30 seconds. Good afternoon. I want to call to order this work session of the Durham City Council at one o'clock p.m. on Thursday the 23rd of July and I certainly want to welcome everyone here today but my council colleagues our staff and all those who members of the public who are attending as well. We're glad to have you here today. Before we get into our business I want to mention that yesterday we had our 74th death in Durham as a result of COVID-19. We also know that in the last week we've lost two civil rights icons John Lewis the great John Lewis and the great C.T. Vivian. C.T. Vivian was a colleague of Martin Luther King. He was buried today in Atlanta and I had the honor of marching with him in the 70s and these are great losses and then of course for us an equally great loss is the loss of Tom McLean a 12-year-old boy who we lost to gun violence in this past week as well. So as we start our meeting today I'm going to ask for a moment of silence and memory of these friends these neighbors and these leaders. Thank you. Madam clerk will you please call the roll. Mayor Schuhl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Council Member Caballero. Here. Council Member Freeman. President. Council Member Middleton. Here. Council Member Reese. Here. Thank you. Thank you Madam clerk. We're about to go to announcements by the council. We put our agenda for this item the discussion of the recent gun violence. I've discussed with the manager what we'd like to do since is hold that and some of our other discussion items until we go through the consent agenda so we can let our staff get back to their business once we have cleared those items as we usually do in work sessions and so without objection I'm going to ask that we hold that discussion until we go through until we go through the consent agenda items and the manager we have several discussion items and the manager and colleagues you all will figure out the order in which we want to hold them as usual. But now let me ask are there other announcements by members of the council at this time Council Member Freeman. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to give an update from our previous council meeting to say that the Black Artist celebration is moving forward and you'll look to see I shared an email just to give a little bit more information and I just wanted to make sure the council was aware and making sure that everyone in the community was aware that there were five neighborhoods that were selected to move forward based on requests from people in the community and will continue to have a process open so that additional neighborhoods can request to have public art whether on the ground or the ground plane or on buildings set with a with a muralist and some community engagement that includes youth youth stipends so to speak for the work around doing the art. So I just want to make sure that folks are aware of that. Thank you. Council Member thank you and thank you for the initiative and thank you also for the email updating us. Appreciate it very much. I'm looking forward to that. Any other announcements? All right thank you. I'll now move to priority items. Are there any priority items by the City Manager? Yes thank you Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon everyone. Good to see everyone and welcome to the the new year of virtual meetings. I have several items this afternoon that I wanted to bring to the council's attention. First not on the agenda but I would have asked staff from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development to give the council a brief update on our small business loan and grant program. It wasn't something that we could provide a written report in advance because it's changing every day and I wanted it to be most current so just like the other presentations at some point if you can let us know when that is we'll be ready to go with that. And then there are three items that the Department of Community Development is requesting that the council suspend the rules and vote on today. They're all associated with some very important work associated with COVID response and homelessness. Agenda item number 22 is the contract with Durham County for the provision of Community Development Block Grant COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Agenda item number 23, Housing for New Hope Inc. Emergency Solutions Grant COVID-ESG for Rapid Rehousing Services. And then agenda item number 24, Project Access of Durham County Emergency Solutions Grant COVID-19 for Emergency Shelter Case Management Services. I suspect there will be questions on one or more of these items so certainly we're prepared to respond to those questions but I do want to request that the council consider a waving of the rules and acting on those today. These are all important services and needs in the community right now and we need to get them rolled out as quickly as possible. I do think I may have had some authority to grant emergency approval of these based on some earlier actions that the mayor had provided but I wasn't comfortable unilaterally doing that. I thought it was too close to council coming together that we would I'd rather be sure we're answering the questions you have before we we initiate the program so thank you very much those are my priority items. Thank you Mr. Manager and can I have a motion to approve the manager's priority items? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the manager's priority items. Madam Clark will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. I vote aye. Council Member East. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Manager. And now Madam Attorney do you have any priority items today? Good afternoon Mr. Mayor, members of city council. The city attorney's office has one priority item and that is a request that the city council go into closed session for attorney client consultation to consider and discuss newly filed litigation. The name of the case is Tony Scott Jr. and Tony Scott Sr. versus the city of Durham at Owl. The file number is 120CV558 and that's been filed in the middle district of North Carolina. Thank you Madam Attorney. You've heard the attorney's priority item. Can I have a motion to approve it? So moved by Mayor Pro Tem seconded by Council Member Caballero. Madam Clark will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member East. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Madam Attorney. Madam Clerk are there any priority items? Good afternoon Council. I have no items to report. Thank you very much Madam Clerk. Alrighty we'll now move to our administrative consent items. Item one the city clerk's office approval of council minutes. I don't want to pull this item I do want to make a comment on it for the clerk. I don't I don't see any reason to amend these minutes but I do want to observe that I have some discomfort with the way council questions and comments were handled in the May 21st and 27 minutes attributed them to council rather than to individual council members. I think it's better to have the comments and questions attributed to the council member who made the statement and asked the question. I don't think these particular minutes suffer in any way from that but it does concern me so just wanted to raise that Madam Clerk. Okay thank you for letting me know. Yeah thank you. Item two Carolina Theater Board of Trustees appointment. Item three Durham Convention Center Authority appointment. Let me let me just while we got through these I'm going to recommend that item two the Carolina Theater Board of Trustees appointment to be re-advertised colleagues. I wanted to hear your thoughts on that. I was going to add to that as well I'm sorry. Council Member Freeman. I was just going to ask for the same thing on two but not three. Yes two. Did you? Council Member Caballero. I'm fine with you there was several that I thought we would maybe want to re-advertise and I don't know if we want to do it all together or do we want to go one by one? Let's let's go one by one just so we don't confuse the clerk. I think let me ask then as we get to them if there's others that you all think you want to be re-advertised let's mention them okay. So item two is everyone okay with re-advertising? Okay I see enough thumbs. All right thank you. Item three Durham Convention Center Authority appointment. I'd like to re-advertise item three as well. Okay. Council Member Freeman was not in favor of re-advertising item three. I'm also had a person chosen for that but I'm happy to hear with the majority's thoughts on that. Do you want to other people want to express themselves on item three? Yeah I don't know if we advertised this item previously this is the first time I don't know. I don't know if the answer to that question. Madam clerk do you know or is is Laverne on the call? Laverne is on the call. So maybe she could let us know if we have previously advertised for the Durham Convention Center Authority. Yes we have. Hi everybody. Hi Laverne. Yes we have advertised before. We have. Yes. All right. Council Member Caballero. If others are agreed then I'm fine with not re-advertising. Mayor Prattam. Yeah was the one applicant that we received was she also the only applicant when we considered this previously we didn't get anyone else? I believe so I can I think it's the same person but I can check to be sure for you. Okay no that's fine if we've already re-advertised it then I think we should just move ahead with the person we have. All right. Thanks. Thank you very much then we'll move ahead with number three. Item four Durham Cultural Advisory Board. Item five Durham Homeless Services Advisory Committee Appointment. Item six Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. On HSAC Mr. Mayor? Yes. All right that's another one where we only had one applicant and I'd like to hear a little bit more about kind of the history of that. Have we advertised is this a re-advertising? Yeah. Laverne do you know on that one Homeless Services Advisory Committee Appointment? I think we only advertised for this one once. Yeah this is a term expired. Council Member Reese do you want to recommend that we re-advertise? Yes I would. Yeah yeah okay. I'm okay either way folks okay I got some thumbs up so we'll re-advertise item five. Item six Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners Appointment. Item seven Durham Open Space and Trails Appointment. I was recommending that we re-advertise that one. It's already been re-advertised. This has been re-advertised. Double yes correct. Okay then I withdraw that thank you for letting me know. And item eight Housing Appeals Board Appointment. All right and item nine Recreation Advisory Commission Appointment. So just so we are not confused Madam Clerk which ones did you get that we're re-advertising or Laverne? Mr. Mayor you've decided to re-advertise the Carolina Theater Board of Trustees and Durham Homeless Services Advisory Committee. Okay those two. Thank you very much and now we'll move to Departmental Items Audit Services Department. Item 10 Payment Card Industry PCI Compliance Performance Audit March 2020. Item 11 Timekeeping Management Follow-up Performance Audit May 2020. Under the City Council Office Approval of Juneteenth is an official holiday for employees of the City of Durham. I don't want to pull it I just want to say that I'm glad that it's there. Likewise I think we all are and thank you very much and thank you Mayor ProTown and thanks to everyone who has been advocating for this. Item 13 Racial Equity Task Force Final Report. This is a discussion item and we'll have a report from the Racial Equity Task Force. Item 14 Funding for the Recovery and Renewal Task Force. Colleagues um this is also a discussion item it's I hope it'll be a very brief one but I will just move it over to the um discussion column so that we make I make sure that we have any comments that you all may want to make. City County Planning Department City County Planning Department FYS 21 Work Program. I'm going to pull item 15. Item 16 Expedited Hearing Request for Zoning Map Change Z19000036 Farrington Road Multifamily. I'd like to pull that Mr. Mayor. Item 16. Item 17 2019 Board of Adjustment Annual Report. Item 18 2019 Durham City County Appearance Commission Annual Report. Item 19 2019 Durham Open Space and Trails Commission Annual Report. Item 20 2019 Historic Preservation Commission Annual Report. Item 21 2019 Planning Commission Annual Report. I'm going to pull item 21. Department of Community Development these next three items are the ones that the manager has asked that we suspend the rules and vote. We'll come back to them after we have done the rest of this agenda. Item 22 Contract with Durham County for the Provision of Community Development Block Grant CWG COVID-19 Emergency Rural Assistance. I'm sorry Mr. Mayor we are going to discuss it before we vote. I don't need to pull it. Okay perfect. Right yeah I'm sorry I'm pulling these 22 23 and 24 yeah. Thank you. Yeah thank you. 23 Housing for New Hope Inc. Emergency Solutions Grant COVID ESG CV for Rapid Rehousing Services. Item 24 Project Access of Durham County Emergency Solutions Grant COVID ESG CV for Emergency Shelter Case Management Services. Department of Transportation Item 25 Extension Emerger Agreement with the County of Durham Demand Response Services. I'm going to pull item 25. Item 26 Contract for Cloud-Based Venter Hosted Integrated Parking Management System. We pull that Mr. Mayor. Yes it will. Item 27 Contract with Otis Elevator Inc for Parking Garage Elevator Maintenance and Repair Services. We'll pull item 27 as well. Item 28 Contract with SPS Management Inc. DBA Scotties for Parking Garage Pressure Pressure Washing Services. Item 29 Ordinance to Change Parking Fees Amendment Edition of Evening Monthly Parking Permit fee. Mr. Mayor I just wanted to comment on 28 I didn't really want to pull it that I noted that there were two women of like 200 staff members I just wanted to just make sure that that was noted for staff if there was any follow-up. Thank you Councilmember Freeman. Item 30 Grant Project Ordinance Super City Grant Project Ordinance 15653 Grant Project Ordinance Super City Grant Project Ordinance 15651. Item 31 FY21 Agreement with North Carolina State University NCSU supporting the Triangle Regional Model TRM. Under Department of Water Management. Item 32 American Tobacco Water Line Replacement Phase 1 Award of Construction Contract to JF Wilkerson Contracting Company Inc. Item 33 Contract for Western Intake Partnership Program Manager. Item 34 Ordinance Amending the Durham City Code Regulating Billing and Payment of Water Sewer and Stormwater Fees on Combined Utility Bills. I don't want to pull this but I do want to say excellent and I really appreciate the staff viewing these practices through an equity lens. Item 35 Bid Report May 2020. Item 36 Bid Report June 2020. Fire Department 37. Item 37 Local Burning Ordinance. General Services Department Item 38 Cell Tower Lease and License Agreement with T-Mobile South LLC at 1318 East Pettigrew Street. Under the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Item 39 Contract with Eckerd Youth Alternatives Inc. to Provide Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Youth Services. Under the Police Department Item 40 Executive Office of the President Office of National Drug Control Policy 2020 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. HIDTA Grant Project Ordinance. Item 41 Executive Office of the President Office of National Drug Control Policy 2019 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull Item 40 and 41. 