Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. at home or stop by Bojangles or something like that. So, >> okay, Miss What What's What's going on? Okay, thank you guys. So, good morning. Thanks for all of you for being here today. I truly look forward to this time together on as the largest city in North Carolina, we have an opportunity to work to support our residents and keep Charlotte moving forward. I was recently in Raleigh with the House Oversight Committee. That conversation remain reminded me that we do not stand alone. The work we do here connects directly with our partners at the state level and relationships really do matter. As many of you know, we'll convene this evening to continue our discussion on the NCDOT 77 expansion project. Secretary Johnson will also be coming to Charlotte to host a small group meetings with homeowners along I77 corridor. I hope that in the next few days we give our each other space to come together as a team. Strengthen how we work not just with each other but with the people that help us do what we do. The state the ability for us to work with them. I want to thank the city staff. I know you guys are all working there or have worked very hard in organizing this retreat and the Ballentine Hotel for um hosting us. But I really want to say a big hand and I hope you will Greg do this with me as to say that Mayor Pro Tim Mitchell has worked on this for several several months. Maybe he feels like you know maybe years. But the thing about it is that he has invested his time and effort with almost everyone in this room and it has made a tremendous difference. And so I really want to say thank you so much for what you've done. You said that we would do this retreat. It was before the snow. We waited and got it just so because we can have heat. Thank you very much. >> A lot of heat maybe. So, I want to say let's welcome our moderator for the next two days. Someone that we all well not I guess all know but most of us actually know because Deborah Campbell recently retired as city manager for the city of Asheville where she served seven years after 45 years I don't know Deborah and I might have something in common. So, um served 45 years of service in local government. She's familiar very much with what we do here in Charlotte, having previously served as the planning director for the Charlotte Meckllinburgg planning department and later as assistant city manager. So, please join me in welcoming her. Be kind. Be kind and gentle. Kindle, Deborah Campbell, please come forward. >> Thank you, Deb. >> Welcome home. >> There you go. Yeah. Wow, I didn't expect uh that kind of a response. But thank you all so very very much and I really really appreciate the opportunity to be uh your facilitator um for this important meeting and you heard a lot about my bio. I think we want to before I go into more detail, we want to see a video in terms of accomplishments and then we're going to jump into a um festive two days. uh we want to be extremely focused because I think this meeting is a is around strategies and I'll talk more about that after we um see the the video and give you all a couple of housekeeping things as well. Hey, hey, hey. Give me another go. Didn't expect that. Heat. Heat. Hey hey hey. All righty. Yeah. Give yourselves um an applause. This is amazing. If this was a year's worth of work, Mr. Jones. All right, I'm impressed. Um, so housekeeping items. Um, restrooms are out the door to the left and then another left past the um, food. Um, Wi-Fi connections. Use that um, information that you see uh, on the flip chart. And as you heard, I I recently uh, retired from uh, the city of Asheville as a city manager. So, I'm actually uh used to being way way in the in in the back um observing um but also praying that our elected officials will understand that we collectively are a team. um we can't have the kind of impact on the community that we want to have without our collective um efforts. And um I hope that today as your facilitator I can help you kind of focus on what those strategic initiatives um that are needed to positively impact the lives of the people who live in this community. And that's what live and do business and work in this community. That's what we've got to focus on is that this is not so much about us. It's about our role as leaders in the community and the impact um that we can have. And so again, over the next two days, hopefully I will be able to um help you decide on those things. Now, as was noted in your manager's introductory message, in that really nicely well doumented um report, uh in the introductory section, he says that although this event is only two days, it's just the beginning. So, don't feel as though you've got to have all the answers at the end of this meeting. You can't these two days. Um I would often share um with um my council in my time in Asheville is that um resources are so limited and finite. And so having these kinds of strategic sessions to really get laser focused on things that you need to get accomplished and that truly moves the needle again on the lives of the people who live, work and do business. It's extremely important. So this meeting is really really um important and I don't have to tell you all that. Um, so to help with your discussion, and I hope that what I'm about to go over just very quickly and briefly is not to stifle your discussion, but it literally is to kind of provide some guard rails in terms of not what you discuss and but more how how will we, you know, it's kind of the rules of decorum, you know, how will we uh en engage and So the first one is active participation and then there's a check which means we need you to be fully checked in uh to this meeting. If you need to use your phone, if you need to do any of those things, um maybe step out of the room so that there's no distraction and we can uh continue the fruitful conversation that I hope that we will have. The next one is respectful communication. We're all adults, right? Um however um our feelings can still get hurt. So please please please u be respectful and mindful um in terms of of the discussion. You can have a different opinion but it's how you express that opinion confidentiality and trust. There may be some things um that are discussed in this room that I think we're live televised so it can't stay in this room. So make sure that uh at your tables if you are discussing some things um and there is a request that this be kept confidential that you do that. um accountability. Um you are accountable for your actions today and moving forward. And the accountability is more or less around when you come up with these strategic initiatives. Please, please, please understand that this shouldn't be just talk. This should be a commitment amongst yourselves as council members, but also to the to the community. And then lastly, collaboration. As I noted earlier, this cannot be done without the collective work of staff, this council, even the mayor said other local governments uh like the state and possibly possibly the federal government. And um I hope that you all understand that uh it's the collective will and I actually left out one very important entity which is the community. Don't forget the community has a huge role uh in the success of of this um this effort this Charlotte's on the move initiative. Um so before I ask Megan um Bourne who serves as a senior principal with the Mc Crystal group to provide an overview of the traits of a high performing team because that's what it's going to take you all performing at the highest level of professionalism. I'm going to ask you to indulge me just one more minute to express the um a personal note of sincere gratitude and appreciation to your city manager Marcus Jones. Uh I was in Asheville doing tropical storm Helen. Marcus reached out and said first how you doing? how's your family doing? Secondly, he said, "What do you need?" And he provided the resources that we needed um amongst a lot of other communities, but I took it personal when Marcus reached out cuz he knew me. And um I want to thank the council for picking Asheville last year. And if weather had permitted you would have been there this year. So, we really really appreciate um your generosity and um now uh that I've teared up and everything. Thank you again uh for inviting me. And now I want to uh invite Megan Bourne to get this party started. Megan You're welcome. >> Okay. Thank you very much, Deborah. And thank you everyone, the mayor, Mayor Prom, and all council members. Thank you very much for gifting me this opportunity to speak with you today. Um it is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. But first I want to talk to you about uh a little bit about my background. You do also have my bio. Um but I specialize the work that I do uh is to specialize in teams. How do teams operate? How can a group of individuals become a team? How can a team become a higher performing team? And and what's the intentionality that we can put behind that? Um, but I always think of like all I see teams everywhere everywhere I go. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Sorry about that. Um, and for many of us that one of the first teams that we have is our family. And actually, I want to acknowledge my family because they're the reason I moved here to Charlotte 5 years ago. Um, so I saw in the video at the start that uh Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities and I am one of it sounds like thousands of people who is contributing to that. Um, so I look forward to kind of and we're working on getting the rest of our family down here as well. So I'm going to try to help help that growth continue. Um, but as far as the work that I do, I um I started it with a background in finance and I like to say like I love the numbers, I love the spreadsheets. Um, but when it comes to actually driving change or having an impact, it's really about the people and the people are the more dynamic nature. Numbers are kind of numbers. They're straightforward. Um, but it's the people that make the teams that make the bigger organizations that then have the impact on the city like all of you do that really are the more dynamic and kind of can be more challenging at times. So I switched my career about 13 years ago. I went back to school and studied teams and leadership. And now I work for a company called Mcrist Group. And because of that job about two years ago, I had the opportunity to work with manager Jones and Julia and their team, the the deputy city managers. Um, and through that, I've just gotten more and more involved in the city. And so what we're going to talk about today is teams, but specifically you as a council. What does this mean? How can you kind of interpret some of these fundamental concepts that we're going to talk about for your reality as a council? Because it is definitely not a one-sizefits-all kind of again the numbers and the math. It's not that. It's it's fundamental concepts that we can kind of take and reflect on and apply to whatever your specific context is both as individuals and as the council. So, we just talked about high performing teams and now you see group dynamics up there. Um, I'm going to spend probably have us spend about 45 minutes first on group dynamics and that'll make a little more sense in just a minute here, but it's high performing teams is one element of this kind of bigger spectrum that is groups. Um, so that and that's breaking it down really helps you as individuals and as a council get really laser specific like focus in on what are some strategies or tactics or behaviors that we can each do very intentionally so that we can be the team that we want to be. Um, and then after about that first 45 minutes, we'll talk about trust and the dynamics there. You'll see it's about both simple concepts and then we'll kind of build with some examples. I'll share some examples. I'll ask you to reflect in both individually and then in your table discussions um on how does how do we see this apply and therefore how can we take this information and do something about it. I do want to note any one of these topics could be the whole two days themselves. So we're not going to kind of solve any big challenges right here in the room in this next 90 minutes. but we're going to try to create the language for you that can be the spark for the conversation today and then going forward after today. Um Deborah mentioned that this is kind of a journey and that's I'm happy to go along that journey with you and I'm happy to keep checking in be a resource to any of your working groups or you as individual council members as you go. So this what I just call the the kind of group dynamics spectrum and um what we see is the across the top we see individuals the groups of individuals the teams and the high performing teams. I'm gonna build some of the visuals here and apologies if they are a little difficult to see but what you see in the first one we're all used to this we see the you know I as an individual citizen you as an individual citizens we may not know each other's context that circle around the people so it's kind of everyone doing their own uh operating based on their own context to meet their own goals when we start to have a group there's something that brings us together there's some overlap there's something that we have in common and therefore we're working together at times. We see that 1 plus 1 can be two. We also see that it can be zero. This is where the level of effort can be a little more challenging. You're putting in that time but you don't always see eye to eye. So operating as a group of individuals can be rewarding but also very frustrating. When we get to a team, one of the big details that changes are those bonds represented by the bigger circle here. Um that can be the bonds of trust that we're going to talk about that really is at the core of every human interaction. Um it can also be the bonds of that commitment. You see these green all these green circles. It's why are we here? What is the common purpose or that core function that really brings us together? Um but what we see also is that 1 plus 1 can equal three. But we see that some of the team members have dynamics that are outside of that circle, outside of that common purpose. And that's to be expected. We're all individuals who are parts of many, many groups and many, many teams. So, we're going to feel pulled in different directions at different times. Um, those dotted lines, for example, may be a full-time job that just pulls you and has you kind of committed somewhere else. Your time and mental focus needs to be somewhere else. It could be the difference between being an atlarge member or representing a district and feeling that kind of pull more towards your district and how do you operate as a member of the council while also representing uh your constituents. And so that's those differences and those kind of tensions that are created are when we can get that 1 plus 1 equals -2 because now I'm investing a lot more time. I'm investing a lot more energy and it can feel even more frustrating and like it's more work. Um, and we're not seeing the the intended benefit of the teams. And so when we talk about high performing teams, it can look pretty much the same right at the start. What you notice is, okay, this the outside circle is a little stronger, uh, a little bolder, but what does that actually mean? And we know we all talk about high performing teams. It's definitely like a catchphrase in these last few years. Um, but what does it actually mean? And the idea that we can achieve something that otherwise would not be possible if we didn't bring a bunch of diverse individuals together with those bonds of common purpose and trust, but what does it actually look like? That's kind of the magic that everyone wants to know. And what I often tell people is we see that actually the difference between a team and a high performing team is when your individual dynamics your individual context changes dayto day or week to week but the whole team shifts with each other. So if one team member for example, oops, let me go back. Uh if we see the team member on the bottom right corner has to is pulled more towards their constituents. If that represents a district member uh team member that's representing districts and for a given topic, they are pulled more towards representing their constituents. The other as well as the team member then in the uh the top left, the rest of the group kind of adjusts and adapts with them. still all within the circle but in different positions. And it's that idea that we're communicating, we're consistently operating in a way that is for this bigger purpose that brings us together. Um, and actually before I go to this overwhelming slide, um, I do just want to note this seems kind of like elementary and kind of obvious and why would I start here? There's a few different reasons. um partially the one that slide that I'm about to show talks about one of the fundamentals of group dynamics being communication and we can often all talk we've all had experiences our own experience whether it's sports teams or musical or orchestra or theater or family dynamics we've all had our own experiences so we can talk about teams in very different ways so the intent here is to give you guys a common language to start having conversations ations here in just a moment. Um, and then that that language will then help you again carry this conversation into turn it into actual actions. What are the strategies? What are the specific things? We can't change it all overnight. We're not going to flip a switch and all of a sudden all these dynamics are different or our contexts, individual contexts suddenly get suddenly get easier to manage. Um, but what is one or two very specific things that you can leave here today saying as a council member, here's what I'm going to do differently. Um, and so again, that's why we start with just these fundamentals. Now, this I will make sure um, apologies for the very small font, but I'll kind of orient us here and then we can actually reflect. You see at the top it says reflect. I'm going to give you guys a few minutes in your notebooks to take some notes on this. Um, but first the going down the side, I've kind of alluded to some of these examples, but we see the five fundamental categories of all groups. And that's members. That can be very formal memberships or informal memberships. It can be your level of degree to that to which you're in the group versus kind of on the fringes of the group. Um, the goals, this isn't simply a strategic plan. And it can be your individual goals and the group goals um as well as kind of that bigger purpose that we talked about. Then the norms, this is like the normative behaviors, the the kind of unspoken rules, but there's an important distinction there of if they're unspoken, can you kind of make them explicit and how do we operate? Uh communications I mentioned already. Uh and then leaders. There's again that kind of formality of leaders versus people who lead more by influence. And you'll see that change as you go up this uh to the right here on the spectrum. Um and I point this out because as you reflect, it's not as simple as do we fall into the team category, do we fall into the group of individuals column, which one is it? It's just not that cut and dry. Um, so what I'm going to ask you to do is take a look through this list. I'll leave this up here. I'm going to also show you some questions, some reflection questions to let you collect your thoughts for about five minutes and then you're going to have a discussion at your tables. Um, but one example that I'll give you very quickly is if I look and I'm not going to be able to move. Okay. Um, if I look across the members row, the bottom bullet point talks about the level of connection with team members. Think about that circle that's around each of those people on that visual. How much do I understand my other council members context? How much do they understand mine? I might say, well, with some it's really strong. With others, it kind of varies. Um, and that may be purely a function of time and how long you've known them or just how often you get to interact with them. But then if I keep going and look at the goals, I might say, "Oh, we definitely have smart goals. We have a clear 2030 plan for the city, we've got metrics that we're tracking towards, but also when I look over at the group of individuals, it talks about individual goals kind of taking priority over group goals. That can be a real source of tension for teams. They want to drive towards agreed upon metrics but they feel pulled by individual goals. So it's kind of then we look at when that tension is created, how are we communicating about that? How are we agreeing to the normative behaviors to help us manage that tension? So you can see I'm already kind of getting it. It gets really shades of gray and that's why it's a spectrum at the top. It's not to say as a council you fall in just one column here. It's I would like you to kind of reflect on how do you see any one of these dynamics playing out in your role and your experience with the council. So before I go um I'm going to have everyone actually write down these questions because then I'll go back so that you have that more detailed slide up andor I can go back to the visual as you reflect. >> There is a notebook. >> Oh, it is in the notebook. Okay. Oh, excellent. Thank you very much. Um, yeah. So, if you open your binder, this will be one of the pages there. >> Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you, Deborah. So, if you turn to that page, then you'll have these uh questions there and the idea is to just reflect on them. And again, we're going to take five minutes. Um, I'm happy you have the the visuals as well, but I'm happy to put anything back up here on slide uh on the screen so that you can think about how much do your fellow council members really understand your context. Are you one of those people kind of being pulled out towards the edges of the council or are you right in the center and you feel fully allin the time? It's probably pretty rare that that anyone can feel that level of commitment to just one group. Um, but just some reflection there. And then do you understand that for others? Do they understand your context? Do you understand theirs? Um, and then starting to think about what I was just mentioning, the where do we fall? What did my experiences with the council and as a member of this council? How do I currently perceive us on this spectrum? And is that where I want us to be? It could be, yep, I I think we're kind of a combination of all these different dynamics and I'm okay with how we're operating. or is it I think we're a combination and here's one or two where I think we can do better and focus this year as a group on really how do we strengthen in this one or two areas. Um so that's how we're going to kind of use this time and let me do a quick time check. Yeah, we're going to have a good five I'll start with five minutes. We'll see if people need a few extra minutes to reflect. But just use these questions to collect your thoughts. uh and then we'll discuss in your tables first and then as a large group. Any questions? >> Okay. Who's there? What do you say? Yeah, I mean I don't Absolutely. Oh yeah. I'm just I don't think I It's okay. have you keep discussing as a group. The one thing is we're going to share out also. So when you have a chance uh identify one member of the team who will share out with the bigger group keep discussing as a group. The one thing is we're going to share out also. So when you have a chance, identify one member of the team who will share out with the bigger group. Awesome. If there's any questions that you didn't get to as a group, make sure to take a note um so that you can come back and have that conversation later. We're going to discuss as a big group here in about 60 seconds now. you didn't get to as a group. Make sure to take a note so that you can come back and have that conversation later. We're going to discuss as a big group here in 60 seconds. Now >> we we want to hear what each table shared. So, we're going to go ahead and if you haven't already, make sure one of your team members has the table mic and ready to ready to share what you were discussing. I'm actually going to start over here on my right with Councilman Graham or Councilman Mayo. Would you guys like to kind of share what your team reflected on whether it's to one question in particular or just what you guys talked about? >> Yes. Oh, okay. It's one I'm working. Um we just talked about the importance of building relationships um with different members of council so that we can get to that high performing teams. Um we talked a little bit about a couple steps we think would be essential like processing the work. How do we facilitate our meetings? How slash when we disclose information? How that's important that can be with the community and with each other. Um and lastly, kind of going back to what I said, um how do we build trust and transparency with each other and also the community as well. Um so we really just talked a lot about like relationships and trying to think through um how do we better work together so that everyone feels included um and that their voices are heard. >> Yeah, those relationships um like understanding just the circle, what is that kind of series of lived experiences that you're each bringing into this room? And when you got to jump straight into council business, it's it's hard to feel like you have the time to build those relationships. Um, and actually trust, you mentioned also, we will we'll make sure we go a layer deeper on that one here in a few minutes as well. Um, how about table up here? >> Is this on? Yeah. Okay. Um, so we also talked about relationships and about um context and I guess really addressing the first two questions around trying to understand each other's contexts. Um, you know, I spoke about the fact that I am architect archetypally um focused on justice and I' I've come to appreciate that I I need to be more open and curious about some of the other aspects of decision-m because my justice lens is so heavy. And you know, Dante and and Ed both spoke of, you know, the the backgrounds that they bring to it and the the context that they've been able to form through years of working together and and really coming to trust one another with with time and and and seeing that repeat of um the reliability that you've got in a in a team member that you can you can kind of have a true north with them. And so um I don't know what else talked about the context of of politics. uh you know we could all understand each other's family and um you know the fact that I'm an attorney and you know somebody else is an engineer and somebody you know just that background is understood but coupled with the fact that we're all against a a very political time and so some of those things may not be as reliable an indicator of that person's curiosity as it used to be. You have to have a broader context. >> Yeah. And that's um actually let me see if I can Whoops. Well, I'll go. You guys have the the print out, but that that idea of communication being one of those five foundations, there's a whole another layer to it as elected officials that you all have to navigate. both communications with each other, the fact that meetings are live streamed um but also then the fact that you know there's communication then with the city and you each have to go out and communicate um beyond just being here in the room together. So that just adds a whole another layer of dynamics that I think it sounds like you all started in kind of the same place so far of but we've got to start with knowing each other as individuals. How about the table over here? that was the same theme that we had here. Um we talked a little bit about the context of each one of us and um very heavily leaning to the community organizing the neighborhood leader space and bringing that to the to our work. Um I think one thing that resonated here was authenticity and being able to be congruent in your actions and what you say. Um I think we landed if we were to look at the matrix of where we believe we fall as council. um depending on the issue, we are somewhere between group of individuals and team. Um and I think that that is um not our natural bent in terms of the council members that are sitting here because we're more relational, more hey, we can have the we can have a disagreement and move on to the next thing. Um, and in this environment, particularly like Kimberly was saying, um, politically, there's always that we we're friends today because we agree on this issue, but tomorrow are we necessarily going to be able to rely on the strength of this of this relationship. And I think that's what we really uh would like to focus on and see to move us a little bit further down that spectrum. Did I mention anything? >> Anything else? >> And so that to your point then I wanted to just clarify. So you it is that we're somewhere between group of individuals and team but we would like to keep operating more as a team but the the sheer breadth of topics that all of you have to be knowledgeable on and like represent your constituents for can create that kind of conflict or that tension. So how do the relationships get stronger to overcome those differences? >> Okay, anything else? All right, welcome to this our >> test two one two three. >> Um, so that at our table we talked about uh definitely trust and it takes energy and commitment and we was talking about how do we identify those things we could work on and so Megan didn't bring you back at the end of June and measure how well we doing. So we threw out ideas like trust from close sessions. >> How can we work on uh in close session continue to work together as council? Uh when the mayor make appointments, the mayor is making appointments based on performance and not on personality. Um we we talked about let's listen to understand and not rebuck. Yeah. >> Um I think we all should give each other grace as we try to become a high performing team. Let's give each other grace and seek understanding. >> And I think if we can start making those steps and and identify how we can measure and bring you back, Megan, we have to be committed to to work together and trust one another. So it can't not start here and stop here today. >> Yes. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And actually um I think that that idea of it requires that energy and that effort and so it's where can there's any number of places that you all can focus but how do we use things like closed sessions to say we're going to focus in this area of understanding each other and building relationships so that through all the tough changing political dynamics or whatever it might be we we stay as a team and make sure and that's why I have those again I mentioned at the beginning I'm a numbers person so you see I've got those 1 plus 1 equals and that the negative numbers get to that point of when you've invested that time and that effort and you commit to that as a team, you want to start to see the payoff in terms of outcomes and closer relationships. But it is a challenge. Deborah, anything else? As you were taking some notes for me, anything else that you'd comment on for the group? I guess the only thing that I would add is that um it's a journey and there's eb and flows and there's sometimes you're going to remember all of those things that you're talking about today and and then sometimes you're going to get out of line. However, it is how do you respond? How do you internalize and think about, oh man, I promised that I was going to do X and I know I failed. So now what do I do with that information? Do I go to that individual? Do I go to the group and say, "Hey, I was out of line." you know, in in Asheville, we we went through the same thing, but we post some this is how we're going to behave in council meetings and it was at the DAS. >> So, it was constantly in their faces about this is what we agreed. Remember in the retreat, they didn't always do it, but they agreed to write it down. And that's what's important, y'all. is when it's written down and it's in your face, it makes a difference. >> Yes. >> I think we also need to take a moment to give space to acknowledge hurt. So if we've had conversations and or if we felt like something was done that was perceived as intentional because of relationship even if we want to move forward until we truly address that directly it makes it difficult. So, if we have a conversation and we decide, okay, this is how we're going to be moving forward, and then you do something that's in direct contradiction, whether that's through a vote on Monday or a interview or something, then you're opposed to that being able to heal under the band-aid. You keep pulling it and playing with that scab. If we don't take the moment, and the challenge is is we don't have the space to do it because council is recorded. retreat, we got recordings, so we don't have that moment to have that real conversation. And sometimes it needs to be a one-on-one, but sometimes it needs to be a small group so that there's a witness to the accountability. That's that's a reality of where we are because we we are human as we started at the beginning. And if I can't trust you because of your actions, when I tell you who I am, believe it. When someone show you who they are, believe it. But at the same time, we can change and we can grow. We don't get to give each other the grace to see that growth if we didn't take the moment to address the hurt >> and then through our actions do something different. And I think there's a space where I wanted to at least put that into this room because there is some hurt from different people at different instances that has not healed and therefore the way you're maneuvering. For me, it feels like you're not maneuvering towards team and high performance. You're clearly comfortable maneuvering as individual, not even group individual. Yeah, >> part of that is because of the hurt, not the work. >> Yeah, I really appreciate you calling that out because that is some of the tough conversations that are necessary to move forward as a group. Um, excuse me. And I think that the point your point of needing the space to have that level. Um, and actually some of the comments you made we're gonna talk about in the trust section of how and when do you have some sometimes it's it's a matter of time and number of interactions to build trust with someone. Um, and it's not I actively distrust them, but I just don't yet have trust versus I actively and then versus I actively distrust. Um, and and the strategies for how you address that over time are different depending on which which situ situation it is. Yes, ma'am. >> So, I don't want to jump ahead too far into your trust section, but in my experience professionally when we've done this work of high performance apprised um historically that most people their original orientation around trust is distrust. They start with distrust and then they distrust is zero and then you have to build from there. Right? My orientation with trust is I start with trust, right? I start at whatever that highest level of trust is and then it gets degradated over experiences and interaction. So I think it would be interesting to see as a group what our where our individual orientation is with trust where we begin and then how what are the steps that either erode trust or build and develop trust. >> Yeah. I really appreciate that. And actually, we are going to jump unless anyone has Yeah, I was going to say unless anyone has something else, that's actually what we're going to jump to to next. Um because exactly that and I think my clicker is stuck. Oh, there we go. Thank you. Um so I wanted to again just mention since you guys have this, this is something that again dynamic. It will keep changing over time. So just using this as a resource to kind of come back to or and when you have an interaction with a colleague in the coming weeks thinking back, oh that's what this is, it feels more like they're operating like an individual. So this can give you that language to then enter into what is going to be probably a pretty tough conversation. But if you just have this experience here today, you can use that as use resources like this as that jumping off point to again continue the conversation. So, we're going to um I'll come back to the actions here at the end. Um but what we've tried to do is say what are two things in each of these two sections. What are two things that you can all do as individuals andor you'll see there's an option like in groups in smaller groups or as in a group as a whole. Um but we'll come back to these and again you have these printed as well. Um cuz first we want to go into trust and before I get there I do want to mention we're going to build up you see that we're going to start with some simple concepts um and then we're going to actually talk about okay how what are some examples of how these apply some of them are going to be very tough conversations some purely require time um and others are more of like oh yeah we can all agree to things like rules of decorum and how do tools like that also So help build that found or maintain the foundation for trust. So we're going to talk about it at three different levels. Um but I'd love to kind of keep these conversations going that we've already started. And actually to start I want to note that there's a paradox. There is a very very clear paradox here. Um that is simultaneously at all times there is trust is fundamentally very simple simple concepts that have been studied and proven over time and yet they interact in ways that are impossibly complex. And I don't use that word lightly. I um impossibly I actually that is not just hyperbole. If we think about the number of one-on-one interactions that's possible in this room right now and the number of the amount of context that we're all bringing into this room that we don't understand about each other, you can see how the dynamics of trust is one-on-one versus small groups versus the entire room can feel very overwhelming. Um, I always like to say either everyone's an expert or no one is. And what do I mean by that? So, I have a niece who's in fourth grade here in CMS, and she um I can I like to talk about trust quite a bit. I started studying it about 13 years ago, and so I talked to my niece and my nephew about this, and in third grade, when she was in third grade, she could memorize some of these concepts that we're about to talk about. She could even tell me why she does or does not trust certain classmates or certain friends. So, it's a human experience that we all have from a very young age. Nothing we're about to talk about is groundbreaking new evidence or new uh research. But at the same time, no matter how long you have studied it or experienced it, it's it's going to keep changing. There's no magic solution that says, "Oh, I've got it now. Now I can have trusting relationships all the time, every time." And so what we're going to talk through is how does this start simple and get harder and harder to understand and when it gets to the point of being overwhelming, what do I do? What are the strategies that we can do to kind of go back take it back to the fundamentals. So we're going to start here at the interpersonal level, the one-on-one um one-on-one dynamics before we build up So before I show you this next visual, this next kind of model, I want to point out two two concepts. And actually two of the tables already brought this up of it's about perceived trustworthiness. It's not simply I trust you, I don't trust you. That's oversimplifying it. It's how do your actions, your behavior impact my perception of you as being trustworthy and is there a match between your intention? I might behave in a way that I intend to earn your trust. I'm not trying to have you distrust me, but you're being perceive you're perceiving me in a way that is not not helpful. Uh that I am not being helpful to you and not building our trust. I'll share a specific example from my own experience to help make that point a little more clearly. Uh and then at the bottom you see actually the study that we're that is this is adapted from. Um it's important to note trust has been studied like academically studied for going on a hundred years now. Well many many studies since the 1960s to the point that by the 1990s there were meta studies. So literally studies of other studies to identify the themes across the studies. So again for people like me who love the details love the numbers that's like exciting reading. I promise you it is not actually that exciting for most people and you're like I don't need to read a 200page study. I just kind of experience it. So that's why we're going to bring it up a level. But this I share all that because this study in particular studied dozens of um again I'm saying the word studies like 15 times already. But what you realize is there is any number of ways people can refer to concepts of trust. Character or integrity. Is it capability or is it competence? And the point is these types of meta studies have found we might use different vocab and we might mean nuanced deep things in different situations, but really it all boils down to anywhere between three and six fundamental concepts. So that's where we're going to start today. Um, and I'm going to just quickly kind of talk us through each of them. And while I do this though, you'll be automatically thinking and I encourage you to keep thinking about multiple interactions whether it's with your fellow council members with co-workers where you have experienced these both it helped build trust or it helped um it did not help build trust. So the competence that's simply do I have that confidence in the person's knowledge skills and abilities and so we've already talked about the the wide array of topics that all of you have to be informed on. So that alone is challenging. So some of the ability here might be simply time for the pre-ereads or time to prep for a working group meeting. Um and it's demonstrating that to your fellow council members so that they have confidence in your competence. Um it may be things actually we heard about uh community building skills like some of you bring negotiation skills, some bring community building skills. What is the combination of skills and experiences that you each bring into council that you don't all have to be experts at all of them but can appreciate those different uh sets uh skills that each other have. Benevolence now this one is not I always hesitate because we have the confidence that the person has the disposition to do what's good. good is a dangerous word there because it's very much subjective um of what how I define good but the idea being this is not simply do I like the other person do they like me it's more of am I confident that they have something good they have an orientation to do something good for something that we both care about so an example here is I have co-workers that I wouldn't necessarily say like we are best friends. I would hang out with them outside of work. Um I don't care to spend much time beyond when we interact at work, but I and I don't necessarily worry do they like me and I don't necessarily have to like them. It's we care about the project that we're working on and we care about our company as a whole and that there is sufficient for me. What I have found though is other team members might say no I need to know that you care about me as a person also. So that little nuance difference can be I'm going in thinking I have benevolence in mind and I'm trying to demonstrate benevolence for the work that we're doing, but if someone else thinks of benevolence as do you care about me as a person first, then we can do the work together, we already have a mismatch. So we're at risk of kind of getting off on the wrong foot from the get-go. reliability is that just showing up with consistent behaviors. Um that might look like that, you know, rules of decorum, showing up for meetings. Um and then accepting ownership for not just how you behave in the meetings, but this one might be we voted, we agreed, we made a decision. We may not all like it, but we agreed that here's how we're going to show up with the media or here's how we're going to show up with our constituents. am I going to trust that the my fellow council members are going to reliably stick to here's the messaging that we decided upon um and these so again you can see we're already getting into like tougher and tougher conversations and so far we still just have a simple simple ven diagram we add once again context that outside circle I always point this out because people say do you have to hit the bullseye the short answer is no you don't have to have all three at all times. An example would be if I have a family member who's going through a needs a surgical procedure, that doctor does not necessarily have to have the benevolence to care about me or my family member. I just want them to be reliable and show up and then have the the competence. I want them to be the best at their skill. Um, so I share that again because we I don't necessarily want this to turn into something of you can point to it and say, "See, that's why I don't trust you." We don't want this to turn into >> started with that one. Okay. I'm glad I'm glad I got there. All right. So well and it's so that's important of I mentioned at the beginning the intent of today is kind of the spark for discussions. We need to make sure we leverage these and have a have some conversations of how to have those discussions in ways that are productive and constructive for operating as a team as a council. And we'll we'll talk more about that and you will definitely have time to kind of reflect and then talk in small groups again. So now I'm going to share that example. I'm going to show start to show how this gets more complex. Um and Councilman Anderson, you mentioned I love uh what you said earlier about how you show up, how you start your kind of default position for trust. Um as you were describing that, I was thinking of it was exact opposite. I'm one of those people who starts with nope, you got to earn the trust. I'm not starting by giving you trust. And I see some head nods around the room. Just simply knowing that of what is people's default position can be key. This example I'm going to share was the first example I reflected on 13 years ago when I first started studying all this. It was a client that I had um and we showed up and I now know I did not know at the time that we had what I would just call different defaults. We had different default settings to our trust preferences. So again that simple ven diagram you can see it's represented by I have competence at the front reliability on the top. I like to lead by demonstrating competence and reliability and yeah of course benevolence is important but if we care about the team or we care about the project or the outcomes that's good enough. We'll get to know each other over time. This client was pretty much the exact opposite. She wanted to know that I cared about her as a person first. Um, so when I showed up with project plans and ready to tell her how we were going to do this next 12 months worth of work and what we were going to achieve together, she was kind of saying, "Slow down. Who's on your team? And do you even know my team?" Um, so this is where I'd say we had a mismatch. And we've all felt this. It's just like you're talking past each other. You're well intended in your behaviors, your your conversations, but it's just there's just this mismatch. Um, and it's frustrating. We've all had many of these situations, many of these relationships. And then we add to it those trust walls. That's what I call it. So in in the academic technical terms, this is called your propensity to trust. What is your natural disposition for how you walk into any given relationship? Um, I like to say I'm the person there, um, with the 18-inch thick titanium reinforced steel walls. um as far as my trust walls. But then there's some people who say, "No, no, no. It's more like a filter. I'm going to trust you. I'm going to have a little bit of guard up, but I'm going to trust you until you prove over time that I that I cannot trust you." But again, that proof that proof is my perception of your behaviors. So, even that gets a little starts to get a little bit messy. >> Yes, please. No, please. Sorry. Thank you. I should have mentioned that because we're about to get conversation, but yes, I would love questions. >> Well, I just wanted to know and if you're about to get here, apologies for jumping ahead, but it's I think of another kind of filter or overlay on this, and I was curious of what you what your opinions were there. Um, I may be fine to trust you to do XYZ, but I'm not going to trust you to do this. Like, there's degrees to trust. So, I was curious as to how that integrated into here. