[Music] all right we're ready all set uh good morning everybody and happy New Year uh welcome to this uh January 6 2025 meeting of the Charlotte City Council Transportation Planning and Development Committee we start as usual with introductions beginning in the back corner there morning good morning man Peterson planning happy New Year braxon Winston concerned citizen Dana Fon City manager's office Katherine Mahoney planning Kathy cornette planning Allison Craig planning director Monica Holmes Deputy planning director Malcolm Graham Committee Member Ed dggs committee chair Liz Babson assistant city manager Yolanda Jones planning staff ly Alexander Charlotte Transportation re Mt Summers planning and online please online Lana Mayfield council member at large good morning thank you sir Mar Molina council member and vice chair Dr watlington all right then well let's get underway we have two topics today uh the community area planning update and the unified development ordinance and I guess I'll take it right over to miss Craig yes good morning good morning um so I'll I'll tee this up um thank you for the opportunity to talk about the um community area planning process we're supposed to come to Committee in December and we ran out of time I'm grateful that we had the opportunity to do some one-on ones with council members but we also want to make sure that we have an opportunity to talk to the public as well so we're really starting to gear up towards um the release of uh 14 draft area plans and I just want to make sure that everyone knows that there will be plenty of opportunity for engagement both um before and after the plans are released and this is an opportunity to start to um give you information about what's in the plans what they look like and so really every month that we come before you all we'll have more information and more details um but staff is furiously working in the background getting ready for the release of plans in early March um so with that I'll kick it over over to Kathy and Catherine thank you um Kathy cornet I'm going to turn it over to Katherine Mahoney who is the project manager for the community area planning process and she'll give you an update and we'll be both happy to answer any questions you have good morning um so uh if you'll go to the agenda slide in today's presentation we'll begin with an overview of what we're trying to accomplish with community area planning and then we'll highlight some engagement that we've received uh throughout phase two and phase three of the effort specifically organized by Council district and then as mentioned uh provide that preview of what uh officials and the public can expect to find in these Draft plans and then conclude with a discussion about next steps and how uh engagement is ongoing and everyone can continue to provide feedback so uh first slide please community area planning this is a slide that we've consistently shared throughout the process uh this effort builds upon the vision and goal goals of the comprehensive plan and is intended to provide more detailed development guidance uh for smaller geographies so we kind of translate what the vision and goals within a Citywide document mean for these 14 smaller geographies and then uh we are doing the effort across all 14 geographies within a tight period of time so that we can deliver this helpful guidance uh as quickly as possible and no area is left waiting for it the expected outcome will be 14 documents these are intended to be policy documents that are used as references in future decision- making like resoning or capital investment planning it'll also result in a refined or a revised policy map which I'll talk more about and a manual this next slide gives you an idea of how the 14 plan areas overlap or intersect with the council districts um I'll say a few things about our boundaries first the area plan boundaries were developed during the comprehensive plan process as a way to um study and analyze the growth that's expected to come these boundaries are based on projected growth development patterns and natural boundaries but then they were revised during our policy map effort uh to align with our neighborhood profile areas neighborhood profile areas are federal reporting areas that are used by all levels of government and so uh we were encouraged to do this by our data uh specialists in the I think 15th floor I don't know where they are now um but this will really help ensure that we have consistent datting um tracking and reporting over the next 10 years the boundaries can be Revisited during the next census update uh but for now we want to hold them uh as is for that consistent reporting and tracking you can see some council districts have more area um plan areas within them than others uh but hopefully because these plans are intended to be highly visual you know averaging 60 Pages we feel confident that once a council member spends time with one or two plans they can move through the other plans with a you know level of ease um so we we we hope it won't be too overwhelming come march to to dig in the next slide uh provides an overview of the planning process process it started in 2023 with us identifying each of the 14 geography's greatest needs and I'll talk more about that phase two we revised or we reviewed the policy map that had been adopted in 2022 with these geography's needs in mind and looked for opportunities to the map accordingly the outcome of that effort was the revised policy map which again I'll I'll talk more about phase three we worked with our partners to identify planned infr structure projects and existing programs that will support growth and then ask the community about what else may be needed uh phase four we are currently working uh kind of between three and four uh to process feedback received in phase three engagement and then developing recommendations that will be within the plan and uh kind of putting all those recommendations within a guide for staff to use over the next 5 10 years to track our progress um uh phase five will be reviewing adoption which officially begins after the draft plans are released but this is part of our effort to share information incrementally and kind of help everyone um know what to expect I'll highlight that Community engagement has and will always be an important part of every step of the process feedback is always welcome um and will always be responded to so we'll talk a little bit more about that again on the final slide so the next slide uh highlights the outcome of phase two which I mentioned is that revised policy map um we worked with the community Through 42 workshops uh which were attended by over 450 people and we received 800 comments to uh tweak the map so it best addressed each geography's needs in terms of their need for increased access to housing increased access to job opportunities to daily goods and services and reduced environmental impacts we also worked a lot with our internal partners and ultimately we are recommending about a 6% change in the policy map uh we released the first revised map so this map that shows 6% change in March in order to provide that next opportunity for the public to to review and and weigh in uh we received about 137 comments at that March um during that March through June public comment period processed comments received and then released a second draft in September M and offered another um 90-day public comment period so um I'll if you'll go to the next slide uh this shows you the number of comments that have been received with each iteration of this revised map uh we're currently working through the second um the 205 comments that were received on the second map um a few things that I want to say about these comments uh in general this is now the fifth iteration basically of this map and with each iteration we receive fewer and fewer comments we believe that this reflects how we are increasing the accuracy of the map and reflecting the community's values uh and priorities better uh you'll notice that in the second um draft there are a few districts that actually saw an increase in comments and so we're we're digging into that to understand why it's not consistent with the trend that we've seen over the last few years uh and then you'll also notice that some districts have uh lower number of comments again because this is the fifth iteration I don't personally see that as a bad thing I think it you know we've had a lot of opportunities to provide feedback but if that is your district and you hear from a constituent that there's an unresolved issue we' really love your help in helping to address that when the third uh and final iteration comes out in March um in general I mentioned the comments tend to uh decrease in number with each iteration the majority of comments received uh are well all comments are evaluated based on their consistency with the mapping approach let me say the mapping approach reflects the community's values and priorities uh that were um collected during the initial development and so we since that that methodology was set in 21 we revi we review all comments based on consistency with a mapping approach so in general most of them tend not to be consistent for example they might want to put something um non-residential in a residential area uh or they might want to do something that is not pedestrian friendly in a mixed juice Activity Center that's kind of the nature of what we see when it's inconsistent with our our mapping approach there are some that are consistent and usually reflect a data error and so when that's the case we incorporate the comment uh and then we always receive a few comments in support which I just would like to highlight so moving on to phase three again in this um phase we working with our 133 City County City and County Partners to share information with the public about planned infrastructure projects and existing programs uh related to the topics of Mobility open space and sustainability Community character and public services uh in Special Districts uh that relate to uh growth and and help support growth that's coming we shared what's planned and existing with the community and then ask for their feedback on what else is needed you can see the range of topics that um well the range of comments received per topic one thing I'll mention you know this this engagement period um we used eight workshops which were attended uh by about over 300 people we received 364 comments but then we also had an online tool that was AA available 247 uh for three full months so we really you know tried to to get in front of the community and hear from them and ultimately their biggest concerns are General Mobility improvements uh second by uh second topic or most important issue would be uh the Str Strategic investment area projects uh as well as open space and sustainability needs and then the third uh priority topic across the city would be placemaking so next slide you can see if we evaluate that based on Council District the trend kind of holds uh or or carries forward you know within each Council District General Mobility tends to be the top uh priority or top issue uh once you move into the second and third topic it kind of toggles between strategic Investments open space and placemaking so this is really where we are working and focused on right now uh working with our partners to determine how we can uh reflect the feedback that we received within the community area plans uh and and so you'll see that in March um so this process that I've been describing is ultimately going to culminate uh next slide please in one program guide and 14 plans the program guide includes information that's applicable to all 14 geographies so an explanation of what this work is how it relates to the comprehensive plan and an explanation of other City policies that intersect with this work so for example the Strategic Mobility plan and our energy action plan intersect with our policy and so we explain to the community and readers how that all works together and is coordinated uh within the 14 plans um there's five chapters which I'll dig into more on the next slides um but I I'll iterate here that the content within the 14 plans really align with the process that I've already described and so again we are hopeful that um the the final plans will seem familiar and not you know completely um out of left field for for for readers once they see it so the first chapter uh is a community area profile next slide please this chapter provides a summary of the existing land uses building form infrastructure uh demographics uh and projected growth for the geography this work was done in the beginning of 2023 and published online uh with on our project website uh in February and so it's been available since that time for for the community to review the second chapter uh next slide uh focuses on each community's greatest needs next slide please and uh the needs are really focused on the need to increase access to housing choices the need to increase access to job opportunities access to daily goods and services and the need to revie uh reduce environmental impacts the reason why we focus on these needs is this is how we Define equity within the comprehensive plan and our vision is to become more Equitable in the future so we really are grounding this work within that Vision uh as as shown in the comprehensive plan then based on each geography's greatest needs we identify what uh which of the 10 plan goals the comprehensive plan goals are big or the the biggest priority for that geography this does not mean that all 10 goals are not important they are uh but if one area has a higher need for housing uh and another area needs to reduce environmental impacts it's helpful to prioritize the plan goals so that we know how to best Channel Investments uh and and support in the near term so next slide uh with the needs and goals in mind the following chapter called creating complete communities uh really digs into recommendations for future development uh these recommendations address the needs uh and the recommendations come in the form of polic of of the policy map so the place type designations within that map what this chapter also does is it provides a comparison of what's on the ground today versus what we're recommending for the future and an explicit uh explanation of how that recommended change is going to address the needs and then help create increase access reduce impacts and improve Equity over time I'll mention here that chapter um the previous chapter uh which identifies goals and then this chapter which talks about the policy map will be really helpful in future uh in your future resoning uh discussions um understanding what each geography's greatest goal is and and and the recommendations for the development pattern kind of the justification for why we're recommending a certain development pattern I think will be good data points when considering a request for something different um the next chapter called supporting the vision this is the chapter that will really mirror phase three engagement so we'll touch upon Mobility open space uh Community character and public services um again within our workshops in that online tool we shared information about what's already planned and existing uh and now we're working with our partners to to figure out how feedback about what's needed can show up in the plans um I'll mention here that I think this chapter will be really helpful a good reference in capital investment planning uh decision makers will be able to see you know what investments are needed to support the recommendations for future growth and then they'll also be able to see how the Investments may be able to work together next slide within this chapter we will include a toolkit called the neighborhood toolkit uh which is a catalog of all the existing programs available today uh if anyone's tried to navigate the website we know that there's a lot of information and it can feel overwhelming so this is a good One-Stop shop for any residents or business owners who might have some sort of need or interest in mine and can easily go here and see how to take action next Slide the final chapter is titled implementation this chapter includes two sections neither are intended to be adopted by Council the first section outlines it's basically a staff Tool uh you can imagine a an Excel spreadsheet um and it identifies each of the plan recommendations what department or agency should be the lead on um advancing that recommendation what's a reasonable time frame and and reasonable time frame for doing that work so we use it as a staff tool to kind of check our work and keep us on track and then the second chap second section excuse me is what you're seeing here uh it will be uh two illustrative concepts for each plan area and these Concepts um are really just an attempt to help the community visualize what all of this means so we talk about it daily we think we understand we think the difference between policy and regulation is simple and easy to follow but uh this section shows you kind of a sequence of if you go from what's on the ground today to what's recommended in the future you layer on our other Citywide policies and our development regulations you can expect something as shown in the model to occur over time as development occurs so um I consider that kind of a nice uh bonus so that's what you can expect to find Within These 14 plan documents uh next slide as mentioned we're sharing this in hopes to kind of manage expectations uh about what what's coming um this is just the beginning of the conversation as mentioned Community engagement public feedback is always welcome and always responded to uh we shared um information with you all as mentioned in December we're here again in January uh we would like to meet again in February with like the next level of detail and then review uh release the Draft plans in March we have seen it is really a lot easier for people to respond to something once you put something out there for them to see and and read and completely you know follow from A to Z so we fully expect that once these Draft plans are released there will be a lot of feedback a lot of comments and we will have another round of Engagement and discussions so that's all I have to share happy to open it up for questions and discussion thank you um Miss Craig I think I once offered you a $20 bet that you would not get 14 plans done by March of 2025 so my first question is are you hurrying up just so you can win the bet I always felt confident in our time her time frame so uh committee questions comments everybody is dump struck um couple of things uh for one this is uh amazing work uh I think we're we're setting an example for other cities as to how to be proactive in in these matters and not just reactive uh and uh I'm proud of that I'm proud of your work and I appreciate it um one thing I will say to my colleagues and to the public is this is very dense and conceptual right now uh and when you get down to the kind of uh the community level the question is what does it mean for me you know what am I going to see what's going to happen so uh if we can try to develop explanations as to the kind of things that you're likely to observe and uh uh not a whole lot of the the theory of the process or the the plan but just this is what we're doing and this is what you would uh expect to see and I'll mention I'm going to have a a town hall on February 1st so we'll have an opportunity to test Market a little bit then uh with that group and that's a different group than maybe the ones that resp respond to outreach efforts when you invite people to comment um you'll see that that's a more I mean they're still engaged but um uh they're they're not special interest types it's a lot of members of the community I hope to get a good crowd for that um I had one or two questions could we go back to the map with the uh that highlights the changes where the changes occurred and while we're going back there my question is can you characterize uh is there any way to describe what those changes were like um what were the most common changes that took place in this 60% and I'll mention this is 6% of the geography of the land area right that's the 6% so uh what kind of things did you change all right two uh dominant or big uh topics based on our 42 workshops and feedback from the community there is a value based change that we made uh and that is essentially within what is a community Activity Center if there was um kind of smaller areas that were designated something else the community the consensus was that we should prioritize the center designation so that future development had a Clear Vision of what that area should be it should be mixed juice it should be very pedestrian friendly it should have highly amenitized public uh the public realm so that really is um it's about 1% it but it that is the level of consensus that we could come to through 42 workshops with with the community I personally you know 1% might not seem huge but these are areas that are going to see the most growth and change and so I think coming to an agreement about these areas uh will be highly impactful over time the other change is really reflective of all the um internal engagement that we did to improve the accuracy so for example the county acquired a significant amount of property during the first and second uh during the first policy map and this revised policy map and so we reflected all of those Acquisitions here and so there's no question about what that property should be in the future it should be reserved as in perpetuity As Natural Area and so it's shown as parks and preserves secondly we worked with our alignment resoning team team to ensure that there was not um a disconnect between the policy map recommendation and Zoning entitlements and so an example would be um some neighborhoods already had into zoning so moderate density zoning but our value from the community from the comprehensive plan and the policy map work is to protect established neighborhoods so we discussed you know what do you do in that scenario do you keep your recommendation for neighborhood one or do you respect the existing entitlements ultimately we decided this is an aspirational document and it doesn't change zoning so we are keeping the in1 designation on the policy map uh or vice versa if there was N1 in an area that should be uh moderate density we aligned it with the the existing entitlements so a lot of a lot of change is reflective of that intersect that coordination uh so that when alignment resoning does move forward um there's less confusion or or um disconnect so those are the types of change that are really reflected in the 6% so uh and I want to miss watlington are you hearing us I am yes good you missed the introduction so I just want to make sure people know you're here Johnson thank you and Miss Johnson yes did you have a question or comment I do thank you yeah okay I'm turning my camera on okay so thank you for the presentation my question or comments are for you know my colleagues especially those of us who were on Council when the Udo was developed um so do we feel that 452 people Which is less than 1% of the population is satisfactory Outreach especially if we're making uh changes to 6% of the map and uh council member Driggs I think you brought up a great point that many of the 452 individuals are probably some special interest uh groups or or at least those folks that are really really engaged maybe on committees so I I do have a question for Miss Craig do we track the the individuals who were in the um or in the 42 workshops do we know if these were like Unique Individuals have they are these individuals who've participated in other um Outreach or you know just names that we hear over and over again do we track these individuals who who participated so we don't uh this is Kathy cornet we don't track um names we Track by ZIP code uh we do have signin sheets at our meetings that you know some folks don't participate in most do sign in um but the other thing I would mention is that the work sessions the in-person work sessions were really just one component of our engagement strategy so we have the three buckets constant coordinated and collaborative ative and that fell into the um coordinated bucket the constant bucket is really there were a lot of not so good things that came out of Co but a good thing for us was that we really ramped up our opportunities to provide uh meth information and methods of feedback 247 and we find that folks are really taking advantage of that um and that is where we receive the most comments so we don't and we track all of this by ZIP code so that's the level that we've been tracking okay thank you so again to my colleagues we have to decide if if um 42 workshops there were 452 people which is just over 10 people per Workshop if that's enough to make changes for a city of our size um we' we've gone through this before we know the consequences um from the Udo when when neighbors are or residents are realizing now how this impacts them so um another question some of our districts have a a very high Hispanic uh population was this information um distributed like in Spanish and and bilingual yes uh we all of our EV everything that we produce uh we it's our policy to produce it in Spanish as well and and in addition to that um on our team on the longrange planning team probably almost half of us speak Spanish so uh when we have iners inperson and online engagement there's always a Spanish speaker a native Spanish speaker available great okay and we also have neighborhood Liaisons who work with the different Community leaders um have were they given the information to reach out to Community leaders did we coordinate with that department yes we did uh and Katherine I don't know if you want to speak a little bit more about that um how exactly we did that but that is that they are um one of our Prime uh contacts for engagement yeah okay okay that's fine and then I will say just again I've said I said it in December and I'll say it when I have the opportunity I I gave the U District 4 has a coalition and it's a group of different neighborhoods and I ask specifically for that that group to be a part of this discussion I know there's that you're scheduled to meet with them I believe Wednesday um yes at their next meeting but that that's after the draft has already been well compiled so I I my concern is the transparency and the the um the engagement from residents so I just want to publicly say that again and we you know fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me so us as a council we really need to consider this Outreach and and learn from the Udo in my opinion I I don't think that the there's been enough Outreach I think it would be appropriate to extend it um to do things differently you know maybe to ensure that we have have a higher number we as a council have to decide if 1% less than 1% engagement is a enough to make such a um a significant change that's all I have thank you uh Miss Johnson I appreciate your remarks as I think the staff will confirm that I've kind of gone on a little bit about this myself uh and um the issue in my mind is it's very difficult to get the public to sit up and take notice at a time like this while this conversation is going on it's also a lot to ask the man on the street or the woman on the street uh to process all of the things that we're looking at and thinking about and that was kind of what I meant before when I said let's understand that when we're talking to the larger public there's a simple question what does this mean for me you know what am I going to see and uh I think though uh one thing I did hear back in response was uh what we were told just now in the presentation namely there will be a draft of these uh plans and there will be opportunities uh to kind of provide input and they will be open into modification as people respond to what is actually in front of them instead of hearing about you know what it's going to look like so I I'm hoping that we can have a robust process but one thing I've emphasized repeatedly uh is I think particularly District reps uh are probably in the best position to have a broader view of what the mood is of their constituents and we're in touch with people who don't attend those meetings and aren't members of those particular advocacy groups so that's why uh I hope all of us will uh look at these things carefully and think about how we message them to our communities and try to anticipate issues that could come up later