uh the uh one of the calls with uh andre and keith um uh actually i guess duke wasn't on that call but i've had discussions with stealthy williams and so i think this is something that we're going to need to be thinking about what uh in the call with self-help what we talked about uh with andre and keith and and a couple people self-help is city funds uh should we choose to allocate them which i believe we should um would be particularly geared towards so so well let me step back a second a lot the funds that are available from the uh from the cares act are not available to undocumented people so one of the one of the most important gaps that we'll have to fill is so many small businesses with undocumented people this could be a gap that would be filled by city funds as well as um a lot of the fun a lot of the uh small businesses um historically disadvantaged businesses um are also going to need to be uh targeted for assistance and so these are a couple of things i think that we need to be keeping in mind uh should we choose to allocate funds and um which i hope that we will um that's one thing i just wanted to to to put out there another is i uh last week i and the so-called big city mayors there were cities the the eight largest cities in north carolina were on the call with uh we had a call with the governor and the the thing that i really tried to highlight with the governor and and he knows this of course already is just the terrible situation we're in with our unemployment uh the state's unemployment system the computer crashing that andrew mentioned it and the reason is that last week you know a month ago they were processing 3 000 applications a month i'm sorry 3 000 a week now they've got to process 300 000 that have come in the last two weeks so it's not their fault that this system isn't working but the need to like beef it up get more people in there is all super important and you know the governor knows that it's a huge priority for him uh but i do think i mean i have gotten some of the saddest emails from people just trying to get into that unemployment system who are eligible um and who just can't you know the computer's crashing they're trying in the middle of the night i mean it's it's a huge problem um but i i just wanted to mention as well any other questions for andrew any comments andrew thank you we appreciate you thank you and i appreciate your leadership and support thank you so much mr manager okay so the last thing we thought we would check in mayor is a brief conversation with our budget director bertha johnson again we've spent the last couple weeks delving into a lot of departmental budgets but we know the hard work is about ready to get started so i wanted bertha just to give a quick update as to where we are and what we're thinking about maybe some next steps with the interaction with council bertha thank you very much thank you good evening bertha johnson director of budget and management services i want to briefly share with you that we have continued our budget process as scheduled um we started budget presentations to the city manager departmental presentations on march 30th we have our final department scheduled for tomorrow and we plan to have meetings with the joint uh city county departments in conjunction with Durham county next week um we are in the process of preparing the third quarter financial report which is key to how we proceed with the remainder of the fiscal year and we're working with our departments on their projections for revenue and expenditures for the remainder of the year um as you may know the third quarter report is really going to be the key to how we respond over the next quarter as well as how we make adjustments in our next year's fiscal year's budget we um are have been in conversation with the league with dr walledon and other large cities as you have the mayor um trying to figure out you know what the impact of cobit 19 will be on our revenues particularly on sales tax which is the second largest um source of revenues and the general fund um there are projections up to 10 percent of revenue lost from sales tax which is significant from us because we get about 71 million dollars in sales tax in the general fund each year but not only sales tax we're looking at the impact on the motel hotel tax the gas tax and as you've heard from some of our department's program revenues particularly in planning inspections uh parking is significant parks and recreation transit will all be impacted their program revenues will be impacted by this um of course again we will continue to do a thorough review with our departments making those projections um obviously the revenue projections we share with you at the budget retreat will need to be adjusted and as such we will be revising our budget development guidelines as well um our um we have planned to have a um conversation with you on more detailed as tom mentioned we're hopeful that we can do that um in the near future but one of the option is option is on april 23rd because you already have a city council meeting and we could do that um in the morning prior to that meeting we do want to have enough time to have some meaningful information for you all to move forward with the fourth quarter as well as the next fiscal year in terms of adjusting our projections the city manager is scheduled to present his budget on may 18th we're still planning for that to be the case we're currently working through as other cities are what the preliminary budget process looks like and the document looks like because we want to make sure that we have the best projections possible when we develop our documents so um as for uh the final um part of component of the budget is you know public engagement and so we're thinking about and uh looking at formats that we can engage in terms of making sure that we continue to have our residents engaged in the budget development process we did all of our budget meetings with 18 meetings with our departments with zoom with um many folks on on the on the on the meeting as you have tonight and that has worked well and so we are looking at ways that we can engage our residents in the budget development process again the the the most challenging aspect of the budget process will be will be revenues general fund revenue revenues as well as program revenues and also looking at our existing tax rate our bid rate and other rates and how we may want to approach them on the next fiscal year and so it's going to be a challenge we're working through it our