40 and 41. Thank you. Under the Public Works Department. Item 42 Water Quality Polluting Source Tracking in Sandy Creek Tributary A and Warren Creek Contract. Under Technology Solutions Department City Works Store Room DC Configuration with Radley Corporation. Item 44 Multi-Year Annual Support Agreement and License Agreement from Unis Software with Tyler Technologies Inc. for FY21 through FY25. Under Public Hearing is the City County Planning Department. Item 45 Annexation of Olive Ranch West. Item 46 Annexation of Twin Lakes. Item 47 Street Closing Cue Place. You've heard the agenda and Mr. Manager, I'm going to go over with you what I believe the items that we have pulled are and the items for discussion. Items for discussion include the priority item, the OEWD, the Racial Equity Task Force, and the funding for the and the funding for the Recovery and Renewal Task Force and the violent crime, the violent gun crime discussion. Those are the four discussion items. I have Mr. Manager. That's correct Mr. Mayor. And then I have pulled otherwise items 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 40 and 41. That's what I have as well. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Colleagues, I think what I would like to do, since I think we can probably go through most of these pull items quickly, is do them and so the staff can leave our meeting and then we'll take up the discussion items. And I was thinking the order we would do that, I believe OEWD has a brief report and so we could do that first and then move to racial equity, violent gun crime, and then the funding for the RRTF. Is that suitable for everyone? Yes, I just- Okay with that. Okay. I just had one additional item, 38. And all I really wanted to note is that this is building on the existing general service statute that allows for for-profit organizations to use our local antenna or local public right-of-way for purposes. And I just wanted to note that this is a 10-year contract that will pay no fees to the city of Durham and just making sure that people are aware that this is happening. Item 38. Yes. Well, we're getting- I think that's correct. Okay. We're getting large fees for that. Okay. Yeah. That's on a water tower. That's not on the right way. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's on the water tower and our fees over the 10 years will be $544,000. Okay. I missed that. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. So we're going to move now to item 15 and thank you all for helping me through this. We will- this is an item that I had pulled. This is the city county planning department FY21 work program. And I seem as young as here. Thank you for being here, Sarah. This is a tremendously detailed work plan and I want to appreciate the JCCPC. And I'm not sure- Charlie, are you still the chair? I am now, Mr. Mayor. Council member Reese. Great. Yeah.  I've never suffered through as a member of JCCPC. So I want to express my gratitude to those who have. I've been looking- it's just wanting to comment, Ms. Young. I've been looking for the right opportunity. I've thought about the comp plan rewrite and our planning priorities going forward, including thinking about staffing. And so I just want to mention it here. And I see this long list of priorities and this attachment listing all of the small area land use planning desires that we're not able to do. You know, the list of things that we can't do. And it really kind of confirms my concern that I would sort of offer thought about it. You know, we hear a lot about the NPO process and how some people say it's the only resident initiated process that we have. I'm not sure if that's true, but I do know that I understand why it gets the interest that it does, the NPO process on the part of neighborhoods. But I also know, and as the council confirmed in our recent vote on an NPO application, that NPO's tend to privilege one neighborhood over others and exclusions in one neighborhood's NPO only put additional pressures on other neighborhoods throughout the city. But I do think I understand why why residents are so interested in it because it's their it's their avenue in the planning process where they feel that it is. And so I want to just urge us as we think ahead through the work plan and the comp plan work about figuring out how we can do more small area planning. A couple of my colleagues comment on this frequently. And I think it's really important and I think we need to figure out how to help our residents do that outside of the NPO framework. And I hope that in the comp plan update during this work plan year that we can take that up and the planning department and JCCC can help us think about how that move that forward in future years. I think devoting some staff to small area planning, which is not I think it will really support our residents' desire to participate in planning for their neighborhood and can help us guide future zoning and infrastructure decisions. We've certainly done a lot of this in my time on the council. I think about especially around the station areas, around the DLRT station areas, tremendous small area planning. So I know we can and do, but I just wanted to hope I wanted to express the hope that the staff and under your leadership and our council colleagues on the JCCC PC could think about how we can accomplish more of the small area planning as we think through the comp plan. So that was my comment. And Ms. Young, do you have any thoughts that you would like to offer on that? Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Mayor and members of council. I wanted to share that it may not be completely transparent that as part of our comp plan effort there will be some amount of small area planning that happens to develop the new land use plan with the thought that more detailed plans may be needed afterwards as an outgrowth of that for areas that may be looking to experience more change or have special pressures. And so the idea has always been that we will do some amount of small area planning as part of the engaged term comp plan process. And that we will follow that with additional future projects once the comp plan is complete to continue to do small area planning in areas. Great. Thank you very much. As always your way ahead of me. Are there other comments on this item? All right. Yes, Mr. Mayor. I was just noting I was going to note it in a chat, but I just wanted to echo your sentiments and that what I know over the time that I've been on the planning commission and on the council is that the neighborhoods that are disproportionately impacted aren't as organized and don't have the will worth all to do MPOs. And so you see this fracture of how residents can push in on the planning process. And so I acknowledge where you're saying that it's kind of like the people who are organized get the actual access. But I'm concerned that no if no one has access, then all we have is developers making a plans for our city. And so I'm hopeful that with Miss Young's comments that there will be more engagement around the small neighborhood planning. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Freeman. Thank you for being an advocate for this as you have been. Council Member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As the chair of JCCPC, what I wanted to say is I'm really grateful to you for calling that out and grateful to Miss Young for indicating the future of this idea. I will say that if and when this issue comes to the JCCPC for a conversation, I will definitely extend special invitation to Council Member Freeman, who to my mind has been the greatest champion for this kind of small area planning on the Council and is the only one of us with experience on the planning commission. So Council Member Freeman, I hope you'll agree to come help us talk through these issues JCCPC when that time comes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Council Member Reese. All right. Thank you. This was a really great document. There was lots of things that I saw that I was really pleased to see, including the Durham Landscape Manual update. And then just one of the questions I had was in the Departmental Racial Equity Work Plan. Will you all be working with HR around the equitable hiring practices? And will that help inform practices in other departments across the city? To answer your question, yes, we do plan to talk to HR. Right now we're examining kind of our own biases in the process. And so it's at a very early stage, but we do plan to talk to HR. And hopefully it will serve to help other departments do something similar in their practices as well. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. And thank you, Ms. Young. Any more questions for Ms. Young? Sarah, thank you for stepping into the breach in the Department again. We need you and we appreciate you. All right, I will now move to item 16, which I believe was Council Member Reese. And this would be the item expedited hearing request for zoning map change. Z19, scene 0036. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I need to pull up a quick email here. Hi, Sarah, you're still with us. Thank you. Have you seen an email from Durham Resident Ellen Plus about this particular item? I have not seen an email about this particular item. I have seen an email in regards to development agreement for this project and the development agreement text amendment. But I haven't seen one about the expedited hearing. Okay. I'm trying to find the right question. She asks, is this expedited request tied to a, as she calls it, swift moving text amendment that seeks to enable development agreements in Durham? Technically, yes. This project is seeking to do a couple of things. One is to use our first statutory development agreement. And I'm going to defer to Madam Attorney on this, just to make sure that I get the terminology right. We have done development agreements for other things, but this would be the first time that we're using it the way that it's defined in the general statutes in terms of, in conjunction with the rezoning, for instance. So that text amendment is coming forward. It recently went to Planning Commission, and there was a fair amount of talk this week about that. There's being some changes made to that text amendment. So that would authorize it in our ordinance. It has been, we had a prohibition on development agreements in our ordinance for about a decade or so. And then in 2016, I believe that was removed. But we didn't have anything prescriptive in the ordinance as to how those would be done, even though they were permitted. So that's one thing. The reason for the expedited hearing and the push to get development agreements of this type authorized and specified in our ordinance is because this project is seeking to do something a little bit different and unique in terms of affordable housing, and they have a deadline that they're working against. And so we are trying to work with them towards that deadline to see if they can be successful in providing that affordable housing. So that's the impetus behind it. The idea in general for development agreements is that they can provide a tool for council to use to secure community benefits that may be outside beyond the bounds of regular the topics that are covered in regular zoning code. So Can you answer a kind of a factual question about the application itself? Are they seeking, is the applicant seeking 330 multifamily units or 160 units? That was another question that was plus of that. I don't, I would have to look at that. I don't have that super handy right now, but I am happy to get back to you all with that. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you, councilmember. Miss Young, I have a question about this also, which is this is going to the planning commission and then coming to us, correct? The case will, yes. Yeah. What if we approve this? Correct. And so what I wasn't clear is what's being skipped, you know, what's being expedited is the expedited mean that they're moving ahead of some other cases that would normally have gone to the planning commission before them. The expedited status basically takes away the planning commission's ability to continue the case for up to 90 days. I see. So it guarantees one stop at planning commission with a decision one way or another and then moving to council. Gotcha. That's what I didn't quite understand, but it would still go to the planning commission first is indicated in the memo. Okay. All right. Any other questions or comments on this? All right. If not, we'll move on to the next item, which is item 21. Thank you, Miss Young. Item 21 is the 2019 planning commission annual report. And hello, Miss Young. I pulled this item. Here's my question. Most of the planning commission items come to us. The vast majority go to us and not to the county commission. But when I count the number of county commission appointees, I see that there are planning commission appointees. I see that the county has 11 appointees and we have six or at least that's the number that are currently on the agenda. And I wondered if there's a rationale for that. Is that just a historic legacy and any thoughts you might have? I don't know what the origin of the breakdown of who got how many seats originally. I do know that this is something that was established in the planning interlocal agreement. There are a few boards that are in that that larger master interlocal planning commission board of adjustment being being to joint city county being another. So I can certainly look into that and see if I can dig up the history why that decision was made, but I don't know right off hand. My guess is that it was a time when the county was looking at a lot more of these. Actually, Mr. Mayor, I believe that there's a crossover on some of them, some of the seats. So it shouldn't necessarily, I think say again. I believe there's a crossover like your representative in the city, in the county. And so that. Well, it would be good to know. So, Miss Young, maybe you could you could help us with that. I'll tell you my concern is not just the number. It's that I feel like we're getting such important advice from the planning commission and it's advice that's non tense of that advice is going to us and one tenth of it's going to the county. And I would just like us to have an ability to, you know, have a lot of influence over that advice that we're getting because we're so relying on it. So those are my thoughts. And once you've been able to find out a little more information for us, maybe we could figure out how to have a discussion with the county about it or would love your would love any guidance that you have to offer. Sure. All right, thank you. All right. Now we'll move to item 22. This is one of the items that the manager has asked that we expedite. And I'm going to ask now for any report on this that we might have from the Community Development Department. Hello, Reginald. Greetings, Mr. Mayor. Peter, nice to see you all. We'll be glad to respond to any questions. The purpose of this item is to have a contract with Department of Social Services Durham County, as well as who will be working with the legal aid of North Carolina to be able to distribute a rental assistance program. The source of the funds will be the COVID money that we have received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the CDBG, COVID money in particular. The sum is just over $1 million. And the Department of Social Services has agreed to distribute this money as part of the framework that they have, initially have. And we've been working with them. Thank you for seeing the memos that I shared with some updates. And so that's the purpose of this item. And that's the reason we're asking for suspension of the rooms because they're unapproved because there's a need out there that we're trying to meet in the Durham community, especially with the eviction moratorium getting ready to be lifted. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. You all have heard the report from staff and I'm going to ask Council Member Caballero. I think that you have some questions on this item. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I appreciate the supplemental memo. Reginald, you and I have had some email exchanges back and forth about this item. I see that Peter Gilbert is here from Legal Aid. I just wanted some clarification and criteria. When this conversation happened, you know, I think now in May, initially there was, I know I shared concerns around any barriers because of the current program that the county has for rent assistance. And I think some of it's been mitigated, but I just want clarity on what the criteria are going to be. What are they going to be asking for folks when they come in the door? Some of that's been kind of clarified in your memo. Some of it is still open so people can say, you know, documentation status doesn't matter. But if they're asking for a social security number, then that's still a barrier. So just wanted to have clarification around that. And then also our contract is directly with the county. So Legal Aid's role is adjacent. But that relationship is going to go through the county via us. I mean, instead of through us, correct? That's correct. That part is correct. Okay. So the way I just want to understand, we're essentially handing all the money over to the county. The county is going to administer it with Legal Aid. That's correct. Okay. And then on my criteria question, if you all could let me know what that looks like. So let me ask you a little bit about your criteria question. Are you talking about what documentation that persons have to provide? Or are you asking what standards are they are to meet? I guess both. Okay. All right. Well, let me, we have Melva Henry, who's a project manager on the call on this meeting. And I'll turn this question over to her to provide some detail. And we also have individuals from the county on the call as well. And so I'll let her answer your question. Melva Henry. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can, Ms. Henry. Welcome. Great. Thank you so much. What I will say is both Peter and the Department of Social Services have worked diligently on completing guidelines for the program. And with that said, I would be more comfortable turning the questions over to the Department of Social Services so they could give you a direct example of the types of information they'll ask. So if Lee or Contessa from DSS would follow up with that. Ms. Little, would you like to comment? Good afternoon. I am Contessa Sawyer. I am the supervisor over the rental assistance program here at Durham County. And the guidelines that we have placed, we have in place for the CDBG money is for clients. I'm sorry. The process is clients will either be referred by legal aid outside agencies and they will call the 5608000 number here at Durham County and receive an appointment for rental assistance. At that time, our social workers that have been identified to work on this team will contact those particular clients at their appointment time. The assessment will be completed with the client at that time. We'll go over pretty much what their housing need is and if it is directly related to COVID. Of course, the eligibility requirements is that the resident must be a City of Durham resident. They must meet the 80% AMI guidelines. They also must be represented by legal aid or an attorney that has been connected to this project They must provide all documentation, which would include of course any income information as well as verification of their needs. I can say that the citizenship requirement has been weighed for this program. And so we will not provide, I mean we will not require citizenship information. I believe that that would be it. Of course, the tenants would have to provide verification that they are responsible for these bills for this grant or utility need. And I believe that should be it. And would you like to add anything, Peter? Mr. Mayor, Council members, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Excellent. I don't know if you have in front of you the scope of work, which I think is Attachment A for the contract. The basic eligibility requirements are as Ms. Sawyer has outlined that they must be a resident of the City. They're very within 80% AMI represented by legal aid, the Duke Civil Justice Clinic or another attorney. We've been training private attorneys to help handle the volume that we are starting to see and expect. There are, I believe, 11 different documents that are required that are listed on page 2 and going on to page 3 of the scope of work. So it is my understanding from your Community Development Compliance Department that and from these are documents that are being required by a combination of the city, the county and HUD. So it is a fair amount of paperwork that clients will have to put together in order to be eligible for these funds. And one of the things that we think they will benefit from having the attorney involved in is that we will be able to work with them to gather this paperwork. Thank you. I just want to share that I appreciate everyone's very diligent work. I know that this is a lot. I know that the federal regulations limit what we can do. I want to acknowledge that. I also want to acknowledge looking at the list here, it just seems like a very onerous process. I'm very, very concerned. A lot of the folks that we're trying to, I see that there are workarounds for a copy of a lease. But there are going to be a lot of folks who don't have leases. They're paid by cash. Their income verification is going to be very hard to get. There's going to be, I also have questions of ultimately who's holding all of this information, especially when we're dealing with people who have different documentation status. So I do want to just air all of my concerns. I know that we're operating with some things that we can't control. But what I'm seeing here isn't necessarily allaying those concerns. Thank you, Council Member. Mr. Johnson or Ms. Henry, any of the other folks want to comment on that? Well, I do receive the comments from the Council Member and as she indicated, we have been in some dialogue about that. I would just share that, you know, in terms of the essence of meeting the need that we have and combining the rules that we receive this Monday on, under, that we, the staff, as well as the Legal Aid and the DSS have worked diligently, as well with our HUD office, field office, to be able to put together a program that will service as best we can. I'll be honest with you, it's not going to address everything, but they have DSS in particular has made significant strides to improve the process and we receive those. Is it perfect? No. But I think that it will go a good ways to meeting the need. I'll just be candid and say one of the things that's important and that in my bailiwick is to make sure and ensure that we do get reimbursed from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for these expenditures. That is a commitment that we have that's very important as well in addition to the service of the needs that are in our community. Mr. Mayor and council members, I'd also like to add that a lot of the information that we're asking is going to be delivered from the program participants by their own self-certification. So for income, they can self-certify. Thank you, Ms. Henry. Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Are there any of these 11 items? Peter had said that they were a combination of things being required by the city and by the county and by HUD. Is there anything that we can eliminate on the city side? Let me also add that we've narrowed the list and this list is as condensed as we possibly can get at this point with all of HUD's requirements and regulations. Thank you. Certainly. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I just wanted to track back on the side of the city with community development and make sure that NIS or Neighbor Improvement Services is included in this scope as well. I noted that they're not and just noting that a lot of the inspections, the you know, housing appeals, that kind of work that's happening, there has to be a way to filter some of the kind of, we know that the housing stock is not all where it needs to be and I just want to make sure that they're involved in the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments? I just, any other comments? I like to add from DSS, you know, with some of the verifications we will be using some of our internal networks and systems to gather as many documents to help the clients go through this process as seamlessly as possible. So we'll be using all of our systems to help with that process and is our intent to make it as quick as possible too. Mr. Little? Yeah. Thank you and thank you to Ms. Sawyer. All right. Any other comments? Just a thank you as well. I know that this is federal funds that you're trying to direct to serve a need that we have. I really appreciate the way that staff has pulled together to come up with this very quickly. So thank you very much. Thank you. And Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to also thank our staff and our partners at the county and at Legal Aid for this work. We know that as the eviction moratoriums that have been put in place by the state are lifted and the COVID pandemic continues that we're going to see a lot of people struggling to stay in their homes and that's a huge issue for our community. Having access to stable affordable housing keeps people safe, keeps people healthy, keeps people in school districts so that their kids can learn. It's just such a fundamental need and so I'm glad to see that we're able to do this. I hope that our state delegation and our federal delegation will consider continuing some of these critical programs that they've put into place over the last few months because as we all well know the pandemic is not over, it's not even slowing. In fact, in a lot of places it's continuing to increase in speed and we're limited with what we can do here but I appreciate everyone's work and that we're taking action and I hope that our federal and state representatives will hear our community's needs and will continue to act as well and provide us the resources that we need to really manage this crisis. Thank you very much for those comments Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Caballero. Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor. Additionally, I just want to say I know that this is hopefully just a first round. We've discussed rent assistance within our own bucket of city COVID relief funds that we set aside and I know that that will not have the same barriers that I know we're all wrestling with so I hope to just like we're doing another round not necessarily of city money around with small business loans and grants that this is a first pass at help because I know that there are many in our community that are going to need it and again I want to thank staff and Legal Aid and the county for all of their work. Thank you. I do want to note also from the memo that DSS and Legal Aid are donating a lot of their staff services to this so that the money can go to rental relief and the staff expressed their appreciation and I want to add mine as well. I also wanted to note that the new AMI for a family of four in Durham and the Durham Chapel Hill MSA is now $91,000. 30% of the AMI is now $27,000 so we're in a continuing situation and it's always daunting to see those new numbers. All right, I thank you very much. Mr. Johnson, Ms. Henry, Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Little, Ms. Sawyer and I'm now going to ask if there's a motion that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. So moved. Second. Moved by the council by Mayor Pro Tem, seconded by council member Freeman that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl, aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, aye. Councilmember Caballero, aye. Councilmember Freeman, aye. Councilmember Middleton, aye. Councilmember Reese, aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes six to zero. We'll now move on to item 23, housing for new housing emergency solutions grant. Mr. Mayor, we need to vote on the item. How clever. Okay. Thank you for that important reminder. I will now accept the motion that we approve this item. Second. Moved by councilmember Middleton. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mayor Pro Tem. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl, aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, aye. Councilmember Caballero, aye. Councilmember Freeman, aye. Councilmember Middleton, aye. Councilmember Reese, aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes six to zero. And this motion, this item is approved. We'll now move to item 23, housing for new housing emergency solutions grant. And then Mr. Johnson, welcome. Thank you, Mayor Reginald Johnson, Director Department of Community Development. For this item, I will ask our homelessness system manager, Colin Davis, to respond to your questions and as well as introduce the item. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. City Council Colin Davis, Community Development, homeless systems manager. This item is to provide housing for new hope funds to implement and expand rapid rehousing for people in Durham experiencing homelessness, to move them from homelessness into permanent housing as quickly as possible. This COVID pandemic. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Are there any questions for Mr. Davis or any comments from members of the council? Councilmember Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Great. Thank you for joining us. I guess you're at the EOC. Is that what they call it? I am, yes. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you. I know you've had some long months over there. I thank you for your service. The staff memo on this item and the next item indicated that, and it looks to me as though only two applications for funding were received under this. Is that right? That is correct. And both are being funded by item 23 and then by item 24? Correct. Okay. Is that, do we know why some of our homeless service providers would another type of homeless service provider not qualified for these funds like another homeless shelter, for example? That's a great question. Other service providers are eligible for these funds. This is the first round of emergency solutions grant funding that came to the community. And at the time, the Policy and Planning Committee of the Homeless Services Advisory Council recommended to prioritize funding to rapid rehousing. At the time we were in the process of closing the hotel that was housing urban ministries at the Marriott RTP. And the objective was to get as many people into permanent housing as we could knowing that we were going back to a socially distanced urban ministries and or other location, which would have much smaller space for folks experiencing homelessness to stay. So the thought was, let's get money. The committee decided that the importance was to get people into permanent housing. And currently, Housing for New Hope is the primary rapid rehousing provider in Durham. And as I said earlier, these are the first round of ESG entitlement funds that are coming to the city. There is a first round of state ESG COVID response funds that community development is the lead agency on and just submitted a grant on behalf of the continuum of care to North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services for additional emergency solutions grants fund. And in that pot of money, there is money coming from the state to it's being recommended that money be used from that pot to urban ministries to help with emergency shelter grants. Great. That's exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you for your help. I appreciate it. That's all I had, Mr. Mayor. You're welcome. Thank you, Councilmember. Any more questions or comments on this item? All right. If I think Councilmember Freeman. Thank you. I know you can always see my hand sometimes. I just wanted to just ask if there was an administrative fee that was assigned to this just making sure that Housing for New Hope wasn't just like it just wasn't a pass through. Are you asking if there's an administrative fee for the City of Durham or an administrative fee for Housing for New Hope? Housing for New Hope. There is a... All right. So let me back up a second. HUD has changed their rules on the ESG COVID funds and allowing a 10% administrative fee. Okay. So out of that amount of money, there is an administrative fee and HUD is very, very specific on what those fees can be used for. They'll have to follow the stay in compliance with that and community development will be working on the monitoring to ensure that they stay in compliance. Thank you. You're welcome. And Councilmember, I think there's an attachment on that. Attachment 5, I think has detail. Any other questions or comments? I'm going to now ask if there's a motion that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. Move to suspend. Second. It's been moved by Councilmember Middleton, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Cada Yaro. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. I vote aye. Councilmember Ease. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Davis. Now we'll have a motion on the actual item. So moved. Second. It's been moved by Mayor Pro Tem, seconded by Councilmember Middleton that we approve the item. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Caballero. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. I vote aye. Councilmember Ease. Aye. Thank you very much. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously. Well now move to item 24. The third item which the manager has asked we suspend the rules and vote on in light of the COVID emergency. This is the project access of Durham County emergency solutions grant. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Mayor, members of council in some respects this is a companion item. I will turn it over to Mr. Davis to respond to any questions. Thank you very much. Mr. Davis, do you want to summarize this in a sentence or two? Sure. These funds are going to project access to work with those in our community who are both experiencing homelessness and medically vulnerable. Project access has the unique capacity and skill set to work with medically vulnerable who are experiencing homelessness. Thank you. I had sent you a couple of questions ahead of time and you've already answered a couple of them there with that. This is just case management. Is that correct and not rental assistance? So it is primarily for case management and or transportation of guests, clients to medical appointments. The funding is flexible in the ESG guidelines in that these funds could be used to rent a hotel room if an emergency shelter is not available.  These funds could be used to rent a hotel room. The funds are not able to be used for renting an apartment for instance. That would be in the rapid rehousing portion of ESG funds. Thank you. And how will persons be identified who would be the most likely to be supported with these funds? Sure. The people recommended and referred to this project essentially need to be referred from a medical provider. Most of the referrals come from the Duke hospital from Lincoln and partnerships with urban ministries with Lincoln Health and we're currently working on how to bring the newly formed street outreach team into being able to make referrals through the medical provider as well. It's kind of making sure we've got a good medical handoff and making sure our medically vulnerable citizens who are experiencing homelessness are well cared for while they're making their way to permanent housing. Is our street team able to operate at this time given COVID? They are operating. I can get you details on where they are on that if you'd like. I know Housing for New Hope has been frantically hiring staff as we were closing the hotel and offering to partner with urban ministries to help make sure guests are cared for and have the supports that are needed because we're kind of stretched thin trying to operate multiple sites right now where we were historically operating one. Well that gives me a lot of gratitude to you, to Mr. Johnson, to everybody in community development and to our friends in the county who when we stepped in to fund this street team I mean I think we didn't know we were going to have a pandemic to follow but it makes its necessity even greater so thank you. I really appreciate this. I think this is a great expenditure of our funds. I'm so worried about this group of people. Homeless and medically vulnerable in a pandemic and so I appreciate you and the department for recognizing this need and including this and I think these three expenditures together are great and I also want to thank you for moving ahead to expand our own I mean one of the ways in which you've expedited this and want to appreciate the department again is by going ahead and spending our own dedicated housing fund money in anticipation of the reimbursement by the federal government which is enabling us to do this more quickly and I think that's very creative and want to appreciate the department for that so thank you. Are there any other comments or questions on this item? All right if not I'll accept a motion that we suspend the rules and vote. I'll move. Second. Moved by Councilmember Freeman seconded by Mayor Pro Tem that we suspend the rules and vote. Madam Clerk please call the roll. Mayor Shull. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Councilmember Caballero. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. I vote aye. Councilmember Reese. Aye. Thank you. The ayes have it the rules are suspended I'll now accept the motion on the item. Move approval. Second. Moved approval by Mayor Pro Tem seconded by Councilmember Reese. Madam Clerk please call the roll. Mayor Shull. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Caballero. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. Aye. Councilmember Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you Madam Clerk. The ayes have it the motion passes unanimously. Thank you Mr. Johnson and thank you to your staff. We'll now move to the Department of Transportation item 25 extension of merger agreement with the County of Durham demand response services and I pulled this item and Mr. Egan welcome. Good afternoon Mr. Mayor and members of council. Did I send you questions? You did so if you'd like I can kind of consolidated responses to the questions. That would be great. I can't remember if I'd sent them to you or not. Thank you very much. Sure. I would go ahead if you want to introduce the item and maybe if there are some of the questions that you'd like to answer that would be great. Sure. Thank you very much. So what we're doing here is we're working through the extension of an agreement that the city made with Durham County last year where we formerly had two separately operated paratransit demand response services and we found that it was much more efficient for us to be able to consolidate these and provide a simpler better experience for our paratransit riders. So we entered into this agreement in October of last year and as part of this agreement we had planned to solicit a new contract for service provision through GoTriangle. What we ended up doing with that contract it was solicited it actually was sent to the GoTriangle Board of Trustees yesterday for award and it's scheduled to begin on September 1st. So what we wanted to do with this extension of the agreement was to enable us to have some additional time to work through the transition to the new contract that's going into effect on September 1st and understand any changes in service provision and any changes in the cost profile associated with this transition to a new contract and a new contractor. So what we are proposing here is a six month extension through the end of December where we'll continue to provide services that have been in place since October and then during that time we plan to work with the county to develop a long-term extension that aligns with that service contract. So that service contract is a three-year base term ending in June of 2023 and then there are two additional option years. So we want the interlocal agreement between the city and the county to be matched up with the service contract and we think that three-year initial term is a good target but we want to understand all of the ramifications of the transition and make sure that those are fully captured and addressed in the long-term extension and so we'll be doing that in the coming months but we wanted to keep the services in place so that there's no disruption in service to our riders. In terms of the how the merger has gone so far it's been very smooth we had the same provider in place so we were able to easily transition county riders to our service and there was no disruptions and we did not hear complaints from riders about the transition. In terms of the ridership we were expecting in the budget about 1400 riders per month. For the first several months we were at about 1300 trips per month and then since the pandemic we've seen a decrease in ridership now to a little less than 50% of those levels but we are meeting the trip demand from customers. On cost the city's current cost is approximately $26 per trip which is the amount that's provided for an agreement. There are some additional administrative requirements in the agreement for reporting and staffing of a transportation advisory committee that would increase the city's cost so we're working through proposals and cost estimates to address those. The goal of the long-term extension agreement is to ensure that any administrative requirements can be met and that associated costs are appropriately allocated. With respect to the advisory body current agreement does include a provision that calls for the formation of a joint city council county transportation advisory committee as a successor to the county transportation advisory board. The formation of the new committee was delayed as the city's transportation department completed a leadership transition so I'll take responsibility for that as I came in this was one of the things that I wanted to attend to and has not advanced as quickly as I would like it to have so as part of that we plan to engage with our county stakeholders and the community as part of the development of a long-term extension agreement to better understand the goals and objectives that we hope to achieve with this group and then what the right structure is to meet this and what resources will be required for support. I heard the feedback that Chair Jacobs shared during yesterday's go triangle board meeting about the valuable work performed by the county's board in recent years and we certainly want to develop a structure that will enable us to continue that important and valuable work. So staff have requested an opportunity to appear before the board of county commissioners that are not coming work session to redress the extension and requirements of the agreement and get additional input from the board of county commissioners and county administration to help us work through these remaining items. So that's my report thank you. Happy to answer any questions. Well you answered all my questions thank you Sean that was great report you covered everything I had seen and I'm very grateful. Any other questions for Sean? All right Sean thank you so much. Sure and if I may I'd like to ask Thomas Leathers to address the next few transportation items that relate specifically to the park. And those are 26 and 7 yeah let me let me first review our agenda everybody because Mayor Pro Tem had let me know that there are several members of the so we have various members of the racial equity task force here to present to us and they have some time constraints and so they've asked if we could move them up. Let me just I'm going to just say I can't remember Reese pull item 26 I pulled item 27 40 and 41 were pulled by the my council member Caballero I believe is that right yeah so I'll just say for my item I will let me just deal with that one item and then we can talk about the other three and sort of see where we want to go. For my concern was the employment statistics for the company which is this would be item 27 Mr. Leathers the Otis elevator contract where I see that there's one African-American employee so I understand we're under severe time constraints today so if I could ask if you could ask that someone from that company or through you to be in touch with us prior to our council meeting to let us know what their hiring practices are their recruitment practices are whether or not they are in touch with our local universities our local HBCUs and and you're very familiar with the kinds of questions that we like the answers to so if you could ask that on item 27 I would be grateful. Thomas Leathers transportation department Mr. Mayor members of council we will follow up with Otis elevator we receive that request information shortly. Thank you all right for items 26 40 and 41 I'm going to ask councilmember Rees and councilmember Carriero are these items that you think can be quickly disposed of or do you feel like we need a major discussion? I can I can dispose of mine pretty quickly Mr. Mayor. Yeah go ahead councilmember. On item 26 I don't have any concerns about the contract itself but Mr. Mayor as with the reasons you might have number 27 the employment statistics workforce demographics of this employer were of concern to me 21 employees all white no black black or brown employees and the UBE requirements per the per the compliance memo were met because there were no subcontracting opportunities identified by the transportation department. The reason I wanted to pull that is just to say this if state law doesn't allow us to reject a contract with an employee with a with a vendor who has no black or brown employees then I'd like someone to tell me that and so that doesn't necessarily have to happen today but I think we as a council are going to have to at some point come to grips with one of two things either we're not doing enough to require more diversity for the in the vendors that are selected through our contracting process number one or number two we are it is unlawful for us to do more and I'd like to know which that is because this is not a good situation. This is not the only contract we've seen like this over the last year Mr. Mayor you identified one I think there's another one later on that I didn't pull that also did not look reflective of the kind of diversity that we want to see in our vendors I you know we can sit here and keep voting for these contracts year in and year out but until we have a real conversation about what the law requires what it forbids and if we are not allowed to do more let's talk to our legislative delegation about getting the authority to do more but voting for these things is demoralizing that's all I wanted to say Mr. Mayor thank you thank you council member and of course we've had this discussion many many times and this is not Mr. Letters we recognize this is not for you but I do think that it's a discussion that we need to advance with our city attorney and I appreciate your foregrounding that council member Reese council member Freeman I just wanted to wholeheartedly agree with council member Reese's comments and your requests and information I just wanted to note that I usually don't ask on vendors that with less than 50 employees because I am cognizant of how workplace comfort levels can can be off-putting when it's when it's much smaller and you're the only one of color that works there and so I just wanted to make sure I added that caveat and then just to say that if there is I wanted to