because what happens is you do all this work and you put it in place and then you start to hear about it uh and I remember in particular the 2.1 issue back when we were doing the Udo uh I went around to HOA groups and so on I said people wake up take a look look what happening here and there was really just u a general lack of energy in terms of public response and then we started to see Providence Plantation and different locations and they go what you did what uh and I don't know how we can guard against that but I think that again district council members are in a key position uh but the thing is for us to start early and and look at this carefully and try to form a view in your own mind as to uh what it's going to mean and how it will be perceived and then uh if there are possible areas of friction that we identify uh that could come up later let's see if we can get them worked out so uh and and you're absolutely right that's why I specifically name the District 4 Coalition when this was first presented to us so I mean I have an example of a stakeholder an Engaged stakeholder in District 4 that was not included in this so I just I I think we should be cautious yeah we have to be but but what I'm saying is that even taking on board what you said uh uh it's not easy uh you just you you can advertise and you can put up websites and you can do all kinds of things and as we saw uh and and and by the way that's uh that's less than a tenth of a percent of the population that's about a half of a tenth of a percent of the population that actually uh did respond so um I do think that input is useful because those people are engaged and they're often representative of the mood of their respective districts um but I just want us to be careful not to be overly influenced by the positions of a small minority and uh and uh take what we know about our our districts and the geography we serve and and uh look at what's being proposed uh I don't see by the way so far I don't see a big conflict I think that uh uh when I see the mobility emphasis and some of the other things that were said in the descriptions I'm I'm fine with it um but U if we have one of those issues lurking uh like uh you know exactly how does the residential development occur and that tends to be the hottest topic you know and what is adjacent to what and and and so on uh so uh anyway Miss Johnson you and I are in a complete agreement on that um and I hope that we will all work to make sure that we arrive at a place and and frankly it's my next question if if is that all from you Miss Johnson I guess it is okay um yes thank yeah uh and my next question was going to be the uh well I have two more uh one of them was the alignment with the market so one of our goals in this process has got to be to have a lower incidence of resoning petitions that are approved even though they're not planned consistent because if that happens too often you have to ask yourself you know what's wrong here right the goal is to have uh the the zoning process kind of dialed back uh to the point where a lot of it is programmatic and you're able to just move ahead um so in that sense I guess um we have uh in the room Mr neld from reek uh are you kind of following this are you comfortable with the impression yeah and so I just I guess I would just encourage you uh to and and you're the industry you represent uh to be active in terms of providing input so that we don't end up with uh establishing goals for ourselves that are counter to what the thrust of the market is likely to be yeah thank you thank you um last question I had was we're in the process right now of developing a new 2030 Mobility plan in the context of our proposed 1-cent uh sales tax tax increase so are we harmonizing this planning process with those Mobility plans absolutely yes and the answer is we are that's good okay great um I think that's all I had uh we we do have in the room a concerned Citizen and uh um so I'm wondering if uh member of the public uh do you have anything you'd like to share with us well I I I just shared your you you said something um uh the person on the street is is going to always ask what does this mean for me and I think that's why I'm here um how can we answer that question concisely um and accurately I think that's a it's a role for the community at large not just council members or staff members so if if either of the two people watching this meeting doesn't know uh the concern citizen in question is Mr Winston former council member in mayor proem uh all right if there is nothing nothing else on that topic then I would suggest we move on to number two which is uh the unified development ordinance update and uh for that I'll go back again to miss Craig all right so on the second topic um this UD update is a little different um this month um there's been some recent legislation that um has affected some of the things that we're doing and want to just make sure the council and the community is aware of the things that we're um evaluating so you know we've got two different kinds of text amendments we've got our cleanup text amendments um that we've had ongoing just you know making the document um easier to administer Etc um but we also have policy uh text amendments that and so what we want to talk to you about is um what this legislation says um when it went into effect and what this means for some of the work that we're doing I know Council should have gotten a couple emails from Dana on um in December you talking about this but now we've had an opportunity of course this is something that um planners around the state are wrestling with and talking about and so we have a lot more understanding of of what this means that we wanted to make sure that you all aware of so so M Craig if I could just preface what you're going to say uh Senate Bill 382 was technically a disaster relief bill and the legislature uh incorporated into it a whole bunch of stuff uh that they wanted to get done during the current uh session and so only part of Senate Bill 382 pertains to land use policy and so on uh and and uh Mr Fenton do you want to uh set the stage for that in terms of 382 and what what's in it tell us a little bit about uh the context for the these amendments sorry this was not planned so you going to have to wing it here okay welcome to the T go thank you uh morning again Dana Fenton with the city manager's office uh that's a very good question Mr dggs um I believe the bill was about 29 pages long and I think that the down zoning provision that is uh the subject of that we're talking about today in 382 took up maybe a third of a page it was the very last part of the bill so it was just sort of it was put in there I mean as you as you said they're coming to the end of their two-year session there's things that they they want to get done so they'll find a vehicle to put it in that's a TI H tradition of legislative bodies all over the country and probably all over the world too so and and my understanding was that the impetus for the land use provisions came from one community in particular uh at least in one situation and found its way into the bill uh kind of at the last minute which meant that none of us uh elected staff or others were really aware that it was coming uh is that right that it was a kind of a last minute or it was it was put into a conference report which uh does once a conference report is signed off by the committee there's not an opportunity to amend it on the floor of the house or the Senate it would then it you want to change it you'd have to go back you literally have to send the bill back into committee theyve come out out the new conference report and uh because of time restrictions they weren't able to do that but at the same time you we're looking at trying to get legislation this year to recogize some of people this legislation so uh colleagues we're we're going to hear about what some of this could mean for us and uh I I just want to recommend that we understand that there are actually conversations already going on uh and that there appears to be scope to make some changes to these things uh we are trying I've been on the phone talking to uh various kind of stakeholders um and we're trying to position ourselves to provide input to any revisions that could occur so we need to know what what uh is in here because it's currently it's the law right so this has been passed and adopted uh and at the same time uh we need to recognize that uh um some of the things that may seem uh impractical are still open to further discussion and and therefore I would encourage us for example uh not not to engage in sort of public conversations about it or uh to offer comments about it we're going to try and work with the legislature to deal with anything that possibly has implications they didn't fully appreciate when they wrote this language anyway um Miss Craig just wanted to set the stage a little bit so if you'll now tell us what the bill says that'd be great Absolutely I'll turn it over today great thank you uh morning everybody so if we can go to the next slide just the goals of the conversation for this again is to understand the city's ability to down zone property as outlined in Senate Bill 382 as we just mentioned uh highlight the components uh and effects of the bill any potential considerations and impacts and then also provide some next steps by staff next slide so as mentioned earlier just this very small component in what was a a larger Bill uh does have some uh fairly ific impacts on us as a local government uh the modifications you can see are are shown as a striketh through on this slide so down zoning has always been defined in 160d as an uh changes to a zoning regulation or a zoning map Amendment which is essentially a rezoning uh that down zones property uh pre previous to this bill uh the cities and counties were uh jurisdictions who are still allowed to enact down zoning uh without property owner consent the changes as you can see is that that was uh stricken through and essentially now down zoning is anything that uh changed to a zoning regulation or zoning map that is initiated enacted or enforced without written consent of property owners uh that is the subject of down zoning uh it means that cities again cannot go through this process uh to to take that type of action previously there was only two sections that were defined in down zoning that was decreasing development density uh and then reducing permitted uses this bill also added a third uh element to it which is now creating any type of non-conformity on land not in a residential zoning District including a non-conforming use non-conforming lot non-conforming structure Improvement or non-conforming site elements so uh the big change out of this again was that it it removed the ability for local governments to down Zone and added a third provision uh that also is now included in the definition of down zoning through creation of a non-conformity so some examples of what that means for us next slide so again we can't go through a process to down Zone uh or create a a text amendment that has that similar effect uh as a local government now that would be decreasing development density uh reducing permitted uses creating any non-conformity in a residential zoning District next slide so decreasing the development density uh there's a couple different ways that that that can be impacted the easiest way to think of is just taking some things that could be allowed that were're built let's looking at this slide we've got the examples of where duplexes triplexes single family detached units and town homes Etc can be built uh if we decided that we were going to eliminate or modify some of those standards where a Triplex was previously allowed uh and now we make some changes where you can only build a single family detached or you can't get the same development density on on a lot uh based on some changes through a text Amendment or rezoning uh those are things that that would fall on under this bill and would be severely limited or we would have no real ability to take action on so uh decreasing that development density again is something that could come as simple as as removing some of those types of of allowances uh or if you change some lot size standards or lot development standards to where those uh you know the space on a a property that you could build on is now smaller and you can't build a three-unit building you can only get two because we increased setbacks or sidey yards or whatever that may be uh that could be problematic and could be argued as decreasing density as well so a lot of little things that that could be impacted through that that element of this bill if we go to the next slide uh this is a pretty straightforward one reducing permitted uses essentially we have a use table where we allow certain uses uh by right uh if we went into that use table and took some of those uses away and said we're not going to allow uh use x in our commercial District anymore uh that would be something that we would not have the ability to do uh because we again we're not allowed to reduce the permitted uses of land uh as a result of of some of this action so uh going into the next slide uh we talk about uh non-conformities this is where it gets to be a little bit of a new territory this is part of the new elements uh of this piece of legislation that added nonconformities as a definition of down zoning uh so again we cannot create uh a non-conforming use or structure or lot element uh unless all property owners effect to that consent and consent to that change uh so let's go through just some examples of that because this is again a new element of this uh let's say we wanted to change the separation requirements for certain uses uh that would be severely problematic because we could have some issues where all the separation requirements may have been met for those uses prior to any change we would make let's say it's set at 1,000 ft all the uses out there met that 1,000 foot requirement and we say we want 1,500 ft uh that would be a problem because all of those uses that met the Thousand would now be considered non-conformities uh so if we wanted to be responsive to some of that uh and say we need more separation requirements between some uses uh that's one again that would be problematic under this piece of legislation things like buffer requirements if we decided that uh in the past we required a let's say 50ft buffer for industrial uses next to uh residential or commercial uses and we felt that as a a city or uh we wanted to increase that to 60 ft 75 ft uh we wouldn't be able to do that necessarily because all of those other uses that met that 50ft requirement would now be considered non-conforming uh and that's again something that is is provided now in this piece of legislation under that new element of non-conforming use uh or non-conforming site element uh that's something that again cities do not have the ability to do now under under this uh Senate Bill next slide so impacts on some of our upcoming initiatives you we've got a cleanup text Amendment out there it was scheduled for adoption back in December as a result of uh this being passed we certainly hit pause on that so we could go through and do some additional evaluation on things we might need to uh take out there are parts of it that are are fine and and don't fall under this legislation but uh we needed some additional time to pull some things out and make sure that what we would include through adoption of that text Amendment wouldn't fall under uh this new Senate Bill uh things that we were talking about back in the fall about housing to support some faith-based initiatives like allowing town homes or some light multif family on properties that were owned by let's say religious institutions uh we do have to delay that a bit because we have to make sure that our ability uh to go forward with that doesn't you know come into effect or come into play Under uh some of the provisions of this new Senate Bill uh affordable housing tree mitigation bank is not impacted uh allowing some housing in some of our non-residential district districts uh would not be impacted by this because we would actually be Prov providing more permitted uses in that situation so it wouldn't fall under uh this scenario things like office conversions allowing those offices that may be you know vacant or want to convert to multif family we just need a little bit more time to make sure there are elements of that that uh we wouldn't come into play Under uh you know some of the changes based on this bill neighborhood character and residential infill overlays again need some time to evaluate those are we you know decreasing density in some of those situations are we creating non-conformities in some of those situations uh again we need some little we need some time to study those uh take some additional time for evaluation changing allowed uses again you know we've got to take a little bit of time and slow the train down a bit on those alignment rezoning does have some major impacts because we would be changing zoning of of properties in in some of those instances uh and some of those may require a you know change from let's say commercial to Neighborhood Center the use may be allowed but the design standards may be different so we may create non-conformities as a result even though that's the city's you know aligned vision and long-term vision for a piece of property it may be that if we don't get that property owner consent we may not be able to do that as a city uh based on you know the changes that were uh included in Senate Bill 382 so some next steps if we go to the next slide uh we will bring forward the cleanup text amendment in January uh we have pulled out as we mentioned some of those things that would be impacted by this legislation uh the bill is retroactive uh 180 days so that takes us back to June 11th of 2024 so we do have to go back and review text amendments approved after that date uh to make sure that there aren't sections of that that may be uh challenging or may fall under uh some of these changes we do have to evaluate other components uh of the Udo that may be impacted by this just to you know against see where we may have some compliance issues uh and then really the biggest thing that that we can stress is just continuing work with the intergovernmental relations team really to try to collaborate on some modifications uh that would allow us to help creatively pursue some solutions to housing uh be responsive to constituent issues so uh you know I think our goal through all this is to bring this forward to y'all's attention uh and just to continue to stress that our goal in all of this is to you know roll up our sleeves and be collaborative and try to find some solutions with everybody around the table uh so if there's anything we can you know do to try to work on this as a a collaborative uh Team then you know that's certainly what our our focus is going to be so uh it's a lot to digest but I know there's going to be some questions so I'll turn it back over to y'all to try and work through those thank you for that we do have a couple questions Dr watlington thank you Mr chair um wow um at this point my questions are if this can be resent the actual bill um can be resent to us for review there's a lot here um wow we do have it but uh Mr Fenton says that he will recirculate the actual language remember it's it's short right uh the the difficult thing is actually interpreting the implications the language itself is pretty concise but uh the actual language is in the deck you know so yeah this is it the whole thing it's the whole portion that is related to Down Zing yes this is the entire language right there but you're right it's it's a lot to kind of ponder M which I think yeah I'm more so interested in the yeah I'd be very interested in the sponsors and any co-sponsors if they and it may be like you said because of is um it bill with so many things in it that we can't necessarily tie it directly to those who requested it I'd be very interested in what the intent was um because it puts us in certainly a precarious position and it's It's Curious um because I would think that many of the very people who had issues and have been very vocal about the impacts of the Udo would take issue with this um but that's a longer discussion so at this point I just would like to be clear about what specific efforts we are taking who we're engaged with what those conversations look like um as we go forward so if if you all could provide and maybe that's a Dana question I want to know exactly what conversations are happening and with who and what the goal is and what the prognosis or the forecast is of success for each one yeah thank thank you very much for the question uh is that we are collaborating uh the key word here is collaborate we're working with the North Carolina League of municipalities our our state lobbyist and other cities on this and any other U stakeholders we can pick up along the way would be great as well um there were discussions that were going on before the end of last year um and um and right now it's too soon to tell just how how um how those discussions are going in terms of a prognosis for Success uh it probably wouldn't be until several months until we would see something if at all so it could be you know we're in a long session now it goes through June so um right now um there's just a lot up in the air in terms of what U what we could be seeing down the pike okay um Dana if if you could please set up some time with me on offline I'd like to Deep dive this one I will thank you yes I have Mr Graham having been been up there for 10 years nothing happens accidentally right so someone had a bone to pay for something and they they had unattended consequences that caused a Statewide Ripple right and so it's less about our Udo and more about solving someone's individual problem in whatever City North Carolina uh that we've got drawn into it and I think Dana is right this is um a a league issue the league of municipalities um working to resolve uh and because it was tucked in the bill where they also I think the same bill where they took the governor's power too right I think so right so there was a lot of Christmas presents um um for a lot of people uh in that bill and so this is going to be complicated to unravel there's no no simple answer there's no one particular sponsor that we that that we know publicly right because the bill was the fter relief bill am I correct it is a disaster relief bill and and that and that bill was not introduced as disaster relief it was introduced some other subject that I I don't even recall right now so I don't think the sponsors of that bill exactly the ones who were listed on the website exactly would necessarily agree with everything exactly they probably even know was there um because um everyone had their own um presence that they wanted to give out um and so I I just tell the committee that it's going to be cumbers for sure um that this is not a Charlotte thing um this is a a collaboration that we're going to have to work with with the league of municipality to kind unwind uh and this is a corner office type of stuff right where we have to get to the leadership um to figure out um how we can unwind this and you know if it's in the bill uh the leadership approv it being the bill right and so um um it is what it is and you said the session ending in June that's not going to happen uh and so we probably won't know about this until the end of the year uh um for sure uh if at all because they got what they wanted and that's what they wanted and so I think for R is to how the we um work through it staff right uh and uh adjust for the next year or so that's just that's just plain top that's it so uh Vice chair and uh League of municipalities board member m Molina thank you Mr chairman and actually um that is um when I when I first um realized what this was my first train of thought was the league of municipalities um and I'm actually a member of the board of directors for the North Carolina League of municipalities um and one of my colleagues who is the president of the league is the mayor protim in the city of Durham Mark Anthony Middleton deal with some of these challenges from a from a zoning perspective and so um our chairman has actually already taken you know just leaning into what Dr watlington said because I think she has the right train of thought and you know who are we reaching out to you know what how are we going to be proactive what is going to be now the rebuttal for this um and making her aware of the fact that the chairman has already taken the initiative to reach out to Rose Von Williams who is the executive director of North Carol of League of municipalities and some of our um community members that are very tied in at the state legislation level to see where we can find allies um because we're stronger together um and I I can't imagine you know thinking of cities um big and small um that are you know going to be faced with challenges wouldn't be interested in finding a common solution I think our challenge however what I find off often is when I'm in conversations about our city is that we're the largest city in the state of North Carolina and so we have very unique challenges the only city that comes close is Raleigh right um and and then you have Durham and other cities at Asheville um that would have challenges but their challenges wouldn't be nearly of you know the growth and magnitude and size of ours and so we tend to always even in a room sometimes I find myself playing a little smaller making sure that I'm paying you know attention to the things that affect our neighbors because the average city in our in our state is less than 50,000 human beings um but our challenges are the same but the scope is very different and so we you know I think our challenge as a body is really going to be to try to really demonstrate what this would mean to us and and find that common ground and what it would mean to a city that's not even nearly the size of us and they don't have the amount of humans coming to them on a regular basis you know like us and the growth potential um and I'll say this lastly it's more opinionated I was thinking about just the sheer magnitude of our city aside from the fact that we're in North Carolina the entire New York City is 300 and something square miles I think all five burrow are somewhere around 330 or 40 square miles the entire New York City the city of Charlotte is 313 square miles the undertaking of of of of of a city of our magnitude we're not even divided into five burrows we've we've tried to take this in bites of 14 area plans and say this is how we'd like to deliver Solutions based on an enormous geography that I don't think sometimes when we're talking about it because I hear these analogous statements that say we're a big small City no we are a gigantic land mass of of of possibility but we don't have the additional 7 million taxpayers that somewhere like New York City has we have roughly 900,000 taxpayers who have an abundance of land and the promise of opportunity of people who are wanting to come to us and I think when you're thinking about something that is an e economic driver like the city of Charlotte I would hope that our colleagues in the state would realize the potential and the impact that we bring to the table as the city of Charlotte and set aside solutions that you know consider the fact and the magnitude of you know land mass population you know um economic impact to the city in general or to the state in general you know compared to you know some of our you know cities that are larger in population but congruent in size those cities started in the 1800s you know deciding how they would develop over time and that's why they have this lasting infrastructure and trains that have a 100 years old and you know they you know chronologically decided streets and things of that nature but they were 100 and totally per intentional about how they would develop those land mass individually based on you know the human beings that were in it and I think we deserve the opportunity to be considered maybe not equally but relatively considering like I said land mass impact potential economic impact and opportunity you know for for what we're making decisions about and so I'll I'll digress there uh with my opinion because it's it's it's pointed to see this and and to say to some degree now you're stifled right like to take when we're at this precipice of growth and now stifle that growth where we need the ability