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um that's where I would say the context comes in of in the context of the council. I may trust you on this working group where we have been working together for a long period of time. I have a lot of interactions and so I'm going to trust that we're going to get this work done together or how you're going to show up to the working group. Um, but if all of a sudden there's a new topic, a new uh project or opportunity and we see it very differently because it impacts our constituents or our our interests in the city very differently. Um, absolutely. So, it is not a one-sizefits-all. That's part of why we say the impossibly complex because you can have different layers of trust with the same person in different contexts. Um, and so it but it it goes back to okay, what is it? Is it purely a matter of time and this is a new project and we can go into this more intentional because we know we're starting with different perspectives here or is it we're already 6 months into this we are actively not trusting each other and it's kind of limiting how effective we can be as a working group or as the council as a whole. Um how do you go back to the fundamentals and have those kind of closed door one-on ones if necessary to kind of reset on trust? Can >> I ask a followup please? So to that point, right, structurally, we are, and I I know that Malcolm likes to say this, we are a group of independent contractors. We were hired by our constituents. And so ultimately, well, I'll speak for myself, my ultimate loyalty is to my constituents, right? And so I don't find that I'm able that I'm acting as an independent agent, if you will. Um, so I guess what I'm asking is by design then I don't know that we'll ever get to a place where, and I'm putting it in the room so you can correct me. I don't know if we'll ever get to a place where our ultimate trust or our loyalty or whatever to each other helps us come to the same place on any outcome because there's going to be times because we represent different constituencies that it will never be a 100% alignment. So, I'm just curious as to how that shows up in this type of situation. Yeah. Um, so yeah, the reality is there are certain tensions that will always exist and not everything can be win-win or if you take the time to get to consensus, you'll just never get there and that's not in the interest of the city either. Um, so that's where I think that if I think back to the other visual where there's the really thick um green the thicker green circle in this case, I'd say that's the interests of the city as a whole. >> And so it's I might not my perspective on this particular topic may not be what we decide to go with. Um, but I do believe that my fellow council members, I trust that they have the interest of the city as a whole, even though my constituents are going to be frustrated with this particular project. And so it's that ability to kind of separate the situation and still focus on the bigger bonds and the bigger kind of outcomes that you're driving for. But even that takes the hard discussions that you guys were talking about cuz you can't just say, "Okay, we're going to focus on the city because then it does feel like the constituents are not your priority." So that's that's a reality and attention. Yeah. >> Uh I just wanted to mention it it is not binary. Um so Mr. Anderson talked before about uh do I start from a position of trust. Um I I start from a position of assuming that all people are good people fundamentally. Uh I start from there and then uh but uh do I trust them to the extent that I would tell them something that I really don't want other people to hear? Can we have a conversation that is candid but you know not what we would want to have in public? And it's not a question of secrecy. is just a question of having the freedom to explore certain things and talk about things. Then there is distrust. >> Okay? And so that's minus trust. And I think a lot of people are somewhere in the middle. They may just not really know or they're a little careful because they're not at the level of confidence where they can kind of have an exchange that is personal and private. Uh at the same time, they're not assuming that something bad. Uh so I think it's trust, middle zone and distrust. Thank you. >> Yes, I appreciate you sharing that and that's again it's that kind of there's there's layers to it. There's and it's more of a spect spectrum as well to your point sir. It's not just binary of trust or distrust. And that's important to recognize when you go into if you decide to have some of these conversations um where there is whether it's just okay it's not act it's not distrust but it's also not full trust it's somewhere here in the middle how you approach that conversation may be different. If you reflect and realize, oh, we might actually have a just a misalignment of how we default think about trust that your strategy for going into that conversation, you can now have a pretty clear game plan of let's talk about let's use some of these slides or these frameworks to start the conversation on do we see here's how I'm coming into this me this uh meeting. I want to show you my competence on this particular topic. I'm not trying to be a know-it-all. I'm not trying to tell you my way is the right way. I'm just trying this is my default position. How are you how am I showing up to you? Like the ability to have that conversation to your points are like requires different levels of skill and time. Um whereas if it's more of a no, we we actively distrust each other. That's where you might need that third party. That's whether it's a professional mediator or simply a fellow council member so that you have conver certain conversations in groups of three or four because it's we need to make sure we're all on the same page with what was just said and decided. So that to the point of are we do we trust do we are we somewhere in the middle or is it active distrust how you apply these simple concepts will vary but it can help you kind of have a strategy going into those those conversations. Um, and please feel free to keep asking questions or sharing um sharing additional thoughts. So, this second example is more of that. We we all love these situations where it's, oh, we've got a match. I may have like a lower propensity to trust still. Um, but you see the the ven diagrams there at the top are are more similar. And so, we just hit it off. The way we we're able to build trust, it feels easier. Um, and so, you know, someone's going to start making having conversations, start kind of removing those walls, and then you feel like we really are in this together. That's where back on the teams, um, individuals to groups to teams, you saw some of the people were like overlapping. It's because they're working on common interests. Their bonds of trust are stronger. When it happens this naturally, it feels great. But this is also a risk because then you think that's the only way I trust people is if it if it's easy and we have the same default and you don't necessarily want to spend the time and the effort on the difficult conversations that it requires for if we go back to this example of kind of the mismatch and that's where I want to caution us and and take a few more minutes just to talk about okay it's not well throw up your hands and like it's it's at a loss and here's the people that I uh get you know and get al can feel like I get along well with I would encourage you to reflect on those situations and even say is it get along or is it oh we have similar starting points for trust and that's part of why this feels easier to build a relationship with them how when it doesn't feel easy how can I still get started and not just kind of say oh I distrust that person I'm not going to build a relationship um so here's really boils down three options. Um, of course, like everything, there's nuance to all of this. Um, but you can just say, I'm sticking to my default. I prior prioritize competence first. So, I expect that from everyone else. I'm going to show up and demonstrate competence and reliability. And we'll see how they show up. And I would love to tell you it's like 50/50 chance as far as what the likelihood that you'll build trust over time. But as we've all kind of revealed already, there's so many changing dynamics that I would put the the likelihood that that type of relationship with the differing trust preferences and no clear strategy or intention going into the rel to kind of build the relationship is probably significantly less than 50/50 that it works out to kind of progressing towards trust. Um, another option is removing your walls. So kind of saying I like to think of this as like the game of battleship where you know I can just over time I can observe how you email. I can observe or understand what other council members know about you or ask you questions have the one-on- ones and get to know you. But if I'm the kind of person who says I start but from a default position of trust I'm just going to tell all of my fellow council members that and we're going to start there. That can feel very uncomfortable though for those of us who are more of the low propensity to trust those kind of thicker walls. Um so again just simply using this and telling people like hey I'm I'm more person a um so I appreciate what you're doing by trying to remove your walls so that we can have this conversation but I'm going to tell you right up front I'm still going to be somewhat reserved here. Yes ma'am. So I have a question around the um benevolence circle in the vin diagram because I think the competence and the re reliability is pretty direct, right? There's a direct definition of what that means. You show up on time, you do what you say you're going to do, and you demonstrate competencies. But for the for the benevolence portion, this question of um disposition of what's good and considered the interest of others, right? It's sort of like the question of who are the others, right? Because as um Miss Watlington just said, she is sitting here because of her constituents, right? And so and she's an atlarge council member. I'm a I'm a district representative and I of course I represent district one, but we all vote on every single item that's in our agenda. So we we all vote for the good of the city of Charlotte. However, we might have different polarities around who the interest of others and I feel like that is that there's a gradient overlay there that could be more crystallized for us. Um, and I think that might be why that might be an origin of different types of action because I could be super passionate about the constituents of district one and only want to do what's right for district 1, but when that item is on the agenda, we're all voting for that item as it relates to all residents of the city of Charlotte. Yeah, that's a very important call out and that's one of those examples where you may be feeling pulled more by the your your group your definition of others in that benevolence in that case when it comes to benevolence is certainly different than your other group members here. And so that's where there is no simple answer. I think just simply the fact that you guys can acknowledge that um and understanding yes I'm I'm at large versus I'm a district representative is a start but taking it a layer deeper to have again oftentimes those outside of the formal meetings when it's time to vote the the conversations to say here's how this impacts your constituents but here's how it impacts my constituents or here's what I'm constantly hearing and that's that just time to really understand and that's why we say consider others. It's not that I'm going to agree with you. It's not that I'm gonna say, "Okay, my constituents, you know, are more important or my constituents don't matter as much as yours." You guys would never say that. It's more of I'm I recognize and appreciate that you have a different group of others who you represent, but together as we are the council, and so we all have to kind of index back towards the city as a whole. And that's that's a really hard type of conversation to have that's going to just take reps over time to keep practicing it. Um, and then the the third one is the I just call it get curious. That's the observing things like obviously how we interact in meetings. Um, but how each other kind of show up at public events or how you send emails. Um, I always tell people this and and they think it's a joke. To this day, I send emails and I write it out and it's like two to three direct sentences and I have to go back and remember like the basic greeting of like, "Hi, how are you? How was your weekend?" Um, it's not necessarily good or bad. It simply is a reality of I remember benevolence and caring about people's bigger context is really important to people. It's not my default, but it is something that now I have learned over time. And so I have ways of doing it that are just still not natural to me. But there are things that I just do with um you know as as my new default I guess I would say. So the question is and what we're going to do now is give you time to reflect on what's your default. What are some of those things that you might already be doing? Because again you've had years of experience here. So you might already be doing some of these and so it might be what are my default when I think about trust in these terms we've just talked through and how do I reflect on those and recognize something new or recognize something I've already been doing and is it working or is there something I want to tweak or change about how I'm showing up in different relationships. Um so this is again we'll give you guys five minutes. Um we're we're going to start with just individual reflection here. Let's give everyone time to kind of collect their thoughts and then I'll do a quick time check with Deborah and we'll see where we are um for group discussion. >> Actually, I think I'm sensing and I've gotten direction that you all want to kind of continue this this conversation. I it it's so important because the rest of the day you're getting into the projects and the strategies and the initiatives and this literally is the foundation of how you move into that conversation and make those conversations a lot more productive and fruitful and and so forth. So, if if I could just add um and I I I promised the um mayor pro Tim that I was going to bring this to you all. Um I have a mentor um and they consistently tell me relationships are more important than projects. And what that means is that if you if we work on building relationships, we can work through really complicated things because we have dealt with, okay, can I trust this person? Um, I do the same thing with emails or a text message. Good morning. I got to treat you as a person first. Then we move on to all those technical things that are so important to us. The last thing that I would leave you with is that I know you all have been elected individually, but you make decisions collectively. And so to make collective decisions, you have to build relationships and you have to build trust. And you have to also work collaboratively to provide the best impact you can for your district, for the community at large. Yes, we're intuitively we think about where we are and who we represent. always do that as an elected official and as staff we do that. But what we have to remember though is that you individually do not decide you contribute to a decision and how you make that contribution or bring those things to the table is really really important. So relationships are more important than projects and believe it or not it really helps with conflict resolution. It really does and problem solving. Thanks you. >> Thank you very much that ability that I appreciate the bring it home making sure it's relevant to the council. So I and to that point we're going to have you just take five minutes now. Um I will keep we'll say we'll start with three. I'll keep an eye on everyone, but actually write some notes for yourself in response to what is my default. How would if I told you right now that I wanted you to rank these as far as how you perceive the trustworthiness of others, how would you rank them? >> Oh, how do I perceive? >> So that's the that when I mean say default prioritization of these three um and to the point of some of the conversation that default ranking might be different for different contexts. So think about some of the different contexts and where that might be different. Um just write yourself a few notes on that. Um and then think about how is your natural propensity to trust influencing all of this as well. >> After after those five minutes, then we're going to take a a break uh sooner or earlier because we're going to continue this this conversation because you guys have been sitting for for a while and may need to stretch a little bit. And to the point of some of the conversation that default ranking might be different for different contexts. So think about some of the different contexts and where that might be different. Um just write yourself a few notes on that. Um and then think about how is your natural propensity to trust influencing all of this as well. >> After those five minutes, then we're going to take break sooner or earlier because we're going to continue this this conversation because you guys have been sitting for for a while. May need to stretch a little bit. Let's keep this conversation. Heat. Heat. you trust my writing, but I am going to type up all of this for us to review in the morning. Uh, and I may even have some of it typed up uh, very soon while you guys are on break. So, we'll we'll get this to you. Have no fear if you can't read it. Uh, I'll have it typed up for you. Thanks. >> You trust my writing. But I am going to type up all of this for us. in the morning. Uh, and I may even have some of it typed up uh, very soon while you guys are on break. So, we'll get this to you. Have no fear. If you can't read it, I'll have it typed up for you. Thanks, writing of this for us to review in the morning. If you can't So, we're going to go ahead and get started and have here um we're going to see if you guys have any kind of reflections that you want to share with the group or just insights about this simple concepts because I'm going to touch briefly on how this keeps getting increasingly more complex. Um and then we're going to talk about again those rules of decorum and what value do they bring when it comes to trust? Um so any anyone want to share what you're reflected on or questions that you have that you just kind of want to put out there for the group? >> Yeah. So, um I was actually surprised because before I thought about it, I would have just very quickly said that competence was my first and as I deeply went into the question, I realized it's actually my last. And I say that because I assume that if you're in this role, you are competent. So, I don't ever need anyone to prove that to me. The the voters have already weighed in on that. And I respect democracy in a sense so much that that is just a default for me. So my first one is actually benevolence but not benevolence in the sense of um of a false like I really need it to be authentic benevolence. I need to believe that you are a good and just person who is not self-focused or greedy. I need to believe that you are not lying or misleading. I need to believe that you value the input of other people. Um, and basically I just need to know that you have a good and just heart. And if if then you don't remember a meeting or you prove yourself to be unreliable in some fashion because I know you're doing it with a good and just heart. I'm much more able to forgive a degree of incompetence or a degree of of unreliability. And that was very surprising to me because as you were talking and you were giving the examples, I know that I'm a very direct person and so I don't always even remember to go back into the email and add a bunch of stuff at the top and and so I I I do have that energy when I communicate and so I I just I was rejecting that. But as I really think about it, I think benevolence for me is the single most important one. >> Yeah. And I appreciate >> that surprised me. I appreciate you sharing, Council uh Councilman Owens. And um I think that insight too of just how you defined it and described your perception of benevolence. I saw a lot of heads nodding around the room. So it's do we have those common definitions or just hearing how you experience it in others allows you guys to then kind of if you feel like it's not there, the ability to try to talk about it and say, is it really not there or are we just perceiving each other ways that we don't intend? Anyone else? Yes, >> we spoke about kind of the precursors that come with building trust and we spoke about having respect and honesty as those precursors and also kind of when we talk about the different context and situations people's already perceived notion of what trust is to them for example I think folks might often times confuse trust with doing what they want us to do, right? >> Yeah. >> And that doesn't have to be the case. We all represent different constituents. We all have different lines of ideologies, um different thoughts, different backgrounds. Um it's natural for us as a council to have different opinions and to make decisions differently. That does not mean I don't trust you. >> Yeah. >> Right. And I think that is one of for me at least personally uh one of the biggest challenges we might have as a council is that I might not do what you would want me to do. But that doesn't mean I don't trust you or respect you as a colleague. As I've told a lot of my council members, I might disagree on a lot of things, >> but you will you will always expect honesty and respect from me, right? Um, and I think to that point I see benevolence and reliability as kind of equals to me. I I think about them in the same uh the same importance, right? Uh because when it says, well, you show consistent behaviors and accept ownership for those behaviors. For me, that ownership part is being honest and respect right? >> Um because >> you can be in here solely for political reasons. Own that. you know, I I would respect and trust somebody even I though I might disagree with that if you're solely here for political reasons, right? Um or if you are solely for your district and want to focus just on community stuff, own that. Um and so I I like to think I own that part, but um so yeah, so that's how I think about these concepts. >> I appreciate you sharing that. And again, those are some kind of tough concepts to get out there. So the the ability to say here's how they're related and here's how you see them showing up. Um and that that idea of trust does not mean always agreeing uh is a tough one. Um that's we don't have time to go into conflict management and conflict styles and all of that but I can that the the headliner of it is it's the same level of dynamic simple fundamental concepts in very dynamic situations. Um and one of the key key details is that simply because we disagree does not mean we have to be in in conflict. Um, and it doesn't mean that we have to then lose trust in each other. Um, so thank you for sharing that. Yes. To that end, going back to Council Member Mayfield's comment about um counting a six, right? If you know we don't agree and you don't engage, to me that is connected to trust because exactly what council member Audius just said is I'm going to be honest and you're going to know where I stand. Um, and I think sometimes the efficiency of getting something through um happens at the expense of that relationship piece because then you lose trust. If you only ever bring me good news, then I wonder what's what you're not bringing, right? Um, and as I look at my three, my prioritization, I think that shows up for me just depending on where I'm going to place you is the order, right? If I start with competence. Um, because at the end of the day, I do have a bent towards are we executing the work, right? I can be an activist, I can be whoever, I don't have to sit in this seat. So, I need you to be able to execute. Um, if you're someone that that I am going to look to for guidance or mentorship or something of that nature, then benevolence comes next because I need to know that you are operating from a place of good, right? Um, to that piece for me, you have to earn, right? Um, and then the reliability comes next. But if it's pretty clear to me early on that all right, we're going to we're going to be at this level of relationship that's going to be functional. I just need you to be competent and reliable. I really the rest of it is fine by me. Right. >> Yeah. >> So I think I definitely I definitely think they overlap. >> Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that as well. And that's a if we think about these arrows in this little diagram, some of them can go straight through people's walls. So it don't have to remove my walls. It's if you're demonstr if people know that about you, then they know that that's what you expect, then they can say, "Hey, I'm I'm showing up with this. I'm coming prepared. We only have 30 minutes to talk, so I'm going to jump right in." And that's not uh because I don't care about you as a person. It's because we're on this team that has agreed to work on trust, so we're going to jump right in. Um and the others can come over time. Um, so again, that's an example of what is really a pretty silly looking diagram. It is much more complex in real life. Um, but how you can kind of experience it and and use it for interactions. Yes, sir. >> So, we're talking uh I would say in kind of generalities here >> and it might be good to think about a real world example, a day in the life. Yeah. >> So, a member has an idea uh uh has a a notion for something that will require a vote. So, it might be related to reasonzoning, it might be budget related, whatever. And so, you think about it and you think about the people landscape you're in and you think about which people can I assume would probably agree with me on that and don't need a lot of persuasion. And then you think about the people who know the most about the subject because they've been in that space and you do kind of an assessment how do I proceed and what do I need in order to get what I'm trying to accomplish and on the basis of that you start connecting with people. So uh it's not a simple hey I trust that person or I don't trust that person. it it's a strategy uh and that strategy will be influenced about what you know about the people or the feeling you have about them. I can call so and so and talk this over without going public like I can start to explore and test my colleagues a little bit on this question. Um, and then some people you might not want to do that because you think they are really going to be opposed and you don't want to make it easier for them to organize the opposition. So I I'm just saying I when I kind of am in these situations, it's not clear-cut in terms of do I like the person, do I trust the person? It's strategic. And that strategy is going to vary a lot depending on what it is, right? Are we talking about more money for affordable housing? Am I trying to get a difficult resoning approved in my district which could be a policy question like the reasonzoning has to do as was the case years ago with affordable housing and there was a broadly held opinion we needed to do more affordable housing around here in this district. So I knew that as I went forward uh with that particular project there was going to be a larger context and the fact is that all of us in one level are at large members. We are all at large members. So we yes we are also seven of us district members but um many of the votes that we take are not about our district specifically most of them most of them are kind of citywide issues that we have to deal with and so then we bring our district perspective to that conversation but we need to take some responsibility also for the whole city. Uh so I'm I'm just as I listen to this uh and I try to translate it into okay what do you actually do right uh when you when you consider all these issues of trust and so on and it really has to do uh getting back to what you were talking about with knowing the people spending some time to get to know the people you're working with so that as you strategize you know what to expect when you call them up >> and that will also inform you know how you talk to them you know that's harder I I think to try to capture in a meeting like this >> because it's uh it it's the product of um a lot of time spent with with everybody in the group. >> I appreciate you giving us that translation because that is important that this isn't just an academic discussion. It's a how does this really show up uh in our interactions. Did you have something? I I was just I was just going to draw a contrast to to the manner in which um council member Driggs views things to the way maybe I do and and some of that is probably born of Naft and this is you know my first rodeo and so I don't even on a zoning I don't go in necessarily with a decision I go in with a curiosity and then I talk to people not knowing where they're going to be on it and willing and able to be persuaded by that. And so that that element of strategy and that element that isn't that isn't in me yet. I don't know if it's something that grows with time, but I also don't want to lose that curiosity and that willingness to appreciate that I don't know what I don't know about a whole lot of issues. And I enjoy the process of of getting there with others. And so for me it it I don't want to say strategy is a dirty word. Obviously it's the way things get done but that is not my goal is not how can I talk to one person who views something and in a way that I'm holding something back. I I just it's very just open and maybe that doesn't work but that's the process I enjoy and the one I function best in. >> Yeah. And that's just important for the fellow council uh members to understand that about the different ways that each of you show up because I bet if we went around if we had time to go around and ask you each to reflect on that and how you'd show up, it might be different and there might be even other nuances. Um but simply the ability to to mention that and so that team so that the other council members know that about engaging with you in particular or sir you and I will come back to this diagram. I know I I jumped to a very complex looking diagram, but mayor prom. >> So, mayor, I'm going to try to make three points very quickly because I think trust has to be uh a commitment that each individual has to uh make on their own because it's not going to happen overnight. So, I'm going to give you kind of three example. Number one, u I trust Council Member Mayfield because we have worked together longer. But I would tell you on the third Monday of each month when she votes no on every resoning uh uh it it it irritates me but I can respect that right because of the trust we have established. So trust is not voting with me all time. Trust says, "I believe I respect your opinion enough that we can agree to disagree and still go out to eat at we have to take you all the time. We go to outback. >> We do. >> We I have to take it out back." And so I'm saying to all my colleagues that it takes energy though and commitment on councelor Mayfair and myself. Then let's talk about grace as it relates to trust. if we have grace and we seek to understand it. Um, when the mayor first got elected, she used to drive me crazy because she was so process driven. And I'm like the energized bunny. I tried to get to Florida. I don't need directions, right? I just want to show up. Well, the mayor would say, "No, you got to go I 85, I 95." And she used to irritate me and I say, "Why she so process driven?" But through grace and understanding, I need to un I need to respect those who have a process lens like Dr. Watlington, that engineer brain who if it ain't on page 6.7, she don't believe it. And so for all of us as we going to trust one another, we need to embrace and realize what the strength we are bringing to the to the team. And so as I switch roles to the new class, I call them class 2025, Mayo, Owens, and and JD, I try to play that compensate role. Who can they call that have questions? Who who they trust would give them the right information? Not the information I want, but the information to make them successful. So I think we all got to wear different hats and different roles, but it's about I need all of us to be committed that we're going to try to trust one another. >> Thank Thank you very much for sharing that, sir. Um and that's actually I will use that to make this point here. This diagram all it's simply showing is we've talked about a lot of nuance. You guys experience this all the time and it gets the the visuals here on the uh right side of the slide are numbers of relationships and how the number of inter one-on-one interactions starts going up exponentially the more people are on a team or in a group. And so to the point of knowing each other, you can't possibly know all the context about each other at all times. Um, and then especially when we start talking about manager Jones and his team and the other people that you need to interact with, that's where it can start to feel impossible. So, going back to this, okay, we as a council are a group who can keep progressing towards being a stronger and stronger team. How can we do that? And it's if you think about, oh, am I one of the newer council members who's one of these dots and I need to I want to understand who to better go to. That might be your focus on how you start to build trust in the role of a council of the council this year. For other members who have been here longer, it may be, oh, I need to, you know, show up to different meetings or give certain team members grace or recognize maybe we see things very differently and kind of take a new approach to just one or two relationships that have been over time just we haven't gotten there with the trust that we need. Um, so that's really all we're trying to show with this visual is that it can keep getting these these details just keep layering on each other and time keeps going as we all know. So it's easy to say we disagree. We missed that opportunity to talk. I'm just not going to deal with it. We simply don't trust each other. But that's where over time then it can just require more and more energy from all of you. but you're still not getting the outputs of that kind of one plus one equals three or four or more that you really want. Um, and then simply here's the point I made of like then we talk about more and more of all the staff and their teams that you all have to interact with. There's trusting relationships and levels of trust there. So that's where when we say it gets overwhelming, just bring it back to the fundamentals. That's why we stayed so focused on the fundamentals because the more adept you get at understanding these and recognizing them in every moment um you it'll become kind of second nature for how do I want to change how I'm showing up to this meeting or this might be a really hard conversation with someone who we don't have strong trust so I am going to take an extra week to have this to prep for and ask them to prep for this conversation um because that's the one other thing I wanted I spoke to one of the tables about But when there is that active distrust, how do you kind of approach it? For I'd say kind of two things. There's no of course magic solution. We all know that. But it's making sure that you've done the reflection yourself on some of these concepts, but then that you've asked the other person to do that the same and you're agreeing to come into that conversation together, sometimes with a third party if needed. Um, but that you both you don't come in and kind of surprise them and say, "Well, we talked about it at the retreat, so ready, we're going to jump right in." Um, it's that agreement to address it at a right time when you've both had that time to prepare. So, again, back to the point of like I don't want I want this to spark conversation, but not in a way that could further deteriorate trust that that actually helps you kind of get on level ground and then build over time. And so I will say there are also concepts of it's not always just onetoone. There are tools that exist to help us build trust. Things like rules of decorum. They might exist on a board of directors or a council according to code or according to bylaws. But they also exist to kind of help accelerate trust. They can give you that kind of foundation of we as a council agree. For example, three examples I have here are that timeliness. We're going to be available and ready and kind of mentally present to show up and start our meetings on time. We're going to be prepared, have reviewed the materials and be ready with my comments and questions to ask those other team members to learn from those other team members. Um, or we've had the meetings ahead of time. So, to your point, um, and then the respectful discussions. You