second and making sure that we are pushing forward through our legislative agenda ways in which to make sure that we have a handle on what we can and can't ask for so thank you thank you council member all right we'll now move unless there are any more comments to item 40 and council member Caballero this is just a quick question for item 40 and 41 the local match number the 10,000 something is that for each item or so is it a total of 20,000 or is it 10,000 because the number is the same so I just was confused yes this is a key suppress them with the police department good afternoon and council members um yes the 10,000 is for each one the local match is for our overtime for our officers and their benefits so we do the local match every year for that okay thank you thank you council member and thank you miss Preston thank you all right um mr manager I believe that we have gone through all the pull items and we're now down to the discussion items that's what I have mr mayor oh mr manager I'm going to change a little bit about from what we said and move on to the racial equity task force and then we'll move on to the that's fine that's fine thank you thank you for those members of the racial equity task force thank you for hanging with us we have big agenda today and very appreciative of you all being here with us um I'm going to ask the mayor pro tem if she will make some introductory marks remarks and then uh introduce the task force uh I'm I've discussed uh previously with the task force leadership and I will give you all 30 minutes to um report I know there's several of you all are going to participate and then we'll have questions comments from the council mayor pro tem would you like to introduce our our presenters may she's gone for a minute I will introduce our presenters um I'm going to uh introduce our chair judge and dean Elaine O'Neill who I want to thank for doing a great job leading this group over the past year and a half uh and also I believe Karin Haldeman the vice chair will also be helping lead this presentation and the two of them have been wonderful leaders for this group I want to say to the members of the task force I want to express my gratitude to you all for the incredible effort you put into it I've mayor pro tem has kept us informed of the effort of the ongoing efforts and and the extraordinary work that you've done and I just want to express my gratitude uh mayor pro tem would you like to um say a word to you and then uh we'll we'll hear from judge bush van yes sorry for judge O'Neill thank you mr mayor um and thank you everyone I'm really thrilled um to be here at this moment hearing this presentation from this group over the last 21 months I have seen them work so incredibly hard to think about the ways in which the city um and other institutions in our community are failing to live up to our ideals and our promises um about racial equity and to to put concrete recommendations in place um for our institutions in order to in order to move in the right direction um they have especially over the last six months spent countless hours uh in meetings they you know met three times in just the last two weeks I've honestly been um inspired and just so deeply grateful for the work that they've done and for the incredible commitment that all the members of this task force have put into um making this possible and bringing bringing these recommendations to us um we've learned a lot over the last almost two years um they've done a lot of community engagement had plans to do more but unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic made um made some of those efforts unsafe but I think that this is this is the beginning of a really important conversation and so we'll be able to continue to engage with the community and with organizations and residents around the around these important issues a lot of the recommendations are going to require the city to um to to put resources behind making um making some of these recommendations real they require funding and a real commitment from us um towards building the kind of community that we all want to live in um your race doesn't determine so many um of the aspects of your of your life and your future that that are that are now determined so I um hope that we'll all I know that we'll all give the recommendations serious consideration and and that we move forward um as quickly as we can with providing some real resources and funding to put to put some of these recommendations in place but I don't want to talk too long because I know our um our guests I'll have places to be but I just want to thank them um so much on behalf of the council and the entire city for the work that they've done and commit to um commit to putting their ideas into practice through whatever means we uh we have available to us so thank you thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem Judge O'Neill welcome we're glad to have you and would look forward to hearing your your report thank you I'm not exactly sure whether you can see me but I am here we can hear you we cannot see you but we can hear you okay and I'm not exactly sure why you can't see me but we will try to see if there is a reason now can you see me no I think that it's because I think you're not as included as a panelist is that correct Madam Clerk okay well I will hang on a second let me ask the clerk Madam Clerk is that correct yes I'm promoting to her to panelists to see if it'll work okay she's trying to judge she's trying to make you a panelist so that you could be seen so there I am hello is she there yay okay and Madam Clerk if you could also make Karen hold them in a panelist I see she's on yes good all right judge thank you good to see you all right good to see you all thank you thank you all so much for this opportunity this afternoon uh it's raining over here so I call that a blessed rain we've had a wonderful 24 21 months and I just want to briefly introduce myself to those who don't know me I am Elaine O'Neill I am a Dermite born and raised in the city having lived nowhere else other than Durham I served as a judge here for 24 years recently retired in 2018 from the bench then I went over to North Carolina Century University School of Law by Alma Mater twice and served as interim dean I am now retired as of today I'm done for a little while at any rate I I've had the distinct pleasure of serving as name chair but actually co-chair of this historic task force the racial equity task force I thank our Mayor Pro Tim Johnson and Mayor Shul for asking 18 of Durham residents to take part in this historic and monumental work we have been together and we are now family from November the 20 of 2018 to July 23rd today 2020 and we apologize for the lateness of the report we have actually been on a marathon for the last two weeks up until last night when we finally approved the last uh iteration of this document and it is now complete and ready for your uh for your perusal we asked that you remember that it took us one time to write it but you're gonna have forever to read it so we pray that it will be a great read and a call to action I wanted to uh introduce our task force members but I'm going to skip that part other than my co-chair and ask when those uh committee members speak if they would introduce the remainder of the task force member there are 18 of us hopefully you will hear from some of us today most of us today but I do want to introduce you to this special lady who I met on the day that I asked her to co-chair this task force and that's Karen Karen not Karen Karen Haldeman and she is the glue she has been the glue for this task force and she has kept us moving forward to this day I want to preface my opening remarks by basically saying and we have agreed that this comes directly from the report but it does address the moment in time with COVID as you know we were interrupted in our work we had planned to meet with some more community organizations but that time was interrupted and our work had was largely developed before the COVID-19 pandemic but that has further exposed the depth of inequality in our city and nation while adding to the work urgency of anti-racist work we have attempted to incorporate this experience into our recommendations but we realize that our understanding remains incomplete as the pandemic and its consequences are developing in real time the pandemic does underscore how serious our problems are and the necessity to up our efforts in changing the realities of racial inequities we talked about a couple of nights ago the task force did about the tone that we wish to for the readers to infer as they began to delve into this I think it's approximately 64 pages of reading and we thought it very important that we inject something into our conversation about this that you don't really see in the public eye and that's the idea of community love community love kindness and grace you hear a whole lot in the days news every day news about all of the hate but where is the love so this is our love letter to Durham and it is a loving and urgent call to action and so we ask that you infer that tone for this reading and for your subsequent action and with that I am going to turn this over to my co-chair Karen Haldeman who will explain to you our work thank you so much Elaine you are our north star on this task force good afternoon my name is Karen Haldeman and I am the vice-chair of the racial equity task force and I serve on the health and environmental justice subcommittee and the public health public history subcommittee today I'd like to give you just a brief overview of how we did our work there's a longer summary in the report so we hope you take a look at that but this is sort of just a brief walkthrough when I first walked into our first meeting back in November 2018 I didn't know one soul in that group and now we're standing here well sitting 17 of us having spent nearly two years together struggling and celebrating and supporting one another through the work and trying to rise to the challenge assigned to us we're parents grandparents and caregivers we are teachers and we are activists and we are business owners we are your neighbors we began our work early on by creating those safe spaces where we could talk about race and racism white supremacy and racial equity that deep thoughtful and sensitive work that was rooted in empathy we established some agreed upon ideas of racial equity and while we still grapple with the perfect definition we put forth in this report that the conversations will always be ongoing that racial equity is a noun but it is also a verb as our actions toward it are built into it we collaboratively developed six subcommittees that include housing wealth and economy health and environmental justice education criminal legal and public history subcommittees met outside of our monthly meetings and spent time visiting community spaces inviting speakers and attending other meetings that informed their work it wasn't a stated part of our mission from the city but we agreed early on that we really wanted to include a component of community engagement so that we could hear feedback from the people of Durham on the recommendations that we had made before we had even finalized the report this is really important to the group in December of 2019 we turned our attention to those presentations in the community in the remaining time December seems like years ago now so we turned our attention to those meetings and we were able to schedule a total of nine of them in February and March before COVID-19 interrupted all of our lives and we were able to keep eight of those nine meetings in the midst of the pandemic tens of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets and powerful protests that have laid bare the consequences of racial injustice and are passionately and effectively calling for a new anti-racist direction and our society and in our culture our task force responded with an urgency that we move forward with writing our report and in May we began meeting every week we offered this report in solidarity with this movement and here in Durham we cannot ignore the additional epidemic of gun violence and its deep and long-standing impact specifically on our black communities it has stolen our loved ones our children including Tyvee and McLean a 12 year old boy a student at Lowes Grove Middle School a Durham son preventing and healing the deep trauma of this violence is not the work of one organization or one city council it is the work of racial equity and of our entire community so we stand now at a vital and pivotal moment in our history when we are compelled as a city and as neighbors to build a collective conscience together and create the just city that lies ahead when we must lift every voice and saying the present situation cannot stand we can and must do better the future of our nation our state and our city is at stake so now we're going to hear from our task force members who will present recommendations from each of our subcommittees I believe Cameron Smith is with us today to talk about our recommendations from the housing subcommittee Cameron are you here yes I'm here Cameron thank you Cameron can you hold on one second let me see if our clerk as people are speaking can make them panelists so we can see them Madam clerk is that possible yes mr. Mayor I've already made her a panelist great and so we should be able to see you Cameron if you turn your camera on and let me just while we're doing this thank the clerk she has done double duty today uh minding the chat and and the everything else so thank you and Cameron um yes yes great good welcome thank you mayor thank you city council members for having us today my name is Cameron Smith and I'm a member of the housing task force as well as subcommittee as well as the wealth and economy subcommittee um my I'm presenting the housing recommendation um our chairperson was James Tavron as long along with uh housing task force members um Hallie Mott singer Dan McKinney and David Dixon and Corey um I would like to begin with our initial introduction and our recommendations for the housing uh task force it should be obvious to all concern that the lack of decent and affordable housing is a national and local crisis of great proportion that has been building over time we can trace this trend beginning with the denial of 40 acres in a mule to the survivors of American slavery and carried on through the period of Jim Crow via segregation racism and government housing policies real estate and mortgage industries are magnified the red lines this is also compounded by the urban renewal which is the hay time neighborhood of Durham led to the intentional might I add displacement of 400 families and 500 businesses most recently the 2008 Great Recession and its consequent indiscriminate gentrification along with the continuing decline in support of public housing and COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the housing crisis particularly and black indigenous POC community our policy recommendations focus on minimizing harm as we begin the meaningful work of seriously tackling the problem we understand the limitations on city power and financial capacity so we also advocate that the city work in league with other anti-racist forces around the state and nation to actually do the work here are a few of our further recommendations we recommend that the city partner with Durham housing authority to ensure the public housing will be safe livable humane dignified and well maintained and sensitive to environmental impact we also recommend that the city of Durham and the Durham housing authority develop and implement new public housing and eviction policies that provide mortgage and public rent relief and create a universal right to counsel for those facing eviction by allocating more money to legal aid eviction diversion program we also recommend that