to really kind of be malleable based on what the recurring impacts to our city and population are I think that's that's a particular Injustice to our city so uh I I do want to emphasize the relatively limited scope like all of the things you talked about our big picture aspiration it's not like it's all been set aside we we just uh uh this is an intervention in certain areas that we want to work on um but I I I appreciate your perspective and I agree with you I I think we need to be able to kind of uh do what's right for Charlotte in Charlotte and I have Miss Johnson next thank you thank you very much I I feel like what we said earlier H how does this apply to to us so I I'd like along with Dr watlington I think the council needs a deep dive if we could have a a workshop on how this will impact us how does this impact approved resoning that date back to June or how's this going to impact our faith-based Housing Initiative Mr Paton you said a lot so I'd like if if there's a a graph before after or or something we we just need a lot more information because this has it sounds like a lot of serious implications so so I'd really I I think it's important that Council have a a workshop or a more formal presentation I hope we're going to present this at the the housing committee but more so to the full Council so that we understand how this impacts us and impacts the residents and thank you for that council member Johnson I will say just related to the resoning side there's really no perceived impacts to those uh those are all done with property owner consent and that's one of the big elements of this uh down Zone in it always has been is just having that property owner consent so uh since res zonings are uh provided or applied for with that consent from a property owner I we don't really see any perceived impacts to past or you know future ongoing rezonings it's more the uh text amendments and then any City initiated type of of rezonings like alignment rezonings or other things that we may sponsor for a zoning map Amendment or text Amendment so uh but rezonings themselves shouldn't have any real impact as a result of of the changes of this house bill or Senate bill so you mentioned something about faith or or houses of Faith Y is that is it going to impact the faith-based Housing Initiative it it will definitely slow it down a bit because we need to make sure that whatever we propose is um something that we're all comfortable with I think one of the the kind of overarching themes of of this Senate bill is our ability to introduce something and say let's put it on paper and and see how it goes for 6 months or a year and then we'll come back and refine it uh that's something that is I think a little bit limited and impacted by this legislation because that could mean that if you make changes and projects already went through into the initial text Amendment or the initial set of regulations if you make changes to those then you may create uh outcomes that reduce the development density create non-conformities or change the permitted uses and those are all things that that would fall under this so the ability to to you know continually refine things is where we will find ourselves being a little bit challenged by this legislation uh and so that's why things that we have proposed need to be slowed down a bit so we can make sure that we've tested them and and we're comfortable with them because coming back in 6 months or 12 months to to make some changes may be uh a challenge for us so I think that supports what I said earlier about the community area planning and the need for us to be as inclusive as possible before we release the first draft because that's one of the things that we say well we you know after the draft then we'll continue to hear from the public and we can make changes it sounds like what you just said could could could change that so I right I'll say that on that's for text amendments and this is really this Senate bill is related to zoning regulations and zoning map amendments so text amendments to the Udo and resoning so policy that that we adopt that that's not that doesn't fall under this so you know the area planning process you know the the documents that come out of that will not be impacted by this because those are policy related and those aren't zoning regulations or zoning map amendments so they they wouldn't fall under uh under this piece of legislation okay well again I think we need we definitely need a deeper dive and and to really understand and maybe a before and after comparison would be helpful for me also and for the public thank you you're welcome thank you so uh you certainly stirred up the committee with this one uh no no just just one last comment you know and and you know this is It's a dual track right there's a certainly a policy discussion that has impacted every major city in the state and then there's a a political conversation that's going on somewhere right and and so the the two should never meet and so I just want the committee and the public to know that you know and I think you you you you articulate very well the the impact that it's going to have or may may have right uh on on our on on our our policy and what we're doing here locally uh and then working with collaboratively with major cities throughout the state um to find out what the issue is and solve that person's problem which has already been solved probably uh and then try to draw it back a little bit so that impact wouldn't be so severe to others right and so it's a delicate dance that that that you have to do that I clearly understand right uh and so I think what the staff has recommended uh is appropriate um uh to dot eyes and Crosses um and to U not alarm the public or the council um but to but to advise us where we're at today and where we may be going so I don't want to think that the house is burning down yeah but there's smoke in it he makes analogy work with my colleague he G to make a picture burn it down yet but there there's definitely smoke in and it's going to take some time um with Dana and and other lobbyists um that represent um cities and and counties um throughout the state um to to revolve this issue and re revolve it resolve it uh with members of the the corner offices um that Dana knows exactly what I'm talking about right thank you just you know what I so the my concern also there's a retroactivity ability and I'm I'm concerned in how that will affect some of the decisions that we've already made um if at all right and and I think from a policy standpoint right that that's also this is a personal opinion but to me that's a a particular overreach because that's saying decisions that you've made as a body that you had the ability to make within the abilities of your Charter are now going to be affected we can actually now take that back right and and make that something different from the state level right um and so that that's a particular um that's of particular interest to me because that's something that stands out to me as far as an immediate need and what now and I I'm sure we'll have to work with our our legal team and you guys to be able to dissect that um you know what that means for us and decisions that we've already made and the anticipatory decisions that we have coming you know in the immediate future because I I don't see this as something that we now can't make zoning decisions and I don't want to alarm the public as if to say that because these are two separate statements I am not saying you know that we have paused zoning we're not going to make zoning decisions that is not what I'm saying what I'm saying is you know anything that downsizes development that we've made as a decision over the past 6 months particularly with reference to this particular portion um there may be some changes and and I'm Molina uh bear in mind that the provision that you have to have the property owner consent rezonings that come to us always have the property owner consent because they're being submitted by the owner or the buyer of the property right so so as Mr petton pointed out I don't expect that the retroactive nature of this would impact that uh and uh if you don't mind I just want to uh clarify a couple of points uh for one is that okay I'll just go ahead yeah um I did talk to uh the the league uh and um to Rose Williams uh and said you know we have these you know darned amazing planners here in Charlotte and uh if they can help it all to uh uh just you know clean this up uh and I think there's stuff in there that even the authors didn't have time to reflect on and would appreciate the benefit of more thoughtful input so I have encouraged the staff to kind of try to generate a position paper from us uh and recommend improvements I guess and we we'll get that into the pipeline uh I I would also mention and uh um T is here uh you know under the constitution of the state of North Carolina the legislature absolutely has the authority to do that it's not like there's a basis for a challenge by us so we don't want to go there um and uh well I'm not trying to tick anybody off legisl if you're looking not trying to tick you off like it's absolutely fair to say that uh uh we do need and the league is always advocating for autonomy at the local level in deciding the fate of communities and the future of communities absolutely um so that will be an ongoing conversation but uh we cannot question their Authority if they so choose to do that the other thing I'll mention though is I I believe that this was sort of developed and stuck into this Christmas tree package it's not of the will of the entire body right I doubt that most of the members in the legislature gave a whole lot of thought to this so uh uh but it uh to miss Dr watlington point there was a process through which this found its way in uh you'll not see what that process was from looking at the bill sponsors because the scope of the bill was so large that the sponsors are some very recognizable names and not the people that authored this but one thing I wanted to do quickly is try to to highlight uh some of the things that Mr petton said so when you talk about a non-conforming use for example isn't it true that there are a lot of non-conforming properties right now as a result of our transition to the policy map uh and uh I mean we basically created these new designations and anybody uh who doesn't conform to the new designations as a result of their existing uh development uh becomes non-conforming is that right well it it wouldn't have been from the policy map if there were non-conformities we may have captured some through the zoning translation when the Udo went into effect but a lot of that was we tried to do as much of a one for one but anytime that you make those changes or change regulations change development standards to an ordinance you may you know have that consequence of having uh a non-conforming use or a non-conforming element you know sight element like a setback or a buffer type uh situation so that's why most ordinances contain a non-conforming section to allow those situations to you know continue to to exist without really any challenge uh they still have abilities to expand you know by let's say 10% they can continue on as long as they don't you know discontinue that use so you know ordinances are always built to accommodate those to a certain degree uh but what this does is just it doesn't allow us to make changes that would create those moving forward but unfortunately anytime you do text amendments particularly large scale ones nine times out of 10 that will be somewhat of a consequence particularly when you're involving multiple properties and in our cases you know sometimes thousands of properties but uh having that ability to again let them exist and let them grow and to a certain degree is always something that you we put in your development regulations but avoiding that all together is is really where the challenge is that's why we always bake that in because you sometimes can't avoid it uh so that that's what makes this a challenge is is trying to avoid them all together now where before you could say well we created it but they can still exist they can still expand but at this point it it creates a real challenge because they're basically telling us you can't create that situation right and that's that's what I wanted to be clear about so uh in the past it was not uncommon to create a non conforming use because whenever you made a change you said stipulated okay you can stay but you are now non-conforming and that means any Redevelopment has to comply with the new rules yeah um and uh on the other hand it doesn't really mean much more than that uh now when they tell us you can't actually establish any New non-conforming Uses uh as you have highlighted that will affect our uh our text amendment process because in the resoning process again we have the the owner consent right so what we're really doing at this point is looking at the text amendments that are pending already uh and um we're looking at the zoning categories and their list of uh authorized uses to make sure that look to see whether or not we're changing anything that would violate that provision um so it it's uh I I think once you get your head around it um it's not that complicated uh recognizing the different ways in which it could affect us is a little more difficult and I believe you're kind of still working on that right yeah that's a process for sure yeah uh so I think as has been noted uh we will appreciate uh any further insights and also updates in terms of conversations that are taking place to address some of these consequences because I see things happening that I can't imagine were in the minds of the people that wrote this language uh and um it's interesting to Dr watlington question to speculate what was in the minds and and what the circumstances were that gave rise to this I've heard something about those um not very reliably so uh and at this point it's probably not important the critical thing is that we just uh uh uh work in order to get this but in the meantime for however long it takes we have to deal with the law of the land which has this language in it so if I could just clarify one quick thing too in terms of sort of the Retro look back um I think really it's only the last cleanup text amendment that falls into that window so none of the rezoning cases we don't think that the the majority of that is affected but we do want to go through with the fine-tune you know comb and make sure that you know we examine that from that look back period so just wanted to clarify that thank you for clarifying that and if I may um Mr chair the um particularly um the neighborhood character and residential infill overlay uh that's something also that is going to be a very important conversation right think about that a you know a a home is probably the most substantial purchase that an adult will make in their lifetime right I bought this home I'm going to raise my children here you know and all of my greatest memories are probably in this house and me and a majority of my neighbors but we don't have 100% consensus would like to keep this a single family neighborhood again 313 square miles right of geography that are not the same there is a diversity among the humans that live there and just as much as we have an opportunity for people to decide that they would like for there to be differentiation there should also be the inverse of people being able to decide that they don't right and so um this clearly states that that we have some potential challenging opportunities ahead as we think about what this means for the community members in the city um among many right but those are the things those are the things that stand out to me it just on a base line level and as we continue this conversation I'm going to be interested in you know um a solution you know based collaboration and how we can make sure that interests like that and others are at the Forefront of how we present and collaborate with our colleagues across the state I I would just again emphasize uh uh we we we should be careful about making General comments because it makes it look as if the impact of this is broader than it actually is so let's stay focused on down zoning uh and the uh uh non-conforming use provisions and we will look forward to hearing from the staff as you identify more places in practice where that affects us and also what ongoing conversations there are to mitigate those effects um otherwise I guess we are done if there is nothing else from the committee I will entertain a motion to adjourn so move second all in favor stand up [Music] e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that's braxon over there [Applause] we ready good afternoon everyone my name is Malcolm Graham I serve as chairman of the jobs Economic Development Council first meeting of the year and we have a pack house and so let's start by introducing those in the room starting with my far left to the wall and then we'll come to the dies after that yes sir Mark commun okay Anthony mes opportunity en Serv corer braxon Winston concerned citizen welcome back sir I'm Erica Corbin with Sugar Creek Business Association Madison of opportunity Rebecca Hing and neighborhood servic Sarah Hazel sustainability sustainability ER city attorney's office Peterson Department Matthew Economic Development Alex Gordon Economic Development H Economic Development Christie Floyd econom devel J and then we'll start at the DI Association cman sellers United Way of Greater Charlotte Aaron Gillespie with the corridors of opportunity Monica Holmes planning Marjorie Molina council member Committee Member Tracy dadson city manager Office James Mitch Vice chair Ed Dres Committee Member Char barari concern Committee Member Beverly Sanders Communications to Wanda Brown Economic Development and those who may be visiting with us virtually what would you like to introduce yourselves thank you chairman Lana Mayfield council member at large thank you Miss M for being here well this is uh Mrs doon's last meeting yep uh with the city of Charlotte so it's going to be a very good one and so we have a u pretty impactful agenda ongoing initiatives and upcoming strategic plans and schedules and I will turn it over to you to drive the ship so thank you chairman Graham um this is not this is my last committee meeting not my last meeting um fortunately unfortunately for y'all I'm around a little bit longer um one of what we wanted to do with committee today was talk about some of the things that we've been talk talking about in this committee and give you a little bit of an update and kind of some things to think about but then also at the end I'll spend just a couple of minutes and talk about things that I know you're going to see in first quarter as I do the handoff uh with the with the committee and the and the staff so let's go quickly into the first one the quarters of opportunity um you have your city council retreat at the end of at the end of January and you know when we do these Retreats there's things that we at the city do that are just you know it's the it's the three let stools we talk about it's housing it's jobs it's mobility and that can be economic Mobility or and upward economic Mobility or Transportation but then there's things that we have built cultures and structures around with Partnerships that are really a part of our DNA it can be capap with with Sarah but it's also corridors of opportunity and over the past four years we've really built something that is special and unique and we want to kind of highlight how the momentum that we've created has led to some some incredible work within the corridors through our investments but also in Partnerships so before we start because I know um I would have had everybody stand up but the room's crowded anybody on the team or partners that works in quarters of opportunity will you please raise your hand I'm not okay so I just want you to take notice that it's not you might see one or two of us from time to time on a project or things like that there's enormous group of people that are working on this to see the success and it's not just City staff but it's also our partners that are here that are here today um so let's go ahead and jump into the next slide with that and as I said um so go to the next slide it is really 2 plus 2 equals 5 do you remember where we started with this several years ago um and the manager said planning Transportation Economic Development and housing you all get in a room and figure this out how are we going to do this and how are we going to make the Investments and for that in the beginning we started to to look at Geographic areas batty for and laau if you remember um Oakland and batty for and we moved to from B for to West Boulevard and we continue to develop playbooks um and we continue to develop Partnerships in that and that is what has really led to the success of what we have here today let's go to the next slide so the quarters of opportunity six corridors you all know that you know what our mission is is fostering thriving communities for residents and businesses and building lasting legacies um and growing these communities equitably um we the city have invested nearly 100 million since 2020 um there's an additional I think 600 million roughly Aaron is that right that um Charlotte water has put in so it's not just this but if you look at the past several years of what we've invested and the great thing to that is there's nearly a on toone private match on that with our partners and other different things that we've done with Partners in the in this in this community and through this we also follow this framework right we think about we don't just let housing think where's Rebecca we don't just let housing think about housing Transportation think about transportation we really think about this comprehensively about how these pieces go together so if you're building a sidewalk you're building a sidewalk that goes to a job or goes to housing or goes to a source of of Mobility um I'm going to now turn it over to Aaron and let Aaron start to talk a little bit more about some of the Partnerships that we've that we've built sure so thank you um Aon Gillespie um I have the privilege of leading our corridors of opportunity core team and we do have our core team members here so I'm going to give them a special highlight Anthony Mendes who leads our transportation infrastructure strategy and Kelsey Preston who is our engagement lead and Madison dugar who sits within the Urban Design Center and leads a lot of our planning um work as well within corridors so we're working uh full-time dedicated on the city's work within the corridors but we rely on the collaboration of over 60 other city and county staff staff who make up our full implementation team so that work looks like a lot of collaboration this is a um small list of uh some of the other programs that we are always uh working closely with or we are boosting in some way and so what we have um for you all is a bit of a spotlight on a couple of these projects so um you know we always like to remind ourselves where we started at that Bates Ford and lasal intersection uh we started here putting this approach the corridor's approach and framework to work so focusing on one key intersection um and layering different uh types of Investments whether it's public private Partnerships Economic Development housing even placing um all in this one area to almost jumpstart or kickart catalyze some uh further Community investment so can I just enter ask one question to the committee who drives through this area on a regular basis does it look different today than it did four years ago okay so you can see change okay going sorry yeah and we've got um you know after batty Ford and Lal we pivoted to other intersections and corridors like West and remount and we continue to use that kind of node or intersection um approach when we um are working in the other corridors all of our work uh is really based off of the engagement that we go back one um the engagement that we uh collect and capture in the Playbook process that that's the Intensive you know uh very um intentional engagement work that we do with the community to create that Playbook and we use Playbook literally with I realize a lot of people like that word but um it is truly a document that reflects the community's visions and priorities for how the city and others should be investing into their community so um you know the former economy in project uh I know we've highlighted it a few times uh the rendering is you know what's to come but this is a project where we like to remind folks that it wasn't something that we started with corridors this was a longtime challenge that had been identified by The Hidden Valley Community and the Sugar Creek Corridor as well as cmpd and you know there had been a number of different attempts to try to um you know jump start some kind of change um but it really took the corridor's approach and program of coming together um aligning a multiple different Investments at once um to get that change um ignited so you know we've gone from a blighted underutilized hotel motel property that was driving a lot of um criminal activity to a property a clean site site that will become 39 new for sale affordable Town Homes um in addition the developers um Prosperity Alliance will be we are working actually with Madison on the uh inclusion of a new public space through our placemaking program on the site working hand inand with the community in the Hidden Valley neighborhoods and then how we got here it was a very quick turnaround 13 months from when the city purchased the property to when we transferred it to the new developers and within that 13-month window our team worked um hand in hand with a number of on the ground partners for all of the different tasks um and activities that needed to take place to keep this project moving forward um time really was of the essence and we were able to work with uh you know a number of different partners within even the United Way Network um our housing Partners on relocation assistance and some of the on the ground uh service providers as well so Aon can I just jump in really quick because I just want to highlight some of the Partnerships um when we brought this project to city council we asked for the sport to purchase the property 1,200 hotel rooms at that intersection and I think our Playbook had said we wanted to decrease that by at least 25 to 30% and so but the purchase Council supported then we went and pulled a million out of the corridors fund and mrii for the demolition of it then we started the partnership or we didn't start then but then we jumped into the partnership with United Way to make sure that there wasn't a story about people that might be living at the hotel being displaced and Katherine and team were so amazing in in helping with that that's all just to get it positioned to a point where then we can go out with an RFP and so those are just two different Partnerships on one project to move something forward sorry yeah all good um so we uh are you know eager to see the project um come out of the ground um later this year I'm so used to saying next year and this has also sparked a number of other hotel motel conversions within the area so this isn't a oneandone project it's really um kind of snowballing into other hotels getting uh transformed into uh housing so our next example I want to show is how corridors is supporting small business and uh really it's building off of a relationship that we've had uh even before the Hotel project in Sugar Creek uh working with some of the business owners and stakeholders to form a Business Association centered at the intersection but really serving um the corridor businesses we had a very active and you know all-in group um who took the Helm of creating this Association um really building out the foundation of the association and working even with uh some of our partners like living cities and Main Street through the breaking barriers to business cohort uh that was funded by truest Foundation it's a multi-year capacity building uh program that they're in and they were able to leverage that even further so uh we actually have a couple of the Business Association Leaders with us and I'm GNA um have Alicia tell us a little bit more about what you all have been able to do awesome um well great afternoon everyone my name is Alicia Bailey that's me um I have my colleagues with me as well um Veronica Washington and Erica Corbin they're part of the Sugar Creek