guys have already touched on this, but that idea that we can disagree, but there are times to we're not necessarily going to debate in the more formal meetings. We will have had those disagreements and discussions ahead of time. Um, and then think about how we're showing up uh as a council. So, I wanted to just get your thoughts. We we are pretty much at time here, so I want to see if anyone has kind of reflections on this. This was intended to be more of a table to conversation, but we've really touched on this already. The question is more about that perception of trustworthiness. How does something like simple rules of decorum that you all can agree to kind of things like timeliness, preparedness, respectful discussions um relate over to these kind of competence, reli competence benevolence reliability factors for trust? >> Any just initial reactions or reflections on? So Megan, I'm going to start off with the uh with the tough one and go back to the easy one. I think for this council, the area we need to improve on is respectful discussion and right now we don't have time allocated for that. And so then a lot of is played out on the out on the dis when if we had a window or you know come early lunch then then those who if I'm mad at JD for example uh my frustration with Bill will then occur to dies as opposed to me and JD having 30 minutes to walk through where our differences are and so JD don't think that I'm personally trying to attack him and he And so I think that's big for us, that respectful um discussion. And I think Council Member Mayfield said it best. Um when do we have an opportunity to address it professionally oneonone without the cameras being on us? Let me go back to the easy one. uh the timeliness and and I would say when I did my oneonone with all council members in December that was the number one issue they had a problem with us that we don't start on time and and so I'm'll be the first one to tell you I'm worked I think six of us worked and so I do think sometimes a challenge for us but I think the open communication if you're going to be late tell us you're going to be late um I think that that's a giant step for us being on time or communicating we're going to be late help us become the high performance team because I would tell you how other people feel around that table when they get there at 5:00 and some of us come in at 5:25 they go like oh wow is that the behavior we are accepting and so if we can we collectively could talk about how we're going to deal with timeless but I think more important for us how do we have that window for respectful discussion >> y >> and that's where If we think back to that uh matrix that kind of it was the spectrum at the top and then all the lists of bullet points under the five kind of group dynamics in some cases like timeliness. What I'm hearing is okay the strategy is communicate. We're going to just make sure we're all going to commit as members to be on time but also when we can't be because we do have other things that are kind of pulling us away from council. We're going to communicate. A tougher one might be the um respectful discussions because we we all we agree that it's okay to disagree. Um but it requires time to to have that disagreement in the in the way that allows us to have respectful discussions. So if I think back again to that kind of big chart, there was that norms. Something that you guys might agree to is it's kind of implicit that we don't debate and kind of show disrespect in these recorded meetings, but let's make it explicit. Let's say it's that doesn't mean it's not okay to disagree in the formal meetings. We can disagree, but what does that look like? Take it a lay level further and what does disagreement versus debate versus disrespect look like so that you guys kind of know here's what we agree to take offline ahead of time or after the fact and here's how we can still disagree but be respectful in these meetings. Um, that's where you might want to make it explicit and not just assume we're all on the same page. >> And and even if that happens in a meeting, we're all humans, y'all. We're going to we're going to mess up. We're going to have disagreements um in the meeting, outside of the meeting, or whatever, but then maybe it's just stop and reflect and just say, "How did that land on you? How how did you feel when I said that?" because I think it will check us when that person says um you disrespected me. I felt disrespected. It gives you an opportunity to reconcile. It gives you the opportunity to say that was not my intent. here was my intent and here's why I got so passionate about that issue and okay, I'm going to try to do better and if we just have that level of reciprocity in terms of we're all humans y'all and again our feelings get hurt. I don't care what our title is. And so it's just a matter of the again the the decorum of um sometimes biblically do unto others as you have them do unto you. >> Yeah. Please. >> I also think when it when we talk about respectful discussions, uh something I was telling my colleagues at this table and some other colleagues uh during my short time here is disagreement on the work, right? And not on our personalities >> um or who we are as individuals, as beings. And I think that often time that line gets blurred >> that just because I disagree on let's say a certain reasonzoning in someone else's district does not mean I'm doing it out of a vendetta or because I don't like the person or etc. Right. Yeah. >> The other thing is I think when you have a disagreement with someone allowing to Mayor Proin Mitchell's um point that space to talk about that disagreement and not doing loops or going to other colleagues and then having other colleagues come to you and call you that there's a disagreement because that does not help solidify trust. Right? I think often times we might find our not often times sometimes we might find ourselves in a situation where I don't know another colleague might be upset with me >> but I do know because other colleagues are telling me that colleague is upset with me >> so and and I think that's you know within the team >> I think is allowing that space to air out your disagreement. Um, I don't know. I just I grew up a very strict household and I say things very bluntly and sometimes and and that's something I've been trying to work on is telling my colleagues the tone of my voice does not by any way inform how I feel about you personally. I just had a Colombian immigrant mother who told me things how they were. So, you know, I I think that's part of it as well. I so appreciate you for saying that because my black mama will tell you real quick exactly how she felt and that my approach is very much direct in that way. Um, and I I appreciate you adding things that because I'll be honest with you, when I think about rules of decorum, for this this for me feels a little I I felt myself feel a little bit of a way, right? And I had um I had to unpack why. And I think it's because of some of the things that you mentioned. Like I'm not going to say I don't care about these things. I do. But for me, none of these things build trust when I know that you worried about what I wore 3 weeks ago and you told everybody but me. I don't care what time you got to counsel. You know what I'm saying? And so sometimes I feel like we're we're dealing at this level rather than really addressing in an honest and direct way what the issue is. And so for me, the rest of this ends up feeling like lipstick on a pig when it comes to trust. And absolutely when it comes to performing your work, these are very important. But I don't for me I'm not looking at these to build trust. >> Yeah. So these these alone don't work when we're when there are distrustful relationships. Um yeah that's well and so I guess two points that's where we might add. So as you've seen Deborah's taken a lot of notes here. We're going to make sure we write these up for you and you might take these and say these these are really generic and high level. We're going to take them a level more specific based on this discussion. And then also add things like we're going to agree to try to address distrustful relationships in a constructive way. What what does that look like will be might be a challenge or different in different situations. Um but that might be something you add just to say there's going to be things that we do handle offline and what does that look like as well. Um, so I do just want to note that we will make sure we get this all back to you with everything that you've already discussed. Um, so that this can be that good jumping off point to kind of formalize a few simple rules of decorum that you all agree to. >> Anyone else have any other kind of final thoughts or questions? >> Yes, sir. >> Culture matters >> and it's the centerpiece of all of this. >> Can you tell me? Wait, so >> I just I just let let it lay right there. >> Let it Okay, so culture matters and is that the the culture the culture of the team or the culture that individuals bring into the >> of the organization? Okay. >> So what what dynamic does culture bring into all of this as well? Can't be ignored. >> Okay. Um, so this is that list. Again, this is in your um binder. There's the specific actions, but as far as boiling it down to what is something that you can take away, not this is not necessarily a to-do list that you've got to do all of these things on the um on the slide here or in your workbook. It is simply a prompt to help you think through what's the one or two things from this discussion that were most insightful that I can start doing personally that will help us. I will show up as a council member who um tries to build trust, tries to help us advance towards teams. Um so just kind of selecting one or two of these and really committing to those. Um, and like Mayor Prom mentioned, I'm happy to come back in a few months or and keep engaging with you guys over time throughout this whole year. Deborah, anything you would add to kind of share? No, I I think if one thing comes out of this discussion may be that you might want to consider developing rules of decorum or rules of engagement or how you're going to collectively work together as a team. That's just one step. Not how you're going to do it, but the what I'm going to create rules of decorum. And do do you all you all are still on a two-year election cycle? >> Oh, yes. >> Unfortunately. >> Well, and that and that and that brings a whole another layer of intensity and stress because you all were elected to get the job done, right? not be buddy parties part of partners. But you cannot get the job done effectively if you don't take the time to build this team of then you become this efficient kind of of entity that you don't regret. Man, I sure that was the hardest thing I ever done in my life was be on city council. We don't want that. We we we don't want that. Nor do we want other aspiring people are watching y'all. >> They are saying, "Is this something I want to do? Is this something this person I elected? Look at how they're behaving. I can't believe they're behaving." or they will say, "I am so proud of that person that I cast a vote for. They may not have gotten all that I wanted, but their character and the manner in which they made decisions, I'm proud of it." So, rules of decorum, I promise you it won't take long to develop. >> Sure. Okay. If no one has any other questions or any final comments for the group, I think we're we're at a good stopping point. Do you want to is there anything to cover right now or do we >> Megan? Oh, this is going to be a action strategy session. And so, Deborah, that needs to be assigned to a committee, assigned to someone. We're just not going to say we need to do it. We're going to make it an assignment. So, >> uh is is that BGR? Uh, city manager, mayor. >> Oh, I'm set. I'm Michelle. >> So, we want to do it in a way that it's helping someone or want someone that wants to participate. I can't see all the way across the room, but yes, find out who >> No, I see somebody saying no, but we No, I think we can ask people to decide if they want to do it. You can just say I want to do it and see how it works. We have some already in our process. Oh, we got three already. So, we got three people. We got um Mazura and we have Kenberly and who else? You, James. Okay. I forgot about you. Okay. All right. So, we have a committee to do this. So, swearing. >> Who is up? Who else was up? >> Oh, yes. Back there. I can't see that far. Okay. >> I know. That's okay then. So, we have four. and let's take this seriously and do it on a time and have a plan that this is something that the council can come back as an organized effort and can just think about what you've learned what we've all learned today and see what we can do to make it happen. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And I just want to make sure I got all of the names. I missed >> Owens. Kimberly, >> drop off the mayor. She may >> Joy Mayo Ao. >> Yeah, you was close. >> You need to cross out the R. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Nice. hand it I'll hand it back to you then Deborah if we're going to go into a strategy >> uh the CIP do do you I I'm I'm going to defer this staff are there people still here that need to do the presentation the capital okay so um let's debrief let's kind of unpack um so we're almost to lunch and I got this thing that I do used to do with my staff uh in our executive team meetings after we have done something like this. We do a thermometer. Know what a thumbter is? You got it. So you use your thumb right as a meter all the way down is man you wasted my time. in the middle is eh and then it's somewhere in between. How are we doing? How how are you all feeling about the first almost three hours of your work? Bummer meter middle. Anybody else? Anybody else? middle. >> Okay. Tell us, give us feedback. What could we do differently? >> What do you wish you had done that we didn't do for you? And we'll do it in the next 30 minutes. Yes, I'm just kidding. >> I I don't I don't think that you can. Okay. >> I think I think my thumb would have been higher up earlier and the weather precluded that. Um, I think there's a lot of water under bridges already that are making some of these conversations particularly difficult to have in the moment, particularly on camera. And it's just it's there's an artificiality to it that is informed by a number of decisions that have already happened, a number of of strained conversations that have already preluded this event. So, it's it's just it's a tension, a palpable tension that makes some of this deep, transparent, and vulnerable conversation having very difficult both to give and to receive. >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate that honesty because essentially you're saying possibly the as you said the environment is cons constraining us from having that little deeper level of conversation that we we need to have. So I think it's note to staff some of these conversations need to be held in a different environment that you all can have a little bit more openness. Great. Yes. >> I think the presentation was great. I think it it gave us a lot of tools and concepts to think about. So thank you so much for that. Um I I the reason I put middle because I think there's more work to be done. >> Absolutely. >> Right. If I would have put thumbs up, I think we'd have been really great as a council and we all trust each other, get along so happily together, which I it's the goal. I think we're working towards it, right? But to council member Owen's point, there's a lot of work to be done. There's more conversations to be had and there's more rebuilding to happen. But I think that's just the nature of a local government structure, right? especially one that is elected every two years. You're going to have to keep building trust with new or existing council members and the work that we're doing. >> Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um >> yeah, I was just >> going to kind of recap some of that, but also thinking through like how we process the work. I know Malcolm says that a lot, but I taught math for a long time. So things to me are just not as succinct as I would like or the processes. So then it makes it more challenging to try to I have to talk to everybody about something. If we could just figure out ways to make things easier. Um and I'll talk to the manager about that on my next 101, but um it's it's just a lot of information and I get that's the process of the game, but how can we create procedures that make it easier? Or even like we'll have our committee me meeting on Thursday and we'll get the agenda, but I don't know exactly what they're going to talk about because I don't see all the details. But I mean, we all have Outlook, Microsoft Outlook. They could share those presentations with us beforehand and still be editing them. So little things like that. I mean, I would love to go into the meeting, the committee meetings, and have read all of that stuff before instead of getting such a broad I mean, the agendas are very broad. So I think that's part of it for me. Then I could talk more to my colleagues before the day of literally right there at the dis or at our committee meetings. Okay. Um, so are you are you telling me that you all don't have a deadline for receiving information prior to your committee meetings? >> A little bit. >> So, >> you do or you don't? So >> so part when the committee chairs met back in December, we did ask our DCMS to send out all committee presentations the Friday prior to the meet Thursday prior to the meeting cuz usually in the past we have a tendency to show up and to me it wasn't making our committee meetings productive and so the DCM have been doing a great job of sending us getting us information advance. So, let me um ask the city manager. Um so, it is it 2 days, 3 days, is it 72 hours? Is it >> Friday? It's Friday. >> Friday. >> So, the weekend just like we get the package Thursday night. >> So, are are we talking about the council meeting, not committee? Surely you don't have all committee meetings on on Mondays. >> Oh, yes, sir. >> You do? >> Yeah, they did. Holy cow. >> There were things that changed since >> I am so sorry staff. Oh, that's a lot y'all. >> That is a lot. >> I thank the DCM for sending it out in advance. >> We've had some changes since we've also seen some of those changes like those council members used to come in. I'm sorry. We've had these changes where council members actually came into the building. We actually Deborah, you'd love to see the new um program, the place where we have um every council member has a window now that they can look out the city. And so I think that one of the things that happened is that we stopped really bringing everybody in to talk about what was going to be going on and what was going to happen. Okay. And so I think sometimes doing new upholstery doesn't really work that well. Um I think that it would be something that you could just see more people in the space, more of the council members in the space on the time that this would work and then they would have time with the staff as well as any other conversations that we needed. But we have to say that we're going to show up now. And I understand people have jobs and I understand people have things to do, but you know, sometimes we made this effort and it works best when you work together and it's pretty much what we're trying to do is expressing what we're trying to do now. How do we maintain those relationships if there's seldom anything except at the dis? So if a meeting is on a Monday, then that means information goes out on a Friday. That gives you a weekend to network >> and the meetings on Monday. >> That's not enough time for you on a weekend right? >> Not necessarily. Okay. Sometimes >> I think it depends. So I just looked at the housing committee one. we have all the the presentations this time, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's just the agenda. So, sometimes it's just that consistency. As a teacher, I'm used to having a checklist. I'll be like, "Okay, do I have" and maybe that would help for some of the DCMS to have that part to be like, "Oh, did I not just include the agenda? Did I also include the slides so that people can look at them so that they can have their questions beforehand?" I mean, it's just it's not always consistent. Some committees do, some committees don't. Some meetings there are, some meetings there aren't. I mean, we could do an audit and we could figure that out very easily. >> Um, and this is definitely an action item for for staff for um for the staff to work on. Yes, ma'am. >> So, I was just going to piggyback on what Joy was saying with with respect to things coming in in the Friday and that ability to have conversations. Um, I don't value perhaps in the same way that others may that that weekend outreach from somebody that feels um in quite honestly intrusive of of my family time. But more than that, I don't appreciate um all the nuances of the conversation the way that I would in a face to face. I don't pick up on I'm I'm a very literal person and so context and and facial expression and all of that. I'm not as trusting of an over the phone conversation as I am of a of a one-on-one. And I know already the relationships that I've managed to have on council, you know, in the three months that I've been there are really with the people who have shown up more because I know that that is that is how I develop rapport. And so, you know, maybe we do revisit the timing so that we do have an ability to talk before we're on the dis because, you know, I I don't always answer my phone on weekends and I don't necessarily give full trust to someone who's calling me on a weekend and is very certain of their point of view. That is that is offputting to me and I would rather have an open conversation with two or three people. Hey, how do you feel? And less certainty and more curiosity and that just doesn't get communicated over the phone. >> And and I know that this sounds like a lot of work council for you all to be able to literally take people on an individual basis. It's just like your kids. You can't raise them all the same way at the same time because they they're unique individuals and you all are unique and your interaction has to be more unique. You may not be able to address Mr. Driggs in the same way that you do Miss Mayfield. Um, but what I am hearing from each and every one of you is that you want to make the effort of making this council be, you know, you Charlotte's on the move. You all get to determine where and how it moves because you're making some really, really key decisions. And the best thing you can do is work together to come up with the collective good. All right. Um, we've had two people who have not talked hardly any. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Staff. >> I'm N. I'm new Gi in contrast to OG. >> That's cute. >> Um, thank you for the presentation. It's it's been really helpful truly as the new G to listen and hear my new bosses um talk about the work and how to support them in this work. I've been taking a lot of notes about communication styles and preferences because while I have the opportunity to speak with them one-on-one monthly, it is helpful to hopefully be able to share the information that best supports their work because ultimately I recognize they they serve the people, the residents of Charlotte. And so this has been really rich for me. I haven't said a lot because I've been taking it in and it's always an opportunity to do that >> and and I hope that you all would give me the liberty to defer a little bit to some of the staff because you're a team. >> That's right. >> And some of this I think um they need to understand obviously the perspective that you all have, but sometimes it's it's kind of good to hear from their perspective as well. Um because again got to work together. Yes, ma'am. >> I just want to make an observation that I I've been experiencing over the last uh couple years which is I think this council there's sort of especially now with our three new members. We we sort of have uh three different phases of this council you know. So we have a group of council who have been long serving you know and I'll call that leg the legacy section and they're f and they talk about doing things the way it used to be back in 19 you know and that's not a slight but it's real right like we've all have heard this right and so it's like this legacy way of doing things is the right way um almost like a boomer perspective right and then that was for Ed. That was for Ed. >> That is for Ed. No, no, no, Malcolm, it is like I don't want I don't want you to I'm not calling you out in particular, but I think we can all say that we we've we've heard it. It's on public record. It's in our meetings like we it's been said, right? Um it's not a slight, it's just an observation. And then we have a a c a portion of this council that just through my observation sort of came on during COVID and a lot of things were done remotely and everything had to be suspended for COVID and so the ways of working and uh standard operation procedures flipped and I think that was their introduction and therefore a baseline of how things work. And then I'll say the third piece is sort of the postcoavid portion of this council, myself included, right? And we have three brand new council members who just came on last year or Yeah, last year. And so and their experiences, as you've heard, because they've been vocal this morning, are very different about their ways of working and um desired standard operation SOPs, right? So, I think there needs to be a calibration. I'm not saying one one or or all three are wrong or right. I'm not um assigning a a level of correctness to it. I'm just making an observation that there probably should be a calibration given that we have three aspects of council um around ways of working and standard operating procedures. and and let me make and maybe I should have expanded when you gave me the opportunity, right? Because all of this centers around even the comments that council member Anson just made around culture. The culture doesn't if the culture is firm, it doesn't matter if you've been here a year or 40 years, there's a process in place that everyone understands, that everyone respects, that everyone knows and can rely on. If the facilitation of the meetings, rules of engagement, show up on time, speaking limits, read the material before you come, respect your neighbor, right? We can do that very quickly here, right? How we facilitate the meetings and now in some cases, who facilitates the meeting, that's the structure and the culture and how we disseminate information internally and externally to whom, when, and why. Those things go beyond uh the COVID babies. True point, right? That's when we lost everything for sure, right? Because we simply stopped meeting for months. >> Uh and that culture of council members coming together on the floor before the meeting in the small hallways negotiating among one another went away just like all the employees in the building went away. Right. So this the building is literally on Fridays. It's just right. It's empty. Um I'm there. No one's there. Um uh and then is how we disclose the information. If we focus on the culture, right, uh and the governance that helps rebuild the trust because they can trust them. We've talked about it before. >> All righty then. Yes, ma'am. And then Miss Esme, you have not talked Yeah, I I agree with Malcolm, right? I think essentially if you think of the Golra star with or design, there's certain elements, right? There's structure, but then there's also the people. And like I will just I'mma talk about Mayor Pro Tim. Yeah, I'm going to talk about you. I came in 2019. 3 months later, CO started. Guess who has been on my phone almost every day for the last 6 years? James Smudgy Mitchell. It didn't matter it was CO. We were in each other's space, whatever. Whatever. he builds relationships, right? Um, and so I think that that is the core of it. We can however we want to develop a process, etc., etc., but I think as we were listening earlier, it was profound to hear how you, Council Member Owens, and how Council Member Driggs differ in your approach. I am much more um I'll say your approach resonates much more deeply with how I approach things. And people are different, right? And so I think that until we figure out how to deal with each other and our differences, all of the other things are small potatoes, if you will, necessary, but um I think that that is the foundational piece that we need to figure out is how do we work with each other from where we are. So I'm particularly interested in hearing what council member Ashmir has to say since she hasn't spoken today. >> A sweet Well, I think we all need to do more listening than talking. If you look at the council meetings, people just are waiting to make their points. And I think if you all just do more listening, I think we can operate more effectively. And I agree with Malcolm, we have a cultural problem. And that's not going to be solved here in this room in front of the media. Uh, I think that is having one-on-one conversations with council members. Um, and I think Kimberly nailed it earlier when she talked about water is under the bridge. I couldn't agree more there. So, that's all I have to say. and we can make sure that everything that you guys have talked about today because it sounds like you're all committed to like let's lean into the relationship piece of this, there is a process piece of this and you as the current council are deciding we have three kind of historical eras or phases that make up who we are but that's like now we get to formalize it today. We get to kind of choose and formalize going forward who we are as a council. Um so and I can make sure that we take the notes from this session to give you guys kind of the jumping off point for that. Yes sir. >> Yeah. Um I I agree with all the points that have been made. Um and I also think about the structures and processes in place right now. How we operate as a council also need to be revisited. Um, as I've told manager Jones multiple times, we're a city that is seeing 157 plus folks move into a region each day. So, we can no longer operate as a, and this is my personal opinion, part-time council trying to fulfill the requests and demand demands of nearly a million residents that live in the city of Charlotte, right? And so I think that that is to Mayor Pro Tim Mitchell's point, six of us or more are working part-times or full-time jobs, right? So we need not only processy changes within how we communicate and engage with the manager and city staff, but also processes, changes in how we operate as a council. and whether that means we have more support from our office of constituent services, whether become full-time council members to allow us to actually be in the work cuz I I'm hearing all of these demands and all of these requests, which are great, but if we are at a limited capacity as council members to fulfill these requests and demands, whether it's working groups, whether it's creating a special committee to talk about decorum, etc. Um, we need to rethink how this council is structured in terms of like our time capacity as well as our engagement with city staff. >> Perfect. Okay. Um, if you'll indulge me, counsel. Yes, Mr. City Manager. >> Okay. So, uh, thanks Deborah. This has been great. I love you. You know that. Okay. Um so um a couple of words came out today like grace. Uh but another word came out curious. And I think a part of it is the curiosity of understanding people and how to to work with people. Um my list was um benevolence, confidence reliability. Um, and I think for me it is what we're trying to do is something special for about a million people. >> And if we start with that, so we went through this exercise, Megan, you crushed it. Thank you. Two years ago, but we were doing something totally different. Okay. So, as council starts to think about policy and we start to execute the policy, what we decided over 18month period, 9,000 employees is to be committed to exceptional service every day. So, it doesn't matter whether you are working with solid waste or fire or, you know, police, it's every single employee is committed to exceptional service every day. It's our northstar. And my big takeaway is I enjoy working with you and maybe it's what is this collective north star because even Megan early on you said sometimes people wonder what the good is right so um this is the 10th one for me and the beginning as staff knows is always a little bit challenging. With that said, I think we've made more progress than any other annual strategy meeting up to this point. And so, um, and I'll end with this. So, deputies, I think we can just be committed. We'll get these presentations out on Wednesday. So, you're not getting them on Friday. chairs, I just need for you guys to work with us a little bit sooner so we can get the agenda and the presentations. So, not the agendas out on Wednesdays, but the agendas and the presentations so that we're not taking away your weekends. So, things like that, it's a takeaway for us and I just really appreciate having the conversation as we are committed to exceptional service every day. >> Absolutely. Great. Okay. Um, now we're standing between you and lunch. >> I knew that would get your attention, but Mayor Pro team. All righty. So, we're going to break. We'll come back at 12:30, I believe, and we'll start on the next session. Yes, sir. Very well done. Very well done. All righty. We'll see you all back at 12:30. >> Absolutely. Great. Okay. Um, now we're standing between you and lunch. I knew that would get your attention, Mayor Pro. All righty. So, we're going to break. We'll come back at 12:30, I believe, and we'll start You know, do Hey, hey hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hallelujah. evening together. Also, we've got a long day today. As you all know, there's a discussion around I77. So, we will be leaving here around 4ish or so and uh starting that discussion at 6 o'clock. Okay, y'all. Come on, Mayor. Be behave yourself. Start on time. Mayor. >> Okay, I've lost total control. Let's go. >> Come on, people. >> We got Ed. Where's the mayor? >> Yeah, mayor's behind you. >> Behind you. >> And we got Marcus. >> Malcolm. >> And we're missing Malcolm. He's at the table. I told him they can bring your food. You can bring your food in the room. >> Here we go. >> We got to know. >> Okay. I think we got a quorum. So, we're going to start. >> We're going to start. >> Yep. >> All right. As we were saying, we we've got a long long day. Uh we're going to reconvene at the government center at >> six o'clock and continue uh this the discussion. Now we're going to move to a very very important uh discussion related to um law enforcement and policing and public safety and and and so forth. And if you think about public safety from the perspective of it being just innate, everyone wants to feel safe. And the role of local government is how then through the services that are delivered that you support and enhance a community's sense of safety. And I think Sean, he is going to provide us with a panel discussion uh regarding this issue. And so now I'm going to turn it over to Sean. >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon everybody. Sean Heath, city manager's office. >> Good afternoon. >> If I could ask the panel to come up because my presentation is fairly short and as you're coming up, I can introduce you. So, we have the dream team from Housing and Neighborhood Services, Director Hefner, Deputy Director Stewart. You know, we rely on Housing and Neighborhood Services a lot. And sometimes I refer to this team as our community first responders. So, we're thankful for the work that they do and they're going to breathe some life into some of that this afternoon. We also have a few folks from CMPD. Sergeant Phillips, if you can join us up here. And Andrea Lucas serves as a senior behavioral health specialist. So, one of the things we'll be talking about are alternative strategies to uh public safety. So, you know, I like a short presentation. So, I have six slides. I will move through the content very very quickly. Then we'll move into a fast-paced panel discussion and then we'll turn it back to you for reflection and discussion. So first slide here, you know, we've intentionally structured the agenda today where we have first a conversation around non-law enforcement and alternative strategies followed by Chief Patterson to provide some perspective. I know I'm preaching to the choir on this, but public safety obviously requires a mix of strategies, a holistic approach. So, uh, we won't have time to go into everything in great deal in great detail today, but we want to wet your appetite on some of the exciting things that are happening because you've enabled them to happen. Next slide, please. Oh, I think that went one too far. We can go back one. Thank you. So, even though this presentation is not about policing and law enforcement, this is where we did want to start just to state the obvious. As you think about the key components of public safety, CMPD is clearly the cornerstone and it it's it's evident when you're in the community that having patrol people in in cars and on bicycles and walking the beat is is the demonstration in the most tangible way of city council's commitment to public safety. Those things matter to real safe to real public safety as well as to perceptions around public safety. This council clearly has shown a tremendous level of support for first responders and CMPD in recent years. It was obvious in your budget workshop conversation Monday of last week that public safety and public safety investments continue to be front of mind for you. So even though this is not a law enforcement presentation that we're doing here today, just wanted to start and acknowledge the importance really with policing at the core. Moving on now, CMPD, of course, is just one component of the criminal justice system. And in any city, particularly any large city, you're only as strong as your weakest link in the criminal justice system. So, CNPD must be supported and complemented with a strong district attorney office, strong courts, the jails of course, and one of the things that that's that's helpful to reflect on here is your most recently adopted legislative agenda, which makes direct reference to the importance of having adequate resources in the DA's office and in the courts. And with the courts, that would refer to clerks and magistrates and judges. For any community that expects to achieve timely justice and accountability, all of these component pieces in the criminal justice system must be adequately resourced. So once again, this is an area where council is in fact leaning in. And as I had mentioned in a previous conversation, now that your state legislative agenda has been adopted, we at the staff level will turn our attention towards activation. and the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance has offered to serve as a convenor to bring parties together, including the city, to be thoughtful even in a short session. How can we work with partners in order to breathe life into the things that you adopted? I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention ordinances, local ordinances, and state statute. This is another area where council's been very active over the last few years. If we think about intentional choices, policy choices that this council made related to some quality of life ordinances a couple years ago and reestablishing the criminal enforcement penalty, current conversations at the committee level related to street vending. And then once again, your recently adopted state legislative agenda, which makes direct reference to opportunities to strengthen local ordinances and state statutes as well. Next slide, please. So, we're zooming out a bit more here. Once again, stating the obvious, but in order for this community to continue to deliver on your public safety outcomes, there must be strong partnerships across other public sector agencies, the private sector, and the nonprofit community. Kind of going around the wheel here. Think about all of the things that Meckllinmberg County does in the health and human services and criminal justice services space. nonprofits. We're blessed in this community to have tremendously strong nonprofits that are focused on economic stability education housing really all of your priorities. There there are great nonprofits doing doing important work. CMS of course is vital and you don't think of of early childhood literacy and graduation rates as public ser as public safety strategies, but we know that those things matter to public safety in this community 5 years, 10 years down the road. And then the private sector of course instrumental to the economic stability aspect of the social determinance of health and also very influential in terms of their philanthropy. The good news here is that once again thanks to council actions you've enabled staff to advance a number of collaborative efforts across the public and private sector. You can go down the list of affordable housing and homelessness, youth enrichment, behavioral health, food security, workforce development. Those are all examples where where you are allowing us to lean into things with our partners like the county and others. Moving on here, we continue to zoom out here. And once again, just reiterating that if you go across the wheel in green here, your priorities, your policy choices, the investments that you've authorized, thinking of corridors of opportunity, economic development, housing, small business, workforce development, all of those have unquestionably had a positive impact on community safety. Last one, key takeaways. I'm stealing a line from from a council member here. Uh you know who you are. Public safety is a team sport. We can't do it alone. We know that uh integrated efforts across the ecosystem. Integrated efforts across the ecosystem are essential. Uh which to me is is separate and distinct from the first one. It's not enough for it to be a team sport, but we all need to be operating from the same playbook where possible. Third, u I think there are a number of actions that that council has advanced in the last few years that demonstrate a true understanding that in order to address public safety issues in the community, there there must be investments in prevention measures, a recognition that social determinance of health do in fact have a direct impact on public safety. Uh, as I said before, your council priorities that on their surface for the community may not seem like public safety strategies are in fact of direct relevance to public safety in this community. And then the last one here, which may not be as obvious, but it's a little bit of a segue into the panel discussion. It's kind of an emerging feeling at the staff level that there are opportunities kind of further extending what you've enabled in the corridors