the city of Durham develop a strategy that would allow Durham housing authority to refrain from filing evictions after the 14-day notice period and instead implement a non-punitive measure like offering financial counseling many evictions including most public housing evictions for non-payment of rent resolve themselves when the client is able to pay additional rental assistance case management and where appropriate financial counseling or mental health services often resolve the underlying problem without the need for a lawsuit in court in many cases all that is needed is additional time for a tenant to come up with the money we also recommend that bend the box which is the questions about criminal history for potential renters in Durham be used in in our public housing also the city and county should track the race and gender of those facing eviction it is imperative that the city and county of Durham ensure that the public and private renters within their jurisdiction are not discriminated discriminated against as citizens the city and county must develop a system to track the race and gender of those being evicted and should publish the data for transparency and accountability we also recommend that all housing strategies contain a larger wealth building strategy we envision a Durham where communities that are most often disconnected from the city's dorm prosperity are supported in the initiative to build self-sustaining wealth historically and currently one of the primary ways to build wealth in this country is through home ownership the affordable housing bond allocates some money for home ownership for 400 first-time homeowners this money will cover the cost of the down payment for first-time homeowners we recommend that the city expand on the foundation of the housing bond and create a long-term strategic plan to increase the access of home ownership for community members who have historically only had access to rentals we also include in our recommendations love measures on increased accountability and transparency the main concern that we receive from community members of color with a general distrust of city initiatives we recommend that the city be proactive about building trust within these communities it serves and for the city to trust that the community knows what's best for itself we appreciate the efforts of neighborhood improvement services to move more intentional in this direction we recommend also that when the city rebuilds communities they do so as the community seats fit and that the community revitalization priorities include communities that have been negatively impacted by institutional policies and practices we also recommend measures on data collection and publication we recommend that the city track and public sized developers who are buying up homes we recommend tracking and publicizing this for the purpose of public awareness we also recommend that the city track records of the Durham housing authority who are relocated for renovations or redevelopment the questions came up where are they house how many return to their communities after renovations as where is where do those who do not return end up in closing we can only reiterate that there is a housing crisis in Durham a crisis that cannot be dealt with by a quick fix or one bond issue we call for innovative and serious action by the city state and federal government and concert with communities that are most impacted now i'd like to turn it over to Emily coward to present the recommendations for the wealth and economy subcommittee thank you Cameron thank you mayor shul mayor perotem johnson city council members for the opportunity to speak with you today and for the opportunity to serve on this task force my name is Emily coward i'm a Durham resident of 17 years um an attorney a Durham public school's parent and i i deeply love this city i want to speak for a moment about my identity as a white person with race and class privilege involved in this task force um as white people we live in a permanent state of unpaid debt to our black sisters and brothers to indigenous people and to all others exploited by the economy that we built on stolen land on the backs of enslaved people our communities and our souls would be far healthier if we were to reckon with our history but for centuries we have refused to do so this failure perpetuates racialized outcomes in our communities where opportunities and life outcomes are still predictable by race um and so fellow white people i encourage you to find a way to get involved in supporting reparative racial justice work not as a trend or as a hashtag but as the slow and humbling and necessary work of a lifetime with the goal of creating a liberated nation where we all can thrive our city our city has signaled its support for this sort of reckoning by creating this task force and i wanted to thank you for that and this task force has been focused on how to put our anti-racist values into action sustainable meaningful transformative action i'm a part of the wealth and economy committee along with Cameron Smith who you just heard from Cecilia Polanco Corey Hogan's Jessica Luganbuele and Tia Hall it was clear to our committee from the get-go that our focus needed to be on the appalling and growing racial wealth gap in our city we know that racialized poverty and Durham is not a product of culture it's a product of systemic historic and ongoing racism Jim Crow redlining the destruction of black neighborhoods for highway construction and other reasons disparate investment racialized policing education criminal justice and healthcare expletive wages for essential workers we know these causes and we need solutions so we would love to see our city and county take several steps to turn away from this legacy and build a new future they're highlighted in our report but i will note just a few today so first we'd like to see our elected officials use their platforms to pass resolutions calling for reparations at the national level and to organize along with other cities in our nation a concerted effort to make the imperative of national reparations a reality second we recommend that our city and county invest in a local reckoning alongside the national project of reparations we believe that reparative action needs to take many many forms as an unfunded task force with a limited time frame we didn't have the power or capacity to engage with the community to the extent necessary to lead the sort of reckoning that we believe our city needs but we do believe this should be ongoing and funded work third we want to encourage our elected leaders to launch a racial equity fund bold enough to meet the challenge of Durham's racial wealth gap it must be community led and accountable to Durham's communities of color we have leading scholars on reparations and the racial wealth gap right here in Durham who the city and county should be consulting with and launching such a fund we recognize that regressive state laws limit some of the options for such a fund but Durham is not powerless we call upon all resource rich institutions in our city duke university philanthropic groups businesses wealthy individuals research research triangle park and others to contribute to this sort of effort these kinds of funds are happening around the country and they should be happening here this should be happening here Dr. Henry McCoy's research shows that some of the most progressive cities have the largest racial wealth gaps this is true in Durham white paternalism and charity are built into many typical historic progressive responses to racial inequity it's time to turn away from these approaches and to invest in opportunities for wealth building and self-sufficiency and communities of color we're not in need of charity but are entitled to opportunity and accountability by making these investments we as a city and a county can begin to dismantle structural racism and the racial wealth gap that is continuing to grow in our city we know that what we've proposed will not be enough to solve the deeply entrenched racial wealth gap in Durham but as a city we believe that we should start this work recognizing it will not be ours to finish it has been an honor to be a member of this task force under the very wise and very loving leadership of the honorable Elaine O'Neill and the also quite honorable Karen Halderman thank you Durham thank you all of you for that opportunity and next up I want to introduce Anna Nunez who chairs our criminal criminal legal system committee. Hi everyone my name is Anna Nunez and I along with Tia Hall Howard and Machiner and Katie M. Gangola make up the criminal legal system subcommittee for our task force the uprisings of 2020 calls for a fundamental reassessment and transformation of our criminal legal system and other issues of racial inequity while the conversation regarding our criminal legal system has been brewing in Durham for years we believe a more substantive action is needed now we're offering a minimal set of recommendations whose institution would mark a beginning but beyond recommendations we need our community to come together for an in-depth discussion of how to stop the ongoing criminalization of black and brown people as we ensure safety for all as a subcommittee we have spent the last 21 months listening to community members and leaders including elected officials acknowledging that the criminal legal system covers a great breadth of issues we focused on matters where we saw high levels of racial disparity due to time constraints there are multiple areas of our criminal legal system that have not been addressed in these recommendations however we hope a permanent racial equity task force can continue to explore the areas that need attention and move this work forward I would like to share with y'all one of our recommendations due to our time constraints today which is that the city and county along with community partners work to implement policies that result in the decriminalization of substance use abuse mental illness poverty and poverty in Durham we believe this can be achieved by the elimination of barriers to housing in order to allow justice involved persons with criminal convictions to apply for and retain housing including but not limited to public housing the elimination of traffic stops based solely on equipment infractions by the Durham Police Department and the Durham Sheriff's Office access to court diversion programs that do not require a financial financial commitment from those seeking to use those programs investing in more mental health and substance abuse treatment providers in our court system in our city and in our county investing in mental health services improving living conditions and access to medical care at the Durham County Jail and the decriminalization of cannabis possession for personal use these recommendations are a spring board to a much larger conversation about the role of the criminal legal system in Durham we hope the work of this task force leads to a reassessment of budget priorities for making community safe we have invested too much in criminalization model for public safety instead of investing in housing jobs health care education for black and brown communities and fighting structural inequality we think our Durham community for sharing their knowledge their feedback stories and ideas with us and next I would like to introduce Jamal Moss who will present for the health and environmental justice subcommittee Jamal hi everyone my name is Jamal Moss and I'm the chair of the environmental justice and health subcommittee and I've called Durham home for five years until I moved to Tennessee to attend medical school at Meharry Medical College but I along with Karen and Giovanna Lewis have essentially looked at the health and built environment of Durham so over the last 21 months their environmental justice and health subcommittee met with community members and organizations to listen to their experiences and demands attended various meetings with key stakeholders to understand their contributions to the community and analyze the data to paint a picture of the health and well and well-being of Durhamites by the end of our efforts one thing was very clear systemic racism is a public health crisis in Durham internalized in a personal cultural institutional and structural racism are the fundamental root cause of disease and poverty in our community we need a trauma-informed perspective to understand the impact of centuries of racism and intergenerational violence inflicted by white supremacy on black indigenous and people of color until this system of oppression is deconstructed and dismantled we will continue to see poor health outcomes and chronic disease in communities of color there are no set of words or phrases that can be that can justly articulate the inhumane experiences we've heard from community members about their interaction with the health care systems in Durham black and brown families are less likely to have health insurance and more likely to face stigma and discrimination when they do seek care we listen to countless stories of people being ignored neglected and abandoned by doctors and other health care providers when they saw care and unfortunately this stands true during the age of COVID-19 where black and brown people are disproportionately represented in infection and mortality rates recently Durham residents of color have expressed the need for patient advocates when they seek care when they present with symptoms of COVID-19 they are turned away by health care providers and asked to return when their symptoms are severe which then may be too late for this reason we call for every health care and public health professional in Durham to become active participants in the struggle to end racism we ask that you advocate for health and racial equity by upholding yourself and the institutions you work for accountable to the people you all serve anchor institutions such as the Duke University Health System and the Lincoln Community Center are significant stakeholders who play a vital role in caring for Durham community they need to be called out and called in to unpack the distrust and resentment held by black and brown residents as a result of culturally incompetent care and discriminatory practices we know that it is racism not race that causes health disparities for too long our health care system has used race-based medicine to inform clinical decision making leaving black indigenous and people of color misdiagnosed and under treated which ultimately leads to poor health outcomes in this time we call on every community stakeholder to dedicate resources and funds to the life on commitment to self-evaluate and self-critique their practices procedures and policies to institutionalize cultural humility and anti-racist health care however we know that health and well-being are more than genetics and the summation of our health behaviors but it's also the environment our health our our health outcomes are the result of both nurture and nature our built environment is the result of city and county government supported plans and zoning practices based on the zip code we can tell if Durham families will struggle with obtaining healthy food attending well-funded schools accessing parks and green spaces being exposed to gun violence and environmental toxins and receiving quality health care our lived experience and build environment have biological or epigenetic consequences that affect health outcomes and life expectancy healing and reconciliation from centuries of racial trauma and violence requires more than declaring racism as a public health crisis and quite frankly that is the bare minimum that we can be done that we can do we need to transform or we need transformative justice to break generations of harm and feelings of hopelessness in our community no more empty promises no more