department directors have been great they all you know completed their assignments in terms of their presentations and their projections but you know of course we didn't make a lot of changes at you know around the revenues at this point because we just don't have enough information we are working with others throughout the state to on that issue and looking overall I mean their projections that you know we will lose 20 of revenues around you know discretionary spending for our residents and others and so it's it's going to be a challenge but we're working through it and you know we will continue to work towards having a more detailed discussion with with you all I'm happy to take any questions all right so thank you very much and now I'm going to ask if there any questions for bertha mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor this is less of a question than a thought but when we come together again and we talk about the fund balance I know that you all have had an initial proposal for how to spend out the fund balance over the next few years but given that we now that that's kind of the rainy day fund and we're now experiencing quite a few rainy days if y'all could give us some thoughts on ways to use that money differently in order to help support some of the help support people in the city who are struggling right now support operations that we you know that we want to continue that may not have the resources that we need otherwise to continue so just some ideas from you all about other ways to allocate fund balance over the next couple of years thank you and that is an on list and we're working on that as well we certainly know that we need to make changes in terms of how we had originally thought about using those resources thank you yet looking at from our last budget retreat we had such a healthy outlook for what the next year would look like and now it's kind of in the blink of an eye it's a completely different story but thank you for all your work and we know that y'all we're in the right hands so thank you you're a council member sorry council member Reese great thank you mr. mayor bertha i just i don't have a question or even a suggestion i just want to say that i can't imagine the job that is ahead of you and your staff right now this is exactly the wrong time to try to be figuring out what next year's revenues are going to be given where we are in the spread of the coronavirus in this country and in this community the incredible loss of jobs that we've experienced because of the choices that we've had to make and i just want to say to you how much comfort it gives me to know that you and your staff are going to do the very best job possible for us and for the people of the city this every year the budget is the most important thing we do is a city council and none of us i have ever faced a budget situation like the one we are going to have to face over between now and mid june and uh you know i was talking to um council member freeman over the weekend about how it just doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like a good idea to have to do the budget right now because we don't know so much about what the real impact on the economy is going to be what the lasting impact of the economy is going to be how long will it will a recovery take but you know for better or worse we have to pass a budget that's just one of the things we're required to do and so i just wanted to say to you how grateful i am that we have some of your experience your dedication and the incredible quality staff that you've accumulated in uh in recent years and i feel although it's going to be painful and it's going to require some really hard choices i believe this council is up to that and i feel well armed for that conversation knowing that you are going to be doing all the important work that we need you to do um and lead up to that so thank you and um good luck with that thank you council member uh thank you um thank you bertha for your work and your city hand um throughout all this i just one clarification i know you don't have a lot of projections yet you did mention 10 loss of revenue that was just sales tax was it sales and gas do you have any projections at this point about the loss and gas tax revenue sales tax um is the revenue source i was referring to with our gas tax revenues it's those revenues are based on population and street miles and so it really depends on how much the state allocates uh per capita as well as um per street mile so those we don't have projection on at this point but we know the the the pot will be smaller the pot will be smaller um but it will not be significant we've already received 100 percent of our revenues this year for that so it'll be basically looking at next year revenue projections from the state thank you any other questions or comments council members bertha thank you we appreciate you we know how hard this is going to be and and i just do want to say to my colleagues this is something we're going to have to step up to we are in a you know everybody's been saying a very different situation and a lot of our hopes and dreams for some awesome stuff we really want to do we're not going to be able to do and we're going to need guidance from our staff and then we're going to have to step up to it and i know that we would thank you bertha thank you i look forward to talking to you all more in the future thank you mr mayor that concludes our presentations if we have any other questions on anything we didn't cover we tried that's all we have right now thank you very much i think we've done it uh thank you tom and uh where uh that was a good long couple of hours more than a couple of hours and i feel like you all did a great job in educating us colleagues if there's nothing else on that i'm going to go ahead and move to our second item which is a discussion of the timeline to conduct the council ward three replacement process and i'm going to ask council member rice to head of our council procedures committee if you would like to start us off with a presentation about his recommendations and and then we'll we'll have a discussion about that thank you mr mayor first of all i wanted to thank all my colleagues i had the opportunity late last week and over the weekend to speak with each of you individually about the the vacancy that we now know is coming because we have accepted um our colleague vernetta allston's resignation or i guess i should say i think um and the city clerk can correct me but i do think we are