of opportunity to look at at small geographies and these would be small geographies where there are known challenges related to public safety, unemployment, disorder. How can we harness the resources of the community, not just the city of Charlotte, but working with the county, other nonprofit partners in order to achieve beneficial outcomes in these areas across a whole range range of of focus areas. So, we'll we'll delve into that a little bit more here in the panel discussion. So, that was really the extent of the presentation. really in a lot of ways just wanted to underscore highlight all of the great things that council has continued to do and also point at a few specific homework assignments that we have for example activating on your legislative agenda and then continuing to really lean into some of the specific things we'll discuss here in the panel discussion. So with that let's jump into the panel. um already introduced the panelists and we're going to kind of go through a series of topics here in rapid fire and then as I said we want to leave ample opportunity for any questions that you may have and reflections. So first we're going to start with director Hefner and the unhoused population. So Rebecca questions for you. We know Charlotte Meckllinburgg unhoused residents experience significant health and safety challenges and the conditions of homelessness pose a range of quality of life challenges for our city. What are the key strategies we are address advancing to address these challenges? How does this work connect with public safety? And who are our key partners in these endeavors? >> Sure. Thank you, Sean, and good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Uh glad glad to be here with you at your strategy session today. So, I'm I don't know if y'all remember the old Johnny Cash song about the one on the left is in the middle and Okay, I'm not getting any recognition. All right. >> Remember that. >> So, no. Okay. It's it it's on one of my dad's old records, let's just say. Um, so I'm going to I'm going to answer the first question first and the third question second. That's that's that's where I was going. Okay. So, so yeah, the city, you all actually have a lot of key strategies that address the unhoused population even though it's not the kind of front focus of your work. Uh I would say there there are three key things that you all do with your investments as city council that support uh connecting unhoused residents to housing and also to the services that they need to maintain that housing. So the first strategy is a funding and investment strategy. So you have several funding sources that you leverage for uh supporting the unhoused population each year. you have federal funds, uh, uh, financial partners, and of course your housing trust fund. So, with your federal funds, these are dollars that the that HUD actually designates specifically for a variety of homelessness services, um, but you invest in uh, both uh, organizations that support the unhoused population, um, that that create shelter, uh, that conduct street outreach, and that also pay for rental subsidies. And so there's a variety of of funding um uh that that you invest in in supporting our unhoused neighbors uh through the housing trust fund. In your most recent $100 million bond uh on on the affordable housing funding policy, you invested an allocation goal of $9 million in supportive housing and shelter services. And under that funding, you have already invested in uh in one really critical um uh shelter for our community uh which is the non- congregate shelter that you invested in in partnership with Meckllinburgg County. And uh that's that is a gap that we have here in Charlotte is having a non- congregate shelter. uh and this building when it's rehabbed and opened uh will will be very supportive in filling that gap. As we as you know we also have a general capacity gap when it comes to shelter. So each investment in shelter and supportive housing is really critical right now. Uh, another strategy you have, and you you might not think about this every day, is addressing uh, encampments. And so this is a partnership that happens between CMPD uh, and code enforcement and often includes Meckllinmberg County and always includes our street outreach partners. And so uh, addressing homeless encampments is not just about cleaning them up. It's actually about connecting with the residents who are living in those encampments, helping get them connected to services, uh get the the supports that they need to get connected into our system, find uh shelter or temporary housing as needed, and then the last step is actually then uh uh cleaning up the site itself. Uh and then the last strategy I would say really street outreach. So the direct interactions that uh that our partners like House Hearts for the Invisible and Roof Above have with residents who are living on the streets to help understand what their needs are, coordinate those needs because they're often very complex and then uh connect them to um resources. And so those are those are really your key strategies of investment and and um addressing encampments and working uh in individually. Um but it takes again a whole range of partners and coordinated partnerships. And so one I will just start with CMPD um because you're going to hear about um kind of the crisis intervention and crisis response work, but what you might not see and hear about every day is e every police officer on patrol who is actually they're out in in uh in our neighborhoods with visible presence um with care and partnership and accountability. So, they're really uh uh thinking people first and helping connect uh our unhoused residents to all of those supportive services that are available. And then Meckllinmberg County, of course, the county it it is under their health and human services a priority to support uh getting people housed. Um they have recently announced that they'll be advancing the a home for all work. Um making homelessness rare, brief, and nonoccurring. And I think we can all get behind u u that goal. But a range of partners from United Way to Roof Above, the Salvation Army, Friendship CDC, Hearts for the Invisible. I know it's dangerous when you start calling out partners because I've missed a lot of them, but tune in on Thursday. We're talking about partnerships in the housing committee. Um but but I would say starting starting with Melber County and CMPD and then just a range of community partnerships. And then the last piece is just thinking through the connection to public safety. And a lot of this is about two things. I think when in our in our code enforcement work in housing and neighborhood services, what I emphasize every day is safe, healthy, clean, and green. This is the community we're trying to build, the community that we're that um we're we're working with code enforcement to create one that is safe, healthy, clean, and green. And just from to start with when people are living on the streets they are not safe and they are not healthy as individuals. Um but they can also because of the conditions of homelessness create spaces that are not clean. Um and and so we ha we have to be mindful of that. We have to uh create that for public health and and for individuals. And then just the thinking about the the perception of safety um when when when there are people living on the streets and especially when you have the coexistence which we see a lot of uh mental health challenges or substance use. um that's those are situations that not everyone knows how to deal with when they encounter and so that can create a feeling of a lack of safety um for for residents even if there's not a direct danger. So uh because it's not something that we all know how to manage when we encounter it really can be a perceived um s sense of not feeling safe. Um, so I think th those are the pieces where the work that you all do to invest in uh connecting people to services and to housing really does support the overall sense and perception of feeling safe in our community. >> Thank you very much, Rebecca. So, you had a reference to a song, right? So, I'll do a reference to a movie. >> Be be careful because mine fell so flat. >> Sometimes those are the best ones. My my reference might be a little easier. So, my cousin Vinnie maybe one of the most famous lines in my cousin Vinnie two >> youths. Okay. That was that kind of fell flat. Say no. So, Office of Youth Opportunity Office of Youth Opportunity is still relatively new for the city of Charlotte. Um, Dr. Stuart Stewart, give us a sense for what is the Office of Youth Opportunity? What is your vision for this work? How does it connect with public safety? And who are some of our key partners? >> Well, I just want to say I didn't quite get my song together yet, but uh if I had to think of one, I would think of If You Stay Ready. >> You don't have to get ready. So, first I do want to say uh thanks for the opportunity to be here and I want to give a thank you to the manager and to council because when the manager presented in budget last year that he wanted to set up an office of opportunity, he had 100% support. I didn't know where he was going with it, but once Rebecca and I got into the work, I really understood and saw the need. So, when we think about the Office of Youth Opportunities and we think about the vision, it's really simple. We want to prepare the youth of today for the opportunities tomorrow and we have to think about how do we do that. So when the office was put together there were three primary function areas that were put together from various departments across the city. So one was youth diversion from CMPD. There was uh peer mediation and peer clubs from community relations. And then there was the May program which was housed under myself and Rebecca in housing and neighborhood services. So when we think about um creating opportunities, what we really had to do was take a look at what we've been doing for the past 40 years. Shameless plug. This is our 40th year. So we had to take a look at what are we what are we doing and what do we need to do differently. So some of the things that we are doing is we are re-evaluating and re-imagining our programming. We're trying to create under our three pillars, career experiences, um youth development and youth safety. So our legacy program had been the mayor's youth employment program. Traditional six-week program um we offer development one time a year. But when we think about the state of our youth today and what we need to do differently, we are meeting the youth where they are with the resources that they need and we're looking at it from a holistic approach. So, when I think about the work that we're doing, as I mentioned, uh, Mayup was traditionally a six-week program, but once we get out into the schools and we're talking with the youth and we're talking with the CDC's and we're now we have, um, youth diversion under our umbrella and we're working with these youth and their families, we needed to make changes. So, our internships are two, four, and six week, right? Because you want to think about there are some youth who may have to attend summer school. There are some youth who may have not been accepted because they had summer vacations, but we know with the um I don't want to use the word crisis, but I've already said it. The crisis of where our youth are today that we need to make intentional um and intentional changes so that we can make sure that we're getting the impact that we need. And we needed to also look at the experiences that we're offering and not look at what's, you know, what's hot today, what's cute today, what's needed tomorrow, what's going to make them successful. So, for example, we've had some great um conversations with the Office of Sustainability so that we can create a pathway to prepare our youth for those um roles. We've had great conversations with the Office of Workforce Development and Danielle and I work very closely so that we can make sure that the work that she's doing with the training and the work that we're doing with the youth that it aligns so that we can ensure our youth are successful. Sean, you asked quite a few questions in one sentence. >> Yeah. Did you did you comment on partners? >> I did not. >> Okay. >> Um, so our we have lots of partners. So, like Rebecca, I'm not going to name names because I don't want to leave anyone out, but our primary partners are CMS. CMS gives us access to every school. We have an opportunity to go in and to provide um career readiness training. And what we did differently this year is we actually went in and helped to fill out my applications. We went into 23 schools and we have currently been in the Enlivian properties. So, we're going to where they are. We're checking off the box of excuses and we're going to help our youth to be successful. Another great partner has been Meckllinmberg County. We work very closely with the Office of Violence Prevention. As you all may be aware, we jointly rolled out um the alternative to violence in 2021. So, we continue to work closely and thank you to the manager and his relationship with U. Manager Bryant um Council Member Mayfield. I remember last year in committee you mentioned that when you were younger um after school there were parks >> and there were opportunities with parks. So I've had four meetings with the uh park and recck director in the past two weeks and there's some great things coming. I can't share but I can't share yet but there's some park activation that's going to happen for our youth across the city so that they can have things to do after school and the summer. And then of course our own fabulous CMPD is one of our great partners especially since we now have um youth diversion in our wheelhouse. So we work very closely with uh Major Telus and his group, the community engagement group. We've been working closely um with the school resource officers not only within the city but also across the towns so that we can make sure that we can offer our programming. And the great thing is now we are able to see things from a different lens. So, we're able to see that we're impacting the family holistically. And that's one of the great things about um the Office of Youth Opportunities being in housing and neighborhood services because we have the housing department, we have code enforcement, we have 311 that has all of the resources. So, we're able to intentionally impact the youth with our partners. >> Thank you, Dr. Stewart. If I could just connect two dots real quickly as we transition to the next mini topic here. Once again, tying this back to why is this a public safety conversation? It's because if you think about the unhoused population, members of our community that have a lot of unhoused individuals will say to us, this is a public safety challenge, a quality of life challenge. But I think what's important here once again is council has given us the tools as staff to advance solutions in an intentional intentional way. These are human- centered solutions for the unhoused population. This is not a an arrest first criminalized homelessness strategy. This is not a let's displace these individuals from the community. It's a street outreach strategy. It's an it's a non- congregate shelter strategy and everything in between. Intentional investments on the youth side. How does that connect to public safety? As we've said many times before and shared with you, when you look at the data, the data is compelling. Juveniles have a disproportionate impact on crime in the city of Charlotte. So once again, what are the things that we can do upstream from an from a prevention standpoint? Youth enrichment and opportunities for workforce development at an early age. There countless examples of things that you've approved in recent budgets that enable us to do just those very things. Okay. So switching to so the chief has given me permission to pull in CMPD representation into the non-law enforcement. So this is exciting. This is this is an alternative strategy. So, Sergeant Phillips, if we can start with you just at a fundamental level, what is the crisis intervention team and the community policing crisis response team? >> Yes, sir. Thank you. And thank you to city council for having us out here today. And it is my honor to be here sitting on this panel today to discuss about CIT and CPCRT is something that's very near and dear to my heart. So for those who don't know, CIT began in 1988 after the the fatal Memphis shooting of a man who was dealing with a mental health crisis. So they began the program crisis intervention team to train officers to be able to recognize individuals who are who are experiencing a mental health crisis and also how to deescalate. And so in 2008, CIT joined CMPD where they began to train our officers again how to recognize an individual who was experiencing a mental health crisis. Okay, that program is a 40-hour block where the officers are trained and they are also there to learn about different resources that the county has to offer to not only the consumers but their families as well. During that 40-hour block, the officers have the opportunity to actually hear stories from from individuals with livedin experiences to know how they felt when they themselves were involved with police officers while they were going through their own crisis. And again, it reminds the officers to know that patience is something that CIT teaches us something that we cannot wear on our tool belts, but something that we wear in our minds and our hearts because again, patience goes a long way whenever you are out with someone who's experiencing a mental health crisis. The Megenberg County CIT program is actually one of seven that's platinum certified not only in the country but in the world. Wow. >> And that is because of the utilization and that is because of the utilizations that not only CMPD utilizes with CIT but also our dispatchers. Our dispatchers go through a three-day training where they themselves are able to recognize when someone is calling 911 and that person is in crisis. They don't have to wait for patrol to go out. They will summon a CIT officer to be in route on scene because again it is important to note that each and every call we have to again have what's called patience. Now, CPCRT, that stands for community policing crisis response team. In 2019, CMPD recognized that responding to mental health crisis calls for service, we needed to go a step further. So, what did they do? They created a co-responder unit which consisted of six social workers who are trained in again being out with individuals with a mental health crisis. and they were partnered with six CIT trained officers. Their job is to respond to all active crisis calls for service during that time to provide additional resources again not to only the consumers but for their families and because of city council and again we thank you for always believing in us. Today in 2026, that team has grown now from 6 to now 12, making us one of the largest co-responder units on the Southeast Coast. Not only the largest co-responder unit, but the co-responder unit who actually goes out to every active crisis call for service. So that team operates from 7:00 a.m. until midnight every single day. And even after midnight, we have on call units who are able to come in to assist patrol with getting excited. Now you see right getting excited now. One of the biggest things about CPCRT is follow-ups because patrol will go out initially, but the followup is the key and the follow-up reason is to make sure that the families and the consumers are on track with what they need and if we need to provide them with more and again followup, followup, followup. That is the key to keeping the team and keeping that individual in line and to also let them know that we are here if you ever need us. Thank you, Sergeant, for your passion. Appreciate it. So, Andrea, if you don't mind, if you can give us a sense the 12 teams, as I understand it, that's 12 teams of two. We have a sworn officer paired up with a behavioral health specialist. Can you give us a sense for what is a day in the life like for these teams when they're dispatched? What do they encounter? What do they bring to those situations, etc.? >> Absolutely. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. Um, so as Sergeant Phillips mentioned, it is 12 teams. That is a statelicicensed mental health clinician paired with a CIT trained officer. Our shifts run from 7:00 a.m. to midnight. We do have call back for your more high-risk type situations. Um, and then if there's a situation where either there's not a team available or it is after hours, patrol is able to create a referral. So that referral is something that the team is going to receive and they will be able to follow up with that individual and their family and provide services. Um so at the beginning of shift officer and clinician are going to meet up. We do operate on what's called an embedded model. Co-response looks different across the United States. Um and so you do have some situations where the team is more of like a followup. Um our team gears more towards the immediate crisis being addressed. Um, and another element of of the uh embedded model is that our officers and clinicians, they ride together 40 hours a week. Um, so through that time, they're able to really develop a nice dance rhythm and a pattern. Um, they're really able to uh kind of work through these situations together as a partnership. Now, again, as I mentioned, the team will meet at the beginning of their shift, uh, get into the car together, and they will immediately start to monitor the radio. um they are looking for calls that may be appropriate for CPCRT. Um and then if they do find a call, they will then add themselves to the call. That is one way we dispatch the calls. The majority of the time, our dispatches are just through the 911 operating system. Someone has made a call for service, patrol has responded out to scene, and they have identified a need for CPCRT and so patrol will call through that way. We do also have um community members that will call. they may have had some experience or they've heard about us and they will request us directly through 911. So when the team reaches uh the location, they're going to speak with patrol briefly, maybe family, friends, whoever is on scene just to get a little bit of background information about what's going on and then they are going to immediately provide deescalation services. Um, so they are going to speak with this person, figure out how can we get this person down to it, not their baseline, a little bit better emotionally than they were before we got there. Um, resource connection is another big key thing for us. We're going to complete a clinical assessment. So, we're going to want to know um any mental health diagnosis, any medication. We're going to know want to know, of course, what brought the crisis about, what is the situation that happened? We're also going to want to know about social supports because we definitely want to be able to tie in any supports that that can help that person along getting to treatment. Um, we want to try to create a treatment plan with the individual and their families. And sometimes that looks like um you are going to have sister come stay with you for a while or you are going to call your therapist, you are going to go get your medication refilled. And if there is a situation where we are not able to get that person back to their baseline and there is potentially a safety concern, we are able to go petition for the IVC order, um, we're also able to educate the family members for any future clues that an IVC process may be necessary. Um, so in addition to that, we want to make sure we just leave the individual and their family member with a couple resource options. And in some situations, we do have where the individual may need to go to the hospital. So the team is going to provide that they're going to facil facilitate excuse me that transition. So they are going to transport the individual to the hospital and they're going to provide what I call a warm handoff. Meaning the clinician is going to speak with the nurse staff. That way that individual does not have to re recount what they just told us um while we were getting that clinical assessment. And that way we are also able to kind of provide some of our clinical observations to the nursing staff. Uh we do offer follow-up services where we are going to reach out to that individual. If they were admitted to the hospital, we try to follow up with hospital. Um and then we will also try to follow up with family as well. Um I think individual uh excuse me, I think education for the family is very important in these situations um because oftent times they do experience burnout and we really want to be able to validate what their experience has been with their loved one. Also, it's a time for them to vent as well because oftentimes the focus is on that loved one. Um, so just giving them an opportunity to kind of get out what's been going on. And before we leave them, we want to leave them with some tools, um, some words to use to engage with this individual uh, so they can be more productive in actually getting that person to treatment. Types of calls we go on would be grief calls. Um, we have situational crisis. Um we have um threats of suicide or homicidal ideiation. Um and then we do sometimes get like your behavioral health adolescent type calls. Um I believe that's that's the that's the extent of our call type. Yeah. >> Thank you, Adriana. Appreciate it. >> Yep. >> So I did have one more question in my hip pocket, but I know the feedback you provided was you want to have time to talk and ask questions. So, I'm going to keep that one in the hip pocket. But, I will say if anybody's interested in hearing about the specific work we're doing in the area of Katherine Simmons Avenue, Lincoln Heights in particular, super collaborative work across the city organization, Meckllinmberg County, Atrium, Friendship, CDC, the list goes on and on. Uh, Rebecca Hefner would be able to answer that question today or at any time in the future. So, with that, I'll turn it back over. >> Okay. Now it's up to you all any specific questions, interests, things you want to know about. >> Yes, >> thank you. Great discussion. Oh, I appreciate the insight all of you have shared. Certainly very helpful. Um, thanks to Dr. Stewart for leading our youth office and um certainly this is a collaborative effort and the city cannot do it alone. Uh we need nonprofit partners, housing advocates and just our county colleagues and of faith organizations. Um, couple of questions for Sergeant and remind me >> Andreana Lucas. >> Andrea, Miss Lucas, you talked about the response, crisis response model. Uh, certainly I learned a lot. Uh, obviously we knew about the crisis response, but we didn't have insight into how it works. So, 40 hours training and so on. Currently it operates till midnight. So what happens if there are calls that are uh very distressed situations. I know that you get referral in the morning but the time is lost. Um, and I know your boss is right here, but um, uh, you can tell whether is it for the council worth expanding that to be 247 service? >> Thank you for that question. Um, absolutely. Uh, we would love to have teams operating 247. Um currently right now again we always go out to patrol just to you know let them know that if you are out with someone who is experiencing a crisis after hours to you know always send those cases to us so that in the very immediate mornings we can have a team follow up with the families and and if not the families the hospitals as well and we do have a close connection with uh Megber County Intake Facility. So if someone is arrested, we can contact their behavioral health specialist at the intake facility to have that individual uh analyzed to see if an IBC needs to be granted and if not again following up. >> Yeah. So what I hear from this expert is that we need to expand that model to 247. Um I would like to see data as to how many calls we get that are in crisis. I'm talking about mental health crisis where we need an expert from your team that are after hours after midnight. Um, Mr. Manager, if we can get that data from CMPD, that would help us uh as we plan our budget session. Uh, whether this is something we should expand um and if we do, where is the where where does that land in terms of priority? uh because certainly the team is doing great work and certainly connecting individuals. I think in this scenarios when we have crisis calls time is so important. Time is crucial like every single second. So if someone is having to wait to get a call from experts in the morning, did we lose that very important time where we could have saved more lives? Well, if you would like the numbers from 2025, I do have them. >> Oh, sure. >> Sure. >> Okay. >> I would also like to add that we Sorry to interrupt. I would also like to add that the department does have a call back system um that the team will just operate on that schedule, but it is more for your higher risk type situations. >> So, Sergeant, do you want to share the numbers? >> Oh, absolutely. So in 2025, I have it right here. Um a total of CIT and CPCRT CPCRT cost for service was 5,541 for the year 2025. >> Say that number again. >> Yes, ma'am. 5,541. And does that so how do we know out of 5,541 calls how many were were there any calls after hours or were you was that something being tracked? >> So that we don't have at this time but we are more than welcome to get you those numbers at a later date. >> Absolutely. And I think it would be helpful with other municipalities. Do they have 247 model or is it only till midnight? I think that would help us with comparison. Um obviously there are competing priorities when it comes to funding and we want to address retention and rec recruitment. That is definitely our one of our top priorities but I also want to make sure that if we are getting crisis calls after hours that we have the resources that we need. That's all I have. Thank you. >> Yes ma'am. Thank you >> Mr. Thank you Deborah. Uh uh Rebecca Sean teed it up when he talked about Katherine Simmons and and Betty's fort road as a pilot program that we've been working on for months. Um just this past weekend we had a street outreach event where we literally interacted with 67 individuals. Uh Council Member Anderson was out there as well. And part of the strategy I think is to scale it to other parts of the city like uh Reagan Drive. Milton Road in the plaza. These are two points of interest because the county is interested in those points as well, right? So, it keeps the collaboration together. Can you talk to me a little bit about the internal staff working of it, right? Not the the the issue on the ground. I get that. How how is that collaboration internally? How is the collaboration from a budget perspective? Time aotment. Um, do we need more resources to do more? Uh, and so t talk to us a little bit about how internally that's working and how the relationship with the county um is geared up for expansion. >> Sure. Thank you. And and I will just say um thank you for coming out on Friday and council member Anderson. There was we really had a great event out there. um the collaboration that it takes to work like this in in in an area like Katherine Simmons Lincoln Heights was on full display. Um so if you have a chance to to see anything about how that event played out um I encourage you to take a look. So the inner workings uh one thing that I will say is that we were able to really lean in the way we have in cath in the Katherine Simmons area this year right now because both the city and the county were able to repprioritize and reallocate existing resources. So that's always going to be our first line of defense. How do we use what we already have to pivot towards the work that we think will be most impactful? As you mentioned, we have several areas um that we are currently working in. Uh we call this approach neighbors building neighborhoods because we we we feel like we need to get the on the ground partners, the neighborhood organizations, the community-based organizations aligned and active before we can really expand and scale. So the situation we had in Katherine Simmons for example, we had been working out there actually for about a year in a really focused way with CMPD, code enforcement, our neighborhood engagement liaison. Uh and then what happened is the community started meeting monthly. They pulled together a task force and that engagement from the community. It was Friendship CDC. It was the business partners right there along Batty's Ford and uh and people like the uh Lincoln Heights neighborhood organization when the community really started engaging one it put pressure on us all to move faster um uh and and two we were able to really leverage that full range of collaboration. So, so that's what accelerated it. But from a from a staffing and resource perspective, uh, we're we're able to in in an area like Katherine Simmons, uh, leverage our neighborhood engagement liaison. They typically lead the work in in this area because it's within a corridor of opportunity. We also have a large number of staff from corridors who are who are doing work on the ground. um the corridors team led the wellness without walls event. Uh and then with CMPD and and code enforcement and others. So can can we get to all the areas we want to get to with existing resources? I would say it depends on how quickly you want us to get there. Uh and so we with what we have and and with the county's investment of a little over a half a million dollars uh in unsheltered response resources, that's what enabled us to accelerate right here, right now. Uh and and we're we're we're are we're constrained in how quickly we can move is how I would say. >> Well, I would love to continue this conversation as we kind of get into the budget. U I can't only can speak for me. I I I think we need to accelerate it. Um because there are other parts of the city all connected to the corridors of opportunities >> are are experiencing the same issues, right? Different street name, same type of issues. Uh and some are bigger than others. Um council member Anderson uh Reagan Drive is the geography is just larger, right? So, it's going to take more collaboration, more resources, and I just want to make sure that we have the appropriate funding in place uh and the staff in place because I see this as a a marathon um not not a sprint, right? >> Perfect. Yes, sir. Mr. D. >> Yeah. Um Miss Lucas, I was very interested in your comments. Um the problem I think about mental illness, these are very difficult patients. Uh and they're not always willing patients. So um and our system doesn't serve them well. A long time ago when I was involved with uh mental health in my professional capacity, lengths of stay at mental hospitals were 24 25 days. They're now about four or five. So people get stabilized, they get prescriptions, and they get tossed back out again. Uh recently um in the context of uh Arena and D Carlos Brown there was a public debate. Why wasn't that guy locked up? And I talked to the city attorney who said it's very hard to get an involuntary commitment. If you go to court um that person has rights and they will resist often. So I guess I'm I I want to get a little deeper into the practicalities of especially from a safety standpoint. How do you know among a lot of people who are very disturbed and could be dangerous which ones you really need to focus on? And then how hard is it to get them put in a safe place and and to protect the community? >> Thank you for that question. So I would like to start off with while 911 has been called, police might have responded to the scene, the clinical interaction of that piece is voluntary unless there is an observation that that person presents as a danger to themselves or others. And when I say the clinical piece is voluntary, it is that the clinician is going to attempt to complete a clinical assessment to go down the list of stressors, hospitalization history, um assess for any suicidal homicidal ideiation, any current treatment plan, um or any even just desire for treatment. Um and so in that situation or in that case you could say it could be considered difficult if we do have a particular consumer. We call them consumer some people say patient some people say client. You have a particular consumer who is resistant to that piece. Um once again the team is going to do their very best to still assess for safety in those situations. What is being said? Um what does this person believe is happening in the world around them? Um, and of course we're going to draw in family, friends to see who has been around this individual lately to see if we can possibly at least come up with a safety plan um, among their social supports. >> So I I think in general I would just comment the most dangerous people are likely to be the least cooperative and that in my mind is the public safety challenge. Thank you. >> And I want to piggyback off that as well if you don't mind. So we do do we go above and beyond to make sure that we do everything possible on scene to get that person to the hospital. You know, obviously our team will go to the hospital with that subject to speak to the nursing staff and the doctor staff to let them know what they observed on scene to kind of help that team at the hospital to provide that subject with all necessary resources. Now what happens after we leave is as we noted out of our control but again we do everything on our end to make sure that that does happen. >> Thank you. >> I'll make one more comment as well. I served as a clinician on the team before I became the supervisor and I will say oftent times we would have issue with maybe engaging and connecting building rapport with someone. It is oftentimes during our follow-up period that that individual has had a moment to sit think about it. maybe some of their stressors are no longer around and so they are able to make better decisions. So oftentimes we do see some success when we are making our follow-ups with that individual and their family. Thank you. >> Great. Okay, I got this table almost and then we'll go to the next one. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you all for being here and uh for giving providing really great information. Um, I'm a huge proponent of addressing public safety from a full ecosystem approach and not just purely leaning on law enforcement. So, I love this panel, uh, Mr. Heath, and I love how you you've put it together. Couple questions for you. Um, Dr. Stewart, I had an opportunity to go out and visit one of your ATV programs, one of three, um, out on exit 4, and it's a fantastic program. they have incredible relationships with the community. Um, and I'm really happy to hear that you are already activating and and collaborating with uh the county because one of the biggest concerns and root causes I heard while I was out there is that the kids don't have anywhere to go. They don't have anything to do or hang out. And so effectively, they're just hanging out in the shops. um these long-standing small businesses that have been there for decades and they're trying to basically execute programs for the youth and keep them off the street. So, a an activation uh of of public parks for youth activities. It sounds like a wonderful act idea and I hope we can see that sooner rather than later. But I also wonder um what else do you need? Um, and I have your your your excellent memo that you sent out on February 19th, sort of laying out everything and I've highlighted some things in yellow that I think are really important. But what else do do you think needs to be added to this approach to the ragu of of of addressing youth enrichment? >> Thank you so much for the question. So, I had a similar question asked of me with the board of county commissioners. And what I what I mentioned is I think what's most important is that we need to get educated, right? Because when we think about we're just a small piece of the puzzle and Sean mentioned there are lots of nonprofits across the city that are doing work as well. So to understand where the gaps are, we need to understand what everyone is doing and what that looks like. So myself and the um interim health director, Dr. Scott, we have committed to create a convening of all those who are doing intervention and prevention work so that we can kind of create like a resource hub for each other so that we can truly be able to go to our leaders and say, "Mr. Jones, Mr. Bryant, uh we have done this collaboration. We've identified the players in the game and this is where the gap is." So, I don't want to just throw out something to you. I want to be very transparent. we need to do an analysis of what we currently have to make sure that we're leveraging um the other partners across the city. >> And can I add to that? So, I want to I want to just shout out because some of this work is already happening and what that is is a better alignment between the city and the county and the school system around how we support our youth. So, we had an opportunity to sit with the manager and manager Bryant and the CMS superintendent and talk about what are some of the things that we need collectively going forward. So, there's a shortterm ask uh that that you're go you're going to hear soon, but I'm going to go ahead and preview it for you right now, which is a collective call to action to support our youth this summer. This summer, 2026. And and if you think about the summer, the summer starts now. >> People have already filled up summer camps. >> We have almost 1,200 applications in for our summer employment programs. >> And how many jobs do we have, Rebecca? >> Right now, we have lined up 200 jobs. >> Okay. So, what we need from each and every one of you, the county board, the CMS school board, your entire networks, your families, everybody you know who owns a business, we need employers to come to the table this summer so we can connect our youth to summer employment opportunities, safe places to be, career experiences that they can they can leverage. average income for themselves and their families. This this summer is going to be big. Our city manager, you know, well, likes to set bold goals. So, we had a meeting a couple of weeks ago and he said, "We want to see the 40th year of the mayor's youth employment program. We want a thousand career experiences." >> Okay. And I thought I thought, okay, well, um, we need to end this meeting because we have some serious work to do, but but I think there are a lot of things we can do to align those resources going forward. The work that Danielle is doing in workforce development, aligning CMS's career pathways, there's so much opportunity, but the opportunity to create an impact is right here in front of us right now. If we can help our youth who applied to this program from every school across CMS, from title one schools, from the schools in our corridors of opportunity, if we can connect every single one of them to a career experience this summer, I think we will have set the foundation for significant transformation in this community. >> And let me just add to what Rebecca has mentioned. Um, and if there's someone that has a bleeding heart that wants to provide the experience and not sure what that should look like, we have a team of 14. We will come out. We will help write job descriptions. And remember, I said internships can be two, four, or six weeks. So, there are options, but like Rebecca said, we do need everyone's help. >> I just I wanted to just say thank you. Um I recall last summer we had the new park and wreck guy from the county and we went through this um procedure. To think about it and to hear that it has come to fruition is just wonderful. The opportunities that you're presenting I I'm just amazed. But let me just say this. Um since Marcus said how many how many? >> 100 >> 1,000. So, let's see. How many 1,000 night will you be when we're going to have night basketball? Here we go. We're going to put him on the basketball court and he's going to get out there and do this for the rest of the summer. >> So, um Jason, can you make sure you call Mike Bryant's comm's person and uh Dr. Hill's comm's person and let them know the cat's out the bag. But, but this is intentional. Um, and I'm sure they won't mind. So, when we sat down and we met, you don't wait until May to talk about opportunities for the summer, right? And so, what's important is we're going to attempt to co-brand all this. Whenever we send something out, let's make sure we have the symbol from the city, from the county, CMS, and there are some things that we can do together to make sure that um folks understand the opportunities. Yeah, they're going to have a short guide playing ma basketball. >> Don't don't forget about the alliance, right? The the centerpiece of the corporate community should be front and center. >> Yeah. No, I I absolutely love to hear that. Um clearly you've excited the whole room with that. That's fantastic. and um and and that's going to change lives for sure. That one experience could really pivot a young person's life. But I have two more questions. Sorry that just the room just got excited about that. Um, for Miss Hefner, um, my question to you is, um, I think a part of our public safety charge should be addressing directly these areas in the city that effectively have an acceptable culture of disorder. And congratulations to Mr. Graham for the program going on on Katherine Simmons. and I want to definitely see that scale and multiply. But there there's so many other pockets. Um Milton Road is absolutely one with the plaza. Um there's others out Freedom Drive. And so thinking about how we can address this culture of disorder uh and break it because you you have to you know it's not going to take one time. You're going to have to shatter it multiple times. And so uh in order for it to dissolve. So, I'd just love to think for you to think about and and you probably have already have, but share with us in in the future how we can approach that um outside of corridors because it it is it is a a pressing issue. And then my last question is for um the sergeant. Um you last week we had um leader Batch and Leader Reeves from the General Assembly come and talk to us. um about various topics, but public safety was one of them. And we had some questions and discourse around mental health and how we can be creative about funding mental health challenges given um the pivot from the the history of funding it here in our state with Medicaid. Um, and I'm I'm thinking as as you all were talking through your program, which is fantastic, that maybe as a part of our federal uh legislative agenda, that that might be one area that we could capture some dollars for mental health specifically is through this combination of law enforcement and social workers. Mhm. >> Yeah. It's a it's a really really interesting approach. But can you tell us how does your program interface or overlap with the CARES team program that we started years ago but now resides on the county side? >> That's correct. Uh thank you for that question. So our teams do work hand in hand. Um, for those who don't know, the CARES unit was created to respond to the unhoused population here in the Charlotte area. Um, when they began, they only touched central division and metro division, but as of right now, as you know, they now touch four different divisions and will continue to expand. Um, again, their mission is to provide housing for the unhoused, but if they were to get out with someone who is unhoused, who's also suffering any crisis, they can contact our team and we work together to not only provide with housing, but making sure that their mental health is stable. >> Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you for that. >> Okay. Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. Um, again, I I want to echo the the compliments that have been given um for the quality of this presentation. I really do appreciate the the wisdom and the insights. Um, I will say that I had a very interesting conversation with a physician, a voter in my district, um, who had seen that I had done the point in time count and he wanted to have some conversations about what that experience had meant to me because he'd done it years prior. And one of the things that really stuck with me from that conversation was his assessment. And I'm interested in the the point of view of of y'all up on the on the dis. His assessment that a lot of folks um have a perception that everyone who's homeless is is mentally ill and that that is not true and that we need to get our minds around that. But also that homelessness itself, sleep deprivation and the stress on the body and the inability to perhaps manage medication on a consistent basis and food on a consistent basis all can lead to things that can appear in a short term as a mental health crisis and that we in his estimation and I I was really I was I was persuaded by his his point of view but his estimation was that we we don't always approach it that way and that looking for more non- congregant shelter is in his estimation that housing first model that you can't really get to some of the mental health issues until you can get somebody who's able to sleep in a bed, till you can get somebody who's going to be not focused on whether they're going to be warm that night. You can get somebody who's going to have food in their belly. That all those things are much more easily managed. So, I'll just I'll leave that there. But his other comment that really struck me was a lot of the focus after Arena Zerusa's murder on involuntary commitment and his experience being that that is not an effective strategy because for a lot of folks they've lost trust by the time you've had them involuntarily committed whatever you're coming at them with is not ultimately going to be as effective and that you do need time to get somebody on board so that you're not going with that process. And so I guess you know my takeaway is those two thoughts but also you know reiterating social workers and attorneys like medical case management all of these components that we need and that we need funding to be able to supply. I just I my hat is off to all of you for understanding those but if you could elaborate on any of that that would be um that'd be interesting to me. I'd like to start if I may just to say the fundamental challenge is not the mental health uh or whatever else may be going on for our people living uh living outside. The fundamental challenge is a lack of affordable housing because under that housing first model which is decades of research that says that's the way to go. If you can get a person stably housed, then they have the space, the time, the capacity, the lower stress levels to then address whatever other challenges they may have occurring. And so the need for uh non- congregate shelter uh and and other shelter resources that people can access in crisis uh and the need for uh more affordable housing which you already invest significantly in. Um, the these are the things that that stabilize that stabilize households, stabilize families, and give them an opportunity to engage in all of the other great resources that are made available. And the other thing, and I just want to shout out Andreana and her team, the other thing that we see from the from the different ways that we support housing is that the burnout for our case managers uh and our clinicians and our mental health professionals is significant and that without those navigation and support resources, even getting folks connected to housing is very difficult. So, thank you. But also, I want to acknowledge that that is another big gap in the system. >> All right, the next table. Thank you. Thank you all for the presentation and providing the information. Rebecca, you know, I think housing and neighborhood services team is amazing and you all have been doing an amazing work and manager Jones, I want to thank you for the willingness and the openness that you have exhibited with our county manager and the fact that you all have had very different conversations that are in alignment with conversations that myself and my colleagues have had with you over the years. Now you say you want a thousand Maya experiences. While we're having this budget conversation, one of the things, one of the opportunities I believe we have is as elected official nor a number of us and I'm going to speak for me personally. I have always had individuals reach out for internships. I now we've changed where we you need to be a minimum of 14 but that is a opportunity as well because we have young people that are interested in local government and I've had the opportunity where the young people I brought in through internship have also been able to shadow in the attorney's office shadow in the different departments because I identify their goals and aspirations But if council had the ability, we're not a strong mayor form of government. Some councils actually have their own budgets for their areas or office of constituency services. So they have the ability to do that. But that may be an additional way for us to be intentional with the thousand that you would like to see for our law enforcement. The question that I am wondering and this is based off of a instance that happened earlier this year that was concerning when you identify the opportunity to go out and the individual has been identified as needing to be a part of CPCRT or with the CIT. Are you also running to see if there are any active restraining orders for those individuals? And the reason I asked that is earlier this year I had a elder who was beyond 80. Unfortunately, her son was experiencing a number of different concerns, but that relationship almost turned into stalking/abuse. There was a restraining order that was issued through the courts. It took a long time and I have a whole timeline and I shared it with the manager for him to share it with the law enforcement leadership for one CMPD show up. Two, I never heard if CPCRT or CIT showed up. So I want to get a better understanding how your work as you see it is also connecting to protect our residents specifically our elders. >> Yes ma'am. So again, that is one of the reasons why when someone calls 911, we encourage patrol to go out first because patrol job is to make sure not only is it safe for our team, but that if any criminal aspects has occurred that we are definitely still going to take criminal actions as well as providing mental health services, too. Um the one thing that we do offer that we partner with the county is called wellness court. So if an individual who is suffering a crisis commits a crime, we will still charge that individual with that crime, but we also will submit that person into wellness court. And that is a whole program where they are where they receive an act team to help that person again stabilize their mental health. But in that case, patrol goes out. they are, you know, supposed to make sure that we run each individual into our uh database to make sure that we don't have any pending criminal charges for us to take action on. So, and this manager Jones and for Chief Patterson now that she's here, I would like to see us. I think it would be helpful for council to receive a update on the 911 dispatch calls and that time period because you remember this incident that was 40 45 plus minutes to even have someone go out that much time a lot could have happened. So while we're having we're identifying that numbers are being reduced in a number of cases at the end of the day safety is about how we feel. So the perception of safety regardless of what the numbers say is about how we feel and if we feel like we don't have a system that responds quickly. I just had an individual two Sundays ago. Unfortunately, we had a major accident off of the highway with a with a motorcyclist. This individual actually unfortunately watched cuz they were in traffic when the accident happened. So, they saw the individual fly. They saw the motorcycle go a different way. 911 went in to leaving a voicemail when they got in contact with someone. It was many minutes later, but the line of questioning was not one that was helpful considering the immediacy. So, while we are supporting and funding these programs, which are great programs, I want to ensure that we're also tracking the family or the communal impact of it. And part of that communal impact is how quickly we can get through to you. If there's a delay, if you're going into voicemail, if there's a challenge when you're calling 911, even though we've had that challenge for a while cuz we ain't have enough staff, there has been an increase in opportunity. It I think it would be helpful for us to get an update of where we are on that as far as vacancies cuz again, you said you want a,000 Maya experiences. those 17, 18 year olds that are in school very well, that might be a good plug in because they're very well may be someone that is interested in being that because now we have 911 and all these different shows on TV. So they see they're seeing and that's not I mean think about it a different world encouraged a lot of young black people to go to college. >> Amen. >> For the experience and for what they saw. Well, these shows like 911 and others are giving just a commercialized version of what 911 looks like, but it's also encouraging young people to consider this field they hadn't. That might be a way to get to your thousand so that we don't run our staff crazy with trying to figure out there might be some natural connections and opportunities that we just hadn't considered that we might want to consider. and and that is one of our chief's main focuses is retention and recruitment so that we can cut down those numbers. >> Thank you. And so we are approaching a time for you all to take a break. But I am willing and I'm sure they would be willing to continue the conversation if you all want to cut into your break time. >> I'll make it quick. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Um thank you so much for being here. Um, Council Member Mayfield is right. Uh, scandal made me think I was going to be the next Olivia Pope. But, uh, and this is why I'm here. Um, but what again, thank you for your time. Appreciate the expertise. Um, I want to first talk about young people and internships. And I agree, Manager Jones, with Council Member Mayfield. I think our OCS office, our office of constituent services will be a great opportunity for this because as you know, social media evolves, I am out there on social media and I'm getting messages from students across middle schools and high schools uh throughout CMS that want to shadow me or internship um and and be part of the process. And I think this is also a great opportunity to spread education and awareness about how a weak mayor form of government works and that we can't solve all the problems like New York City can. Right. Um the other uh I I do have a question for our CMPD is how does uh the Jade initiative incorporate to making sure we are keeping young people off the streets off of uh criminal activities and how can the city support to continue scaling the Jane initiative? >> Thank you for that question. So with the Jade program, we actually have specialists who can answer that question better than we can. Um, and we we definitely not overlooking that question, but if you would give me your contact information, I'll be able to answer that question thoroughly for you. >> Perfect. Thank you. And I'm also thinking how we can use that as well to provide career opportunities to folks that are part of the Jade initiative going from that, you know, prevention to then absolutely getting them through a pipeline of career workforce development. Um, I wanted to pivot real quick about the economic impact for small businesses when it comes to homelessness and um, vagrancy. Uh, I'm not for criminalization. Absolutely not. Uh, I'm an advocate for mental health. So, I recognize that a lot of the help and resources we need also are dependent on the willingness of our state lawmakers to give us those resources. So, I want to make that very clear and I want to thank the BIGR committee for putting that uh on our state legislative agenda. But I I want to know when does a certain point get to being too much when we have folks disrupting businesses um ex exposing theelves to business owners that really has an economic impact to certain sectors. Um, so I want to get some ideas on like the mitigation processes to ensure that, you know, these repeat offenders aren't continually disrupting the economic impact of small businesses. So again, it comes down to our CARES team. They were put in place for situations like that because when we go out as patrol, we have only a minimal amount of resources that we know of. But with CARES, they actually are embedded with the resources in the county because their main goal again is to get that subject off of the street into a home to be stabilized. That way we don't continue to have those repeat offenders who are disrupting businesses costing them money. But in all, we all working together as a team. As they say, it take a village. Correct. And that's what we all are sitting on this panel right now, a village. >> I appreciate that. I also want to recognize that sometimes other sectors of the city might have more resources and more partnerships than other sectors might have, right? Other villages might built be built a little bit more stronger. For example, we're having reoccurrences on uh in district 5 on Eastway Drive, Central Avenue, Sharon Amity where we keep getting those repeat offenders and I oftent times don't see the CARES team out there. So, manager Jones, it might be a question of how do we better scale that? And I will also love to see some data points of where uh our care team, our officers are reporting these incidents cuz I don't want the last thing I want is inequity and where these incidents are being reported from. Right? So, right now, uptown Charlotte is a destination, right? But we want to make sure that East Charlotte also becomes a destination and deserves the same visibility and attention to these incidents than other parts of the city. Thank you. >> Okay, we've got one more question and then we'll get to city manager Jones. >> Yes, it's more a comment. So to wrap it up based on all the insights that you share, housing stability is number one. If you truly want to build city, we have to have stable housing for everyone who lives in our city, who works in our city. Uh council member Owens talked about housing first approach. I remember when I served on the housing authority B board now it's called in Livian they first partnered with nonprofit on the housing first model and we actually had a founder of the housing first traveled here from New York and talked about how housing can provide stability in one's lives so they can access other services whether that's mental health support health care needs or whatever else that's needed. So, uh I I just want to make sure as we end this conversation on building a safe city alternative to non-law enforcement approaches, we are prioritizing affordable housing, especially $100 million in affordable housing bond referendum so that we can build on the progress that's been made since past 10 years. Thank you all. Thank you, city manager. >> So, thank you, Deborah. Just a couple of things that I think are important. One, you guys were really, really good to um push the budget discussion out of today, so I wasn't able to put any kind of guard rails around. So, you guys are brilliant. Um uh no, but but um seriously, um and I think do Dr. Watlington will love this. It's almost what's the racy ma matrix, right? Who's responsible? Who's accountable? Who's consulted? Who's informed? And we have all this momentum with the county and CMS, which is great. We're working together on youth, mental health, housing, workforce development, economic development, quality of life. With that said, I think it's important for us to figure out who's the lead, who's the partner, who's the support, so that we're not falling all over ourselves. And I don't know how to begin that at the elected level. We've started it at the staff level, but I don't want to lose this momentum. Um because I think if we can figure out at a bare bare minimum who leads, who partners, who supports, and we bring in the alliance, as um Council Member Graham said, to bring in the private sector funds as well as the philanthropic funds. I think we're on to something. >> Just a quick question. Is there continuum of care board here? Yes. >> All right. any last minute things on this topic otherwise um >> you've got four minutes. No, I'm just kidding. To start, we'll we'll give you uh we'll start the next session at um 10 after and hopefully we can we can get that done. Uh because it probably won't take us an hour to get to the government center. >> It's gonna take a while. >> I just >> really Heat. Heat. That's how you feel. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Now it's working. All righty then. >> Okay. We're going to continue our conversation around building a safe city. And we have the pleasure of having your chief of police who is going to be here to provide us with the brief presentation. I think she's going to also uh invite um staff up uh to answer questions if you have any. And just as a reflection, um I can't tell you how impressed, uh I was with that earlier conversation around building a safe city. It is just so important that I think one of the council members used the term a holistic approach to community safety, you know, and I and I think we just and I believe uh the chief is going to talk about all those things that we intuitively don't think add to the community's sense of safety. sidewalks, street lights, all of those things um contribute to and support uh the community's sense of safety. And so without any further ado, I'm going to turn it over to your chief of police. >> Thank you, Miss Campbell. And good afternoon, Mayor, Council, and Manager Jones. Thank you for the opportunity to come and present and not only me but also our team coming forward. Let me begin by just saying that it is great to be back at CMPD and that's largely because I inherited a fantastic team of individuals, true professionals and people who are devoted and dedicated to the work. Also too, I love being back at CMPD because this is an organization that's very data driven. We just don't do things just because we want to do it. We really rely on the data. We're also very community focused and we are relentlessly always trying to look at excellence, doing things the right way. And so I'm very pleased with that. Over the past two months um in the seat almost three months now, I've been really listening to our personnel, our officers, professional staff, as well as our community to see what is important. If you can recall, I talked about my priorities. And let's see. Oh, good. It worked on the first shot. Oh, now we went too far. Let's go back one. Okay, there we go. And so, um, when I even before I officially arrived in the seat, once my name was, um, announced, I started talking about priorities just from what I was seeing, um, across Charlotte. And then I met with the team. I met with community members, business members, and what they shared with me really aligns with the three areas that I have been focusing on or that we will be focusing on as an organization. And I have shared this repeatedly, but I would just tell you that the three areas are reducing violent crime and disorder, of course, enhancing our community engagement, building that out more, and then just improving employee morale and wellness. That is just so huge for us. And I will say that these are not just slogans. These are not just taglines for the moment. These are actual operational efficiencies that we want to expand and work on so that we can support our city. As Charlotte is growing, as it is evolving, it is important that our strategies evolve as well. And I think these three areas are really where we need to focus. So I'll start with on January 5th, we officially rolled out our endofear numbers, our 2025 numbers in our annual report. And we have a copy on each table so that you can take a look at that. But in this report, I was very pleased. I can't take credit for any of it even though I want to. Um, Chief Jennings did an outstanding job and so did the team in making sure that we were laser focused in on crime and reducing that. And I'm pleased to announce that we saw significant reductions and I say significant because to have reductions in violent crime as well as property crime is really significant. You don't see that too much. I haven't seen it in my 30 years that much. And so being able to achieve that, especially in a city that's growing at this pace, really speaks volume of the team and what they're doing. And as you can see, overall crime down 9% over 2024, 21% in violent crime, and then 6% in our property crime. Now, looking at 2026, because this is not the way I look at 2026, I see that it's a year of momentum that we have a good tailwind behind us and we're moving forward and we're going to continue to move forward. In 2026, year-to- date, we see good crime num reductions as well. We're currently sitting at a overall 7% I'm sorry, overall 15% reduction in crime, 15% in property crime, and then a 10% um in um violent crime, which is really good. By just looking across our numbers, we did see a little bit of an uptick in our homicides. We're up one over last year, but still overall we're seeing those reductions. And we're going to continue to keep working as much as we can to mitigate crime. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. So looking at violent crime reduction, we're going to continue as a police department to really expand our datadriven policing policies, strengthen our collaborations, and make investments in technology. Deborah, you talked about some different things to do. Technology is going to be one of those things that we really lean on when we talk about crime reduction. But in 2025, the team did an outstanding job of really looking at where we were seeing upticks in violent crime and making sure that we were formulating units that were strategically looking at reducing that. One of those units is our edu or our entertainment district unit. That unit was very much and continues to be focused on our uptown area, our center city. It is a proactive unit that works and is looking mostly at our night life, being out in the area and educating our businesses, our nightclubs and such that they're abiding by ABC laws. But also too, we know that when those nightclubs let out at 2 in the morning, if there's any kind of disagreements or issues, those individuals are going to the parking lots, they're getting their firearms, and then we're going to have a bad incident. And so trying to mitigate that as much as possible, interrupt it as much as possible is important to us. Also to our Jade unit and council member Aries, you talked about that earlier. You were asking a question about Jade. If you're not familiar, Jade is our juvenile accountability diversion empowerment unit. That is another unit that has focused primarily in our uptown area. When we have our youth that are idle, that are out and about, this unit is making contact with them. And it's not a oneandone. It's not one contact you take them home or if there's an enforcement action needs to be taken that you only have that one interaction. This team is very good about doing followup going to court cases with going to court with these individuals, talking with the families, interacting, making sure they're going to school and keeping them out of the pipeline of getting in trouble and having negative outcomes. So, we're very pleased with what Jade is doing and we got the best of the best on Jade. When I saw the members of the team on there, I said, I know a lot of those people because I hired them when I was here before and I know the quality of their work. So, they're doing an outstanding job with our young people. And then, you know, about Operation Safe Season, I've talked about that pretty extensively, the work that we did with that. Coming in the door, it was important to me that we are not operating in a silo as a police department. I really lean heavily on all our partners, making sure that everything that we do is a multi- agency approach. looking at local, state, federal, and even private security to make sure that we're all working together towards the same goal. So, we kicked off Operation Safe Season in December. We had two operations and we saw some significant outcomes as a result of it. Over 400 traffic stops, 400 and something citations were issued. We made 54 arrests and we took 34 dangerous firearms off of our streets. That was very significant. And I know that everybody thought, okay, operation safe season is done. No, we're continuing with Operation Queen City Safe where we've already had two of those operations um for the year. The first one where we focused on the WT Harris, Maler Creek, North Trion corridors again um getting dangerous um individuals off the streets, but also making sure that we're educating the public on the right things to do and the wrong things to do. This past weekend we had our second session or our second operation um which was also a success. Um we focused on Arrowwood Arrowwood Road Nation Ford and the West Park Drive area. So we were in Southwest Charlotte. Um in fact one of our lieutenants in this room was able to get a dangerous firearm off the streets because she was out there working this operation along with her deputy chief, Deputy Chief Brryley. So, it's all hands on all hands- on deck approach that we are using to reduce violent crime. Aside from just the enforcement aspect, it's important that we invest in technology. As I stated before, one of the ways that we're working to mitigate crime is through our Connect Charlotte platform. Raise your hand if you've heard of Connect Charlotte. Few hands in the room. Very good. And we're thankful to council for supporting this effort, this platform that we have. It is a tool where we partner with our community with this, particularly our business community. So, we want to have access to those cameras, the outside cameras, not the inside cameras, but the outside of businesses. And we connected to our real-time crime center so that we can see if there are offenders that are coming, we want to see them going, want to see their egress routes. We want to get information about them that we can push out to our employees. Um year-to- date we have over,00 cameras that have been integrated into our real-time crime center and we want to continue to push this. So we're encouraging all businesses um throughout our city to connect your cameras to us. We also have what's called registered cameras. And the difference with our registered cram is those are residential cameras. And no, we don't want to connect and see what is going on around your home or in your home. But we want you to register those cameras so that if there is an incident around your neighborhood or on your street, our detectives as they are following up on that crime can reach out to you and say, "I believe you have some footage. Would you share that footage with me?" And knowing who those registered camera owners are really helps us with that situation. Connect Charlotte is a a wonderful tool. I was very happy coming here to Charlotte and see that we had it. I had it in Raleigh and we were able to solve a lot of crime as a result of it. So, if your camera is not registered to Connect Charlotte and you live in Charlotte, we want you to connect. You can go to connectsharlotte.org. You just type that into your web browser and it will pull up the information that you need to be able to integrate or register your camera. Another technology tool that I think is important is incar cameras. Um, you will see that our officers have bodywn cameras that they weigh on they wear wear on their person, but we do not have in-car cameras. That's something that I'd like for us to bring back. One, because it really enhances transparency. It enables us to capture more information and I see it as a community safety tool for us to have. Um, we have started a pilot where we're testing some of those cameras. We started that in August of 2025 with only 20 vehicles, but I would like that to be an initiative that we expand throughout the organization. Also to drones is first responder. I think that is important for us have we have spoken about that council. Thank you again for supporting that initiative. Our police foundation has also supported us with drones first responder. We have not launched it yet. We're still in the initial phases of that. But the resources and the efficiency I think that this brings will be good for our police department. We definitely want our officers being available to respond to our high priority calls. drone first responder helps us to go to those lower priority calls or if we need to upscale and send them to high critical incidents type of things, we can do that. We can launch these drones right from the field anywhere in our patrol districts divisions and we're able to get aerial view of what's going on in that area. Again, I think this is a wonderful tool that we'd want to incorporate here at the police department with our drone responder first responder. We're looking to roll that out in fourth quarter of this year. So, I talked to you about some violent crime prevention tools that we have. The other area that we're focusing heavily on is building out our community engagement. CMPD has always had a wonderful reputation of being connected to our community. We really want to enhance that even more, expand it as much as we can. I personally believe that public safety is a shared responsibility. We just can't say that the police respons solely responsible for the safety of our community. We really have to look to the community to be our eyes and ears so that there's visibility, there's transparency and also collective responsibility. So in 2026, we're going to continue our commitment to collaboration by extending programs that connect our officers with those neighborhoods that they're in. I'm a proponent that every single officer is a community officer. Yes, we have community coordinators. We have teams of people that are addressing community problems, but at the end of the day, every officer should be engaged in the community in between calls, getting out, talking with those community members. In fact, I shared that with our command staff just this morning that we want to see more of that in 2026. Some other ways that we are connecting with our community include um having my let's talk about it sessions. I've done two already last week and we're doing two more this week in our community. were hitting every quadrant of the four sections of Charlotte to be able to talk about the issues that are important to the community. For me, it's about telling them what my priorities are, but also listening to what the community says is important and that we should be working on. Another community engagement that we're ramping up is just partnering with our faith community. Also to our educators and our local organizations, our nonprofits, any organization or group that is interested in public safety, want to make our community safer. We do want to work with them. I think that the community, our eyes and ears, the more engaged they are, the better it is for us and in reducing crime and disorder within our community. The last area I want to talk about with you this today is just improving our employee wellness and our morale. We all know that in order to deliver public safety, we have to invest in our people. We have to have the best of the best in our organization and making sure that they are supported and have the things that they need. Our ability to reduce crime and strengthen trust in our community and support our officers really depend on having a fully staffed department. And for me, it's not just about the numbers. Even though we're trying hard to fill our vacancies, and we're going to continue doing that, it's about getting the right people in the seats, making sure that we have quality employees that reflect the values and the diversity of our city. We just recently graduated one recruit class. We have three more in the hopper for this year along with two lateral classes. We're going to keep pushing to make sure that we have enough resources on the street to be able to work through our problems that we see with recruiting um employees and building the morale within the organization. We know that we have to have competitive incentives, salaries and such so that we can bring in the best and the brightest. One of the things that we have and actually many of the things that you're responsible council for doing which is great for us. We have a language incentive. We have education incentive, residency incentives. I think those are all wonderful. One thing that we're rolling out internally is providing a bonus or an incentive for our employees to recruit more people into the organization. I tell our officers, I say, "Nobody knows better than we do who should be our backup, who should be in this field." So, our police foundation has been very gracious to us, and so we have some funding to really expand that incentive. One of the other ways that I'm really focusing on retention and and that's the recruitment side of the house. I'll turn now to the retention side of what we're doing. Um within my first 60 days, I sent out a climate and culture survey to our employees. I really wanted to know what is important to them. What do they feel that we should be focusing on as an organization to build the morale? And that survey went out. We got a lot of responses back. We're still sifting through all that data. But from that survey, we're going to build teams, impact teams, um, action committees to be able to solve whatever the issues are. I told our police department, I says, if you're going to complain about something, you got to bring me a solution. You got to tell me how we can solve it, how we can fix it. So, we're going to be building out those teams to start working on those problems that they have identified within the organization. also to the wellness aspect and Sergeant Phillips talked about some of the things we're doing public facing for wellness but we're also looking inwardly at our department making sure that our employees are whole holistically and so we do have a therapy dog which is wonderful we have peer support we have other programming that really helps to touch our employees who are dealing with traumatic things I mean every single day they're going from call to call that is very difficult things that are very difficult to see and even comprehend, but they're doing an outstanding job of being able to work through that. But from the leadership level, I want to make sure that they're going to be okay mentally with what they're seeing. We have a program in which employees, if they go to seek counseling or they seek counseling, whatever is not covered by insurance, our police foundation is given us funding to cover the remainder of that call. We really want to make sure that there's no stigma attached to getting help if you need it. And so that program helps us with that. Also too, we're focusing on development of our personnel. Always about succession planning. I talk about that all the time. We got to think about who's going to replace us when we transition out or when we retire. And so building up our police department is huge. We have a very, very young police department just because we've seen so much attrition in the last couple years. So we want to make sure that they're developed and they can meet the challenges of the job. And then lastly is just recognition. Just today we had our officer of of the month recognition. We want to make sure that our professional staff and our sworn employees feel valued, that they know that we see the work and that what they're doing is making a difference for our community. In my 100 days that I've been here, I've been out in the field. I've been running, going here, there, everywhere. And I've been going to our roll calls, visiting with our employees, letting them see me, listening to what things that they have, what they have to say. Beyond just doing the survey, it's important for me just to in interact and engage with them on different levels. Then lastly, just talking about 2026. I believe truly this is a year of momentum. This is a year that we are going to keep building on the things that we have here at CMPD, but even expanding and stretching folks. I've already tasked my team with all these various things. I know they said she come in hot. She got all the stuff going on. But I think it's important for us to continue not to get stagnant, not to keep doing business as usual, but to look at creative ways, innovative ways that we can expand and that we can make sure that our city is safe. In this month, I will mark my 100 days as chief. I will be doing a state of the department message as I promised in the early days of getting here. and I'm going to provide transparent information on our progress, our challenges, and also the road ahead with our department. Again, I feel like the momentum is on our side. We're doing a lot of good things. I love the energy that our employees are exhibiting, and so we're going to continue to capitalize on that. Together with our officers, our partners, and our community, we will continue the work of making 2026 a safer year for our police department. I often say that my goal is that Charlotte will be the safest large city in the nation and we'll keep working towards that. That is all that I have for you today. I'm happy to answer any questions and in fact I'm going to ask the rest of my team, our deputy chiefs, if they will come forward so that we can address any questions that you may have of us. >> Wow, >> you guys are so lucky to have this woman here, your chief of police. Let's give her a hand. Thank you. I just