race neutral or blind or colorblind solutions we want to build we want to build a more resilient and accountable Durham a city that proudly proclaims black lives matter we as a task force recognize the revolutionary act of breathing for black people is a form of resistance so when we say black lives matter we articulate the fullness of black lives declaring a right to be healthy productive autonomous and ultimately liberated in this crucial and climactic time we suggest the city of Durham and Durham County along with community members and stakeholders use a set of recommendations as a foundation of the lifelong commitment to races to anti-racist work that our city urgently needs one we recommend the city of Durham adopt definitions of health anti-racism and environment that focus on well-being are built in natural community spaces and environmental justice two we recommend the city of Durham understand community trauma in a historical context due to the effects of poverty the lack of employment and health care and increasing gun violence three we recommend the city of Durham collect qualitative community Rudy and quantitative data to understand and address health and environmental issues impacted by racial inequity to help improve the overall physical and mental and mental wellness of our residents in Durham four we recommend the city of Durham improve healthy food availability and access and last we recommend that the city of Durham create a city county health alliance and integrate health outcomes into city county plan decisions I will now pass it to Katie for highlight recommendations for education thank you so much Jamal um so I am Katie Ngongola I am the education subcommittee chair um and I served on the subcommittee with David Dixon, Vanessa Hines, Harry Mocktinger, Dan McKinney and Cecilia Polanco and education is obviously a very hot button topic right now what are we going to do for school this year seems to be the question on everyone's minds uh whether they are a parent a child or an educator um there's so much stress and trauma built into this moment we are in this very critical moment that has made America's many structural and institutionalized inequities very visible education is no exception although we would like to think that education is the great equalizer there are far too many barriers including racism that prevent that from being a current reality for most of our almost two years working on these recommendations there was no coronavirus we were able to meet in person with some of our community's great educational experts from DPS employees and leaders to students and parents and we thank you to those Durham community members who worked alongside us the concerns the challenges the strengths that they shared about our schools have not disappeared because of COVID if anything COVID has brought into sharp focus the very recommendations we were crafting when it struck we know that many things have changed however and we wrestled with how this context in our recommendations melded ultimately the situation we are in now it's not going to be the situation we are in forever so some of our recommendations based on physical classroom settings may be part of a long term or post COVID vision for example but the heart of our recommendations is this we are not here to fix the child we are here to fix the system and in terms of COVID that really means mental health support supporting the whole child having nurses in schools language access this means effectively creating a culture of trauma informed culturally responsive teachers and staff but also being clear the educators are people their safety and well-being matters too and they're going through trauma right now also so it's really important to make sure that teachers are getting what they what they need health wise if not they also may unwittingly inflict trauma on students we want to foster healing that reduces bias and helps us dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline our recommendations delved into four arenas supporting the whole child by providing more comprehensive holistic services to prevent gaps in the social safety net for our community interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and ending the criminalization of our children identifying and addressing racism and white culture within our schools and childcare centers while making sure they are more culturally sustaining and addressing the need for supporting dorm youth including education to career training these recommendations are robust and we hope you and those listening take the call to action seriously many of these resonate particularly during this current context we want to emphasize the need to fund counselors social workers nurses to meet nationally recommended ratios before providing funding for school resource officers in particular we encourage DPS to prioritize hiring black and latinx counselors and social workers including spanish-speaking ones additionally having equity focus anti-racist district leaders is so critical right now when we risking opportunity gaps get even larger we know the recommendations we make here require a cultural shift and as we as a community strive to deal with covid it's time to reimagine and reinvent what our schools and our education community looks like it's time for everyone to thrive feel safe and feel valued ultimately we know the city is not in charge of funding our schools we know these recommendations need to be heard by county commissioners the school board county manager and beyond in fact state leadership and the general assembly needs to understand this and fund our public schools we see political leadership trying to get rid of public schools particularly legislators who create this polarization between educators and students but we want a different direction we aren't here to punish students or teachers we want to change the framework of understanding about what's going on in our schools and as many others have mentioned today to develop any true framework of understanding we must start from or within the community decisions need to be driven by students and directly impacted folks one of the biggest conversations this year in Durham education and nationwide is around school resource officers and the question what makes people safe the community needs a voice in this conversation including discussing safety issues around SROs we have seen this year that students are willing to lead us if we are willing to follow and listen in closing these stories the stories of students and their families are important to us and the work to make our schools truly safe and equitable for all these recommendations are just a beginning so thank you for listening today and for the opportunity to serve on this task force and I will pass it to Vanessa Hines to share about public history thanks Katie um good afternoon everyone and thank you council for having us join your work session today um like Katie said my name is Vanessa Hines and I am the chair of the public history subcommittee uh this this subcommittee consisted of myself Tia Hall and our vice chair Karen Halden the public history subcommittee has sought to help the city of Durham tell a more full version of our city's history and our public spaces we believe this to be a service to both the newcomer and a longtime resident to know the history about the place you live both the hard truths and the unique characteristics worth celebrating we believe it is important to know the stories of those who came for you and to ponder how you might get into the wider story of public history and public art help us know who is welcoming the city and whose story the city thinks is worth telling for the sake of future generations we must find a way to uplift the stories that have often gone unheard we desire to live in a city where everyone can find themselves celebrated through the story of someone who came before them one way we think that this can be done is by gathering more stories the city can fund the creation of a story gathering commission composed of groups in Durham who are already dedicated to the gathering and the sharing of our collective histories I think especially of the history department at North Carolina Central University the public history the public history department is doing some incredible work gathering the oral histories of Black Durham from historically Black neighborhoods like Braggtown the city can fund that the university's efforts to expand their work we believe that would be a great gift to the city of Durham there are many other groups to be included in this gathering of stories especially from our Latinx communities our Asian communities and our native and indigenous communities in order for us to be a truly racially equitable city we need to uplift the stories of those who have been intentionally left out of the narrative we can also we can also be a city that tells a more full version of our history by acknowledging when you've gotten it wrong in the past we know that the creation of highway 147 decimated so much of Black Durham's prosperity we know that promises were made but promises were not kept and many families were left out to dry where is the apology for that where is the investment for those neighborhoods and business districts that were destroyed we think that an apology although not enough to fix the decades of divestment can be a step towards healing and the beginning of a renewed commitment to the lives of Black Durham but only if it is coupled with a commitment to invest in Black communities finally we think Durham can tell a more full version of its history by funding a full-fledged museum of Durham history with enough resources to offer a plethora of outdoor exhibits to help bring the stories of Durham out of the buildings and into the streets we need more monuments to people in our city who have inspired us to seek justice especially for our most vulnerable we need more memorials to call us to lament our city's shortcomings we need more murals to help us remember where we have been and inspire us to imagine where we can go and of course we need more community engagements surrounding all these these projects should prioritize the hiring of BIPOC artists for the design and and implementation and include information about the artists and the history of the project we are grateful for the work currently being done by the city to create the Black Wall Street Gardens as well as the Black Artist Celebration Initiative that Council Member Freeman made reference to at the beginning of this meeting we are also grateful for the work that was done by the city city county commission on Confederate monuments for their list of who is missing from our public square and to the sesquicentennial commission for their list of Durham honorees time is of the essence to find places to honor these people and to share more Durham story and to continue bringing the stories of Durham out of the buildings and into the streets the artist and activist Fabiana Rodriguez says the role of the artist has never been more important artists are the beacons who help us see the light in times of devastation artists expose hard truths inspire new ideas and and make the future we want feel possible tangible and inevitable artists activate the imagination they soothe comfort and move us to action let's imagine together what Durham could look like if we exposed the hard truths through the intertwining of public history and public art may we be a city that doesn't shy away from the hard truths but reflects on them often so that we may heal and in turn create a more whole and equitable city for generations to come and now I'd like to turn it over to our vice chair Karen Haldeman for our acknowledgements thank you Vanessa that was a lot of information that would just drop down everybody the report is longer so we just pray that everybody takes time to to read it in depth this is just a small preview so um just want to take just a brief moment to acknowledge acknowledge that um we also didn't do this work alone and we thought it would be real it's really important for us to acknowledge all of the people who've helped along the way the racial equity task force would like to thank mayor pro tem jillian johnson for proposing the creation of this group in the first place and to mayor steve shul and the whole Durham city council for creating space for us to begin the work we're grateful to mamey web bled so for her patience and expertise as our facilitator as she guided us through two retreats and helped us to focus our ideas in order to fulfill our mission we would like to thank jeremy rauw for volunteering his time to build our website in literally the blink of an eye we could not have completed our community engagement calendar without the excellent assistance of neighborhood improvement services especially and including constant stancil linwood best laura betiger pamela pegan tanu gupta alexis john carmen orteez sharyl mcdonald faith gardener and james davis and we'd like to thank christin dismuks a Durham resident who just raised her hand at a pack meeting and volunteered hours of her expertise in writing this report and finally we thank the people from across Durham the community members who attended our meetings and provided input local resources who shared their years of experience we have so much wealth of knowledge and experience in this city with special thanks to dr henry mccoy who spent hours with our team sharing his deep knowledge of racial inequity in our city you all have helped us in our thinking and in our growth throughout this last 21 months we thank our families without whose support we wouldn't have gotten any of this done well maybe a little bit but not all of it and we've been grateful beyond words for the opportunity to serve the people of Durham in this way at this time and in this moment this has been our labor of love and this story and all of the work within it stan is our love letter to you thank you i'm gonna turn it over to elaine to close us out well mayor and mayor pro tem and all city officials this is this is what how we do it this is how we do it i just like to close what they call to action to the city of Durham we are everyday people as you can see us everyday people going about our everyday lives but what is uniquely different about these folk and i hope that i'm included in that is that we care we care to make a difference in the lives of those who need our help we care to make a difference and what happens when a community comes together and makes a difference can be phenomenal and life changing just as this task force has done for each of us so how do we go for it first you have to realize there's a problem Durham we have a problem the second you need a critical mass of people who are committed to changing and repairing the breach now there are going to be others who will hate this report but they will pick out parts and they will hang on that and that's okay but i will suggest that we can find a critical mass of Durham residents in this moment who will be prepared to help us to focus in on that one thing that we may like versus all of the things that we don't like and we will be committed to do something about it so i ask you Durham to give five hours of your personal time not to your church not to your family you're already going to do that anyway but to someone that you do not know and may never meet and let us make this moment count we need a critical mass of Durham's caring people and that's the operative word people who love Durham who love its citizens who are who are filled with grace and kindness towards people who may not have or may not look like you it is our time now and we need an example of a city that can show this nation and i will suggest to you that it is Durham north carolina that's why i love this city that's why i love this state because we are people who care