Business Association board and um we officially became um active in a board um back in January of 2023 so we're very much in our infancy stage um so we're embarking our third year um and working as an oper um as an organization um I am also a business owner as well as um Erica in the corridor and um one thing that I'd like to say very briefly is that we were able to be awarded um $100,000 Grant um from Hartford um as well as some additional funds from the city to be able to create this entrepreneurial um Center uh right at 5105 Reagan Drive um and it was a center that had 14 uh offices for small businesses that were very affordable as well as an event center and um spaces for small businesses to do popups um for Community engagement um You Name It We were able to do it um we were in um partnership with two other um companies uh real estate agencies and unfortunately there was a misalignment um with what our mission was in comparison to what theirs was and so um with that being said we had to um pivot and close the center um however we are currently looking for a new location um to re to be able to reestablish this Center um but it was something that we were able to turn around very quickly um we had 14 small businesses that were on board with us um they were able to um jump start their businesses in the center um we were able to do community engagements um community events um and now we're looking to redo that so we still have maintained the Partnerships with the city um as well as Hartford and Main Street and um are very much engaged and believing that we will be reestablishing the center in the next couple of months yeah and really it's a you know I think a great example of the corridors program was able to partner with the emerging Business Association um with a little bit of support making sure that they had that um you know de organizational velopment put in place so that they could weather kind of these ups and downs of the retail or real estate environment in a very active um part of the city so um I want to make sure that I'm also highlighting so Eric is a business owner um of Health Services on the corridor and then Veronica also leads the life project uh in the north side CDC and even more connections to be made when we get to United Way in a bit I'm sure um so next I want to talk about perfect um so expanding on our small business and Workforce support Council of course supported um the funding of six opportunity hubs one in each Corridor and we were able to um come together and celebrate the grand opening of one of those six hubs in September with the Freedom business Collective so um I'm not going to tell the story of Freedom business Collective because Mark has put um his heart in Soul into the project and um I'll have you share a little bit about what you guys have done thanks Aaron uh this is a really exciting project some of you have been out there if you haven't been we invite you to come so we've dreamed of this for five or six years we've met so many small business owners and saw two big barriers for their growth one was an a aable space to operate from and the second was economic accessible education for the business competencies they needed to learn so we dreamed of putting both all those in one building which is happening now uh you see a couple of pictures here we've renovated this space we have 15 resident businesses that are operating from there every day we have five or six now what we call associate members that use it like a co-working space but are engaged with with our education as well uh to give you a little lineup and I'll leave some of these uh our January education uh curriculum uh includes uh we have a monthly Aspire Community Capital comes in and does a financial management piece for us they're working on that in January uh we do uh we're doing a a session with climb the legal uh mobilization group uh they're coming in to do some sessions for us um dig Alchemy is coming into a website uh development for the group and then every Thursday and I invite anybody to come to this the one element that we have that's open to the public is on third Thursday of every month is Thrive Thursday for us from 5 to 7 it's just a networking event the last two we had we had over 50 businesses represented and it's just a time to get to know each other have some fun programming uh have some food have some fellowship and get to know some other people people that are in small businesses and growing them and it's really been a fun time for us so thank you to the city for helping us make this a reality and the good news is it seems to be working well I had the opportunity to attend your your your grand opening and and subsequently came back when you weren't there just kind of walk around and I'm I'm I'm very impressed about what you guys are doing over there great thanks a lot we really appreciate it it's it's a fun time it's a fun environment to be in and inspiring the the people have asked me what's the greatest part and it it's getting to know these people who were the most persevering um Innovative getting over the tough spots kind of people You' ever want to meet so yeah I think it's such a great example of what we I mean we could never have envisioned such a successful you know Hub when we first came up with the program but it's I think you guys have done such a good job of providing that boots on the around that front door access for folks in the corridor to go and be able to access so many different resources and Resource Partners within their own neighborhood um and I will also put in a plug for corridors it's important that we're also sharing these stories and so there is on our City website a fantastic video from the grand opening that has an interview with one of the business owners that if you haven't seen it I really recommend you check out and I'll just interject really quick this is why we wanted to do this today is you you all voted on the opportunity hubs a year ago then we have to do an RFP then it takes time to get it standing up and you don't always make that connection of vote to implementation and then even what the Partnerships end up looking like as we've done it and we have the ability to do this in now six all all six corridors so which is something that we we talked about in in terms of making this not a batty Fort Road thing right although I love B for Road but but a CommunityWide thing right where all these quarters are being touched um and uplifted uh and providing the resources necessary to be successful and a place where they can go check in yeah so speaking of other corridors I'm going to chime in you can switch to the next slide on our next project that we really want to highlight which is in uh the north Trion North Graham Corridor which is where we uh have launched this and that is is a partnership with dream key Partners in trips for kids Charlotte what's interesting about this is the backstory of how it kind of came to us it was something that I think seed do uh you've been hearing a lot of chatter around the country about ebike pilots and ebike uh programs getting started by cities and we sedot had kind of had interest in it we had talked about it in Coors and this gave us the ability Wells Fargo Championship through other Partnerships came to us and said you know give us some ideas about how we could partner with corridors of opportunity and we said well this is an on the-shelf something we've been talking about let's see if we can put it into action and so through $300,000 from Wells Fargo Championship having really excellent partners with dream key with Carlo will talk about and then having a nonprofit that ex that is in the corridor in which we're doing this work all partner together uh it gave us the ability to try something out try something that we wanted to see uh if it could be successful and do something that really hadn't been done anywhere else in the country which is giving people both economic Mobility through Mobility choices and so I'm going to turn it over to Carla Scott with dream key Partners to talk a little bit about how it has played out thank you and thank you all for the opportunity to join you all on this pilot um 2024 was a very interesting and full year for the ebike pilot program um we had four cohorts and we learned a lot through those cohort cohorts um not only does the ebike program reduce the emissions and the carbon footprint but it also gave access to Alternative um forms of transportation for people who are homeowners in the North Graham North trian Community you got to think about people who are moving into a new home that a low to moderate income that is not an easy feat by itself so anything that happens to them within this process really affects how they live work play and how they survive in these new homes having that alternative form of transportation has given people lifelines someone's transmission um blue and they could not afford to get it fixed but they had the ebike and it was able to actually um act as an alternative form of um transportation so that they can get to work um it also is a has been a cost savings to the people who who have had the ebikes they save in gas and in parking so now they can go to places like Nota and they don't have to worry about spending the um the additional funds for for parking things like that when they come up town they can come up town without having to worry about parking um also it allows them to increase their income we have one person who immediately became a business owner doing door-to-door delivery they're able to save money with parking but they're also able to make money and some people who've done door Dash so in the time that they need the money most they're able to increase their income and reduce their overall cost of gas and parking through the ebikes um the last thing that we discovered was a which was a great surprise is that the ebike pilot program actually brought Community when you are 40 to 30 to 80% annual medium income you have to go to work there's not a lot of times that you can really get outside to spend time with your neighbor so really this program has built Community because it has allowed for all of those homeowners to get together to know each other to learn each other to know where they stay and now it's created a very unique um neighborhood because they now share yard work they share um you know safety things they look out for each other's homes so it's actually built Community within the community in a underinvested community so we're very happy and thankful and we're looking forward to 2025 where we can expand that so that pipeline of residents um are the participants the folks who are uh participating in the House Charlotte plus um down payment assistance program that dream key manages um on behalf of the city so um really connecting some dots and really layering um support the photo I want to point out this is I mean this is corridors Partnerships in a in a picture so Lowe's who is a fantastic um Community partner for corridors um has provided a lot of support for beautification and really unique projects within the corridors uh they hosted um I think this was a fall um planting session in um North Trion North Graham Corridor and the ebike cohort at the time was able to come out on their bikes and load up with um flowers and the hay bales and take them back home and be able to beautify their new home so uh I just loved when Carla had sent this one over to us yeah so you can change slides so just to wrap up we really wanted to highlight a lot of our partners and we we've saved one for the last is that we have a large number of investment funding Partners but most importantly programmatic partners that do the day-to-day work and help us build relationships and help be those boots on the ground uh that know the community they know uh who's doing what they know how what the needs are and how to provide impact in those communities and a great example of that which we're just going to end with is highlighting United Way and the United neighborhoods program uh who have you heard mention earlier Veronica who's one of the quarterback agencies in Sugar Creek there's multiple other five other quarterback agencies within our six corridors and then additional agencies in um other areas of impact that she can describe but they really are the the people side of a lot of the work that we do and help us build build that stronger tie and kind of fill the needs uh in more ways than we can do as the city alone so I'll turn it over to uh Katherine to describe a little bit about what that United neighborhoods approach looks like sure so um United neighborhoods really focuses on Health and Human Services and that's part of the beauty of the partnership because the city focuses on housing and Business Development uh infrastructure and we really are focused on the people who live in those neighborhoods um I think many of you may have received an email from me recently we just announced $4.9 million in Investments through United neighborhoods uh as uh Monica mentioned six of our areas of focus are the corridors of opportunity and we give about that much amount out every year the model we use is we fund a quarterback organization in each community so each quar Corridor has a quarterback who is really charged with both engaging residents and making them aware of the services that are available but also helping coordinate across service providers so that we'd like to think whe we are funding holistically but also providing wraparound two generational supports to the residents of that community and so the quarterbacks are again charged with making sure that the service providers are working in collaboration with one another the other thing that is unique about United neighborhoods that I do want to highlight is that we really um live and lean into the philosophy that the residents know best what they need uh and so we conduct Community visioning sessions and we really ask residents to say what are your hopes and dreams for your family and and for your neighbors in this community and they tell us what they want to prioritize I am happy to say that they do in fact prioritize across all of the social determinants of health so it's it's fairly evenly distributed across Healthcare access and education and Workforce Development and housing um and then we write our applications around what they've told us they want to fund right and we solicit proposals and then residents actually make the decisions about who comes into their Community to work so we do have Grant panels where at least 50% 51% of those who serve on those panels are residents of the community and they are in charge of determining how those F how the funding will be distributed um and so that's our United neighborhoods framework in a nutshell we are I think three years in now in our alignment with the corridors of opportunity as I said we give out about 5 million every year through this program and just to make sure we're lifting that up the 5 million over the last last three years that's over 75 different organizations that have received funding uh Grassroots based in the corridors that are receiving that funding from United Way they're often times the similar partners that we're working with on our program implementation and so it's really creating that Baseline foundation for just um thriving Community Development within each of these neighborhoods yeah and the wraparound services for organizations to grow from being kind of a Grassroots organization into a more established nonprofit into ones who lead the the geography really we do an awful lot of work around um capacity building so that folks understand the business of nonprofit management um I like to say that you know people we are not for profit but we're not for loss either so we do need to keep the lights on um so really helping people understand how to manage the business of managing their nonprofit so that it can be sustainable and impact on into the future thank sure so just a you know summary that is a brief Spotlight or a couple brief spotlights on a couple of the programs that we are um working on we have uh plenty of work to do um moving forward uh another goal that we have is um pulling down a100 million of federal funding it is a it is our big ambitious goal we're about 20% of the way there with about another 20 to 30% um fingers crossed submitted so uh we continue to leverage all of these Partnerships and collaborations both internally and externally um to really build out this Equitable investment within our cor um so yeah we're looking forward to the next year so as Aon said that's kind of just a quick synopsis but I wanted to highlight it especially in t the Liberty since it's my last committee meeting uh this is the work that I've been the most proud of at the city to see a culture change with our staff and our teams we really are a team of teams but then also the external collaboration and Alignment that has happened um there's a lot of people in this room that rais their hand to say they work on corridors there's a lot more that aren't even in this room today and so we have something that's really unique and really special when companies come and look at Charlotte they always ask what's the secret sauce and I say it's public private Partnerships and to me this is the crowning Jewel of what we can accomplish when we really become strategic and aligned well well I want to take the opportunity also to uh to brag a little bit uh on this Council um and and the staff I think it was 2019 2020 when I approached the city manager and said there has to be a better way to coordinate the services that we're delivering on behalf of neighborhoods and communities especially our quarters and while the city was working in quars um it was fragmented and and he accepted that challenge and uh and and really put his and his staff best foot forward these corridors are changing they have in some cases already changed right and so part of it is making sure that those neighborhood leaders and those residents who live there are part of the change and not victims of it uh that they can benefit from the growth that Charlotte is charot is doing and and it's just not about one District representative talking about one quarter like B Fort Road how can we make District issues City priorities and how can we make sure that not only are we focusing on Bas road but we're focusing on Central Avenue and Alamar Road North Trion and Graham Street freedom and Wilson all these major quarters they're undergoing significant changes how we coordinated the services which was code enforcement and and housing and Workforce Development and economic development all kind of putting out best foot Force the staff involvement has been tremendous I've been to an a wide variety of meetings not only in my district but throughout the quarters and and I think it's just really really um tremendous job that the staff has done in terms of coordinating the services listening to council members in terms of their their goals and their objectives and listening more importantly uh to Neighborhood leaders and residents in terms of what's important to them um the private public partnership is amazing uh United Way Lowe's and others I at every event I go to they're there on the ground providing goods and services um beyond what the city's putting uh on the ground and then the active Business Association and Miss Bailey it's great to see you again see you in a while so it's great that you're here and actively involved in what's going on in Sugar Creek but the B Fort Road Business Association what's happening in Sugar Creek freedom and and Wilson all are actively engaged Business Association they weren't actively engaged four years ago uh and they now all have their own Playbook and their own Vision their their own goals and objectives and so I'm just happy that that this annual report uh reflects the work um that the staff it's done it reflects that they are listening it reflects that this council is budgeting in the right way from my perspective uh and this is a good news story it's not the Panthers or the Hornets um but this is blocking and tackling right in terms of them Panthers hey there let's pray for the Hornets right um but this is this is this is economic development this is outward Mobility this is you know utilizing seeing how the council has um put money where our mouth is in terms of our budget priorities and so I just want to thank staff and uh uh the stakeholders who've been a part of what we've been doing and um I will open up to any questions but I just wanted to kind of say that um because I think it's I I make a conscious effort at least every week uh to drive a quarter uh to kind of see what's going going on and I look forward to actually um visiting all the um opportunity hubs which is love them may be spend the day with staff and just take a road trip throughout the city and kind of talk with them and then lastly maybe at the end of this year you know as a city we always talk about what we aren't doing but we never take the time to stop and celebrate all the good stuff that we are doing this is a good story and it would be nice to get all the quarters in the same room at the same time and we hand out Awards to business owners to stakeholders um sheer comment um ideas of what's working on B for road that may work on I 85 and Sugar Creek that may work on Central and albamar road so if staff can take that as a a takeaway for me to see how we can kind of maybe have a a wrapup meeting we bring everybody in one room and kind of share success and and share War Stories uh and um and pitfalls right and maybe do a SWAT analysis so that we can not only beat six eight disting distinguished corridors but we all can come together as one one community of of people all fighting for the same thing one thing that was missing um however uh which I think the council will talk about later this afternoon is um crime and Public Safety along these quarters and it continues uh to be a problem uh it continues uh the city and had a great meeting with u commissioner gerro and and vice chair Alman over the holidays about wraparound Services specifically and Mr Dres was there too had a great meeting and we talked specifically about wraparound services and how the city and the county can collaborate and work together um because those services are really needed on these quarters right and and the the communities going to have to work with the council because we're making where I think we need to make some really tough decisions about some of our friends and our family members who uh are may be less fortunate than we all are but in reference to how do we begin to let me choose my words carefully now how do we begin to clean up the quarter uh from the public safety perspective and and make sure that we when we when we do that we direct people to Services whether it's Mental Health Services whether it's Workforce Development whether it's um um alcohol related uh Rehabilitation right um how do we crack down on our property owners um who are selling fortifi um uh beer uh to our neighbors and allowing them to consume it there uh and create a lauding issue on a lot of these quarters and so while I think there's a lot of good work to be done there's certainly a lot more to do and the the hard part now is is balancing that act James between how do we enforce the laws on these quarters without protecting the individual rights of people to be there and that's that's the the thread that I think we have to uh find a way um to thread um and that's hard but I think based on where we are from a crime perspective I think we need to find a way to do that questions yes sir thank you Mr chair um I I served before I was on Council on boards like uh Goodwill and communities and schools and one of the challenges always was to increase awareness and and participation so can you describe a little bit your process for outreach Recruitment and making sure that anybody that would benefit from our services knows about them that directed to me yeah so again part of what we do is fund organizations who are embedded within the community and have access to Residents to make sure that they are aware of the program programs and services um there's no shortcut to just building relationships and building trust right change is going to proceed at the pace supressed and so a lot of what we invest in is is the the hard the people time the hard work of U being out in community our own staff plus the staff the organizations that we fund and again earning trust um building relationship part of why um I think you referenced it we' found 75 organizations many of them Grassroots organizations I think what people are looking for often times are services from people that are are familiar to them and that are embedded in their own community so it often times Goodwill does great work but to really reach into these communities effectively they may need to partner with other organizations that are closer to a specific neighborhood for example so those are some of the different ways that we approach this but you know again I would emphasize there's no shortcut to just building relationship with people and being out in community thank you any other questions Mr Bari happy New Year thank you Mr G happy New Year chairman sorry um I I I think it's great work all around I think it begs the question for us uh what what do we do next right and uh I think you've hinted on a lot of things that are very important one thing I suggest is that uh we really take a hard look at doing something very specific that we get behind and really kind of move the needle on um I think we've shown that we can ourselves and through Partners from the bottom up make a lot of very great individual stories but I'm wondering is the next step for us to focus in on what the lowest hanging fruit is in the small business and the startup kind of ecosystem around here and go all in on something and it doesn't just have to be money that is uh given out I I find one you know we compare ourselves to Atlanta all the time Atlanta runs laps around us as it relates to the network they have around small business and startups and the ecosystem much private sector Le we're not going to be able to duplicate that based on where we are nor would we want to but I think there's some unique things we could do to kind of really jump that um that kind of position we're in one being providing for small businesses and startups who are the vast majority of employers in town the vast majority of economic impact we have um with some kind of shared services and centers of excellence for things they need we have we are uniquely equipped to be able to stand up some of these things and much like 20 years ago you know if you want 25 years ago if you wanted to have a online presence you had to have servers and all this stuff that's become a commodity and you go to AWS and you get all these things there that's something that small businesses no longer need to do what's the next set of things I mean it's accounts payable and receivable it's compliance and legal uh Services marketing and branding um um HR related topics Logistics like these are the things that I hear small businesses crying about every day because they're so costly they're recreating the wheel every time I think there's no reason to think that we couldn't stand up a capability that deeply impacts the corridors but every small business in town gets to benefit from it and and we could control the quality of all of that and really provide something that's big I think that's probably the lowest hanging fruit and the most impactful thing that would touch so many of these businesses if we could wrap our minds around putting some kind of you know Center of Excellence shared service together for the most common needs that they have that they're they continue to struggle with thank you I think that's a good comment you're next thank you Mr chairman and I I'm just really piggybacking so I've actually spoken to Tracy about this and I love your idea about the opportunity hubs in across the various places in the city because what I've noticed just based on their explanation because I haven't been able to visit them all but they're not they're not the same in each part of the city in other words right now and this is also building on what council member barari just said they all don't serve the same purposes in each Corridor right so if we get them together how I think that's a great opportunity for us to find out you know and build efficient you know efficiently that's not to say that they each should mirror one another