want to repeat one thing that she talked about in terms of technology and the drone program. I cannot tell you how invaluable drones were in emergency preparedness and response. We saved lives with drones because we physically couldn't get out there. Those drones helped us identify people who were hanging from trees and stranded and all over the place. So, it's it is broader public safety and it's emergency preparedness. So, that's one you guys really need to think about amping up. Yes. over here. >> Chief, thank you so much for your bold leadership and absolutely we are so lucky to have you representing us uh and our CMPD. You did an excellent job at the hearing in February. You did not only talk about the progress and the success, but you also talked openly, honestly, and transparency transparently about the challenges that we face, especially with recruitment and retention and asking the support of our state legislators. I applaud you for doing that. Uh obviously you talked about the top priority of competitive pay and I would like to I would like us to go step forward. We shouldn't just settle at competitive pay. We should be leading the nation when it comes to our officers pay for recruitment and retention. That's how we are going to address the vacancies that we have. I see Mr. Jones is taking notes of all the budget requests that's coming his way. This is my third request. Um, but in all seriousness, officers put their lives on the line every single day to protect us. And we lost one of our own in the tragedy in East Charlotte couple of years ago. And I think the least we can do is to lead in this space and pay them really well. So I hope that we will show that in this year's budget that you'll be proposing that will help the chief in addressing the vacancies. Is there anything that you have a specific ask from this council other than the pay? I I took the note um when you talked about it at the hearing. You also had a specific ask in terms of the take-home cars and I think that is certainly needs to be a priority. I know we have elevated that in our state legislative agenda as well as federal legislative agenda, but we also need to do our part to ensure that we because that is a number one factor for recruitment and retention and I hear that from FOP officers uh and the community. So, I hope we can address that in this year's budget. But is there anything else that you would like us to see in in you'd like us to champion in this year's budget? >> Thank you, Council Member Asher. Yes, I think you need to you hit the nail on the head. Those are the two main areas. Um I've said publicly that I think um is important for us. Um also too, you know, we're funding new positions that were grant funded before. The department's going to have to absorb that. So, we're hoping that we'll be able to um fill those positions and get funding for it. But the number one thing I think um we have to be competitive as an organization, and the way to do that, I think, is through um salaries. That's one thing. Um and then also to the take-home cars. I think when we lose officers to other agencies, those are the two things that we're often hearing. >> Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, Malcolm. And then we'll go to this table. And then we'll go to the other table and then the next one. >> Uh thank you. Um, first let me congratulate you and your team. Um, I think we've made an excellent choice, Mr. Manager. Um, for the last eight weeks since the first of the year, I've seen you all over the city. Either I'm coming and you're going or I'm going and you're coming. And so the visibility of the police chief and even the the the officers seem to have a pep in their step. Uh and and I I really want to thank the officers um for really um protecting and serving. >> Um I I I do also want to and I mentioned at the last council meeting um uh your presentation in Raleigh along with the city manager and and the mayor uh and the DA um demonstrated um high competency um for our community and even to the staff assembled here. You know, we had a rough six months the last of 2025. >> Um the stats tell a different story. Um for sure. Um, but we still had some tough time and the way the staff responded to the FTA and to the state attorney's office and the auditor's office um and the oversight committee, the time, the work, the preparation to demonstrate that our community um has safety as our top priority and we have to the receipts to show it. I think everyone who participated, the manager's office, the deputies, your office, your leadership team should be commended. Uh because unfortunately, um sometimes bad things happen to good people and it's no one's fault, >> right? And so I just want to encourage you and your team, um, Jackie at the end, who has always been, I'm sorry, deputy chief, >> who who's always been accessible and available and responsive. Uh, every time I call a tax on members of the community, I think that goes um unnoticed. I noticed your commitment and the commitment of your teams. And so I I'm just excited. Um I'm with uh Miss um Ashmeir in reference to trying to identify ways we can help. I didn't know all the police cars didn't have cameras. I that I just assumed that they did, right? Um obviously drones are important and technology enhancement is important and and pay is important. So I'm all on board of kind of working with the management team to demonstrate um from a fiscal perspective uh that we're willing to be all in on public safety. Um what you're doing in uptown with the special uh entertainment district is really important. What we're doing to secure large crowds whether it's a Charlotte FC NBA game um event at at the um Bank of America stadium all that is really really public safety. So no question here other than to say um um keep the momentum up um and let us know how we can help you. >> Thank you for that council member Graham. And I got to say, like my boss always says, it's not just one person. It's not just one team. It is team Charlotte. I think everybody contributes in a special way and we saw that in Raleigh when we went there. So, thank you for your comments and we're going to continue working on it. Um, we want to make sure that we keep our city moving forward. >> All right, let's go to the next. >> We'll have her go first and get to you, Mr. J. >> Thank you. Thank you, chief and team, for being here. and I'm really excited that we made the choice that we did. You are definitely have hit the ground running and I welcome the partnership um with you as we discuss uh public safety um as the chair of the public safety committee. Um I want to say I have your book in my backpack and I walk around with it all the time because inevitably I'm getting questions about safety and I always like to be able to whip it out and give correct information. But some really f phenomenal numbers in this book. So um congratulations on last year. But I will say when I spoke to you I think in our very first meeting you said well this is really good information and great performance but I don't know I'm a little concerned because it's difficult to um you know produce doubledigit decline year-over-year. And so I I really just want to underscore to you that within your first uh 120 days, you know, typically when you start a new job, you have about 3 to 6 months of of grace period to mess up to ask for for the world, ask for the moon and everything. And I encourage you to do that. um as you're hearing from some of my other colleagues, uh because once you get further down the runway, you know, it's it gets harder and harder to do. So, definitely think about what you need in order to continue the momentum and advancing and uh provide us a prioritized list. Um, the other thing I want to say is with the work we're doing uptown, um, in partnership with Duke Energy around the environmental work, Mr. Graham, um, I think it's going to be really, really great work in terms of enhancing safety. You mentioned that perhaps a next step could be Southoun as well as you're exiting from Southoun, but just thinking about other areas in the city where we could partner strategically with some of our um our partners within the ecosystem of the city to think about doing things like that and others that can be um that can enhance the good work that your officers are doing. >> Yes, ma'am. And thank you so much for noticing that the work that we're doing and commenting on that and the grace period. Can I get an extended grace period? Please, please, a little bit longer than three months. Um, no, but you're talking about this ecosystem, which is really important. In fact, Deputy Chief Browing and I have already been talking about even going beyond the lighting that Duke Energy is doing. We got to look at just the overall aesthetics. We're talking with C DOT um about striping our streets because we know that if it broken windows theory, right? If things look broken, people are going to think that. We want to make sure that our uptown is as vibrant as it can be. So, we're already having those conversations and I think we got some things already planned for that. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Yep. Again, Team Charlotte is working all together on it. So, thank you. >> Excellent. Thank you, Mr. >> Chief. Welcome back to South Charlotte. I've seen you, I think, at least three times here already. Yes, sir. >> Appreciate that. >> Here. So, uh, I went to Raleigh to observe those hearings. Uh, and actually, I'll admit to you, I meant mainly to make sure they didn't try to hire you back. Uh, and and I heard a lot of people, you know, wanting to do that. Um, and I just want to say, uh, the opening statement was harsh and then after you guys had spoken, uh, and this is the district attorney, you, the mayor, the, uh, the manager, uh, I think they were really impressed. and I talked to a couple of the members of the panel afterwards and so the tone of the conversation uh when when you spoke and the follow-up questions you got indicated I think a real impact for our benefit and I did want to thank you for that. I have two topics quickly that I want to ask about. Okay. >> One of them is AI and drones and facial recognition. There's anxiety around privacy issues, right? So, how can you uh increase your ability to identify danger spots and people and then not make other people feel that they're being watched inappropriately? You already talked about the connect thing. Uh and and how I know that some people have said, I don't want to do that, you know, or I don't like the idea that the the police can see everything in our neighborhood, that kind of thing. So, that's one. And the other one is uh hot topic today is uh the cooperation or lack thereof between CMPD and ICE. >> So there are two topics for you. You've got about three minutes for both. >> Thank you for that, Council Member Driggs. Um I'll start off with the AI question or the comment that you made on that. The reason we're putting so much emphasis into community and building community so that they will trust us so that we will be aligned with what their needs are and that they will understand that any kind of AI kind of generative thing that we're coming up with or doing. And I listened to the presentation on last Tuesday I think it was or Monday that it is the city is formulating an AI policy. So we're not operating outside of that. Let me just be clear. But we know that we just have to build that trust that they trust us that we're doing the right thing with the data and with the information. And it goes back to what I said about, you know, best practices and what other agencies are doing as well. I think there are other agencies that are doing it right that we look at. We're very data driven. We make sure that we're doing things for the right reasons or that is my approach as we move forward that we're not just out there testing something just because, but what has the data shown us? what has best practices told us about that kind of technology and should it be something that we're making an investment within our community because we don't want anything that's going to fragment that trust that we have. That's the worst thing you can do is when you're siloed and it's us versus them. Been there, done that. Do not want that at all. I see the value in making sure that we're building and working with our community. And before we roll out any of these kind of technologies, drone first responder, of course, we're always going to have sitdowns with the community, describe what it is, talk about what it is, make sure that we're consulting with our legal team, that we're not stepping or violating privacy rights or the rights of our residents. So, that's number one. That's important to us. And then you talk about CMPD and ICE. Um, again, I'm a person about building collaborative partnerships and relationships. Um, when ICE came to Charlotte last year, Operation Charlotte's Web, I know that Chief Jennings reached out to that leadership to get as much information. That's the same approach that I would take if we learned or if we knew that they were coming here. We meet and work with our federal partners all the time. The relationship there is really, really strong. Um, ICE, we haven't heard anything from them, but I will continue to push and if they have information that they will share with us. Um, of course I think everybody in the room knows that we do not enforce immigration laws. We that's hands off for us as a jurisdiction and municipality. We just don't handle those kinds of things. Um, if ICE were to call us because there's a breach of the peace or there's a criminal um, action, we would respond to that just as we would with any other citizen or any other entity. So, I just want to be clear that everybody knows though that we don't enforce immigration laws. >> Thank you. >> Did you have anything? Okay, next table. >> Thank you so much. Um Oh, where is it? >> Thank you. Thank you to everyone that's here today. Every time I see you, I'm going to tell you I just admire you. I appreciate it. Sticks with me that people after 30 years within the organization were asking for your leadership. And to me, that speaks to consistency of character. So, thank you for who you are as well as what you do. Um, I've got a few quick questions. Um, prior to my time on on council, I served on the civil service board and um, as part of that service, of course, we get to see the numbers for recruitment and um, also graduates. So, I just wanted to understand in light of what you're discussing in terms of recruitment, can you walk me through where we're seeing drop offs? um um because at the time the conversation was really around how do we make sure that we get a sufficient number of recruits through the academy not just in the pipeline and so I'm curious especially as we think about retention what the retention rates are at what levels um as we think like future forward planning where are we seeing folks drop off or come into the system um so I'd just like a little bit of context as it relates to what those numbers look like >> okay sure and I will say hi level and then I'm going to ask DC Chery who is over our academy recruitment and training to fill in the gaps there. I would just say high level from sitting on the train and standards commission when I was um in Raleigh and even previously when I was here before where we see some consistent areas is one there's not an interest in this profession. So again we're trying to be outfront with the community to drum up that interest to let people see that this is a noble profession and that this police department is very professional in the work that we do. So that lack of interest in this job and then secondly the standards right we want to make sure that our standards are the highest so that we protect our community and sometimes our recruits just can't live up to that standard um whether it's something in their background or some life experience that um disqualifies them from our process or then when they get in our academy they can't continue to meet those standards. Um just specifically about where we're losing them in the pipeline. DC can you talk a little bit about that? Hi, good afternoon. >> Afternoon, >> Dr. Watlington. How you doing? >> First of all, I serve as the deputy chief over the learning and wellness um bureaus at CMPD, which of course encompasses recruitment and training. And unfortunately, there is a point where we are seeing folks that are dropping off. And this is in regards to the people that are actually applying. They are going to the city of Charlotte website. They are doing the questionnaire. They're submitting their F3, which is their law enforcement application to be an officer in the state of North Carolina. And as we get them into the pipeline, we we did some really great things a few years ago, which was we the job related physical agility test just became a marker. It wasn't a point that we could actually exclude people from coming on the department. uh the testing we have now with the written exam, it's it's standard and we use it um you know to gauge their their intellect or academic you know where they are so that they can do the work because the work's quite difficult. We have seen some trends in where they fall off and it's during the background. Unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with recreational drug use and it is something that is becoming more prevalent. We are working a little harder now. We are just rolling out a plan where actually one of our captains will be going out to college classrooms to talk to guess what criminal justice classes to let them know hey if you are interested in a career in law enforcement here are some things you should not do. You should not use drugs that are going to disqualify you from when you actually apply. Right? So this is something that we all have to see now. drug use in America, it is at an epidemic proportion. And we see it from the the conversations you had earlier about where it's taken folks from the unhoused to those that suffer some symptoms related to drug use. But yes, first marker is they disclose drug use at a point when they're in the background investigation and then they become disqualified. So as we get people in the door, that part's working. your advertising, your your benefits, all those things are working great to get people in the pipeline. But this is the first breakdown is that they disclose that they have used drugs either which either disqualifies them depending on what type of drug it is. The other part is that they do not tell the truth. All right. The police department has a polygraph section. You have to take a polygraph exam when you come in. Right. So, so this I mean we laugh and joke about it, but this is something where I want you all to understand if they disclose something and tell the truth about it, even though it's a mistake, we don't necessarily disqualify them. >> Okay? >> But when they're questioned during the polygraph process and they give a completely different answer and when they're questioned, they go, you know what, I lied about that. Or we can prove it. A lot of it has to do with like we we have had people that have committed crimes that have never been charged that they disclose it during that they disclose that they have committed crimes that we cannot hire. Our standards is exactly what the chief is saying. We have to maintain a standard so people have ethical and moral clarity because this job is quite a burden for those that are willing to carry it. But we have to make sure that those are the right people. I hope that answers your question. >> It does, especially for the recruitment. Are you able to speak a little bit about once folks are in and as we look at like staffing and succession planning where we're seeing our officers drop off or do we have a lot of experience? >> So, we've done better and and you're you're right. There is a point uh you have to remember a couple years ago we got hit with something no one expected. It's called the BL pilot program. They redid council members the entire basic law enforcement training program. added a over a month to it. Actually, a couple months. I know Chief Bryley was on that. So, it's two months. Yes, thank you, Chief. >> And the curriculum became quite difficult. And there was a skills portion. The skills portion. The driving portion became more difficult as you had to get more driving courses you had to pass. And the driving, think about all our young people. I have a 17-year-old. He doesn't have his license yet. He doesn't want to do his driving hours. So, think about that. We're coming out of a COVID generation where people did not get behind a wheel and drive, right? So, we had people that were failing the driving portions. We had people that were failing an incredibly difficult firearms portion, the shooting part of it. It was very difficult. It was a very cumbersome process to on board this training program. We had to get to a point where our traders became familiarized with the curriculum so that they could effectively teach it with confidence, right? And then also develop the plans within the academy itself. For example, we learned that we could actually do firearms practice during lunch, right? So we gave them the opportunity. We have the same thing for driving. So we are now coming out of a point where we did lose a number of recruits to some of the skills-based portion of the academy. firearms and driving. Now, we have been able to now mitigate some of those things. We have this recent class that came that's sitting in there now, the senior class. They have already passed all their firearms, which is fantastic. Now, the driving part we're still working with. We're looking at looking at some technology regarding a driving simulator so that we can >> I knew you were going to get that in. I knew you were going to get that. >> I'm sorry, Chief. I'm sorry. It's a driving. >> But I was talking to Council Member Mitchell, too, as well. some other parts to it like you know this year typically we depend on JAG funding to pay for our interns >> from the Bureau of Justice we did not get it so Chief Patterson had to had to find a way for us to support those interns and instead of having a normal class of 40 interns we had to reduce it down to 30 right and we have a number of applications that come in but I believe the department is now really looking at shouldering that burden where before we have we actually have capacity to handle up to 60 interns Right. Now, interns are great because to your point, it already familiarizes these young people, typically junior and seniors, that are rising to the point of I want a job so I can go right into the police department. We already pre-warned them with the knowledge that don't use drugs, don't get a DWI, don't, you know, engage in risky behavior that's going to cost you a job. So, we had to cut back on those numbers this year. So, >> yeah, that's our pipeline there, having those. >> Yeah. And it's been a high it's been we've had a lot of interns apply to the agency just so you all aware and they are working with us now for several years. >> Yes. Thank you DC Chery. Um that is very helpful as I think about the pipeline. And so my next question is about once they're in you're a sworn officer and you're growing through your career. What what are we seeing in terms of trends as far as um I'll say experience and growth through? Are we seeing a drop off of officers? So it was the reason I asked the question is because we often are in these conversations about neighboring jurisdictions and what they pay and it may be oh well maybe their starting pay is more but once you get to so many years of service it levels off. I'm curious are we seeing for any particular demographics of officers whether it's years of service whatever it is are we are we seeing any trends in terms of attrition? >> I'm going to ask DC because she has patrol services where she has the bulk of the officers. So you want to talk about that? Hi. Uh, good afternoon. Deputy Chief Riley over patrol. Um, one of the things that we look at and we see consistently is probably around that three to five year mark. Uh, where officers become either burnt out or stagnant in their current position. Um, again, most of them are on second or third shift pretty much going from call to call. And that's one of the reasons why one of the chief's priorities is our employee wellness. So, trying to put different things in place. So, cuz sometimes it's, you know, we do lose folks who um want to go to other agencies for a take-home car, uh a better schedule um that a smaller agency can provide them. Uh one of the biggest things that um we get a lot of feedback on um are the staffing pools for our special events. We're a large city. We recognize that, you know, as we bring events to our city, they have to be staffed officers. And so a lot of what I do at my level with my majors and my captains is we really push that down to the troops. And what we've worked on is uh making schedule adjustments to where, you know, we're letting folks know well in advance. Um because again, if you're an average police officer, you get weekends off three times a year. So out of a year, your rotation is three times a year. And so if you get a phone call on Wednesday saying, "Hey, we need you to work a Panther game this weekend for whatever reason, then that or Hornets." Yeah. That that can impact an officer's wellness and morale. And so we've tried to find ways where we provide that information well in advance. And so it's been something as simple as printing out game schedules for the entire year, doing say, "Hey, you you pick which weekend you want to work so that way you can control, you know, when you're going to be pulled on your day off." So that three to five year range trying to find ways to help them have a good work life balance because at the end of the day the the generation officers that we have now they value their time at home they value their time away from work >> as the chief said uh a lot of them are dealing with small many traumas every single day on on an average shift they're going to see things that most people don't see in their whole life and then they come to work and they do it again the next day and so we are as an agency have evolved so much to where it's like, yes, we understand that when you get your days off, we want you to actually have your days off and using specialized units uh to fill in some of those blanks. With Queen City Safe, for example, we don't pull any officers from patrol. They are still allowed to remain available for 911 call response and we pull all specialized units to work these operations across the city. Thank you so much for that. And my last question is just an observation to >> is it just me or am I seeing a lot more blue shirts? >> No, it's not your imagination. Yes. Okay. Um all the staff and I used to have white shirts. But one of the things I when I came in the door, I says, "Look, we're one team, one police department. We all need to look the same." And I think it really brings that focus that we are a team working together. >> It's better on the dry cleaning, too. And when we eat also >> that is so chief I would say welcome home. >> Thank you >> to the team. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. One of them you kind of answered but regarding artificial intelligence. I'll come back to that. I think it will be helpful and this will be for you and for manager Jones to provide us with a update on the grants that have recently expired or about to expire as we're getting as we're having this budget conversation so that we can get a real I real time idea of what funds are going to be anticipated with that initial grant investment and what the expectation is >> yes ma'am. >> I'm not co-signing on your additional funds and other things cuz we got to have a real conversation about are we talking about a tax increase which the city has not done in six years. It will be helpful to for everyone to know what grants have been exhausted or about to exhaust within this upcoming budget cycle so that we can try to allocate appropriately. When we first started the conversations August November 2025 regarding drones, we received a grant. I will say my former colleague, Council Member Brown and I were the two no votes. I have a lot of concerns about challenges with AI. But initially what was identified was that the drones could be used for SWAT standoffs, dangerous home screening, which made sense. I think, and you don't have to answer this right now, this could also be in a report to give us an idea of what you're anticipating for the drone usage. So while ago there was an article the article in the article it was noted that drones will be stationed on police and fire department rooftops and monitored by CMPD's real time crime center. >> Mhm. if that is still the case and to give us an idea of outside of those most dangerous because it would have been great if the incident that we had within the last few years where the drones were utilized to go in and assess the situation before we lost not only our family within law enforcement but our partner family members within law enforcement. But I want to just be able to clearly communicate because you did share, which I appreciate, that you're going to meet with community regarding how drones will be deployed. I'm wondering if council is going to be briefed prior to or if we're going to receive a update because a lot of times we receive a update on what has actually been done as a pilot. Mhm. >> And I think this is an opportunity for us to be briefed on the front end to be >> but but I do want to say this. It goes back again to what I said just a few minutes ago is I don't want to introduce anything into this police department or into this community that has not been tested that we don't have best practices around. I would share in Raleigh we had drones and I saw the value in having it particularly for safety. when you have that aerial view of somebody who might be carrying a firearm in a protest or have a sitting in a parking deck that's watching um activity happen during a protest and having those eyes in the air like that really really helps and being able to send that in before you send an officer as you alluded to that is good for us but we will certainly make sure that we have those um conversations and we get the information to you I think DC Bryley have we already started or had some conversations with the community even before I got here. >> Yes, we had some and it was it was really centered around the transparency portal. That was a really big piece for us um as far as the public facing forum where it shows flight patterns, flight locations, and the program that we're looking um to stand up is all tied to 911 call response. So, there is not a surveillance piece to it. Um the only piece that would have a larger impact would be for our large festivals and events um that we have when we have a lot of people in a small condensed area um where our real-time crime center can't see those cameras like the chief said uh weapons and crowds, things like that that we want to mitigate before, you know, something uh large happens. But mainly is the is a drone as a first responder. So responded to 911 uh priority 1, 2, and three calls for service, which again, one example um when we were testing out was a uh loitering call for service where the the people had already left. And so there was no need to send two police cars to that location on a side of a store where the people had already left and that freed up those two cars to go to two different calls for service. Uh whereas before that would have tied up two officers probably 15 to 30 minutes before they could have responded to something else. And manager you can help with this. There was do we ever deployed the commu the residents that will show up for traffic violations or traffic accidents. So, one of the challenges which we're seeing across the nation, you received the email the other day on a particular >> I'm not even going to bring we'll figure that one out. The challenge is across the nation you're having people part of an organized piece that will drive fast, jump in front of you, slam on brakes and or back up, they hit you. our officers, if they don't see the accident, you're having conversation about what happened. Are we looking at utilizing the drones to help with that piece and or tying into our cameras to try cuz that's one of those ways where thinking about what was just mentioned. If we don't have the officer go out, the time commitment of that, the drone could probably get there a lot quicker. And if it's already tied into the business cameras, then you can actually see what's happening cuz we're getting more incidences and or hidden runs, including unfortunately our colleague where your vehicle the vehicles end up total because of a hit and run or and or the person did not have ballot information, ball valid license, ball valid insurance. Trying to figure out how we're balancing that cuz we have so few of you. So, and as the city is growing, trying to get a better idea of how we might be able to utilize this technology and or if it's already being used in those ways. >> Sure. And I don't think we've had discussions on that, but we certainly will. We'll huddle and talk through and then we'll make sure we get a response to you. >> Thank you, Chief. >> All right. Next. And we got about six minutes until the next session. >> Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, team. Appreciate good seeing you again. Um, thanks for the great presentation. And I want to talk a little bit about um you know where resources are allocated on response times and making sure that we have an equitable approach and ensuring that resources are allocated in other parts of town that might not have those same resources. Right? So for example the entertainment district unit. I think that's a great idea. Uh I think there are different pockets across the city where there are maybe a strip or boulevards of of entertainment clubs, venues, etc. Uh and seeing how we can perhaps to your point you mentioned earlier operation safe season and operation uh Quinn City. Um making sure that it it is also replicated in that way. Um any thoughts on that? Well, as we continue to build a department and get staffing, then certainly we could have different teams um in those locations. Edu is focused in the uptown primarily in Southoun, but we also have our crime reduction unit. Those are other although their function isn't specifically working like with the nightclubs, but that is another resource that we can kind of move around the city to be able to do some things. >> Perfect. I also wanted to talk about CBP first to shout out the Eastway Division who uh did an incredible job. a Sergeant Decker, a Lieutenant Jenkins there, um, who I for an entire week, uh, would speak to them in the morning and in the evening to making sure that the protesters there, the young kids of immigrants were protected. And I think that really facilitated a lot of community building and trust uh, during that time. Um I I do want to be very clear. It was CBP here in November and ICE continues to just be in the community in general. Um you you mentioned that you would respond to a breach reported by our federal agents. I do given the recent events and I'm not trying to be political but given the recent events that took place in Minnesota given the taken of two American lives two US citizen lives how would or is there any conversations or appetites being discussed right now within the department about a response to breach reported by civilian caused by a federal agent. So, if I understand you correct, if we had a resident or citizen call us about a breach of the peace by CBP or ICE, would we respond or how would we respond? And so, we would respond like we would with any other incident. We're going there and in fact, we had that in November um where we had some incidents and so we would respond as we would with any member of our community um and we would work through it. Um, just last week, I think it was, we met with the FBI. Um, those are our partners, and we asked them if we were to have an incident here in Charlotte, who would be responsible for handling that investigation. You know, we're already trying to have that kind of information on the front end should we find ourselves in those kinds of situations. Um, it's hard to just navigate it totally, um, council member, without the cooperation, >> of other, you know, of ICE or Border Patrol. But my position is that we would respond just like we would for anybody else. We're not going to treat it any differently. And we are here to keep the peace. So if there's a breach of that, then definitely we're the party that's responsible for doing it. >> Thank you so much. I also want to better understand any vacancy levels between command leadership versus patrol officers. Um is there any discrepancies there? Anywhere where council can help in terms of that? um how many positions you have filled up for command and leadership versus uh patrol? >> Not really. I think we're aligned um the way we should be as an organization. I don't see a gap there with that. >> And then the other thing is um I was made aware of a culture and climate assessment. Have we gotten the results for 2025? >> If you're talking about the internal survey that I pushed out to our department, yes. Um we have that and like I stated before, we're going through that information because there's a lot. half of the department completed it which was really good and they were very candid with their comments and their um the things that they want to see in the organization. So we have our research and planning team that has provided that to me and we're just sifting through the data now. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> All righty. Next. >> Yes, >> Chief. I'm just going to echo a lot of other comments. Thank you for coming home. We're very proud of your leadership. And the second question is I can't wait to see uh on a serious note uh how we need to from a budget standpoint make sure you can fill those vacancies because it's very obvious to us that we've heard loud and clear from our citizens public safety is one of our top priorities. So looking forward to supporting you. >> Thank you. >> I want to ditto what um Mayor Perim said. I mean, we're really proud of you being able to come back home and I'm just really glad that we have you and our off working with us. But I do have one question and this is from my neighborhood because they tell me things like this. Um, I think that we have real concerns around speeding in neighborhoods, speeding next to schools, speeding everywhere. And I don't know what to do about it, but I do know that I see a lot of people driving four, you know, 400 or whatever. They're driving fast. And so, how do is there going to be an opportunity for something to take place for street um concerns that the neighborhoods have? I think um I hope Kimberly you will do this for me be because it's by South Park and it's you know all of the things that they're trying to do there that's doing going well um restaurants everything and all of that but the cars and the speeding are just really awful. >> Yes, ma'am. And I've gotten a lot of those complaints already around that and particularly those small little motorized vehicles that young people are riding on sidewalks and in the streets and then Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. All of the above. Um, we do have traffic enforcement team. Um, DC Bow Monkey, you want to talk a little bit about that? Um, and and mayor, I would say officially we haven't put a full plan together, but our traffic units are out all the time. Um, week after week trying to address um, some of these issues and um, DC balm, I'll let you talk. >> Yeah, mayor. Um, and council, thank you for having us today. So, I'm Brett Balamaki. I'm the deputy chief over special services. So, I have uh like our our motor units, the motorcycles, I've got our DWI task force, everybody that's focused specifically on traffic all fall under there. And so, just as an example, last week they were focused in the Providence Road area where they had generated several complaints that some had come through your teams and they wrote over 300 tickets. So, you know, it's it's really a collaboration. and Debbie Smith is consistently reaching out working on solutions as a partnership, the one Charlotte mentality and it's something that we're going to continue to focus on. You know, even people being in the roadway and in the medians, one of the very first areas that we did the one-step program that was a pilot was over in South Park because we had people that were just sometimes impaired, sometimes not, walking in and out of cars and in the roadway. And that was one of the areas that we're really just trying to reduce traffic fatalities, reduce accidents. I know um Liz Babson and her team have been working with us on initial discussions on some of the red light camera stuff to try to reduce speeds and and just improve safety overall. So, it's something we'll continue to be committed on. And if you want to share that specific area that you guys and your neighbors are seeing issues, we can obviously as we do, you know, on a weekly basis, be very responsive on making sure that we give it a lot of attention. >> Well, it has been an exceptional um work that we've seen. It's just so much that you have to do and I understand that. Um I won't probably talk to the neighborhoods about it. I think that it's really something that if you say that we can make it better, we've done all these crosswalks and everything, but that nobody seems to pay any attention on Fair View Road. >> Just so congested, you know, there's so many people and as people I think what did you say in your town hall? Uh, city manager 167 87 >> 57. >> All right. I knew it was a seven uh at at a day and we have so many people coming, you know, with two or three cars that it's just a lot more congested, but we're we'll continue to stay focused and try to make sure that we're all focused on vision zero. >> Thank you. >> Thank Thank you, Mayor. I I very much value the fact that you're one of my constituents and so please have your neighbors call me, email me. I please well I welcome them on March 12th. I welcome to hear from them but I I do want to piggyback on that very briefly. I wasn't going to comment because I think so much has been said and so much is is definitely on my heart as well how proud we are to have the the talent that we have in this room representing us on public safety. Um traffic concerns are definitely something I heard a lot on the campaign trail. I think there is a deep and abiding appreciation for the fact that when we are short staffed and you do need to prioritize things, sometimes traffic does need to fall on citizens to just, you know, do the right thing a bit more often. Um, all that said, you know, while I'm sitting here this morning, I've had two different requests from neighborhoods who want traffic calming. So, I think widening the lens with your experiences on what that actually looks like, working with our fire department to appreciate where speed bumps are actually not helpful and potentially are are a problem and and just it's it's a wide um it's a wide circle of interdependencies and and it's on us as representatives to explain that to people because a lot of neighborhoods do think okay well that's the that's the only tool they think exists around traffic calming. So, I just I want to welcome those conversations between you and S DOT around, you know, are are we repainting? Are we perhaps making some of our lanes not quite as wide so it's not as inviting to go as quickly uh down the street? Are we looking at our curbs? Are they are they so forgiving that you can take that angle a little bit faster than maybe you would have if you're going to bunk up your car a little bit? I mean, I just I think that there's a there's a creative approach to this that doesn't necessarily mean we just have to throw more officers at it because I get that there's we're just we're growing too fast and you do have to triage, but I I do appreciate what you do, but some creativity with C dot would probably be great too. >> Thank you for that, Council Member Owens. >> Great. All right. Uh let's give this group a another round of applause. Can I just close by saying thank you mayor, thank you council for your support of CMPD and we're hoping that you'll help us keep that momentum going that we have already started. >> Good deal. So let's take maybe two minutes to transition to this next group and just allow them an opportunity to >> Okay, y'all don't don't go too far away. Okay please. >> I'm in the south. >> Okay, I can see the South and Proidence. >> Thanks for joining us. >> Call me anytime. You know Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. No pressure. No pressure. I know the item on the agenda seems a little little bit ambiguous in terms of authority transition overview, but we've got some experts, some attorneys that are going to help uh explain what this agenda item is. So, I will turn it over to And by the way, we said we needed to congratulate the chief of police. You got a hell of an attorney as well. So, >> thank you. >> Go for it. >> Thank you, Miss C Eagle Pride. That's right. Thank you, Miss Campbell. Um mayor, city council, thank you for the opportunity to be before you this afternoon. Uh we're here to talk a little bit about the transition with the authority. And since the voters approved the referendum um late last year, city council has been a strong intergovernmental partner with the MPTA. This council has appropriated $4.3 million for startup cost. You've approved an interlocal support um management agreement with for the risk management services. And there's still much work to be done. The PAVE Act has a number of key components to ensure an orderly transition. And part of that, the clear goal is are two things. Compliance with the law and stewardship. And when you talk about stewardship, we're not just talking about dollars. We're talking about our people and the financial assets as well. So today we have with us attorney Katherine Claudeelter with Parker Partner with Parker Poe and she's here to discuss some of the key transition next steps that are common in this type of u transaction and we'll talk about questions as they come up that you all may have. And so we have not a ton of slides because we wanted to leave space for the conversation. But again, the goal is to outline the framework and for the key next steps and to create space for discussion for council. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Catherine. Thank you, Katherine. >> All right. I am here to give you all an idea of what it looks like to transfer an entire city department to a newly formed public body. Um almost all of what I will tell you is going to be general. Uh there are two reasons for that. First, the details haven't been worked out yet. they are going to have to come back before you all to have been worked out. You will have to approve what a transition and a transfer looks like. The second is that the Metropolitan Public Transportation Authority, the MPTA, is still being formed. It's still being set up. It is not a small task to set up a public body. That will not be the last time you hear me say that. So again I will say generally what kinds of um agreements we rely on in order to facilitate a transfer of a large number of assets, employees and operations. I can give you some examples and I will interuppers some details that we do think have been at least somewhat worked out or that we expect at this point. Still, this will be a somewhat unique situation. The biggest thing that you all have that a lot of other transfers or consolidations between local governments don't have is you have a statute that gives very specific details about what has to happen at the very beginning of a transfer process and gives you some timeline requirements. I'll take a step back and and recall the PAVE Act requirements just a little bit to make sure we're all on the same page. So, the PAVE Act, the state statute requires both the city and the MPTA to come to some agreements, and I'll get to that. But also think back through the PAVE Acts requirements on what the MPTA has to do between the time it was uh first created until July 1st, 2026. It's about 6 months. And that public body will need to do things like create all of their policies human resource related, operations related, um fiscal management related. They will need to name a finance officer. Uh by July 1st, in order to receive any of the state tax dollars, they'll have to create and approve a budget that's separate completely from an operations budget on which you all will also um provide approval. So all of that will be worked on from the MT MPTA side. In parallel, all of the details about what a transfer of those assets uh employees and operations, all of the details of those what that will look like will be worked out. So as those things happen in parallel, you're going to be talking about the transfer of ownership of cats assets. Well, first we have to get a good idea of what we all agree to as CAT's assets, which is undefined in statute. Um, you will have to discuss and agree on what it will look like for personnel to transfer from the cat's department to the MPTA. Um, how funds flowing from the state, which will start to flow to the MPTA on July 1st, will need to come to the city in order to cover things like debt service. That is protected in statute. Um, you'll also have to talk about things like how liabilities are are covered and shared, who gets keeps insurance on what assets, and you'll also need to talk through what and how you will have use agreements when the city still maintains assets that the authority will end up using. So, these things happen in parallel. What does it generally mean for a transfer? So we'll take a step back and have more of a highle overview. Know that a transfer almost always necessarily has to happen over a period of time, not at just one point in time. So there won't be a date that everyone looks to and says come that date, there'll be no assets of the city, there'll be no operations, there'll be none of that. It'll all transfer all at once. It's just not going to happen that way. It generally never does. There are a few different reasons for that. In the grand scheme of things, there are a lot of programs that are involved in running public transit that a a a public body acquiring assets, whether it's newly set up or already existing, has to make sure are consistent. Uh even things like the programs to register when money comes through, pay channels, things like that, all has to be consistent. Um, in terms of setting up a public body, the MPTA specifically, the MPTA will need to have benefit plans put in place before any employee can transfer. And that might take less time than it takes to pay off all the debt that has to be paid off for the big assets to transfer. So, you might have different points in time where different things can happen. I'm going slow down and talk through that just a little bit more. The city currently has outstanding debt that cannot transfer to the NPTA that's associated with cats. That debt can't transfer. Any asset that serves as collateral for that debt also cannot transfer. So the city will maintain some cat's assets for a long period of time longer than than employees might transfer over. So for instance, the MPTA, when the MPTA is set up and ready to operate and and have employees, it's important for employee retention that those employees go to their new place of business, learn the new policies earlier than maybe an asset can transfer. Let me give you a better idea of why. Some assets won't be able to transfer until 2031 at the earliest. There are other assets that will take until 2040 to come out of the debt period. So you're not waiting that long to transfer operations and employees. You will transfer those earlier. So they're going to be different points in time when you transfer different assets and different liabilities and operations. This is pretty pretty standard in transfers that I have worked with. Uh there'll be sometimes when an asset can't transfer because of outstanding debt. Sometimes the local government that's providing the assets hasn't finished its audits and you need to wait for that to happen until you can transfer an asset. But employees are ready to transfer and that's important for employee retention. How do you work through that? How do you make sure as you're getting ready to transfer certain assets uh all the employees, certain operations that that timeline you've agreed on is something you can hit and do successfully without adversely impacting operations. In in an agreement, you come to milestones that must be met in order for a transfer to happen. So these would be things like debt has to be paid off before the assets can transfer. Um a benefits plan, human resources plan, other human resources infrastructure has to be set up before an employee can transfer. You would agree to those milestones so everyone knows, okay, here are the target dates, but here are the things that must be in place before operations, employees, and assets can transfer. This is going to change over time. I've just told you that assets might not transfer until 2031. Some of them, some of them might have a longer run depending on the debt that underlies them. Um, and some of them might be ready to transfer much earlier. So, the way that you make sure that you can have a one master agreement and other changes is through a legal separation between at the beginning we will agree to what this transfer is going to look like. the milestones that we want to hit, the general dates we think are set, and then along the way, there'll be implementation agreements that might need to come back before you to make sure that we're transferring things uh in accordance with a manner that won't adversely impact operations and employees. Um, in pretty much all the agreements that I've been a part of, there's been one master agreement and then along the way at least two implementation agreements to make sure that as things are transferred, it's done in a way that won't ad adversely impact deadlines change. Um, some of the third parties that the MPTA will need to work with will change their deadlines and that will impact your deadlines. I'm going to tell you everything I just told you again in a visual in case you are a visual person. So we are currently at the very beginning of that red timeline. It's just a timeline. The green bubble is supposed to tell you how long it's going to take the authority to set up as a public body. Again, it is not a small task to set up a public body. So they will continue to need to pass financial policies, human resources policies, technology policies, um in incorporate new software into their operations all through a period of time that the transfer is going to take place. When the transfer period begins, we already know it has to be July 1st, 2026. That's that first big blue bubble. The other transfer milestones are supposed to just represent general timelines you might come to. There's nothing set in stone yet, but you can imagine that first transfer milestone might be when a human resources infrastructure is fully buil built out and operations and employees are able to transfer. That next milestone might be when the first set of assets stop serving as collateral for some of the debt and those can transfer and ongoing. At some point, you will get to a place where the last big asset transfers. the debt is gone. But you'll still need to have some long-term coordination between the city and the NPTA simply because there are going to be some assets that are going to be shared. There'll be assets where the city owns the property and maybe c the authority is leasing the property and so you'll have shared use agreements. You might do the same thing with employees who are giving some time to the departments. Again, on a high level, some of the factors that will impact how this transfer looks and the details about this transfer. The outstanding debt can't transfer between the city and the MPTA. Any debt serving as collateral cannot transfer. So, the city will have the assets and the debt for a longer period of time. The MPTA will need to meet certain federal and state requirements in order to be able to have the operations and the assets. Uh and again it takes a long time to set up a public body. Let me give you a few expected time points. I say expected because again these are not set in stone until you agree to them all except July 1st which is the required state law period when an agreement has to start. The MPTA and the city saying this is how we think a transfer is going to look. Here's our master agreement. Generally, if you're transferring employees and assets, there are two dates that are favorable, convenient during a year to transfer. The first is January 1 because of benefits. That lets employees start a new benefit program without interruption or or issues in their benefits plans. July 1st is another convenient transfer point because you're ending one fiscal year, starting the next. It helps for accounting. It helps for budget purposes. So in general, we expect that once the MPTA is able to set up its human resources infrastructure, its financial policies um and the other policies that need to be in place in order to accept operations and employees that that January 1st time frame is an expected time frame and employees might transfer. Certainly by July 1st, you would expect that operations would completely transfer. Most operations transfer with employees. You want the rolling stock, the computers that the employees use every day to transfer generally when the employees transfer. Again, I pulled out the June 1st, 2031 timeline just to give a sense of that's the first date that the debt becomes prepayable. One of the debts become prepayable. So that's likely the first time large assets that are securing the debt would be transferring. That is that is a longer time away than 2027. I think I've given you what to expect, but let me give you the high level of what to expect. Significant collaboration and coordination is going to be needed between now and July 1st between the MPTA and the city and after. There will be a lot of moving parts here. Even when a lot of the operations and the employees have transferred, there will be assets to collaborate over. Now, we expect to set out very clear milestone requirements in an agreement so that you all know when the MPTA is able to receive assets, operations, and when employees are able to transfer and when that just wouldn't be possible. That's to keep adverse impacts um from happening. Again, it's a period, not a point in time. Um, you will likely see a a transfer, a staggered transfer of assets when they come out of debt or as the debt can be prepaid, those assets would transfer. And there are other stakeholders involved, of course, the federal and state government being one of them and the other local governments around. So, there'll be a lot of conversations with those stakeholders as well. That's all I wanted to present to you all today. I know you all have a lot of questions and I know you're all exhausted. So, um, we are here to answer them if you have them. >> I know that was a lot of information and you probably have been getting this information over time, but I thought she provided a very succinct and concise uh, review of a lot of attention that has to be paid to this issue. You you all don't have a choice. This has to to happen and resources actually have got to be devoted from particularly a staff perspective coordinating with this new entity that is forming. So let's start with questions. >> Um the transfer of the employees is a particularly sensitive subject. Uh do we know what compensation levels will be there? Will they take their existing salaries with them? And related to that, can they still participate in the local government employment retirement system? >> It is a requirement of the PAVE Act that the MPTA um participate in the local government retirement system. So yes, for your last question, they will participate in that >> and they will take with them the benefits they've acred. So their status won't change for retirement. >> Yes. the the details of what compensation would look like, how certain postemployment uh benefits will transfer as well. Those are things that we won't have details about until the MPTA has has a plan um creates those plans and and provides compensation schedules. It is not uncommon in transfers for the transferring entities. So the the city in this case to insist on having discussions and understand what those compensations are and have that written into the agreement. So those are things that can be written out. They're not things that we can talk through until the NPTA has that information. >> So for example, we have a minimum wage of $24 an hour. Is that a negotiating thing where we would say to them we would like to see that travel with I don't know how many cats employees actually are at that level but uh it's not binding on the MPTA. Is that right? >> It's not binding on the MPTA uh Council Member Drift. But what I would say is that there have been a lot of robust conversations with even some of the appointed officials for the MPTA about what those compensation structures look like on the city side to prepare the way for the next steps. at this point they're hiring staff and getting their consultant staff up to speed on where we are. And so I have to say kudos to the the team for sharing information early with that that leadership team so that they could move forward with those types of plans. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for the the presentation. Uh very good information. Just a couple questions. So, uh, on slide seven, you you right there you have the, um, MPTA has established human resource support. Are they currently working on uh, their human resource um, policies? >> So, uh, Council Member Anderson, I would note that this is a plan for for January 1. They are of 27. They are not quite there yet. They are they are thinking through these pieces with the development of policies. Um hard stop the they are hiring consultants. That's part of that 4.3 that's been appropriated for them to hire consultants to help develop those policies. Much of what we are doing um includes sharing of our documents and how we do things here with the city in an effort to help facilitate their processes processes as well. I I I got you. I'm with you. But are they actively working on that? So, do they have um a legal team, a consultant team that is working on the revision of those documents? Um standing up uh versions of their HR policies. >> It is my understanding is they that they are not there quite yet. Okay. >> They have an attorney that they've hired for a limited purpose, but not full fully built out this part of the process. >> Okay. So, these dates that we're looking at, and I love your um wording of it that this is a plan, but are there are these dates a mixture of soft and hard dates or are these hard dates? >> Well, and I'll yield to Katherine just a moment that July 1st, 2026 is a hard date. um that we've got to we've got to at least have a a plan to move forward with some of these major steps. Uh Katherine mentioned just a moment ago how some of this will be uh implementation certainly implementation agreements that will follow suit and so that will allow for the timeline to be a little bit more fluid. But but again that July 1, 2026 is a hard date um based on the payback. But Katherine, if you'd like to add more. >> I think that's everything I would say. The one other thing I'd say is that that June 1st, 2031 >> cannot move up for the transfer of assets that are securing certificate of participation debt, cops debts. That's the first time very large assets could transfer assets like rolling stock, computer, other small assets might be able to transfer earlier. >> Okay. And then the current uh MPTA, do they have a funding source outside of the dollars that we as a council voted to provide? Is there another funding source? >> No, Council Member Anderson, they do not have a a funding source at this time. Certainly, they're anticipating the the tax to come in soon, but right now the 4.3 is the limited amount. So, so given that given that position and I thought that was correct, just wanted to validate it. Um, I believe we should really be leaning in to um these beginning stages of corporation development, right? So if if they haven't started working on their HR policies and beginning to codify them and we are effectively their only funding source, I think we should have a very strong position and in how those policies are developed, city manager um just my just my perspective especially because our our our human capital is being transferred over um and it secondly I I believe it I'm not sure if you already have this but because there as you have on slide five this window of transfer is over many years but in particular some big some of those big blue bubbles are really important in the beginning I believe we should have a a multidisciplinary um trans transition team internally to be working on these things and advising um I think that would look like help to the authority if we we could certainly offer that because we have that developed muscle of having operated you know for so many years. Um and we are the funding source of the sole funding source for the moment. The the other question I have is um for on this slide and and I can appreciate what you said about June 1 3031 that from a cop's perspective certain assets can't transfer but do we have some idea of the percentage of assets that will be transferred over these uh transfer milestones so you know will 50% of the of the of our assets be transferred you know in July by 2027 or does it get smaller? Does it get does it ascend or descend? You understand what I'm saying? >> I do. I don't have specific percentages for you, but I think I can give you an idea a bit. So, the assets that would transfer earlier are going to be assets that could be either um determined to not serve as collateral for any debt. >> Yeah. >> Uh which will take some forensics to make sure we're accurate before we transfer anything. for uh coll assets that are serving as collateral that you can get released from the debt. In order to do that, you have to have a valuation of all the assets and it has to be some amount of the value that doesn't isn't needed to cover the remaining debt that can then transfer. So um given that from what I understand in the conversations that we've had so far a significant amount of the assets are are covered by debt or serve have been purchased using federal or state dollars. This is another thing I want to talk about. Um the the majority of the assets I think it's fair to say will not be transferred early when the operations transfer. Those will be the smaller dollar value assets. It's probably also a smaller amount of assets. your cars, your vehicles that are used, your equipment that's used for um going out and repairing, and then your computers, things like that, smaller dollar value and a smaller um number of assets. So, in addition to the debt, the other thing that the city will need to make sure of is that none of the assets are covered by other agreements like federal grants always come with agreements, state grants, DOT always come with agreements. And most of those, all of them require the the city to get permission from the state or federal government to transfer those assets. That'll have to get worked through. That's not expected to be as long maybe as the the debt payoff, but that's another another thing that will have to be worked through. So, to answer your question again more specifically, the the smaller number of assets will probably transfer first. Those will all be assets that are used during operations that the employees use. Um, and generally that's so you don't have an employee of the MPTA using equipment daily that is an asset of the city. The there's just policy overlap questions, there's insurance overlap questions. It's easier to transfer those things, but the bigger value assets are not going to transfer until much later in the process. >> Okay. Um, just last two points. I know there's a five-year window from when we actually began this agreement to begin the repayment of certain dollars. I believe city manager, I might be getting that wrong. Um, but it would be really interesting to see how that overlays and works with these implementation agreements. And lastly, I would just say I I think it would behoove both us and the authority um to to um solidify firm up these dates sooner rather than later. So certainly um a human capital transfer date should be a hard date that we're working toward because once it's a hard date then everyone has to be prepared in order to do so. Thank you. If I may just share one thing quickly to to those earlier points, council member Anderson, I I want to want to share with you that city manager has worked very intentionally with the team to build a transition team internally um that is made up of multi-disciplinary groups to ensure that on the city side we're prepared to engage with the MPCA in a meaningful way and share information early and quickly so that the conversation can continue to happen. And so that hasn't been by happen stance and I think there have been some fruitful conversations happening. I'll give a couple of examples. We have um been providing board support for the authority um both with drafting helping to draft some of their initial documents. Of course they have outside counsel to help review that but we've been in those conversations. I know that the manager's office has been intentional with sharing a lot of the data to help inform some of those questions. Another for instance u when it comes to employee benefits right we want to make sure that those employee benefits are handled in an appropriate manner those marketplace considerations are very timesensitive and so those are just some quick early examples of how those communications have hit the ground running. I think once those consultants are in place and some employees are hired um those will continue. So, um, in private practice, I've done things very similar to this, but definitely not of the complexity because I haven't had the overlay of municipal debt and just some of the complexity. So, again, my my hat is definitely off to y'all as as you go through this process. Can you speak a little bit? Is the MPTA going to be set up as an entity that cannot take on the kind of debt that currently is is held? And thus, that's why we need to hold it for the long period of time. there's no ability for them to assume it even if we are to get federal and state approval. And then secondarily, is there then a sense of of you know they will have constraints because of the way they are set up that they will not perhaps have access going forward to some of the same types of financing that the city has been able to avail itself of. And then I have a followup to start there. >> All right. I'll take your question in pieces and I'll start with their authority, the MPTA's authority to uh enter into financial transactions like the ones that are outstanding. So the le they have the legal authority. They are a public body and the payback gives them the legal authority um to enter into the the same kinds of transactions that the city now has related to cat's assets. The reason why the debt can't transfer isn't related to their authority. It is related to two things. one the debt instruments themselves say you cannot transfer this debt. The second is that the pay act actually also says the debt cannot be transferred. U there is a layer though that that is um that impacts the MPTA's ability to um finance certain projects that goes beyond just their authority to do so. Uh they will be a local government that has a bond rating just like the city does. They will just like a person opening a new credit account, right? When they turn whatever age they decide to to enter in that fun world, um they'll have no history of a credit. Um they will have to build up that history. They might not have the same access to the bond market like the city does. Uh but that's a layer above their legal authority. It's more of a practical issue about how expensive it is for them to access the same markets. Well, and and that was somewhat where I was going is whether we could anticipate that, you know, when we get to end of this that we would still need to perhaps serve as a guarantor or be, you know, as as they sort of get more of a track record behind them, what that interaction between the city and the MPTA will be. So, that's just I just wanted to level set a bit. And then I wanted to follow on the the talent that we have in talent retention has been an issue that I've seen in corporate M&A where there is a long transfer process or there is a cumbersome and perhaps u misunderstood or or not fully trusted process. Are are we in a position where we're able to make some some retention payments or are we being thoughtful about the talent that we've got in cats and not losing that? I assume the answer is yes, but if you could just kind of give me some comfort on how we're going to retain people during whatever process this undertakes. >> So, so I'll echo something that Mr. Manager had shared um somewhat as marching orders for our team as we began this work and that is um to to plead with people first and be intentional about how we we manage the work. And so when it comes to what those next steps look like, we've been talking about communicating as early as possible once we have clear clear timelines. Part of that is communicating with our partner, the MPTA, as they have as they develop their readiness for these transition conversations. But um I wanted to start with that's the north star. I know that manager Jones is here and I I want to yield to him to to talk a little bit more about that. But that is a clear a clear objective that he gave us as we began this work. So, I totally agree with the city attorney. There's I I would call it their three buckets, if you will, or three layers. Absolutely positively. These 600 plus employees are are number one. I mean, they've been with cats, many of them all their career, and we're not going to do something to negatively impact them. Uh, number two, we have to, Matt, this is for you. We have to protect the finances of the city. Um, Council Member Owens, you weren't around a few years ago when certain things happened and it became very clear that the city backed operated cats and the city also backed the debt for cats. So, we did some things like we had to amend the interlocal agreement and things like that. So this pave act is so important because it took care of a bunch of those issues that made the city a bit concerned about having somebody else operate a a um transit system and then um the city back the debt. Um and the third piece um would be we want to make sure that the authority is successful. It doesn't benefit any of us if the authority doesn't come out of the the blocks successful. Um, what's really, really, really, really, really important is that we pull together a great team. Having Katherine and Parker Poe, having the city attorney and her team, um, it's very important that the MPTA also pulls together a team, right? I mean, it's super important the dependence on CAT's employees. I while we're doing a bunch of things, it's really important that they get their general counsel squared away. they make sure that they have somebody who's a transition um manager for this. And those are the kinds of things that that I think super important. Another thing that's that I think is really important is it's very clear in the I'm sorry, it's very clear in the pay act um in this legislation that the tax levy will be July 1 of 2026. So you guys help me out. Let me make sure I'm not going out on the ledge here. That means the current article 43 is going to make its way over to the authority. That's the half centin sales tax. >> Yeah. >> And the article 34, the 1% sales tax is going to make its way over to the authority. We're fortunate to get 40% of that back, the city and the towns. So, I wouldn't be too wrapped around the axle about this $4.3 million. We're not going to do anything if we have those three criteria to protect our employees, to protect the finances of the city, and to make sure that the authority comes out of the blocks going running smoothly. We'll make sure what is needed for the authority to be set up um is available. The thing that's really really important, there are some things going to cost the city that's more than what's in the budget now and we fully expect to be reimbursed for those costs. So that that's kind of and I wish we could give you a a a more definitive schedule. Uh if it were two months ago, we may have been s we may have So think about it this way, too. all the back office support that KZ has been receiving from the city goes away. >> So, they have to set up their own accounting, their own HR, their own IT, and we're going to try to do that in a way that uh is efficient, that's effective, that hits those three principles that I just mentioned. But this is really, really, really big, and it's never been done before. >> Not like this. like this. Okay. >> Like this. >> I'm with the act. >> All right, Miss Mayfield. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Miss Mayfield. >> You going to let Okay. Thank you. Just a quick question. Have we I Let me rephrase that. Have you all identified what if any employee absorption is going to need to happen for those current cats employees that will not be going under this new authority? >> So as of March 2nd uh today the concept is cats as an entity moves over to the authority with all of its employees. >> I had a clarifying governance question more so of you know does the authority report to the city or the state? So an example you had MTA in New York City report to the governor and the state right not New York City. How who were who's the authority over the authority is essentially my question. >> So the MPTA is a separate body and they they do not report to the city. They report I mean they they're they report to the state so to speak but they are an entire entity local governmental entity just like the city except you know there are certainly nuances with the municipalities versus authorities but they do not report back to the city on on any sort of affairs. So the only reason I asked that is just to be very clear. >> This council cannot make decisions on behalf of the authority except when it comes to this transfer process. >> That's correct. That's correct. Okay. >> 14. >> Well, we have appointments. I'm sorry. We do have appointment power. >> That's you do have appointment power. Yes. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Go ahead. M >> just a clarifying question. When you said they report to the state, >> you might >> just a clarifying question. When you said they report to the state, >> help me understand why that's a a true statement. >> They have compliance requirements that the state by by way of the payback. I mean, that that is the extent of it. Much like the city of Charlotte has its responsibilities under state statute, etc. >> Okay. So, that's not reporting. That's just compliance. >> Compliance. complaint is a better word >> because they're independent authority to >> they're an independent authority. Okay, sir. >> Mfield did you want? >> It was actually clarified the attorney caught it. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> I'll say that in the mic because I think I was a little bit off mic. Um you all do have appointment authority to for the members and their term limits and so forth. So that is the nexus between city council and the authority. >> Okay. Um >> any other question? >> Any other questions? >> Good job. >> So you get an opportunity to exhale for like almost two hours. Yes ma'am. >> Microphone. >> Thank you. I need a mic. So, um I just wanted to um let everyone know about Renee Johnson's family issues. I went to visit her yesterday and um she was like, "Well, I should come to the retreat." I said, "No, baby. Uh-uh. No, you're not doing that. You've got to do this." her husband had open heart surgery and he was m he came home yesterday I think yesterday and I just wanted to um make that I think when we have people together like this and we're talking about a team that no matter what we're doing we're going to respect and honor that um his mother has come down to um help Renee um Bishop is running up and down the stairs doing just fine and um I think a card or something like that. I don't know that you need to make phone calls, but it would be nice to send a note or perhaps provide some food or something that would work for her and would be accessible. I I just want everybody to know that. So, if you can think about it, if you have the time or the opportunity, um please give her keep her keep her in prayer along with her husband as he goes through his recuperation. Thank you very much. >> That was amazing, Mayor. That's that's what teams do. >> I just want Thank you, mayor, for bringing that up. Uh I've had uh several conversations with Renee over the weekend. Uh and as you know, um Bernard was one of the biggest supporters of hers. Um and she talked about how Bernard was the chef, the driver and nanny. So I have started um meal train for her and she did share with me that would help a great deal. I have sent you all a link if you can sign up for a day or two uh because the recovery is going to be 8 to 10 weeks long. Uh, so whatever you can do to support the family, it would certainly go a long way. Thank you. >> Thank you all. Um, Vice Mayor or Mayor Pro Tim. >> She just told me I'm wrapping. I I don't know about wrapping it up, but uh I'm just going to say two things uh to the presenters who are here and to council. I thought this was a great day one for all of us. And so tomorrow as we go to day two, we do have one important uh responsibility we have to do that is to vote on our priorities tomorrow. And as we started today talking about a team, I would like for you all to come in tomorrow in that same mindset with a team. So with that in mind, when you leave today, you're going to get your swag that I hope you all will wear tomorrow. Um Lana, don't look at me that way. So, so as you go out, please uh pick up your bag and wear your swag tomorrow. So, we >> What say Joy? >> I said we're going to match. >> We going to match. At least 12 at least 12 of us will will match tomorrow. And Malcolm, no, it's not purple and gold. Malcolm like, I ain't wearing no purple and gold. It's not red and white. A >> it's it's uh the city colors of uh of green and white. So, okay. So if you want to you going to be my V. So you got a beanie. >> So >> beanies tomorrow, >> huh? >> Yeah. >> You have your jacket, >> Victoria. >> Thank you. >> You have a a long sleeve shirt, Dimple. >> Ah, sweet. And and last but not least, >> you have sweatpants. All right. You You happy, Lana? So, I look forward to seeing everybody in our team outfit tomorrow. Okay. Be be before you all leave, you've you've got you've got a meeting. Don't forget you got a meeting at the government center starting at 6:00 267. And there's dinner dinner dinner before and I just need to acknowledge just one staff person that I did not acknowledge and that's Julia Martin who has >> I mean weekends and the whole nine yards. Thank you so much >> and and Amanda and everybody that worked on this for this day. Come back ready for tomorrow. But you got to get through tonight. >> Thank y'all. See you down. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey Heat. Hey, hey hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat up. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey hey. Heat. Heat. I think. Heat. Heat. Rain down. Do you know the ground? Heat. Heat. Hey, hey hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey hey. I don't Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey hey hey. I'm Heat. Heat. Down. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. D. Hey. Data. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey hey hey. Down. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. High heat. down. La. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Everything. Heat. Hey, Heat. It's Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. All right. So, um All right. I want to um I'm Vi LaZ, mayor of the city of Charlotte, and I want to go around and have everyone in the dis um ex introduce themselves. We'll start with our clerk, >> Stephanie Kelly, city clerk. >> Andrea Leslie Fight, city attorney. >> Good evening, Dimple Edge at large. >> Good evening, Victoria Watlington. I have the pleasure of serving you as a member at large. >> Joy Mayo, District 3. >> Good evening, everyone. James Smith, mayor pro Tim. >> Thigh LS, mayor. >> Marcus Jones, city manager. >> Kimberly Owens, District 6. >> Malcolm Graham, District 2. >> Lana Mayfield, council member at large. JD Masa, District 5. >> All right. So, I think that include that includes everyone that's here. Um, so I want to um start our meeting with this is the March 2nd meeting of the Charlotte City Council which is reconvened to discuss the NC DOT 77 expansion project. Before we continue, I want to briefly share that the Secretary Johnson and I have had several conversations and he and his team have been working diligently on a number of per important steps. Secretary Johnson will be coming to Charlotte to host small groupoup meetings with homeowners and neighborhood leaders along the I77 corridor and those meetings have already been scheduled. He also shared his community engagement strategy which includes establishing a community engagement center that will serve as a resource for our community. A place where residents can access project information, ask questions, and discuss opportunities for the community enhancements. Office hours will be published in April. NC DOT is also continuing to evolve options for community benefits which include feedback from community engagement section sessions. And this afternoon, Secretary Johnson's office announced that the RFP issue deadline will be extended to June. This will provide more time for community feedback and to take place prior to initiating initiating the RFP. This continues to be steady de deliberate work and we hope that we can encourage all of our residents to participate. There will be more discussion in committee this week about the project. However, I'd like to have council have the opportunity to provide additional comments about these development thoughts for before we be move forward again for any questions available. So, let's see who's stepping up right now. >> All right, Mr. Graham. >> Thank you, Madam Mayor, and and good evening, everyone. Last October, U. Council member and Mayo and I attended the the initial press conference uh where NC do announced their um two design options for the expansion of I77 South. Uh and since then I've been actively engaged in for a wide variety of reasons um the progress made thus far. I I I think for me there are a number of guiding principles as I think about how we should move forward and and how I'm making decisions regarding this issue. Uh one, I accept the fact that we can't move the highway. The highway is there where it's at. I accept the fact that history matters. And that's why I had Tom Hatchet, a historian, come to my town hall meeting to explain the history of displacement of African-American communities and the hurt um and the um anguish that that community still feels today from that decision. And that's why community engagement matters really really u a lot because of that history. Um, I went on I 77 South today to go to Valentine. Um, as usual coming from 85 to 77 South, um, I I was stuck in traffic by the Lel Street exit. Uh, cleared my way to the Morehead Street exit and I sat there again from Morehead to Westinghouse Boulevard. I think we all can agree uh that there's an issue with um capacity uh on the highway and that something has to be done. Uh, I accept that as a fact. It's the how that we're trying to answer tonight. The design matters and uh impact no matter what design that is chosen, whether it's the first option that they threw away, the elevated option that they're currently considering, or even an alternative option, there will be impact. So as we begin this discussion, this is important to acknowledge from my perspective and meeting with NC DOT for the last three weeks um that they recognized that the community engagement efforts were not sufficient. They have acknowledged the need to improve on how they engage shifting from talking at residents to truly talking with them. That commitment is in and improved. Engagement must remain central as a part of the this project as it move forward particularly for communities in the historic West End that have experienced the consequences of past decision. For the last last week, NCDO meet NC DOT has met with me as well as other council members to discuss the project giving us an opportunity to ask questions uh and explain certain ration. Uh the mayor has indicated that NC DOT has agreed to open a community resource center along the corridor. The s the center will serve as a consistent accessible location where residents can receive information, ask questions, review plans, and engage in ongoing dialogue about the project. This is a critical step towards transparency and sustain engagement. They've also have retained help in terms of um identifying opportunities to really understand the Charlotte community in general and specifically issues relating to the African-American community. They did what we asked them to do last week um which was to delay issuing the first draft of the RFP until June 2025 to to allow for an extended listening period. We have committed that the four shortlisted developers will come directly into the community to meet with residents. This ensures that as design concepts are developed for consideration, they are shaped with community input in mind, not after the fact, but during the design process itself. Secretary Johnson, as the mayor indicated, will be in town this week to meet with council members as well as community leaders to listen and learn firsthand about the concerns that we have raised. This provides another opportunity for direct dialogue at the highest level of state transportation leadership. And lastly, the city council transportation committee will meet this Thursday to receive further updates from NC DOT, reflect on what we hear tonight and this week, and determine how we should direct our carpool representative to clearly communicate council's concerns and priority as this project moves forward. and summation. NC DOT has agreed to strengthen community engagement, to establish a resource center, to delay the first draft of the RFP, to provide direct leadership engagement, and this council again will will provide oversight and direction uh as relates to our transport transportation committee meeting this week. uh again in formulating clear direction for our city's corporal representative. Lastly, uh NC DOT has committed to work with this council to address community benefits, economic and community investment, continue to explore options for a community benefit and the $100 million regional bonus allocation. There are a number of issues that we have to do deep dive over over the next 45 90 days to ask a lot more questions. But I think this is a reset uh a level setting um for engagement from NC DOT uh with the community. Well, actually and then I'll I'll I'll give up the mic. Um, our relationship with NC DOT matters not only because of the I77 south expansion, but there are a number of other projects within the city of Charlotte that we're working with them to expand roads and Mount Allen Lake or Steel Creek and other areas of the city that we have to have a partnership and a relationship that matters. Does not mean that we won't agree to disagree. Uh, I think both options kind of sucks and I'm looking forward to working with the developers that will be engaging the community about what we can do to minimize impact for um, um, communities of color, black and brown, without destroying our skyline, right? Um, and providing a number of other issues related to poll pollution and congestion, etc. And so I think they have listened um to council members over the last week and a half. These are small steps. These are small steps along the way. There's certainly a lot more work to be done. We're not going to solve all the issues of the highway tonight, but certainly I think there's a commitment at least from my part in talking to some of my my colleagues to really um engage where we can uh to protect the interests of the citizens of the city of Charlotte on this particular project. And so uh um I will continue this week to um listen. I will continue this week to meet with the secretary when he comes to town. I think we're meeting with him uh on Wednesday. Uh I look forward to the transportation committee meeting on Thursday. Uh and um this is a um a marathon, not a sprint. And so every day counts. Every day matters. Um I certainly um have heard loud and clear from the residents of district 2 in reference to their particular feelings of it. I agree with them. Um but as a council member now I have to balance the scales and I certainly stand with my colleagues and my um constituents on this issue that hopefully a better design can come out of the process because the elevate elevated design from my perspective still does not meet the moment >> thank you madam mayor. Um I would agree with pretty much everything Malcolm says. and I work closely on this project as it affects district 1, two, and three um extensively. Um I know that NC DOT has made some progress about not um affecting homes in historic Weston. We still have concerns with homes that would be impacted in Wilmore. Um so that that is something that we're continuing to chat about. How do we minimize impact on that neighborhood as well and those residents? Um, so we do know that NC do is continuing to work on that design and they're saying that the current design is about 10 to 15% done. It would change based on whatever you know the firms are actually going to be doing and that they could have more innovation because of those firms experiences. So I do look forward to once some of those firms are getting more detailed into this process for them to really start having some of those conversations with community members and they have um agreed to do that. um NC do has said that the um actual firms that would be you know in competition would meet directly with the communities and I think that's imperative that they hear firsthand from the communities and not just from NC do or the consultants that NC do has um so that they can hear directly about the challenges and pain points of the community so that they can maybe think of some innovation to minimize that. Um, and Malcolm or Council Member Graham and I talked often about NC DOT showing their homework. Um, and that is something also that we talked about on Thursday when we met with NC DOT again. Um, and something I would continue to ask them. So instead of us instead of just saying no, we can't go underground, my question has continued to be why not? How much would it cost? Um, I think that we need to be upfront with people in our community about the why and not just say no. So those are the things that I'll continue to challenge in DOAT um and whoever they're employing uh to make sure that we are providing our community with sufficient answers and alternatives um because you know we've seen that there are some challenges with this design and in order for that to actually change we need to be having those conversations with people not just talking to them. Um so those are my main big points. Um, I think the community benefits offers an interesting perspective. We know that the $100 million additional aotment has always been on the table. Um, what I have also challenged NC DOT is not just to use the strategic investment area plans for some of those community benefits, but to explicitly work with those affected areas to make those decisions. I don't think that city staff need to be the only people who make the decisions about the community benefits of those uh neighborhoods that would be impacted. So that would be my other challenge. But I think that we have made some progress. Um I think that we still have work to do. Um and looking forward to the secretary being here to continue that conversation so that we can meet the needs of our community. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um our next um speaker is um Council Member Kimberly. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um so, a couple of thoughts on the situation. I I um am really deeply appreciative of the fact that NC DOT has has moved the RFP deadline. I I think it is um much more uh transparent to these neighborhoods that they're not being asked to to back eggs out of a baked cake. Um that they are actually going to be able to offer some some input and some insights before we are at a point of no return with respect to the RFP. And I I do appreciate that. Um a couple of thoughts that I have on the situation. I I do believe more time is necessary. I'm cautiously optimistic that a lot of the data that I would like to see and that I think the community deserves to see around how much benefit there is to Charlotte um with these managed lanes. I believe that exists because I know that we have um you know been working on this project for for a good long time and that the decision makers years prior to me made those decisions and I just am asking us now to to be transparent and again to to council member Mayo's point to to show the work. I would like to appreciate um whether we have some additional ability to augment the list of things that CRPTO is asking to have in this contract. You know, as I look at the contract and as I answer questions of my constituents, I don't have the facility with the data to be able to say what success looks like. I I don't appreciate what quantum of of predictive um uh travel we are we can envision having with success. How much does it improve the lives of the people who don't take the toll roads? And again, I think 77 North can can provide us some of those insights. And I've had folks offer to to give me some some uh tours of that. I'd like to appreciate a bit more what um comfort we will have because a 50-year relationship is a very long relationship. What comfort can we have with respect to a transfer of the project to another provider? Uh you know, I understand that they're also supposed to be providing um a number of services along the road for that 50-year period. How much do we have the ability to control that? and and I just I'd like to understand our leverage a bit more so that the benefits then math out to me. Um the other part of this that I will say though the the community benefits side and um I've described myself as a storyteller before so I hope that you guys will endure me. But I um I looked at this booklet of things that um are some of the community benefits and I'm really glad that we're going to have an opportunity to engage. But the first thing that came to mind when I saw, you know, the community history preservation program that we will, you know, take pictures or I mean, this is again, this is something that worked on I26 that's being profered as perhaps a model for this. Um, it reminded me of when I was trying to get my grandmother to move into assisted living and I would show her the brochure and I would say, "Oh, you get to do arts and crafts and you're gonna have a a daily playtime with a puppy or whatever." and she would say to me, "But I but I want to be home. I want to be in my home." And um because it was the right thing to do, we moved her to an assisted living. But she was right. She lost a lot in that move. She lost the church that was across the street. She lost the neighbors that used to check in on her. It was not just a house. It was a home. And I really am hopeful that with the passage of time and the historic experience that we've had with displacing families that we understand that at a fundamental level and are very appreciative of how we're communicating benefits such as, you know, an ability to have your own history that you can access online and see pictures of your old house. Um, the part of this that's probably most exciting to me, and I would love to understand better how it played out here, is on the acquisition fairness program. There's a there's a sentence here that says, "Owners may be eligible for additional mitigation payments to address property values impacted by previous public acquisitions or zoning changes." That's a big sentence to me. That is a sentence that does seem to recognize that sometimes we are going back to the well a second and third time with respect to these communities. And it does acknowledge for me that some families have had generational impact by the decisions that we've made that were in furtherance of the greater good. And so I just I want to hold space again for a process. I'm hopeful that this 90 days is enough time to beef up our story of the case on on how good this is going to be for our community, but also to have legitimate engagement with people and and be deeply appreciative of the fact that we are asking people to give up much more than houses. So, I appreciate the opportunity to be heard. Thank you. >> All right. Who's next? >> JD. J, you're next. >> Thank you, Madame Mayor. Thank you, colleagues. Um, thanks to everybody that's attending today. Um, I do appreciate the good a good faith delay that the Department of Transportation has issued. I think it's a good step forward. Um, I will say there are some things that are are still missing that I think could help us develop a plan that is more people first and community oriented. um such as you know evaluating all alternatives to toll lanes. Um as I said before I don't think toll lanes are the answer and as council member Mayo uh referenced you know rather than having the discussion of well this can't happen or we can't do this. We should have the conversation of what we can do and exhaust every possible option. Um I and and I and I raised that because it was a central concern raised by nearly 1300 plus residents in our inboxes, right? As well as everybody that came out last week um talking about this and and I and I also think it is uh something that has an appetite of majority of council as we expressed last week. Um, and I also think we need to take a step forward of an independent review of these alternatives before discussing p before further committing public funds to this project. Um, I I I agree with council member Graham that we need to also look at the breadth of the design and the impact that design has on residents. um and just uplifting the need for an inclusive, transparent and rigorous public feedback comment uh uh period. Uh I think it's very essential for us to do that. How does this community center that was uh stated in the statement? What does that look like? Who are we reaching out to? What does that outreach look like? How are we including every voice, particularly the working parents that work from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. who might not have the luxury nor the privilege or time to come to the government center or uh come to these council meetings or any other public comment period? How are we reaching the folks that fall through the cracks? Um, and I also want to point this out, which is, you know, there are some trends across the country of elevated highways being torn down, but also we are a city that's moving forward. We just invested our uh and and spent a lot of money uh private partners spent a lot of money on passing um the sales tax that will help invest in our public transportation um and the referendum of the sales tax. You know, for me it feels like a living contradiction investing in public transit but then going ahead and enabling car dependency by elevating a highway. Um there's for me true concern about induced demand. Adding highway capacity, even toll uh lanes, can encourage more driving over time, which in turn can undermine our climate goals that we have set out as a city, as a council, reduce long-term congestion um benefits, as well as completely backtrack last year, which we, you know, folks did a lot of work on the ground to have this sales tax pass to invest in buses, to invest in rail, to invest in sidewalk. walks and and bike lanes and to make sure that we become a city where we can create a 10-minute neighborhoods, yet we are wanting to create a structure that increases increases car dependency. It just doesn't make sense to me personally and I just want us to think of ways of how can this project incorporate the goals we have set out as a city through our climate goals, through our public transportation goals. Um, and as well as as we all have spoken around this uh room, recognizing the pain and history of black and brown neighborhoods being divided by highways. You know, there are cities right now working on connecting neighborhoods. You know, why aren't we talking about that as well? And so, and and exploring every viable option rather than elevated toll lanes. I I I said it last week and I'll say it again. I sincerely think toll lanes are not the answer. If anything, they divide communities more than unite them. And again, I understand the demand our city faces with having 157 plus people move into the region each and every day. But right now, I'm concerned about the people that currently live here, not the 157 people that are moving here today or tomorrow or the day after that. We need to make sure that this city is sustainable and healthy and works for the people that currently live here before we can start talking about how it's going to work for the people that don't live here yet. Thank you, Madam Mayor. >> Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Councilwoman who's Mayfield. Sorry, >> someone that girl. >> Thank you. Sorry, >> mayor. So, >> in along the same line as my colleague, I had shared previously. I do have concerns. Yet, y'all know I love to go online, do a quick Yahoo search. I'm not a fan of Google, so I'm still I'm keeping Yahoo around. So when you just do a search on cities that may have removed when we think about examples of cities that have removed elevated highways Seattle Washington the Alaskan Way vioaduct that was an elevated waterfront freeway demolished in 2019. We're talking about potentially supporting uh long-term investment. Portland, Oregon, Harbor Drive, one of the first freeway removals in the US, Riverside Elevated, limited access highway removed. That was removed back in the 70s, but was replaced with the Tom McCall waterfront park. You think about years ago when Deborah Campbell was our planning director and we took the trip to New York and that helped to create part of the design that we now have in Southounian when you maneuver as far as placemaking. Rochester, New York, San Francisco, California, Boston, Massachusetts Soul Korea Montreal Canada, Providence, Rhode Island, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and there are cities right now that are considering and or planning removal. So that information, I think if we're going to have a balanced conversation in community, then all the information should be provided. We need to be looking into communities that have seen the value in removing or disinvesting. We need to know what are the legal implications if this were not to be successful. It was asked earlier which we know 50 years goes by and a snap. Ask any of us that's over 50 and thought we were going to live forever when we were in our teens or early 20s. We thought we had the world in front of us. 50 got here quicker than we thought. What happens on the back end? How does that actually benefit community? Again, if we want to create more public transportation options, what would it look like if we did actually commit consistently to that designated bus lane after that independence investment that split community? we have the real time impact of decisions that were made yesterday year. It will be very difficult with having the history, having all the information to make a very similar decision that's going to impact future generations when we've already seen what happened. What we haven't seen is what could happen if we did it differently. Now, there was some members of the community that asked for a tunnel. That seems to be cost prohibitive to try to do that. Yet, what would it look like really to expand our public transportation system to a way to a level where we get people off the road? I don't have two, three other people to justify being able to ride in the lane for it to be free. My maps personally is set up specifically to avoid tolls. I personally am not going to pay to ride on road that my tax is already unpaid for. That doesn't work for me logically or phys. But also I don't have I'm not TSA. I'm going to go stand in the regular line. So when I see that we have these toll lanes and they're practically empty because everyone is still riding on the regular. We just drove from Valentine to get over here and we sat in that traffic and we went 10, 12, 15. I think I got up to 8, 18 miles an hour when the speed limit is 55. Took 45 this morning to get to Valentine. Most I got up to was 21. Speed limit is listed as 70. So if we have this traffic and we want to encourage people to condense to carpool, however, let's give more public options. Yes, 40% has to go to roads. What does that interpretation look like? Could that 40% go to repair the roads that we already have that's messed up? Because that's going to the roads. We have plenty of roads throughout the city that constantly need repair. To me, it's all in interpretation once we identify from our legal council what can and cannot be done. But everything is in interpretation. So 40% have to go to roads. What does that look like? I want to make sure that we're having a honest conversation with community and we're not just saying, "Hey, here's this great thing that we're going to do." People went to community and with a straight face told them that lie a long time ago. what they left out or what they said in their mind was community here's this great thing that is gonna that we're going to do as government but internally but you're not going to be here to benefit from it. So that part of the conversation never really made its way to the front. If we know that communities are making the investment to remove and have been for many years now, why are we considering doing something that we can look to partners and those that we say when we're looking at best practices that have already identified this is not a best practice, is this really the direction that we're going to we want to go in? Yes. This conversation started more than a decade. I was in my second term in 2014. I still don't even know how to ask all the right questions yet. Much le much much less understand the impact that in 10 years from now again 10 50 years go by very quickly that we're going to be having part two of a conversation that started over a decade ago. But that long-term impact generational I don't have any children therefore I don't have any grandchildren. But the impact of what we're deciding is going to impact many generations moving forward. We have seen what happened in Brooklyn. We have seen what has happened just in the last 10 years with our policy language. Since it was decided by my colleagues to pause, if we're going to utilize this pause, utilize this pause to get actual information and not just paint a pretty picture for people to cosign on it. Thank you, Madame Mayor. First, let me just say that I appreciate NC DOT uh how they are extending the deadline to June for their RFP. Um, as Council Member Graham mentioned, uh, the steps that NC DOT has taken. Uh, I certainly appreciate that. Um, I was on a call with NC DOT with Council Member Graham and Mayo and we and we had a meeting afterwards and we talked about the steps that's been taken to engage the community. Uh I just have one request for NC DOT is that we I hope that we are intentional in our community engagement that it actually translate into meaningful changes and it's not just talking uh it's not window dressing. though what council member Owen said uh in terms of the storytelling that really resonated with me because we are not just talking about houses here. We are talking about homes that many families have built and it's a community that they have built around their homes. So we have to be very intentional about how this community is being engaged. And I believe Sustain Charlotte has done a great job. Shannon Beans who advocates for connecting connected neighborhoods and walkable communities has done a great job engaging the community in this regard and has really organized the coalition of neighborhood leaders. And I hope that NCDOT looks at that model and replicates that in the community engagement that will that will have a that will truly make a difference in the ultimate design that makes community say yes that makes community say yes we are on board. So, I look forward to continued work with NC DOT as well as committee discussion on Thursday and I look forward to having continued conversations with our community partners. That's all I have. Thank you, >> Council Member Dante Anderson. >> Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, well, first I want to just set a context and say it's not lost upon me uh the impact of uh an interstate on your neighborhood. I grew up in Southside Homes, which is directly beside I77. Um there's al there was also a landfill that was on the same um parcel as the area that I grew up in which is even to this day fenced off due to the environmental impacts that Southside Park has u on the city of Charlotte. But when I grew up u that fence was not around that area. And for generations, my family and my family friends were impacted not only by um the landfield um but walking across I77 to uh what was then Revolution uh swimming pool to learn how to swim. Now it's it's a golf course silfort. Um so it's not lost upon me the historical context of what we're talking about. It's also not lost upon me that it's 2026 and now as we have this highway that we've had for decades, the congestion um is uh malleable and also uh the level of crashes that are occur on this corridor is also goes against everything that we highlight in our vision zero efforts. which is equates to it's over f it's approximately 2.5x the state standard and it equates to five crashes per day on this corridor on this 11 mile corridor. And so in this in this type of situation we have to assess things through a balanced perspective. Um, we say we we we have a policy that's called vision zero. We don't want to see another lost life. Um, and yet we have this 11mi interstate corridor that um is endangering lives on a daily basis due to a lack of uh improved infrastructure and uh design. So I was very pleased as I said as of last week that the secretary has decided to come here and listen to the community not listen to council members and he will listen to council members but I think it's so important for the secretary to listen to the community void of council members so he can hear directly from you what your concerns are and that it can be built and baked into uh the planning that's ahead um as an engineer uh through education and and work experience. I I also am very pleased with the structure of this project which is a design build which effectively means um nothing is really designed yet. It's really a what we would call a a a an MVP, a minimum viable product enough to give to some some entities to then build and design the best product possible and their bonus structures built into that process. So there's basically 10 to 15% of this project that is designed which is a minimum viable viable product. So that that I I feel better about that versus it being a designed bid effort where it's already designed and we're just bidding it out to the lowcost bidder um or anyone else who could come forward with um some some other aesthetics that would take them across the finish line. So having said that, I think we are just beginning. Um we are nowhere near the finish line. We're nowhere near 25% of this effort. We're literally 10 to 15% of this effort through and the community has the opportunity to provide input um through the communication center through a variety of touch points and there's bonus structures designed for innovative design. Um, so I I I have some I would say um I I have some hope that that will provide a much uh better pro product than the original I77 product that was um developed some years ago. Having said that, I think the the onus is upon all of us. I live here in Charlotte, too. Um the onus is upon Charlotte residents to provide continued input um throughout this entire process. As I understand it, we've been in meetings all day long. Um but as I understand it um North Carolina Department of Transportation as well as um CARPO CRTPO have put out statements to say we are we're willing to take a pause to listen to constituents. Um, and we want to bake in as much as we possibly can based on your input to hand over to the individuals who would come back with potential designs. I think the work that the community has done is been tremendous. Um, but I also think it needs to be continued. This is not um a just a quick one-time event. This is a multi-year effort. um in both in design and in a potential build. And as I said, as I I'll close with this, as we think about Charlotte in the Queen City and where we're going, we know the numbers of 157 people moving to the region. However, the vast majority of the folk of those folks moving to Charlotte, um we have to make sure that we have a um a balanced approach where we're designing for the but also designing for the people who already live here and to ensure that there is uh the least amount of harm that's done to the communities that are historic and treasured throughout the Queen City. So, please stay engaged. Um, stay lean into this process. I'll be doing the same. But it it's it's not a a quick endeavor. This is a a continued lasting endeavor that's going to take um sustained energy and involvement. Thank you, Madame Mayor. >> Our next speaker is Council Member Watlington. >> Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I'd just like firstly to echo the comments of all of uh, council members um, in thanking NC DOT for extending the community engagement. Uh, we understand that it is not a pause but it is an extension of the timeline of community engagement. Um, the fact that we're having this discussion is a testament as some have said earlier to the power of the collective and um, to the power of the community. Um and I want to make sure as many others have said that it is it is um not for not if you will. Um to that end um I do have a couple of questions but before I ask my questions I do want to just note that as we think about community engagement I think it will be very um important as we look at the community meetings that are happening that we also consider with NCODT how we can NC dot how we can help support um gorilla community engagement if you will. Um, I do think there is something to be said for um, highlighting specifically since we know which parcels are going to be impacted, reaching out specifically to those neighbors. Um, I actually had an opportunity to do a little bit of that myself and talk to some of the folks whose houses are on the map that will be impacted and none of them even knew that this was coming down the pipeline. Um, so I do think that if we want to get very tactical, um, that that'll be the most effective way to go. I look at, for example, West Boulevard Neighborhood Coalition has a corridor wide meeting tomorrow at 6 PM. The um community engagement for this project is tomorrow at 7 p.m. And I'm not sure that based on the information that the uh coalition has sent out that they're aware that these meetings are going to be happening around the same time. Um so, just wanted to lift that up because I know that everybody wants to make sure that as many folks as possible are able to um to engage. I did also want to lift up to that end uh a distinction between Wilmore West over Hills and Revolution Park. Each of those neighborhoods are impacted uh at ex exit 9. Um and so and as as we are engaging with Wilmore, I want to make sure that we are um clear I say we the broader we the team is clear that West Hills and Revolution Park are neighborhoods in and of themselves and have um different neighborhood leadership that would need to be engaged. Um, we've talked about this before, right? Nobody here wants this to just be a delay in time but no difference in outcome. Um, and fundamentally it comes down to a design problem, right? And we've got constraints that need to be considered. And so I'd like to understand uh, and I think I saw some representatives from NC DOT. I'd like to understand what truly truly is within scope as we think about design alternatives. Um people are traveling on 77 because they're trying to get from one place to another. Uh and if you are traveling on those on on the roads adjacent to it, you know that it is difficult if you're and I'll give an example. If you're on West Boulevard and you want to get to Still Creek, um you can go down 77, you can go down Billy Graham a little bit out of the way, come back to 77, or you can try to go down West Boulevard until it turns into 160. Get on 485 and go down until you get to exit four, right? and hop back on 160. My point is people are choosing the interstate because the feeder roads are not always the most effective. And so I'm wondering if there is a possibility within design to look at how we might leverage some of those other roads that may be city roads and we would have to work in partnership to improve those so that we can get some people off of 77. So I'm not sure the format tonight. Um but if we are able to ask NC do I just want to understand what's truly within the realm of scope as alternatives could be >> I don't think that I think that we had planned for these kind your the question that you've asked to be something that would be done tomorrow. Okay, cool, cool cool. >> And I think that that would be great. One, first of all, to show that we're >> want to be in that space and have the opportunity to hear >> and so I think we'll go ahead if that's okay. >> Y know that and get ready for tomorrow. >> Sure. And so then I'll just put my other question um in the room in the hopes that it'll be addressed as well. Um it's just it's an ongoing question. We've seen some things go um come to us from various uh legal uh advisors, some that are affiliated with CRTPO and some that are not. Um I would just want to make sure that we're a breast of at every step what our legal options are. Um as it relates to our voice as a council, as our voice as a weighted member of the CRTPO, um and as residents of this community who have uh state representatives as well. Uh so those are those are the things that are top of mind for me but I look forward to uh the continued discussion. >> So I want to say that it's not tomorrow. >> Okay. >> It's Wednesday. >> Okay. >> No, it feels like tomorrow already. >> So we'll keep on going and um and we'll follow that. Tomorrow you have to go to another retreat. >> So that's right. Okay. Thank you. All right. So Mr. Driggs. >> Thank you, Mayor. So, uh, this has been an extraordinary experience. Um, if I were to fault NC DOT at all, it's because they did not recognize the extraordinary sensitivity of that road project at that location. And I can tell you CRTPO a couple years ago talked about the P3. We didn't know. Uh, I don't recall. I didn't know. uh and I take some responsibility for that but I uh it was just not something that had the kind of uh prominence that it does now. I do think the good news is uh NC DOT has now recognized that their usual process for these things is not going to cut it. Uh and I think a lot of us around the table here of you uh can take some credit for that as well. Um so we now have the potential for uh engagement and um for doing things that aren't the same as happen every time in these projects. Um on Thursday uh at in committee I believe that meeting will be a first step towards formalizing council's engagement uh on behalf of residents and we need to understand around the room a lot has been said here and different things have been said. So uh we need to crystallize the negotiation that has to take place within C dot. We need to learn more about what those benefits really are. We need to get satisfied that all of the alternative approaches have been aired, have been recognized. I think that the some of the contract biders can help us with that because these are companies that have done this work around the country. Uh they're part of the industry and so they will be able to respond to questions about well did this work, have you done that? Did you think about this? And so we can get to the bottom of all of those things. Uh it's not too late. uh three and a half months for openers is good. Even then, it's not over by any means. There will be uh at least a year of continuing engagement. So, we need to reach a point uh by June where we are comfortable that uh the things that the community wanted to know and that we wanted to know have been aired, have been addressed. uh and and then we need to see whether the uh opportunities that still exist warrant proceeding and warrant our support. Uh I believe that the community benefits are something that we need to know more about because the potential for them is good and a lot of people could end up better off. It's possible. Uh, as a result, um, I will say that, uh, historically when a lot of the hurt originated around, uh, the invasion of black communities, the way it was done was brutal. They were basically just driven out. There wasn't compensation. The difference is this time the community has power and is exercising that power. And that's an important difference. And therefore, uh, I'm still hopeful that we can achieve an outcome that responds to the very real transportation needs on that road. It's a dangerous road. It's a dirty road. The interchanges are bad. Uh, so I hope we can get the benefit of this very large investment and at the same time reach an outcome that the community will feel recognizes their needs and sensitivity. Thank you. >> Thank you. our final I think that everyone has had an opportunity so I'm going to turn it over to James Mitchell mayor prom uh mayor thank you and and uh to my colleagues I think this is why this was so important that we added to our retreat uh schedule so and thanks to staff Julie for making this possible I think we all agree it's going to take collaboration and partners and we do have them in the room today. So I just want to recognize with everybody here from NC do staff will you please stand the one who spent the last three days with us hearing from us will you plea be standing and be recognized. Thank you. Um then the young lady in her company who's going to head up the community engagement that I think out of 12 you heard loud and clear community engagement is important. So all of those staff members with um DA Wilson um agency >> diab stand and her staff please stand. And so so thank you for for being a part. So, let me just recap and I think council members know that we just got a very big week, but what's important when the mayor reached out to the uh secretary and he made his commitment, I just think it it show how important Charlotte means to him and how important he want us to truly be a partner and to do the right thing. So, we will have community meetings starting uh tomorrow evening with the secretary at 5:30 and 7:30. Um, some of your neighborhood leaders have already be contacted. You'll be getting an email. And then this city council members will meet with the secretary on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. and at 11:30 a.m. And then more importantly, more importantly, this has been referred to our transportation planning uh committee meeting that is at 5:00 on Thursday. So I say that to say as everyone has mentioned around this uh table, community engagement, community engagement is so important. And so we we are so thankful that here we are. And there is so much planning together, talking together, listening together, we're going to do so. Mayor, with that, um I want to thank everybody for being here. And I I want to see everybody at what time? Tomorrow morning? >> 10:00. >> No, don't even try. Don't even try. 9 a.m. >> So, we are adjourned. Thank you very >> We need a motion to do we we need a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> All right, let's get a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. Second. >> Thank you, Miss Mayfield. We have a second. >> Second. >> We have a second. All in favor? Raise your hands. Thank you very much. >> So, I add more