and we can make a difference so we send this love letter to you with the ending of saying this is just a beginning let us go forth together for our children our children's children and our children's children's children thanks mayor thanks task force you're a lot of best this is our report wow wow that was fantastic um that was indeed a loving and urgent message i my my mind and my heart are both full at this time from hearing what you all have had to say and i'm really looking forward to reading everything and to digesting everything and to figure out how we move forward together and i think what i i know that one of the our big task is going to be to figure out how to move these things forward and we're going to need your help i know judge anil said that you were retired from this day forward but i want you to know that we're going to be calling on you again and this group to help us figure that out because thank you for the recommendations but now we have to move them forward and we're going to need you all to help lead uh it was we hear a lot of presentations most of them in person um and a lot of them are great but really in my years on the council this is one of the best presentations i've ever heard and to be able to do it over this zoom format and to still have the the the power that it carried is amazing i'm very grateful to you all for that those are beautiful and eloquent words and i know that they came out of an amazing amount of work and thinking and i just want to express my gratitude i think what i'd like to do now is just hear from our other council members any questions any comments any thoughts that they may have uh and then uh we'll we'll have a little conversation about how to move on next with these things so uh colleagues who would like to comment or has questions i see council member freeman thank you i um i am also uh so grateful to you all uh 17 members of derm just uh expanded my hopes and dreams for derm into written form and ways in which i couldn't do alone and i'm so grateful to you all and i know i continue to say thank you but i can't say thank you enough i know that each and every one of you report so much time and effort into this and i know the derm is eternally grateful to each of you and i am interested in one piece of the conversation that um was spelled out and i would love to hear your feedback on how to continue to move this work forward um as you noted in the report that this board or this task force needs to be moved and elevated into a board and maybe being city and county and i would love to hear your thoughts on on how that how you if any of you are looking to stay involved like how many of you are looking to stay involved like what exactly are we looking at here that's mainly where i'm at i know that all of the areas i saw the the the recommendations and the vision and this is at least a five to ten year process of like implementation until it's institutionalized and i really would like to have as many of you as possible involved in that process um just to make sure that it happens in a way that's um true to the report that you put together and true to the work that you've been doing with this with the various people that you mentioned who reported as well in addition to yourselves but thank you so much d driana council councilman freeman i think that we are all we all live this work you know it's it's not a thing that you can sit down and say okay i'll walk away you don't walk away from being black um you can't walk away from the things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis so we live in this space and i am committed and i know many of us are committed to seeing this through one of the things that we talked about is perhaps having a we hope that you all will invite us back in one year so that we can gather as a group to see where we are as a city and reassess i know that there are some of us who are interested in sitting on what we hope will be a permanent commission i'm not sure where i'm at in that but certainly i'm going to stay involved at some level uh and then i think also that um we are all just committed to making sure that we do the best that we can to interact on a daily basis in some of these arenas one of the other things that we talked about me and steve is perhaps having a tap time capsule moment where we uh sort of put this in a context uh we want to have something that's uh when we can a more formal presentation or informal presentation to the community at large where they can see all of us rather than on the box so that's one of the things that we'd like to do and at perhaps at that we could do a time capsule because we want to keep keep track of what we're doing uh it's going to take everybody in Durham to pull this off you can't just ignore this stuff as a community resident you've got to own it even if you don't own it you own it so let us be proactive and we're all committed to that to being proactive in this space mayor tia hall has her hand up i think we may have lost him and i do see tia's hands up um yeah i'll i'll jump in until he gets back um tia go ahead i just wanted to add a bit about what we've had as a discussion as a task force around um the longevity of this work being that it is about racial equity um there is a certain amount of privilege that affords you the ability to attend these meetings with the amount of time that we have put into many of us i dare say all of us because of the love for our city but if we are to practice equity we want that to be resourced so that community members who need to be at this table actually have the ability to be at this table so i don't want that left from the conversation thank you there any other comments or questions from council members uh council member middleton thank you so much madam mayor pro 10 madam mayor pro 10 and to her honor judge o'neill good to see you and to my friend karen uh until all of these wonderful um commissioners thank you so so much for this work um it one of the most awkward things is to tell somebody you love them and then there's that silence they don't tell you that they love you back um i don't know how many of us have had that experience but it's it's not a it's not a pleasant experience so let me let me let me return the love let me firstly say um that we love you back and we got your letter um in my faith tradition uh there's a notion uh that there the greatest love that a person can have is to lay down their life for a friend uh love is an action word it's a verb um you do things when you're in love so i i want to say uh in response to your love letter that that i want to publicly commit uh to doing the work because racial equity uh the speeches are nice but the work of racial equity is hard and it's uncomfortable because it calls for divestment and reinvestment in other areas and sometimes we don't know how vested we are in an area until we start taking money from it and sometimes we don't realize how much work we have to do personally until our own sense of of stake investedness uh is challenged so i heard you talk about spending money in some areas and and investing in some areas and and then community players that may not have been traditionally uh at the well and when we spend money so i i want to commit uh uh for me um publicly to doing the hard work of of rethinking even the way we do our budget uh as a city uh to making sure that money uh and funds and resources for the type of things that you've talked about are available i don't want you to say you love us and there's an awkward silence love is an action word and finally i'll say uh most of us uh when we think of dr king's i have a dream speech we get excited about the high art uh he was a black preacher so that high art i have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and about the true meaning of its creed that was the end of the speech uh that was the celebration the first part of the speech was really about a check uh that was written to america it was about economic resources being moved from one area of american life to another area of american life that was the main part of the i have a dream speech what are we going to do systemically and what are we going to do in terms of resources to actually make the promise of this nation uh and who we say we are uh reality for those of us that have been left out most vulnerable so so i heard uh all of the wonderful things that you had to say uh in the beautiful language but i also heard the check part of your presentation and i look forward to reading this document at least twice um and to to having my actions as a public official informed by it thank you bear pro tem for for birthing this um so long ago in the life of our city and i think all of you who took up the call uh for it um we love you back thank you so much thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you council member mayor schull are you is your um connection going in and out do you want me to keep presiding my connections going in and out and i okay why don't you go ahead and and uh keep presiding man madam mayor pro tem thank you all right no problem um any other thoughts or or questions from the council i'm sure we have a lot uh council member rice and then council member cubby arrow thank you madam mayor pro tem i want to thank the members of the task force for 21 months of incredible work uh to bring this report and presentation us today one of the things that friends do is we care for each other we support each other we also tell each other the truth and i think this report um is is a love letter as they said but it's also um a reminder that this city uh has been failing uh in many key respects for 151 years um i'll i'll steal my my colleague council member middleton's theme about the check what this city's written a lot of checks over the last 151 years that have bounced um and many of those have been written uh to our black and brown neighbors this report and the call to action it represents is in my mind a seminal moment in the life of our city as we start the next 150 years uh of who we are as a people as a community and i hope that all of us on the council understand what an incredible responsibility it is to be in service to the people of the city at this time today um and i just pray that we will be equal to this moment um as everyone who's spoken has said um this document calls us to make some of the most difficult choices possible it calls on us to make choices that aren't even possible today it calls on us to imagine a legal and governmental framework that will allow us to make these choices and so before we can even get to the starting line in some of these areas there's a ton of work to be done here in Durham and Raleigh and in Washington DC and i am so blessed and privileged to be in this position to have received this report to be told by our friends um that we have failed as a city in so many ways because it gives us an opportunity to begin to build the community that we want to be that we can be and that we have to be um i uh echo the calls for members of the task force um to agree to serve on some larger more permanent uh commission um that will obviously have to be a partnership with our county colleagues and others um and that'll be some work that i think we want to get done very very quickly but uh let me just say as everyone has said thank you for all the work thank you for caring about our city and our people enough to tell us what's wrong to tell us how we have failed and to point us in the direction of a beloved community that we can be and so thank you very much and um i look forward to the work thank you madam mayor protan thank you council member east council member cabillero thank you uh just wanted a same thing echo so many of what my colleagues have already said i know many of you put in a lot of time and effort and i feel that uh some of the best things that we get as a city are from our residents who choose to serve on these types of boards and commissions and it is a volunteer basis and it is a lot to ask folks and uh knowing that many people who would like to serve are often not able to for a variety of reasons also because of the barriers of time um so a huge amount of appreciation for everything you all have done i look forward to fully diving in uh to the full report uh i hope you all think about potentially presenting to both county and school board um i look forward to the time where we can gather in person because i think a time capsule idea sounds fabulous and uh again look forward to seeing we have a lot uh of work ahead of us but i believe in us thank you thank you council member any other council member freeman just a question i didn't know if um it had already been entertaining i know that there was a recent question about items for the city county um joint meeting i don't know if this is one of the items that will move forward um just so that we're sharing what we have from the city to the county at least and uh i'll leave that to you may pretend to decide on when or how yeah thank you um for that suggestion we have you know obviously a lot of these recommendations um impact the county and county actions and funding um we have a joint city county meeting um next month but i requested another agenda item be added and believe that agenda might be full so i'll follow up with um with our mayor and the chair of our county commission and the task force co-chairs to find a time um that might work for a presentation to the county either either at joint city county or just you know at a regular county commission meeting i don't think since we've all seen it it doesn't necessarily need to be at a joint meeting um but i agree a lot of these initiatives need to move forward with both uh with both governing bodies and with our school district as well a lot of the recommendations will impact how how our schools run so we all need to be we all need to be um working together and collaborating effectively to move this work forward any other thoughts from from council members mayor shul thank you madam mayor pro tem so the other thing i think about is uh and and you all mentioned this uh we we do need the governing bodies to hear it but we need other people to hear it too and it's a really hard time for that uh so i do think uh what you said judge uh they're going to be some you know it's it's this is not going away this the need uh and your report's going to be relevant in you know for a long time uh but i hope that you all uh or the successor group will give some thought to how that ought to happen uh so many other people need to hear this and i think that another thing to think about is kind of what the format for that is you know yeah we're we're meeting nerds you know we are happy to sit here and hear long and and amazing reports but of course that's not true of everyone and so i think that we're going to have to figure out how to make that make your message available to others in a format that all kinds of people uh can can learn from um and so i would just say to you all uh we hear you and we need to as a council we need to give this some thought about how to begin to move forward how to create a successor to you all uh how to uh you know once we've really digested some of my reactions to some of the things were hey we're we're we're we got a good start on that you know we yeah good job us you know um and then some of them were wow we're just so far behind and we have so much work to do and where do we begin with that and so i think that we're going to have to make some we're going to have to give some thought to those things too as we as we go through these recommendations and we'll be seeking your thoughts and advice so those are my comments and uh madam mayor pretend do you have any wrap-up comments that you would like to make i do thank you um i just wanted to once again um share my deep appreciation for all of the members of the task force and the amoun