because the you know there's a diversity of services A diversity of people that they serve that aren't congruent but then in the same ban maybe we can ensure that there is alignment with Services let's say you know alamor and Central has one particular perspective and you know batty Ford has another and you know North Trion Sugar Creek has another but so that they know you know and I don't know if that's really a clear deliverable right now where you know each opportunity Hub knows what the other one offers and what they don't offer and how they could Leverage you know those resources across the city and so um I just wanted to add that I think that's a great idea um and Tracy and I we've had you know this conversation on a different level and and how to you know best create that alignment and ensure that alignment and then you know like what council member bikari said and I'm in agreement with the fact that you know our small businesses are really you know the the engines that drive you know these centers so how can we you know be intentional about you know those services and and really impact you know some outcome so I I will say that I think that that's a great uh opportunity for 2025 is collaboration amongst the opportunity hubs as they get up and running I think we're on this we're on the same city uh different perspective I I think the quarter from my perspective with the most potential is is is your quarter right I mean because it's so diverse and eclectic with the restaurants and the and the the nationalities and it it's just really beg itself for international type of District right um but but that's different than baby sport exactly and that's why we we couldn't go with one opportunity i' you have to go with six exactly exactly and and just making sure that you know like you're saying cuz that's a great point right there's so much diversity among these corridors but making sure that someone on Sugar Creek for an example knows that the resources on Central and you know albamar Road are there right and there may be resources there that may not be available to you that you would need to tap into for the success of the businesses on your Corridor yeah the opportunity help investment you know was a one-time investment using arpa funds by Council and you know we set it up so that it's really has put that infrastructure in place and so our Focus now is um you know figuring out how we can best build off that and utilize it um to keep it going forward in that align I like that idea all right so I want to keep us on on on task um very good discussion I look forward to working with everyone um throughout the city um on quarters this year and um Miss doson great you have the next one for us let's move to the next one which is office vacancy uh um if you remember back in the January committee meeting and the February committee meeting of 2024 we discussed office vacancy um go to the next slide excuse me there was a policy referral that was made back I think it was towards the end of 2023 um about looking at office vacancy and asking the question is there something that the city should be doing now I highlighted on the bottom in the policy question on this because when we asked it in 2023 and early 2024 we said effective strategies that the city could employ um and it was specific to Uptown vacancy so I'm going to come back to that at the end but I just wanted to highlight that was something I'm calling in to question um and suggesting that perhaps we think a little bit more broadly next slide so this is what the committee was charged with in early 2024 is comprehensive review of other cities we did that we talked about what Boston was doing what New York was doing San Francisco Chicago um and then we also talked talked about a couple of different initiatives that were underway or projects I think really in 2024 there was a lot of work that was more specific to projects now we've got a year of talking to different building owners investors things like that and have a little bit more perspective and then really where we are back and what I heard from the committee in the fall uh chairman Graham primarily from you saying you don't want to be in the business of picking winners and losers right what is a what's a framework that can give us some guard rails um but I did hear it come back up in the fall as this is still something that's on your mind so that's why I wanted to bring it back here today next slide so I don't expect anybody to be able to read this um I apologize but as I was going through the research from 2023 and 2024 and what was presented to you all a year ago the leftand image is what the Q3 2023 vacancy report was the right- hand image is the same is a year later um for the most part vacancy has risen in every single submarket in our city and there's a lot of reasons around that that we can we can talk through um but I wanted to highlight that and then again you can't really see but in the far right column of each one of those images under the 2023 one that was um office under construction so you had a pipeline of like 3 million ft that was under construction and you essentially if you look at the right hand image here too you essentially have none in pipeline right now um projects are harder to get financed projects are harder to get leased so just pointing that out as we start to think about these areas um again I'll talk you through a little bit the other piece that I want to highlight is um we are slower inbounds office projects again the state of the market across the country for office people have been slower to determine what kind of square footage they need to determine any big bold moves I will say this um as I look back through projects and this is inbound business 2020 or 2018 and roughly 2021 we didn't lose a lot of projects that came our way that were out of Market coming into Market I would say that we probably got about 90% of them over the last 18 months we've lost we have lost four deals and I have to compete a whole lot harder and it's not that Charlotte's doing anything wrong it's that everybody is competing that much harder for these types of deals because there's just not that many of them out there if we can go to the next slide so I want to start to give you a couple examples this is a slide that I shared last January that was specific to Uptown um we we called out that there was several Mill million square fet or 1.7 of expiring leases over the next 18 months um we C out that there was about 17 buildings that we were looking at the slide or the image at the bottom on the right hand side the red ones were the ones that we were paying attention to and a lot of this was based on their vacancy rates and based on the age of the of the building so the next several slides I'm going to walk you through some stories of some of these buildings um how some are repositioning um how some are converting but then we're also going to look across other sub markets let's go to the next slide so staying in uptown here's two examples of buildings that have done their own private investment and reposition the building and I think that they will both see success or are seeing success based on this 550 which is the nas we all know as the NASCAR building we have a partnership in that building um is only 15 years old and it's about 3 400,000 ft just short of short of that they just announced in December the image at the top on the left hand side a major overhaul of their Lobby space and amenity space these are things that new tenants are now looking for and it's what's going to help reposition buildings on the right hand side one South um which was built in 1974 it's a 50-year old building now turmaline the owners got ahead of their overhaul of that building and creating more amenity space they've over they've rethought portions of um over street that they control within that building and are really rethinking how that building works and delivers to its tenants and as a result of that you're seeing them being able to pick up tenants from other Legacy or vintage Office Buildings coming into there as leases are expiring so these are two examples of private investment that's being made into these buildings to attract uh some of the new tenants let's move to the next two both of these projects are at the same intersection you have 400 South Trion which is currently in foreclosure I think it's scheduled to be auctioned off this week um it's it too is a 50-year old building um I can tell you in my career over the past probably 10 to 12 years I've known people look at this building multiple times can you reclad it can you take the skin off keep the keep the bones um can you reposition it for housing we've looked at a lot of different things over the years um in 2024 we had a potential buyer come to us and ask about this building and ask about a demolition fund the uh it was purchased in 2018 you see there for 133.5 million the debt on it right now is 93 million 93 and A5 um estimated purchase prices for this were 13 million so and then you look at a demolition cost somewhere between 18 and 24 million the land's not worth that if you're really talking about acquiring it even at 13 million 15 million demoing it for that it's not right it's the land's not worth it then you add on top of that it's 4 million a year to operate it and keep the lights on this building is 3% occupied 3% 3% so it doesn't make mathematical Sense on how you can buy the building and reposition the building and so this is one again as an example of where somebody has come to us and asked us about a demolition fund to Wells Fargo um great partner with Wells Fargo in this is that essentially that building is largely vacant um but they've kept the lights on mosa Grill's still in there the branch Bank is still in the retail space people can still Park in there and work through that building via over Street um but if you look at the tax F in 2023 it's over 200 million offers last year on that building were 70% below that so again I think Wells Fargo kind of paused on this to say let's just see what the market does but here's two examples of one intersection in two different buildings that are essentially sitting vacant three Wells farg is really two buildings but three buildings that are s sitting vacant next slide here is two examples of conversions um the Johnson Building was purchased uh last year it's 100-year old building um and it's going to be converted to 245 hotel rooms purchase price was below tax value um we have not been approached on this one around incentives we have been approached on the building on the right 200 North College about a conversion for for this building the Wake Forest building it's five stories it's half a million square feet I put the aerial at the bottom on there because this building's really unique and it's a it's a major footprint of the entire higher block um so it's really hard to reposition into residential it's over a $100 million conversion for that um we have talked to this developer and this owner about could we get affordable housing in here and we're looking at creative ways but to get 10% affordable housing and I'm spitballing at this number 10% affordable housing in a project like this you're looking at a let's call it a 10 to 15 million TIG so again these are all discussions that we're having but these are all different kinds of projects conversions um are going to represent a small factor of what we see in kind of right sizing the market but we also think it's an important one next slide other things that are happening in in um Uptown are consolidations Bank of America pulled out of Gateway 280,000 sare ft this year last year I guess um back into their owned bank assets uh next this year I guess in 2025 they will exit the Fifth Third building which is the image on the on the right they will exit that building of of a 300,000 Square ft so the and I think I told you guys last year part of what we're seeing in some of these buildings like 400 uh South trian that we just talked about was Duke Energy building their own headquarter Tower right so it's things that are moving around in the ecosystem but at the end of the day Square footages are reducing for offices and and this is across the market not just Uptown Square footages are reducing and the inbound office job growth isn't keeping up um let's P um I pointed out earlier that the pipeline is pretty minimal for new new construction you read stories about the both of these projects Carson and Tron Queensbridge um they're both chasing a lot of the same office tenants that are either getting pushed out of Bank of America Corporate Center um or want to still be in that new product there's still a flight to Quality um for tenants for office tenants and large part of that is the amenities that these new buildings offer huge Open Spaces retail opportunities sustainability you name it a lot of these new buildings um offer offer that the problem here a lot of times is the financing and we have been starting to talk about new tools cace um which I'm hopeful that you all will hear about out um in upcoming months which is a um program that is um administered by the state and supported by local governments and provides Property Owners with access to long-term financing from private Capital providers for up to 100% of the qualified improvements so this gets a lot to sustainability and can have a lot of benefits around and support Capa so you guys aren't going to hear that as much from Ed you're going to hear it from Aaron and and Sarah and upcoming months that's a tool that might help be helpful in getting some of these projects off and running um into um new construction and New Opportunities let's switch to the next slide this is a building that's in the heart of South and 110 East it delivered in the middle of 2024 without a single tenant it's virtually unheard of for the the momentum that we had seen in south end it's a beautiful building right on a light rail line it's right acoss from the Lowe's building that's you can see it in the right hand picture now they have signed some tenants since they have been opened and people can actually get in the building but this is one where I've actually tried to get creative on our local business investment grants because where the tax valuation on this at 91 million is far below the real value because the building is vacant and can we get in creative with our business investment grants to think about it differently and how we might look at um a project with a building that's actually already delivered so just an example I wanted to highlight of of that with office vacancy next slide moving to Balentine um you know we invested $42.5 million um into Valentine reimagine 25 million of that was a tax increment Grant um I know council member dggs knows all too well but Northwood is carrying that burden and they need to see success of what they've invested in and they are seeing great success um Premier just re re-upped and is U moving within Valentine they signed 140,000 foot lease um last year now it's great with Northwood because as their tenants grow or contract they can move them around in the park and keep them as their tenants a lot of other buildings don't have that luxury um but in the case of rxo that it that announced in fourth quarter that was an expansion of 2 16 jobs rxo currently has 647 jobs in Valentine right now today I cannot tell you how hard we had to fight to keep that company in Charlotte they were very close to jumping the border and going into South Carolina and a large part of that was over incentives we spent a lot of time in working with with Raleigh and Department of Commerce to try to get them to come up on incentives with our partners at the county everybody had to lean in really hard just to keep them in Valentine so that's why I wanted to H highlight that one was we saw it as a win and it's it's it's an expansion of jobs but it's also retaining a good number of jobs in this community and in something that we've invested in lastly I want to Pivot to the university here is a building as scent that delivered in 2021 it's just under 160,000 Square ft um many times when we have prospects looking at the Charlotte Market this building is is on a tour this building has set vacant since 2021 when it delivered as a brand new building um it gets a lot of looks for life science prospects and I mentioned four uh projects that we' lost in last 18 months two of those were life science ones that went to Raleigh and a large part of that is there's buildings that are positioned well for Life Sciences in that market um whereas we're not as experienced in life sciences in that market and sometimes building code zoning ordinances things like that aren't best positioned if a building want like this wants to reposition and have an office slight R&D or maybe some kind of flex space with it and so this particular project has brought up conversations in 2024 that we had with the planning team about what should we be thinking about differently with existing office that meets the market where the market is in areas like life science where it's not just true office but it might be office plus something else um so I know that you in the last committee talked about State Bill 3 8 82 we're paying attention to that as it relates to the zoning as well and how do we work within all of that these are the questions that we brought to you all in 2024 um should we invest how long should we invest what are what's feasible with conversions demolition a lot of the same questions but I want to propose a couple of recommendations to you if we can go to the next slide that we think about and remember in the beginning where I said the policy question was around Uptown and specific to the city I think my recommendation to you all even though I'm not going to be with the city I'm still in this ecosystem um is partnering with a lot of different entities that are looking at whether it be conversions whether it be incentives local state at all different levels and let's think about what a toolbox might be um studying the ordinances I mentioned that a little bit um just a couple slides ago I mentioned C uh cpce financing that hopefully will come back with Sarah and Aaron and then again going back up to kind of recommend recommendation a is let's look at historic tax credits let's look at our state incentives for business recruitment let's look at our local incentives for business recruit recruitment let's look at City County incentive alignment U chairman Graham you and I have talked a lot about that and then let's talk should we have a demolition fund but let's look at all these things holistically um before we look at just kind of one project at a time last slide so kind of bring a lot to you today um ideas on potential next steps but really what I want to hear from you all is are we go is this the right direction um pulling team members together that are not just City but others that are looking at this and really thinking through at not just what the city can do but what can be done a little bit more holistically that's it so the first presentation was all good this is not all bad this is difficult so I'll let Vice chairman Mitchell handle this one um I'll open up for questions cuz it it it's it's it's difficult right it's hard yeah um and um my my first reaction to it is you know who could be some of the potential partners and then secondly um this is bigger than just the city that's right right it it's it's it's a a community approach of a lot of stakeholders the city the county they housing um Center City Partners University City Partners um the folks in balen time I think we all got to work together to come up with a community response versus a city response from my perspective I'm just thinking out loud um but I'll open up and I saw Mr Mard yeah no I I personally I think that there's three kind of buckets that we should try to approach this with and I think the overriding theme across all of them is to not to your point chairman Graham think that this is our problem to completely solve like that that's just that would be devastating for us to to because we we'd be throwing pebbles in the ocean essentially um so I think it's important for us to look at what's our lane as well as what's the ROI of the things that we can do towards the ultimate outcome we're looking for um number one clearly uh Public Safety it's in our lane we know it has an impact on this stuff particularly Uptown but literally everywhere so um there there's some things I think we can specifically do around that I don't think it's Reinventing the wheel I think it's getting really focused on a couple things we'll talk about that in the right committee and and discussions I think the second thing is up and choose a couple tools M dodson's pointed out some new ones potentially you know really do the analysis on those tools and and then figure out how to really use them because it's it's one thing to create a tool it's another thing to go and actually deliver on it so I like some of the things in that list uh I think they warrant further consideration I think the third thing bucket is where we might have the most success but it would be the hardest and I think it's it's a different Paradigm we need to recruit specifically certain things to town that not only have their own impact but then become recruitment tools under themselves and um you know I think a great example of that right now is Data Centers data centers are super hot there's stories all across the nation of the hot spots where they're coming and they're generating tax base and they're generating jobs and different things like that maybe not as sexy as some other jobs but definitely doing it but you can go recruit Data Center ERS with certain particular um aspects to them that you can negotiate as part of those things that those become pieces that you recruit other Industries Downstream from them and uh and I I just think there's a lot to explore there so it's it's almost a two-dimensional recruitment um picking something that's hot but then negotiating into it another incentive tool down the road so those are I think the three major buckets I'd recommend us exploring in 25 glad it noted uh Mr Dres thank you Mr chair uh I was thinking along similar lines um and I think in order to identify a role for ourselves in this we need to be clear about what the public interest is I mean basically these are private sector commercial transactions and normal economics would tell you that if you have a glut like this the price goes down until there are enough people who want those spaces to occupy them so but it's not happening we basically have larger Supply and also the whole Paradigm of offices is changing so that you have the odd situation of uh people moving into newer space that conforms more to the kind of environment employees and then you have these buildings that may or may not be susceptible but at all times we need to say to us uh where is the impact uh in the public domain so safety is one clearly dereli buildings are an eyesore and a problem for Public Safety and if we can be clearer about that then and and try to put some quantity around it then uh policy uh and investment decisions will be easier to justify because we'll have a framework where we say uh this is why it's important to us this is how much it's worth to us and therefore this is how much we're willing to invest um since Valentine was mentioned I didn't want to specifically shout out Northwood office uh I mean they came to us with a plan to invest a billion A5 dollars and they persevered through covid uh and uh if you know John Barton he is aged about 15 years in The Last 5 Years um and I just commend them for having stuck with it uh and creating something that I think will be immensely valuable to uh district 7 and to Charlotte um I I wanted to mention also if we talk about bigs and things like that uh you know we may need to reexamine the criteria the whole concept cep of the big if we're going to try and incorporate this priority because otherwise it was a pretty simple issue of jobs created and so on and it was supposed to be a test of whether they would come here or not if we didn't do it uh so now we're we're considering that as a tool with maybe broader application and scope um but when I think about that I I very much agree with Mr barari the magnitude of the problem versus our capacity to intervene financially is is just way out of proportion so we do need to realistic about that and and I guess I had one question and that is the there there was a trend towards requiring people to come back to work in the last year or two during the course of all of this so has that had any visible impact on the supply and demand relationships in the office Market I think it has I mean I know there's um some projects that have sat out there for so long because again they want to go to a new building buildings can't get financed but have actually increased in square footage because people are now coming back and they're they're the project scope has increased I think that we're we're finding that new Norm again you know if if it's not going to be five days in the office but you're seeing a lot of people back in the office and it's not half day here half day there so I would say in the return to workpiece we are we are starting to level out I don't hear about return to work being as much of the issue anymore um I do think because of this hybrid work there is that consolidation that we are seeing in some cases you're seeing expansion in other cases um and then there's companies that just have gone fully remote and that's led to some of the vacancy as well right um but I do think that's that's leveled out and it doesn't remain as much of a question mark of we can't look into the future and understand it so therefore we are paralyzed of making a decision I would mention finally that uh the city used some of its car's money to reduce the density of our occupancy of office space to make us more resistant to a covid type of uh because when people are too close together they can't come to work without infecting each other but uh that was all I had Mr chairman thank you thank you um I'm good Mr Mitchell no well we're going to sign this to you I noticed that Mr well again it's it's complicated right and quarterback this one yeah yeah he's all he's already in uniform right seriously I mean v he's already dressed he's already dressed yeah so so so I I heard what you what everyone said um relating to Public Safety aspect of it uh identifying new tools uh the recruitment piece uh with the direct line maybe the data um identifying what our roles should be if any uh what's the public interest what's the return on the investment uh understanding what a framework may look like um really kind of getting more information to the return to work policy and I guess that's the other question other than the city and the county who who else is talking about this in the real estate well I think you have and and we you kind of said it early on and you've got the the development partners and the owners right obviously Northwood is a perfect example I talked to owners that have only office product I talk to owners who have product across the state or across the country to get different perspectives you have perspective investors that have been coming to the table with unique and different ideas um UL has been engaged to talk about a study um of kind of what is out there what are the opportunities in addition you have Center City Partners you know they did their vintage office Study last year this continues to be a topic for them um reic and the alliance did a study um Rob and I were just talking about it when he was here for the last committee um that really looked at office conversions and what does that need to look like and where is it most applicable um across the Charlotte market and so I think my recommendation really is kind of trying to convene all of this to then say you know if and I'll use um I'll use the Rook Alliance study which I have not seen the final report um but if there's recommendations out of that that suggest that they're State Legislative things but yet on one hand we're talking about that and then we're also talking maybe historic tax credits or we're talking about changes to the J dig I don't know let's think about that comprehensively versus one-offs um that would be my recommendation to it and then the same thing locally I think it's fair for for you all and and County if we're going to think about things like a demolition fund or changing um council member DG's any modifications to the business investment Grant um let's look at all of your options versus hey we need a $20 million demolition fund because you have a couple buildings that need to be demoed um I think that can be done pretty quickly in terms of looking at the tools it's just everybody kind of saying yes let's lean in and let's do this together I I guess my my my thing is one I I agree I think there needs to be a convening of the mind of everyone who's kind of touching this that's right I mean just to check in if for anything else right right um uh and then to explore because obviously this is just not a Charlotte issue it's a a national issue so other cities are dealing with this and I don't know whether or not there's a a check-in place where we can go and see and learn and find out what other communities may be thinking about as well um but obviously this is this is a marathon not a Sprint that's right right and so I'm not sure um what the next step is whether or not who who's going to convene and I I'm on senat C Partners board um so I I'll have a conversation with Michael for sure um but it's just not his issue either right and because it's University partners and so I don't want to have several conversations when I could we can have just one and so maybe maybe working with um from a recruitment St point we got these empty buildings making sure that when people are looking at Charlotte we direct them I'm pretty sure that's happening now right but but uh just the the loow hanging fruits that we have to do that are beginning um that we do first and foremost and then the longer the issues are just a lot longer to kind of solve and put our hands around and I don't want to get the city out front that's right then all of a sudden people think we own it right well what I'd suggest uh Mr chairman I there's a lot of subtopics in here but the theme is definitely recruitment retention and growth right so I think we need some kind of uh cross disciplinary body that we can have a touch point with we don't have to lead it but we need some touch point to be in it I have a hunch uh that where the alliance has kind of not been involved in this space that much the last few years they may be getting more involved going forward you think so so but but I mean that's a there's a that's a big statement to unwrap we won't do that today but obviously that that's a material thing that that drove a lot of frustration in the past so with that you know we have a role to play our Public Safety role our our redesign of incentives uh there's a there's movement as we all know just the elephant in the room of how economic development is going to work so I think having some kind of ad hoc Focus for a while of recruitment retention and growth is going to make a lot of sense and the other thing I just add into that lens of subtopics is it's important that we don't move forward thinking the world we know today is going to be the world we're solving for I mean this is very cyclical everyone's been using survive to 25 I don't know if that applies anymore right or what but I think the point is you know we don't have to necessarily always solve today's problems we have to look at what the trend that's coming is and maybe the trend that's coming is everything's going to be hot and sexy again therefore maybe a demolition fund makes sense because it speeds up what's going to happen you know but the point is we have to put that lens on it and we need the right group to be able to convene to do that uh Point well taken any other questions I got two more quick updates for you well in elition okay so um last things were new initiatives that you'll be hearing are kind of I guess more roll out of initiatives that you will be hearing and I can do this in the four minutes um the first one if you remember Workforce Development Danielle was um here in front of the committee in the fall give you a a little bit of a teaser of the Strategic plan um that she would be rolling out you will have some discussions at The Retreat around Workforce Development what's working in other markets I think um she wants to take some of that information take some of that dialogue and then be able to roll that into um the Strategic plan so you all will see that come in I'm going to call it first quarter February March whenever she's ready on that but I think it'll be important to really engage at The Retreat on some of that dialogue that happens there the other one is the roll out of the small business update um if you remember about a year ago our team Holly Christy they were here talking about the small business strategic plan that we were taking um undertaking nearing 2024 um they've done an enormous amount of work with our Consultants 480 surveys 20 sessions 120 participants 50 organizations represented and they will be back in first quarter to really start to talk about the recommendations of the committee and you know one of the great things is talking about corridors today and you all left on a lot of small business discussion how is the work that we're doing right now whether it be in corridors or with amp up um or with our minority business accelerator or small business month how do those fit into the Strategic plan and where does the city show up in the Strategic plan versus other partners as we've we've talked about in some of these other initiatives so those are the other two things coming to you in first quarter thank you Miss D I got two other comments and and then we'll adjourn one just want to give a shout out to Danny marrison and the folks at the charow sports foundation for really for the last month uh in December uh the ACC Championship uh I'll get to that the AC oh don't worry he's gonna mention that sorry about s there Mr chair the ACC Championship and the uh the Duke mail Bowl which was like last week and lastly uh the Charlotte Invitational tennis that Drew 177,000 folks huh got the Jump Man invitation The Jump Man invitation though and um uh and and all that again sports and entertainment um I had an opportunity to play some you weren't there uh I wor uh I was before before um it was 2:00 I had opportunity to hit with Carlos and Tio uh on the floor of the Arena which was so I represented the city well you hand you I I handle my business right but I just want to put that out there that we we want to thank Danny Morrison and those guys and then lastly uh while this is not her last meeting it is her last committee meeting and I want to really thank uh Miss dson for the opportunity to work uh with her for the last three years um on a wide variety of initiatives that really um moved the city forward from a uh Economic Development perspective perspective small business Workforce Development you heard about the quarters of opportunities uh we did sexy stuff too with Panthers and hornets and uh our community is a lot of better place to live in economically for those who are Frontline workers for all the work that you have done over the last several years in that department I just want to say personally thank you for your help and thanking you for our conversations uh allowing us to kind of pit back and forth without taking anything personally I really enjoyed the working relationship no thank you and thank you for that um it was funny as we were sitting through this committee meeting I reflected on many of the conversations that you and I had and go back to the beginning where we kept saying because you I you did come in and say batty SP baty for baty sport and I kept saying but it's a both and it's not an either or and we and I think what we have really been able the staff has been able to demonstrate in working with the council is that we can do both we can do Stadium deals and Arena deals and Tennis deals I know it's still to soon I'm sorry and we can do we're going to get there we're g to get there we can do Eastland we and we can do Eastland but we can also do batty spard and we can also think about um all parts of our community and how we move um the city forward so thank you for the opportunity to work with everybody and I look forward to continuing that oh she's not going far so we know where she's going so I uh sorry side note Mr chair just real quick yes sir I think that Tracy just said that the the workforce strategic plan would be somewhere in q1 I think it would be very difficult if we didn't at least have some kind of preview of that before the uh Retreat because you know we're going to want to talk about it and if we're talking vaguely I I think it needs to be based in some level of where we're headed so I just throw out it may not be ready by then but there to be some informing of our conversation through that plan I hear you and I'll talk to I'll talk to the man manager and Danielle when she gets back this week thank you great meeting great meeting all right Mr you got a lot of work you meeting jour [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] la [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] okay um I know I was having technical difficulties so let's give it a minute for council member Brown to join [Music] [Music] [Music] please we're live council member ashir thank you first let me start with wishing everyone a happy New Year and good afternoon I'd like to welcome you all to January 6th budget governance and intergovernmental Relations Committee meeting I'm dimple AA committee chair so let's start with introductions first we will go around the room and then we will as start with introduction for those joining us online so Mr Mitchell I'm sorry happy New Year everyone James Mitchell committee me member oh James Mitchell Committee Member I'm sorry Sean Heath assistant city manager hey Monica Allen assistant city manager Sheila Anderson General Services procurement division manager Steven Coker offic of Charlotte business and inclusion tell strategy and budget Cherry Smith strategy and budget Ashley price Department of General Services Phil rer General Services Kenny Helms General Services procurement Raymond Bean SEIU Julius Edward's office of sh business inclusion na Mattis Charlotte business inclusion har stry budget that's it for the room Madam chair that's Madam chair that's it for the room all right so for those joining us online starting with Committee Member happy New Year everyone council member Lana Mayfield Committee Member and staff that that is joining us online please introduce yourselves um there's no staff online council member okay I I see Sher Smith G and David flower um no problem well let's dive into our today's discussion for today's meeting of the committee we are planning to devote um the entire committee meeting time to continue our work on a very topic which is the focus on the policies Des to optimize participation contract I know um that Sean Heath and his team has been working closely with council member Mitchell and council member Mayfield iate this continued conversation to address uh concerns and questions from committee members so as we delve into this discussion I would like to turn this over to assistant city manager Monica Allen to kick things off all right thank you councilwoman azir so good afternoon everyone Monica Allen um so today we're here um and I'm joined by several members of um the department CBI and procurement um and so today we're here to talk about the mwsb participation capital projects and just a little bit of background um on this item in uh 2024 last year uh there was increasing interest around mwsb participation in capital projects um since that time CBI have worked to address various ways uh this item is a continuation of the November 4th BG meeting um and at that time that staff had provided an update on opportunities um for the partnership as well as various actions that were taken um and we had also highlighted um when of the workshops that were done around early engagement uh that we did with a consultant of course we ran out of time during that time so again this is a continuation of that work here um and before I turn it over to um stepen Coker to talk about um his items just want to also mention that uh staff are working on responses to several Council questions that have been asked of myself and other individuals in this room um for a couple months now so we will will be providing written responses to those questions hopefully in the next week just wrapping up some things that some of the staff members uh we are sending a first wave of those questions out in the next week and then the second wave will come probably towards the end of January or early February but that's C should catch us up on some things around CBI um practices and and that's just beyond this particular agenda item so I wanted to make that clear um and so again before I turned over to Stephen Sean do you have anything you want to add no thanks Monica sounds good let's rock and roll okay all right Stephen you're up thank you Monica first of all let me just say uh Happy New Year to uh Council leadership who represents this committee uh as well as uh staff and uh friends um this agenda you know we we we really were going to focus on you know starting out where we were uh few months ago several months ago in fact and and take it all the way to where we look to go so we'll talk about the progress to date the opportunities and action review of the pilot program you know with a pilot program uh there should be a set of findings that come out of it and we're going to report those to you and then of course Where Do We Go From Here the path forward and next steps next slide as far as progress to date we started this exercise if you will back in June with a committee meeting where we presented the road to growth in a pilot framework and we introduced the general CIP mwsb Master utilization plan concept and at some point hopefully we're going to come up with a new name for that to make it a lot easy to uh say uh then in the summer we we had the break but we really didn't take a break because we initiated the pilot uh framework including 10 targeted informal solicitations to the mwsb community and then we held what was a successful CBA CBI Outreach event and a webinar uh then we fast forward to September and then we held a small group a meeting with the council committee members uh it was at that meeting where we got an opportunity to truly uh listen to you and you know document questions uh some great questions many of which we've come up with to the respon and as uh Monica indicated you you'll get that uh uh in short order uh and then we uh engage with the minority trade associations and uh our advisory committee the cbac in October we reviewed uh the CBI and uh City procurement policies and procedures and then we reviewed the road to growth pilot framework prelim preliminary results uh in November uh we talked about uh and this was a really quick meeting uh we talked about opportunities and actions and we're really going to pick up on that today and then of course uh early engagement Workshop uh that was very successful uh at that point in time next slide so in introducing the goal of this our Collective goal is to finalize the MW SBE Master utilization plan that optimizes participation in Charlotte's capital investment uh plan or CIP construction plans uh our approach was identify key opportunities and Implement Target actions under four primary components that would be early engagement project development targeted Outreach and removal of barriers next slide at a real high level when we talk about early engagement we talked about integrating CBI into the project planning phase on the project uh development component administering the pilot program framework focused on increasing project opportunities and then as far as targeted Outreach implementing a tailored approach uh to our Outreach efforts through the contractor development program uh and then of course as we stated remove barriers which would be improving uh procurement processes offering bid preparation training providing bonding support where needed and encouraging licensing and and certification next slide so if we can get a little more granular on those four components the first component is the earlier engagement and the opportunity there was to involve CBI in the project planning process to maximize mwsp inclusion what were the resulting actions there were several number one goal alignment where we integrated mwsb goals into the project objectives from the Inception improve goal setting so we develop realistic data driven participation goals tailored to each project enhanced bid opportunities this is where we structured solicitation to create smaller accessible packages for mwsb and then there was the risk mitigation involved where we identified and addressed the very barriers such as insurance bonding and technical specifications as far as transparency and Council buying so important to us we wanted to Foster trust through collaboration and share diversity objectives and a lot of these meetings of what we've been doing has been just that to give you a good sense of the work that we're doing uh and then on the budget and planning process update the annual procurement uh forecast form to include business inclusion efforts for each project as far as component number two which is project uh development uh our objectives here uh was uh administer a framework focused on increasing project opportunities for mwsb and so what happened well the resulting actions uh the pilot framework Administration where we tested strategies to maximize m wbe inclusion in real world construction projects these were actual projects that were on the street that we worked uh toward uh learning lessons that we came away from uh the capacity building we partnered with uh Maryweather and Williams who administers our contractor development program uh to deliver training programs that improve mwsb Readiness so important and then there was enhanced collaboration uh when I say enhanced we really uh have worked with General services like never before and this enhance collaboration between the two groups uh you it it forces us to allow us to better identify mwsb opportunities uh when we talk about solicitation we wanted to talk about optimal uh methods uh whereby we collaborated with General services to determine inclusive construction delivery methods which uh you know such as semar and that may be very familiar to you uh and then uh performance tracking we de develop tools to Monitor and evaluate mwsb partici participation rates all of which resulted in Lessons Learned to support better results in the future now the the final thing I want to just say is you know the lessons learn from all of that there were so many different things there were Pros there were some cons uh but this is a living process uh even when we finalize what we call the mwsb master utilization plan there's going to be work to continue we're going to integrate it into the other departments and you'll hear more about that but the third component targeted Outreach uh we've learned uh more and more over the uh months and years that Outreach is so important so here we wanted to expand engagement through tailor Outreach efforts and the resultant action was uh we leveraged the contractor development program uh where we launched a targeted outreach program to educate and prepare our mwsb uh there was a Community Partnership component where we partner with local organizations to extend Outreach and attract diverse vendors uh and then there was the idea of simplifying the bidding process that's where we take the complex or unclear requirements uh that have discouraged participation and so the illustrating the impact of accessible and transparent bidding process was the outcome uh and that was a a major win next slide we talked about again removing barriers that's why we're here uh the resultant action was uh the procurement submission support uh when applicable we learned we should offer preparation training which we've done uh the bonding support through the contractor development program and assistance with licensing and certification and to that point we learned that we just don't have a lot of folks who are certified General Contractors well guess what we learned that discovered when updated procurement policies may be needed to reduce administrative hurdles for our mwsb financial support uh we learned that there may be necessary uh it may be necessary to partner with financial institutions to provide lowcost loans which we've done in bonding and or administer a quick pay program and that's something that's on the horizon uh technical assistance again uh that's extremely important what we do as far as removing barriers so uh through our uh contractor development we provided one-on-one support to help our mwsb meet the technical project requirements next slide so all in all uh you know at least my part of this presentation talks about before the pilot and after the pilot before the goals are often late set late in the process uh there's limited collaboration between CBI and the Departments uh the barriers such as the need for technical assistance and targeted Outreach uh that went add unaddressed afterwards we now find ourselves at a place where mwsb goals are integrated and discuss closer to the project Inception enhanced collaboration led to more inclusive project delivery methods thank you very much General services and of course there's been a systemic barriers identified and mitigated through our targeted actions so that's uh the long and short of how all this looks to date again it's a uh a living process we expect processes to be improved over time strengthen and just become a better better offering now I'll turn it over to my esteemed colleague Sheila Anderson good afternoon so this slide may be familiar to you it was presented in June it outlines the framework of the um pilot program that we um are still in but began in summer uh the bid thresholds are are Illustrated in this slide and the one the two on the left are what we are targeting for the informal program which is under 500,000 that is considered the informal range now in between those there is actually a deliniation that we've considered which is under $300,000 when the Project's under $300,000 it does not require bonding additionally often this work is self-performed so we try to keep that in mind when we're putting our projects out there as well between 300 and $500,000 there is a bonding requirement um and often consider some that some subcontracting may be needed now those while that was what we took into consideration for our pilot program to the right is our formal levels for our formal thresholds for um procurement and for solicitation over $500,000 open competition is required we must advertise the bid we cannot Target mwsb as we could in the formal range and as we did for the pro for the program um bid bonding is required and usually this type of work does require a mix of subcontracting and self-performing work um are greater than 5 million these are the projects that we consider for alternative delivery methods now while we're not going to concentrate on this um group on this particular category for this presentation we have had some successes in this area Lately by um putting out these bids through an alternative delivery method um a semar method construction manager at risk to be um more specific um so recently which was a project that was approved at the December meeting for the firehouse 11 we reached a um 25% goal on that particular project there was um 15% MBE consideration negotiated and 11 excuse me 10% wbe and uh with the potential for that number to go up we also have two uh projects that will be coming to city council soon for approval where we have also negotiated um comparable uh goals for those projects as well next slide so the next slide are demonstrates uh the pilot program results um as steveen mentioned there was 10 projects that were initially considered for this program and you can see the results of on the screen now to summarize what we have is one of the projects was awarded to an MBE two to wbe two projects to SBE one to a non-certified firm there were three where no bids were received and there was one where a a not responsive bids were received um for those particular projects um oh excuse me so those are the results there we'll take a deeper dive on the next Slide the the two at the bottom these are new projects that we've also let um under this program and for the second project number 12 fire station number two the roof replacement this is actually a result of unbundling so where we would normally um leave the roof in with the other repair and renovation work of the firehouse we decided to extract the the roof portion of it and bid this out individually under the informal program so this slide takes a little deeper dive on the previous slide where it breaks down the um certifications that were sent out so the number of invitations that were sent out were 117 and it breaks down the certified firms that it that the project was sent to um then the next few columns those were the bids that were received and it breaks down we have two total bids which category um of certification each one of the bid submissions were received from so what does this tell you just um taking a look at this your initial observations is that we've had low bid participation in this program now mind you in procurement overall we may see out 200 and still if we get 10% we're very very happy okay but keeping in mind for this particular Pro um program they were a little bit lower than what we had hoped for uh also there were fewer MBE that received awards for these uh for these projects and also that 30% of the pilot projects resulted in no bid so out of the 10 we had 30% or three that um were not bid on at all and looking at the Timeline it also makes us take into consideration were these bids coming out too often for them to be able to respond to as we were putting out them out weekly or bi-weekly trying to get those out to the vendors so Lessons Learned what have we learned from this pilot program learning the market one of the things that we've learned is that there may be some gaps in the market for where we need to concentrate our efforts on certain trades and getting additional firms certified um such as uh traffic and pedestrian signal work so that is one area we really need to try and uh get more firm certified in and we've been utilizing the Hub the historically underutilized business list from the state as well when we sent out those invitations and finding a balance and then learning the market finding the balance uh between the value of the project and the complexity of the project so perhaps limiting the projects that we put out to one to two trades um and um so but also making sure that the potential companies find it um worth their while to bid on so you while you want to keep it low and and simplified you also want to keep it at a level where they feel it's worth the opportunity to B understanding impacts of licensing requirements ncdot requirements so NCD requires that 40% of the work be self-performed some of the bids that we received um they were not able to or capable of Performing 40% of the work therefore their bid had to be um considered as non-responsible uh another for uh another requirement of ncdot is that the The Firm has certain certifications such as concrete certification roadway technician and excavation and if they did not have those three certificates we were unable to award them these um horizontal Project work as well communicating the opportunity definitely need to increase Outreach about the program because contractors aren't aware that this is a targeted program and that these particular um projects are Sent By Invitation Only they um may not be aware that by decreasing the bidding pull that it increases the opportunity for them to be awarded a contract and them not being aware of this makes probably makes them may make them think why you know it might not be the E worth the effort um another thing about communicating the opportunity we talked about compiling a bid schedule so like I said before we were we were getting Mount one to two weeks perhaps we need to stretch that out and communicate a bid schedule to the the um pilot group that we're targeting about this schedule to prepare them for the upcoming bids that are coming out bid preparation training as Steve had talked about utilizing our partnership with Mary William Maryweather and Williams um as well as uh having breakout sessions perhaps at our c CBI events such that procurement could um could facilitate about the essential um the essential elements of a successful bid or successful proposal as well as um going through different forms and documents that are required so that biders aren't overwhelmed by the packets that they're receiving and also we can offer uh debriefing sessions to um our our uh vendors that were not successful in getting an award we do offer those now however um they're just not it's not always communicated that that's something we offer we offer them by request and maybe for these particular um projects you know uh sending invitation out there for them to have to have a meeting and discuss it in more detail just to prepare them for their future bids that they may submit as well and lastly favorable pricing on sidewalk gaps in minor Crossing project what we found is that we have the fids that were awarded in this category were well below the estimate the engineers estimate so we saved money in the pilot program on some on some projects so in conclusion Where Do We Go From Here what is our path forward we're going to finalize the mwsb master utilization plan um of course incorporating all the lessons that we have learned when we're finalizing this document we're looking forward um we're looking um to finalize that by the end of February U also continue to refine our strategies for the CIP projects right sizing those CIP construction projects for the pilot program and continue to consider alternative devel um delivery methods um I with the uh procurement forecasting form um we received some uh forecast for projects coming in for next Fisco from storm water and there's about there's quite a few projects there where they are considering semar methods for those projects and also lastly to continue collaboration between procurement between CBI um such as the forecasting form where just to elaborate a little bit more on that the during the annual budget process which has kicked off for next for next fiscal year um procurement sends out a forecasting form for departments to complete and send back which list all the projects that are going to have to be procured or bid and um but this year what we did is we added a layer for each project they are required to include their inclusion efforts so that has like I said U made them start thinking about from the onset from from conception of project about what type of inclusion efforts they're going to include with that project and finally to um expand our collaboration with our Enterprise departments we've got to you know we've going to push this out and have conversations with them as well to Aviation and uh Charlotte water so that concludes our presentation are there thank you Miss Anderson uh that was a great presentation and Mr cocher thank you so much for all your hard work and your team hard work certainly a lot has been done since our last meeting and I appreciate the progress that's been made I do see we have council member Mayfield's hand has been raised so I will recognize council member Mayfield followed by Mr Mitchell if he has any questions thank you madam chair team thank you for the information good work I do have a question I want to know if any of our small businesses that that have had challenges working with the city or that have reached out to Mr cra's office because of not receiving bids and including those where Council approved a number of mwsb but then we learned later that those individuals were never actually contacted if they are a part of this pilot group well I can't say for sure for all the firms who have not had success uh have connected with us we do our best uh to make sure that when we get them uh number one we uh find out what their problem is what are the issues that they're experiencing so that we can assess that and if it makes sense to turn them over to our contractor development program which uh I think most of the companies that have gone through that have had tremendous mendous success uh in addition uh council member Mayfield uh we get instances where they wanted de brief uh and understand where they went wrong maybe uh the percentage uh of their bid versus maybe a the winning bid how far they're off and and we work with our departments to facilitate that uh of course uh I get a a number of inquiries uh that come through you and your colleagues and and we do everything we can to make sure that we uh connect with them if somehow someone's getting uh lost between the cracks we don't want that and so I'd ask you to please continue to do what you do you do a great job and I think uh the more we do that uh we'll be able to reach out reach each and every one of those firms okay so for clarification none of those businesses that have had Chen Es are part of this pilot because if this is a pilot I'm hoping that we're also taking into consideration what the challenges have been and if we're not having them at the table to be a part of this to actually show True success in the changes we're making I think we're missing an opportunity that's a duly noted uh I will uh do everything I can do to find out who those uh business businesses are to the extent that their work their scopes of work match with with in the pilot or anything that we have moving forward we will make a a concerted effort to to match them with those opportunities thank you for both Mr coper and Miss Allan we may have an opportunity as we're starting off a brand new year of looking at things differently and whether that is a different subcommittee while we're looking at a Pilot that actually is connecting small businesses to Opportunities looking with intentionality a discussion with those that haven't to try to help us solidify the gaps that we have and also for us to start tracking bids that are approved because they are the lowest because we and interpretation everything Lis responsive bidder is really subjective for me so if we're tracking how many amendments come in after those bids and are looking at potentially putting a limit on those amendments that next bid which very well could have been that MW SBE was probably more accurate as far as the market than that low be with the expectation of well I can always go back and do an amendment understood thank you madam chair thank you all and job with pulling this information together for us so thank you council member Mill uh council member Mitchell uh thank you madam chair so Madam chairman first say thanks to you because I think at the November meeting you encourage uh staff to meet with council member Mayfield and I and we've had two great two great meetings they were so dedicated they called me over the holiday and I told them uh to enjoy the holidays and we would deal with this in 2025 uh let me just go back to one point council member Mayfield Mak so I just want to make sure uh the point she Mak was adequate but I think instead of she said Amendment she mean change orders right so sometime we give it to the lowest better then we get all the we get all the change order to come in and the change orders take us beyond the second place bid who would have had more minority participation is is is that it council member Mayfield yes sir thank you for that clarification okay I just so so uh let me just say uh Kudos uh uh to this information that we received I like the fact of how a lot of lessons learn I like the early engagement that was one thing that uh I I was very passionate about and I'm glad to see you all making the changes uh Sheila thank you I think you said something pretty profound when you said I think we need to make sure people realize the requirements as part of chasing a project like NCD I didn't know 40% of was self- performed work right so some of my trade part some of our I think that's helpful uh to some of our trade Partners to know I I do like the fire fire uh House number 11 25% so we can have that detail that's a success story we need to share because Steve I think when you brought it to me you said we're going to have good news about the fire station and so I think seeing that 25% participation is probably something we haven't seen quite some time so I think sharing that with Council uh is uh is great then miss Anis I uh I I like the fact debriefing session because so many people are hesitant by calling for debriefing but if we can make it kind of part of a checklist it's a requirement already kind of highlighted say if you would like a debrief to see where you fell short on your price and why you get awarded I think it' be received very well because um I'll be honest I'm competitive every time I don't win something I'm the first one to say okay why did I lose was was it my price or or was it my proposal and I I like that we broke down even the the threshold of of 10% cheetah to your point is good if we get 10% back cuz I did notice the response were were bad uh Stephen thank you for Mayweather because Maryweather and Williams just did a pilot project for us as it relates to uh helping a minority business get funding and so you and your whole staff are very instrument make and making that happen and and the one um I have I have to thank her publicly it's on the quick pay because I reached out to Teresa Smith I CFO about having a quick pay along with uh Brent kago and I remember to say we can make that happen so I'm glad to see that we offer quick pay and for a lot of our trade Partners you know that's crucial cash flow is keying in our business so neighbor in order to instead of paying you 45 and 60 days if we can pay you now and 30 days I think you all would know that that would make sure you can keep your doors open so quick pay is a big home run for us that the only suggest I would want the staff to consider is um the goal is to utilize for capital investment plan if we can go back to the CBI introduction and one more slide okay that's it and and so we say the utilization Mass utilization plan the timile participation and cap and charlott's capital investment plan I think that's great but I think we need to broaden it because here's what's here's here's where I think we missing opportunities Economic Development got the two two of the largest projects that we have today the Bank of America Stadium 650 million and spectum Marina 125 million uh then Sheila you mentioned storm water has a lot of opportunities coming out they're going to do another close to four4 $4 million worth of work and our airport I think they're looking at $4 billion worth of work so I don't want us to limit just to the capital investment plan because those are the project we going to improve as City Council which I don't know do we have an idea what that number might be right now as far as the project yeah just um no not a total number so I get that to you would be C project I don't think they're I'm looking at uh no they would be CIP would be yeah we're not talking about General Services they would be Citywide CIP Okay so make sure I'm on the same page so capital investment plan that's airport that's Economic Development and that's uh storm water all including the CIP yeah all cap okay okay okay well good that's a good thing because I I I think you may be referring to I said increase our collaboration with them so that they they are more aware of this the pilot program and their efforts and and they are uh more become more aware because of their submissions of the forecasting they've put in their business inclusion efforts so it'll be helpful to the slow council members can we break that out then uh to your point uh Maria so it's totally inclusive we know what departments that's touching right and that way we all clear what falls on the capital investment plan CU I I I didn't I didn't read it that way okay thank you thank you staff thank you Maria madame that that's that's all I have I thank that's great Sugg like well I'm glad to see the progress that's been made by our staff I appreciate the work that's been done by Mr CER and Miss Anderson's team so thank you all so much for your input uh today so before we close if there are no additional questions or concerns um can I request a motion to adjourn this is only topic uh that's on our agenda for today so move second all right uh all in favor say I I I thank you all happy New Year happy New Year thank you Happy New Year to you all bye-bye councilman may feeli get well [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I [Music] [Music] n [Music] la [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] good afternoon and happy New Year good afternoon and happy New Year welcome everyone to the housing safety and Community Committee our first committee meeting of the year um we've got a media agenda with a singular topic that we'll get into here shortly but first we'll start off with introductions I am your chair uh Victoria watlington council member at large uh and to my right happy New Year all Lana Mayfield Vice chair commit committee members Council yeah council member at large all of that all that happy New Year Tiana Brown Charlotte City Council District 3 and the Committee Member can I see we've got committee members online happy New Year ladies and gentlemen dle asara Committee Member and council member at large good afternoon Renee Johnson happy New Year and I'm a Committee Member and represent District 4 thank you so much I will have our staff introduction starting with ACM Heath good afternoon Sean Heath assistant city manager Rebecca Hefner housing and Neighborhood Services happy New Year everyone Jerry green I'm the division manager with code enforcement Anna scha City attorney's office Gail whitcom housing and Neighborhood Services Harold Thompson housing and Neighborhood Services Janine Simmons housing and Neighborhood Services thank you so much and we are joined around the room with a host of resources who I'm sure we'll hear from as we go along so with that we'll go ahead and get started um we ended last year strong we we did a ton of policy work uh from some of the work that Vice chair Mayfield kicked off with faith and housing to going through our affordable housing policy and U understanding how we were going to redistribute the resources that we got from our $100 million Bond and a number of other uh safety and Community items so we'd like to keep up that momentum today um one of the things that we know has been a long um concerning issue in our community and one that we've seen just even most recently is how we're going to address some of these conditions where we start to see that um we really end up with code enforcement issues and people people are ending up in situations where they're living um in a manner that is below what should be our minimum housing code um and so we want to make sure that that minimum housing code reflects the respect that we have for our residents here in Charlotte and so as a result of some of the uh conversations we had last year we got it on our docket to discuss as a committee uh and we'll be starting that today so with that I'll turn it over to ACM Heath thank you chair watlington so I'll be very brief and then hand the Baton over to director Hefner as you alluded to this is a very mey policy referral and with mey policy referrals we generally have multiple touch points with the committee so today we want to initiate a meaningful conversation as an informational discussion uh driving towards some recommendations over the next couple months and last thing I'll mention on the back end of the presentation that Rebecca and team will go through there's a direct reference to stakeholder engagement so you'll recall we've done that on other referrals with some success uh we have some stakeholders in the room today uh so we will be have open Minds as it relates to different ideas and different perspectives that they'd like to share over the next 30 to 45 days so with that I'll hand it over to Rebecca right thank you next slide please we will jump right in as Sean mentioned today's discussion is a bit of an information education level setting about um what's in the minimum housing code uh so we'll go over the policy referral summary um uh Jerry will give you all an overview of the minimum housing code along with what's the code enforcement process what actions are available to us and to you within um those that ordinance and then we'll talk about the next steps in the referral before handing it over for you all for discussion next slide please so in late 2024 the mayor referred this topic to housing safety and Community Committee and the question is around policy considerations that may be needed to strengthen the city's ability to ensure safe housing for residents of lodging establishments and multif family dwellings so our housing code actually applies to to um uh broader um types of housing than this but this is specifically around questions for hotel motel and apartment communities so the committee has been charged to review the city's minimum housing code as well as the variety of legal tools and the legal framework um applicable here in North Carolina um we'll do we'll do those two things today um taking a look at some tools used by other North Carolina cities along with other best practices that will be in in our next um time bringing this topic to you uh and then um determining if there are any applicable changes or policy recommendations we will U we will dig those things up with you along the way next slide please so to set the stage for this conversation I just want to talk a little bit about council's goal is to ensure safe healthy and affordable housing for everyone and uh minimum housing code is one of the tools and one of the components for that but it doesn't accomplish everything on its own so as we talk through we'll talk a little bit about what are some of the the uh ways that the minimum housing code applies but then also who are our partners and other resources that come into play so that we can ensure safe healthy and affordable housing so when when we talk about code enforcement you know we've really been talking about um safe healthy clean and green you know code enforcement actually covers um all of these areas uh but uh Jerry and his team and in our code enforcement staff we've got about um 60 folks total now um 45 inspectors or so out in the field every day um doing code enforcement um and and they're out there often having to balance really diverse needs and multiple perspectives and so we believe stakeholder engagement is really important to all of the referrals and especially also in this process um one of the things that um that we often see is that code is a process and it's a set of tools but it's operating in the midst of what can sometimes be contentious relationships so there might be contentious relationships between a tenant and a property owner or between a tenant in one unit and a tenant next door uh or we sometimes see challenges between property management and owners even and this can impact how our team is able to uh implement the process and do their jobs so I want to just talk a little bit about um those challenges to set the stage for the referral uh because the process is never as straightforward as it's going to appear on the slides and so uh we we do our best to go through it step by step but it really can get messy sometimes um and uh you know um so I just just want to uh set set the stage with that information and next slide please as with most activities that we do in cities of North Carolina um so our legal framework is fairly simple the um Authority for cities to adopt minimum housing codes comes from the general statutes so it's North Carolina uh chapter 160d article 12 so this is what we refer back to um for the for for our minimum housing code U we work closely um with Anna and others in the attorney's office um around our minimum housing code um the statutes the the North Carolina General statutes they set forth both the process and the available remedies um that that cities can use and those things cannot be modified by cities and so when we say process that's things like the notice requirements you know how you know how we provide notice to owners that there is a violation um appeal Tim taes how many days we have to give for certain numbers of things so all of those kind of procedural parameters um are actually laid out in the statutes and they cannot be modified by cities now cities May develop their own minimum standards so when Jerry talks about the code he will he will walk you through um the city of Charlotte minimum standards of Fitness uh and then in terms of applicability Charlotte's minimum housing code applies to dwellings and lodging establishments that are not regulated by mecklinburg County um and so um there are some some instances where um you know lodging establishments that provide food or have pools for example um they they require permits or licenses those are actually re regulated by mackenberg County Environmental Health um but then the um other establishments that that are not regulated by mackenberg county then they come under um the purview of Code Enforcement so with that I'm going to pass it on to um Jerry to dive a little bit into the minimum housing code um and I want to just take a moment while I have it to uh welcome Jerry green as our division manager for code enforcement he was promoted into that role last year um but this is the first time you all have had a chance to see him at committee um so be nice um although although Jerry's been at it for 27 years now so he's seen it all I don't think there's anything you could throw at him today um that he can't handle um but I did just want to have a chance to introduce him and say how glad we are to have him on the team very thank you good afternoon everyone so chapter 11 of the minimal housing C okay thank you the MIM housing code obviously applies to all single family and multif family dwellings which include condos Town Homes room and houses and lodging establishments so back in 2019 we did a we had a similar referral to the one we have now um and one of the major things that came out of that revision was the update in our fine structure where we increased our civil penalties from $10 to $100 a day next slide the minimum standards of Fitness are the minimum requirements for a unit or home to be in compliance with the ordinance um to the right you see the common violations that our inspectors see on a daily basis those are inoperable smoke and carbon monoxide detectors unclean unsanitary conditions then when you see unclean and unsanitary conditions you probably think to yourself what's that so an example would be a unit that has obviously trash and food throughout which cause which can cause um insect or rotary infestations uh unsafe wiring inoperable heat during the winter those months are from November to March and plumbing defects next slide so the responsibilities to keep a habital unit safe and clean are the responsibilities of both the owner and the occupant and this is all specified in the ordinance um obviously when you're dealing with tenant and landlords there's a lot of disputes that that take place so we utilize our community relations committee a lot to help um with those situations um they also provide the wi you written handbook and to the right you can see it lays out the responsibilities for both the owner and the Tenant now this is a good resource for tenants when they move in and in my opinion it should be given out to every renter first time moving into an apartment or or home next slide so before is our enforcement process flowchart to the left you see where the complaint is started either through a 311 service request petition or public agency referral now if you move over two slots you see in highlighted in red the action for 48 hour violations in the ordinance there are 12 violations that are laid out that require immediate action uh we refer to those as The Dirty Dozen along the flowchart you see the notice of hearing the administrative hearing and the repair order issued once you get to the compliance date if the case if all the violations have been corrected the case is closed but when they're not corrected we have to drop down and use our ConEd enforcement and those are time extensions civil penalties in rim repair or inim demolition now our inspectors work throughout this process with the tenant and the landlords to try to gain compliance and if compliance is is progressing you can see at the bottom Progressive extensions can go from 215 days for rental units and 400 for owner occupied next obviously you look at that number 50,000 our staff is very busy um we inspect over 50,000 properties a year 2,000 of those approximately are minimum housing code cases we did leave off graffiti but that's one as well from fy22 to current day if had over 7,500 cases 29% of those have been dismissed no violations found and that's when inspectors go out complete the inspection and don't find any violations 99% of those cases of closed cases excuse me are achieved by owner compliance and that is something that we strive for we definitely want owner compliance and so we try to work with owners as much as we can to gain that the types of units that we inspect 2/3 a multif family uh 1/3 are single family and 72% % of those are renter occupied now the average time it takes to close a traditional case is 99 days um and 81% of those cases are closed within 215 days next M house code cases that are open for more than 25 days over 60% of those are single family units and 150 multif family units when you look at the property risk assessment and mitigation you look at these four factors the time elapse the cumulative number of units within a community properties with large civil penalty balances I.E tangle wood and other displacement risk indicators that are not actually code related next slide so we all remember Lake Arbor displacement and all the issues that came with that out of that we created our enhanced multif family Inspection Team and that team is charged with identifying emerging challenges they also run a quarterly report to flag any apartment community that's meeting a 50% threshold of code cases within a 24mon time frame part of this is to conduct a comprehensive property evaluation this includes the property owner and or the property management and they establish and Implement an action plan for compliance now we've had some successes but we also have some challenges Tanglewood is a great example of this we went through the same process with Tanglewood um we went through the comprehensive property evaluation we established the action plan but at the end the owner device he didn't have any money he wasn't going to do any more repairs so that one kind of fell off out of what we wanted um but that probably has since been sold so hopefully we can establish a new report the new owner and get that property into compliance next side so when violations are not corrected these five are the steps that we can take to try to achieve compliance time extension civil penalties INR demolition INR repair and Inon remedy they all have opportunities but they all have limitations it really depends on the responsiveness and the cooperation from the property owner so the first one is extensions um time extensions may be granted for good cause it provides Property Owners with additional time to comply and it can help owners who are making good faith efforts to bring the properties into compliance but there are also some challenges extensions can be abused by Property Owners the excessive use of extensions could appear to be lenient and not responsive and also under the landlord tenant law a property owner can't compel the tenant to allow access to the unit for repairs and Property Owners must pursue eviction if the tenant is non-cooperative this is one that we see a lot where tenants are not allowing the owners access to complete the repairs civil penalties as I mentioned back on slide six back in 2019 we increased the Civil penalties from $10 to $100 a day so that's where we are currently um so proper owners are subject to S penalties at $100 per case per day this provides a financial incentive for the property owner to bring the property into compliance the collected penalties contribute to the north CL school system but with anything there are challenges our collection rate is low the penalties do not follow the property if the current owner transfers or sells the property so your property owner a has $100,000 worth of s penalties sells the property owner B those S penalties stay with with A and B starts out fresh the penalty structure can lead to undue hardship for the property owner and cause further Financial strain this is a low dis uh displacement impact event okay next you have in Rim demolition city council approves an ordinance directing code official to demolish the structure this eliminates blight unsafe structures frees up land for new development red prodes opportunity for vacancy and criminal activity and the city can place a lean on the property for the cost of demolition now the challenges are EXC the challenges are requires the cost of repair of the property to exceed 65% of the structure value the city can place a lean on the property with the risk of not recovering the demolition cost temporary housing and storage costs for displaced occupants and the city assumes all costs associated with testing for Haz hazardous materials I.E asbest and lead based paint and it could contribute to removal of housing stock which could reduce the overall availability of affordable housing next SL so the how it works for the M repair is similar to mum demolition so I'm not going to read through those again but the challenges some are the same but those are there are some others before work came again the often lengthy housing code process must be completed temporary housing must be provided for displaced occupants incurring additional costs including storage the city assumes costs associated with testing for hazardous materials no legal recourse for tenants who refuse access to the units and tenants do not have to pay rent after the final order of repair is issued so that can create a no- win situation after repair after repairs are made there's no mechanism to prevent displacement so once we make the repair there's nothing to say the owner is going to renew that lease for the tenant or possibly evict the tenant the tenants may not be sa may be dissatisfied with the living conditions and these last two are important to recoup the cost the city must foreclose on the property within 10 years or wait for a sale with no guarantee that the sell price will cover the lean amount the Foreclosure is a resource extensive to pursue action requires a foreclosure attorney does not a guarantee that the property will come under City control or that the ultimate buyer will be a responsible property owner so you all know with foreclosures it goes through a bit process um so there's no guarantee who will be the ultimate owner of the property next slide in remedy provides a legal Avenue to pursue compliance we currently utilize environmental Court I know some of our partners with legal aid have uh mentioned some success in using the adjunctive relief in Superior Court but the challenges are there's still no guaranteed outcome the cases obviously can be time consuming and when the cases are finally heard it's important that an order is issued the penalty for the owner's non-compliance with the order is contempt which is usually a monetary fine so that doesn't bring the property into compliance so we've struggled with that um also we've had cases in court for a year and a half or more next up thanks Jerry I'm going to take it we can't hear anything thank you I was uh when I was uh getting getting Jerry ready for the presentation I emphasized the need for using the microphone and I I was the one who forgot thank you council member Ashira so one of the things that we're going to do next time when we discuss with committee is do case studies and deep dive with you into Tanglewood Apartments and lamp lighter in so the two recent um displacement events that occurred both of those situations had significant code violations and what we want to do is uh share with you how those ca uh properties moved through the code enforcement process and also talk about at what points there would have been opportunities to use alternate levers and so um when when we think about things like um Tanglewood uh right like that was a property that accured a large amount of civil penalties and when that property sold to the new owner those civil penalties don't follow the property they stay with that original owner so that's one of the limitations of the Civil penalties um on on the other hand the lamp lighter in um is a situation where we wouldn't have been able to use uh remedies that um you such as injunctive relief because the owner had abandoned the property and was no longer um Ian we wouldn't have been able to find him to take him to court so um all that to say that each situation is unique and we really have to work with the conditions that we have and the level of cooperation we have with the owner uh to come to a um resolution where there is compliance and in that goal we really want to also ensure that we're not displacing residents on un necessarily uh in addition to code enforcement um other jurisdictional authority May apply um at times in uh in these situations um so uh I referenced earlier that meinberg County U has an environmental health that regulates establishments um so you they they may um in their periodic inspections find things that have to be corrected uh and then also the public um the uh director of Public Health for meinberg County um has the ability to uh shut down establishments to Abate public health nuisances so in situations where think about maybe there's a very significant Road infestation or you know something that goes beyond even the conditions of the building uh Council has asked from time to time about chapter 19 forfeiture uh so I wanted to just note that here in relation to the conversation that is actually jurisdictional Authority that's related to owner and tenant Behavior not necessarily the condition of the property it's a process that must be led by cmpd it goes through federal court um and then the other jurisdictional authority um is the um you fire code and the designation of unsafe buildings and sometimes this is used in in Junction with code enforcement if a structure constitutes a fire hazard now each of each of these options is um again has its own challenges and limitations um may may have a very high legal bar um in particular chapter 19 forfeiture and can be resource intensive to pursue but each time we have a situation that escalates to the kind of level of for example the lamp lighter in we consult with Berg County we talk to the fire department um we really look at what are all of our options and what are all of the enforcement levers that apply in any given situation next slide please now it's not only about enforcement so uh the city actually has a number of incentives and resources that are available uh to repair properties um when when when an owner is willing and cooperative and so again as as Jerry mentioned the goal is for owners to bring their properties into compliance and do so in a timely manner um and so enforcement is often the route that that is taken to achieve that but also incentives and resources are available and uh you you're most familiar of with this for single family so the emergency repair and Rehab programs for single family um but it also applies um in in multif family situations so one one option being the sale of a property to a NOA provider um where the city would then invest in acquisition and Rehabilitation with a new owner the advantage of using incentives and resources um when it's possible is that it creates deed restrictions to maintain affordability for the property and so when when when there's a willing and Cooperative owner um this is a preferred path because it does create that ongoing affordability and provide some protections um for uh for the residents um we also piloted a um multif Family rehab loan product um in the Carters of opportunities and we didn't have any uptake on that so um uh you know the the advantage to the city is the deed restrictions and that's the same thing that makes this program unattractive in many ways to investors um and so we believe that there's some work that can be done to better design that program so that it would be a viable option um for um multif Family Property Owners but we have not um uh used that in the past next slide all right so that's your that's your um very brief overview of the minimum housing code you can you can read the full chapter 11 uh it's 26 pages and kind of get gets into all of the nitty-gritty um but that's that's the overview for today so the next steps we've referenced um Community engagement that will be taking place in January and February we have a couple of focused stakeholder meetings that we're working to schedule um you heard already from um some of our Advocate Partners action NC um one Mech um no yes action NC and one Mech um who who came out to council and also provided um a letter where we're planning to meet with that group um oh and also the redress movement excuse me um so we're planning to meet with that group to do a little bit of a deeper dive into what they're seeing in the field and the recommendations that they have made uh We've we've also reached out to the greater Charlotte Apartment Association and the hospitality and tourism Association so we can get some perspective from the property owners and um property providers as well and then in early February we'll have kind of a broader stakeholder engagement meeting where we can bring together all of those diversity of perspectives um and have it an opportunity for table conversation and Report out um this method of stakeholder engagement actually worked quite well uh last year when you all did the um referral for um the uh uh Rec criminalization of certain code ordinances um because it was another situation where there were a lot of different perspectives and so we were able to really um you have have robust conversation about that in that setting so we'll be doing that again in early February um and then I if if if um if we need to for um getting broader input um we can also do the community survey option um for this um referral so one of the things today is to get your feedback on that stakeholder engagement and who else you'd like to hear from and in what ways in our next discussion with you we'll also be bringing forward um the case studies as I mentioned about Tanglewood Apartments and The Lamplighter in in and this will give you two different uh perspectives one on a multif family apartment community um one where we went through our full process including the enhanced um code inspections and we're still unable to gain compliance that that um property was ultimately sold so we're now engaged with the new owner in those compliance activities and then the Lamplighter in which is a is um a different setting it's a you one of our um Hotel m Hotel establishments and again the primary challenge we had um here was that the owner was not um you know had had abandoned the building we'll also bring forward um information about what other North Carolina municipalities are doing and any best practice research um that you may want to consider as as part of this referral and um hope to have some preliminary recommendations um for your discussion at that point Point as well next slide all right so at this point I'll hand it back to you um chair watlington um for committee discussion thank you so much um well I'll open up for the committee real quick I've got a couple of just clarifying questions this is a basis to the discussion um so I wanted to ask a couple of questions so first uh these common violations that you talked about on slide seven just to be clear the minimum standards over here is this Beyond what's in the building code or is this just a what we're looking for when it comes to minimum housing standards is just that we are consistent with the building code what you see on the left minimum standards are actually what's in the minimum housing code ordinance not State Building Code and that's over and above what's in the building code no these are minimum so is less string than the building code so some okay we'll come back to that but all right it's less than what's in the building code um and then here in slide eight where you've got the tenant responsibilities and you got a note here that the tenants are responsible for the cost of damages caused by them their household members or their guests um can you explain a little bit about what that looks like is this beyond what is recouped in the security deposit at the end of a lease so it's listed in there as the tenant responsibility but ultimately in the ordinance It ultimately falls back on the owner okay has to here okay um thank you and then on slide 10 where it talks about the code enforcement staff and its Inspections just for clarity these um inspections they can either come as a result of a renter requesting or or a neighbor or whoever requesting it or is this just the ones that are done through routine code enforcement which number are you directly speaking of the 50,000 or where it talks I mean it just talks about the 50,000 properties and then as it goes down in here I noticed that one of them says 72% of these are renter occupied well owners are not calling on themselves so I just want I can't speak to the number but what I can speak to is the process for the different types of violation so a chapter 10 which is your nuisance like cut your grass roll your containers back those can be done through a 311 complaint those can be done by a neighborhood association sending a list of violating addresses to code um I believe the same is true of zoning although I I qualify that by saying I don't do zoning um but when it comes to minimum housing the state statute sets forth three ways so it can be the tenant calling to make a complaint because they believe that there are violations in their unit or their dwelling it can be a petition of five people and there's really no restrictions about whether they be people who live in the neighborhood or on the street or have any interaction with the property it's just a petition that's signed by five citizens or a public agency referral so that could be police respond to an incident and they think that code should come take a look or there might be a fire and so then the fire department will refer it so those are the only three ways in which a minimum housing code case can be well I take that back there's one more and that would be a field observation so so if a code inspector has a neighborhood and sees you know like a tree falls on a house or something like that there's an obvious observation that there might be additional minimum housing code violations so those are the incidents in which a minimum housing code case can be opened okay thank you um and then I think the rest of M are oh and then just one additional well two actually on slide 16 where it talks about uh challenges to the inim demolition that the require it requires that the cost to repair exceed 65% of the structure value I'm curious as to the land value itself does the city assume ownership of the land in okay yeah so the the 65% is just for the um building value and then that when uh when Council approves an inrm demolition um then um the city can then contract for and go out and um demolish the structure but the land is still owned by the property owner okay okay um and then as it relates to some of these ideas around the tenants and the needing to be displaced etc etc it brought to mind just a question around um Voucher Program participation are these Property Owners eligible to receive uh our um housing Choice vouchers or how do how does that tie into this there's no direct relationship there so the housing Choice vouchers that en livian provides um and then there's also other rental subsidies available through various programs in the community um a lot of our um naturally occurring affordable housing communities will accept those vouchers and if they do they're subject to additional um inspections and regulations um but it it is separate and apart from the code enforcement process um the other thing that we that we keep an eye on is for example um affordable housing properties that might have deed restrictions because they've you gotten tax credits but they don't have city funding um they also have an inspection process so we can we can see if if those properties are um performing poorly on their inspections that might be an an opportunity to partner around code enforcement um I think a question had come up a couple of months ago around timberidge for example which is a tax credit property but not with any City investment um so some sometimes and we see this a lot when properties are changed in hands right an owner has decided to sell and at that point is no longer making additional investments in the property but is waiting for the sale um so some of those you Timber Ridge and Tanglewood for example that was the situation even even at lamp lighter Goa thank you and then finally as just as it relates to the clarifying questions aren't this is just a procedural thing on the case study piece if you all could provide that as a pread to us so that we could come prepared with a little bit more knowledge that so with that I'm going to open it up I know that council member had her hand raised and then I see Vice chair counc mme thank you madam chairwoman um I agree with you if we can get a pread in terms of our case studies that would help um even like this presentation if we could get a copy of it at least a day in advance so that it's easier to follow it's a this is a lot of information to digest um while we are having this discussion uh so but let me thank Rebecca and the staff for comprehensive presentation on this this is probably the most comprehensive uh presentation I have seen in terms of the tools that we have available uh so I appreciate the work that's been done here uh Mr Green congratul ulations um to you and I look forward to working with you uh I have a couple of questions I have three questions so number one it's on slide 11 where you had stated 70% not code related can we go to that slide okay over 60% okay so where you have the bottom uh at the bottom you got this bullet point saying other displacement risk indicators not code related C can you elaborate on that I'll do this one yep so um the idea here is that is really to give an overview of how how we assess a property and try to determine which tools to apply in what situations so um for for our minimum housing code cases um from from fy22 to date um when we take a look at TH those data there are about 150 multif family that doesn't mean 150 properties because some of our some of our properties have multiple cases when look look at multif family for example and so when we're determining which additional enforcement actions to take um we we really do kind of think try to think about it comprehensively um what are what are what are the risks um to the um to the existing residents um as well as uh you know for for staying in in the property and then what are the risks when we take additional code actions um for example the risk of dis trying to understand the risk of displacement um so we look at things like how you know how long has this been um uh going on have has the owner been cooperating along the way uh we review properties that have large civil penalty balances one of the things that we find often is that there may be a property with um you know with several different buildings and you one building had a unit with fire damage and so the owner May May have prioritized other repairs over that vacant unit um so we have to take some of these things into consideration if we if we if we weren't resource constrainted we would do we would do all of it all at once right but as we think through what are the risks we're really looking at these kind of issues are there are there occupants in the in the units that have um uh code issues and uh you are are um are there are a lot of units within a particular Community we want to focus our our resources there um and then when we think about um Council asme to your question around other displacement risk indicators not code related those are things like is the owner saying that they want to pursue a sale um because when when we when when we know that a property like this is changing hands we know that there's a displacement risk um dependent on um the new owner's plans for the property um dependent on the status of the leases uh so when we talk about Tanglewood you know the Tanglewood residents were on month-to-month leases at the time of the sale so that's a very high displacement risk um so those those are the kind of things that we're assessing for we want to protect the residents um ensure that they have safe and healthy living conditions and we also want to red reduce the risk of displacement when we can all right um it that's great to hear in terms of that we are looking at at this more comprehensively we are looking at the risk specifically displacement risk uh we want to protect the residents uh at the same time we want compliance uh so it's a win-win uh for for residents as well as for the housing provider um I know you talked about resources that are available uh and that's a viable option uh and I know currently those resources are only available to properties that are located in corridors of opportunities uh have we considered expens in that since we do not have participation uh currently in that are taking advantage of the resources that are available uh ultimately what I'm trying to get to is how can we increase the participation rate uh with housing providers that will use some of our resources U great question as a pilot we uh we didn't have any participation within the Carters of opportunity uh and we don't have a dedicated um program for the multif family rehab um so we're trying to balance um expanding it with also the you the level of resource that's available for the pilot but one of the things that we want to do with the stakeholder engagement process um is also get input on you know what would make that a viable and feasible incentive for property owners and then with um with y'all's help balance that against um what is the council's appetite for that type of investment in um in uh multif Family Properties perfect I I look forward to hearing stakeholders input um I know we talked about dig restrictions and that's what um that's what council has Council has always asked for whenever we have made Investments uh one thing to also consider how does that impact their existing financing correct um and is that one of the contributing factors in terms of the low participation rate or no no participation rate in our existing programs um how does the Restriction could potentially impact their existing financing or even potential uh future refinancing if we could take a look at that that would be helpful and the last question that I have Rebecca uh I know this was raised by council member Mayfield earlier in 2024 where I have had similar complaints from residents where they were getting um they were they were getting notices in the mail for leaving a trash can on the curb side by the curb side for just a day or two where some residents have jobs that they're traveling for and so on and I U I wonder if if it's currently being a weaponized against uh our neighbors uh I I would like to see some data around that as to where we are getting increased amount of calls for those thorny CT issues that you like to call um and uh as we are looking at overall um housing minimum housing core uh do we need to reconsider that as part of our overall um focus more on uh more critical items such as two case studies that we are talking about Rebecca I can hear you oh okay um thank you council member Ajira so uh we do see um from time to time that um you that residence residents May we think about it call code on one another um so there is there is um sometimes a contentious relationship um in neighborhoods related to code enforcement um and and um again when we think about code enforcement we've been talking over the last year or so about the prioritization of our cases because we're a growing city um we have a lot more housing units um and so the the code specifies um that the ordinance specifies that we will um attempt to respond within three business days um so while we always do attempt to do that U we are applying that lens of um what we call safe healthy clean and green so our priority in Code Enforcement will be to address um the issues that are safety and health related um that and that may mean that some of our other nuisance um activities take us a little bit longer to get to um but we will still always respond um to those complaints um so to follow upon that Rebecca um when we are looking at some of this torny code issues is that part of our current referral or that wouldn't fall under uh minimum Cod discussion that we are currently that's in our committee it's not part of the current referral it's just it's an overall um look at how we prioritize and um and respond timely to the our entire variety of of um uh issues that are enforced within code enforcement yes so the reason I bring that up even though it may not be part of our current referral uh but it it certainly um it falls under sort of resource constraints right we have so many number of resources and I know you brought that up uh when we are talking about resources um do we need to reconsider some of this torny coure issues because it ultimately impacts our capacity um for the court enforcement yeah I think there's a way that we can weave some of that in um to our followup information Council M asir okay yes that that would be helpful well that's all I have thank you madam chair thewoman thank you Vice chair thank you madam chair so for the sake of time some of the questions was asked so one thank you for this detailed information the clarifying question I have goes back to slide five where we State cities May develop their own minimum standards so do we or do we not have the ability to strengthen our minimum standards so I think some of that will be um it's a good question not resolved but answered by Best Practices that we look at from around the state but the idea is that the minimum standards are what a reasonable person can expect within a unit so earlier to your question Miss Wat about the building code they kind of run parallel in the sense that there are certain things that are going to be required by the building code but you might have a shell space which the minimum housing code would not consider to be a livable space under minimum housing code environment so um one of the things that we looked at in 2019 was making some of the standards a little bit stricter in addition to increasing the Civil penalties and I I don't remember them off the top of my head but I think there were some related to like Windows and and some of that kind of thing so that is always a possibility if code enforcement determines over the course of a couple of years and in doing inspections that there are certain things that have become problems that weren't in the past they could ask you to re-evaluate what the minimum standards are but you can't change the enforcement process and you can't change the procedural parameters MH at the city level okay so for clarification cities May develop their own minimum standards correct based on what we have already captured not based on another additional number of years to help us not get to the point of Slum Lord conditions there are some reoccurring issues that we already see is there a possibility for us to U the ability to increase our minimum standards to encapsulate those reoccurring issues that we already see now versus another one to three years from now and I'll defer to Rebecca but my guess is that that might be one of the recommendations that comes out of this process so so the short answer is yes and I think you know what what what would be implied by that is is that you all are looking for you know in in addition to thinking about the process and the enforcement tools that were specifically referenced in the referral that you would like us to also be looking at and bringing back to you any recommendations as it would relate to the minimum standards of Fitness So my answer is yes to that for the simple fact that for me it feels a bit interpretive of what is minimal standards when we see conditions that are not conditions for me minimum standard would be would you let your mama stay there would you let your child stay there that would be a minimum standard code for me can't put that through legal language but that is the thought process that I would like for us to consider because some of these conditions have gone Far and Beyond as we said we have about 150 cases out there some of them have gone past 215 some of our current enforcement isn't as strong as we would like for it to be I am trying to help through our committee and for us to have agreement to give staff what you need to create a more enforceable Pro process to help our residents because in theory as residents are able to transition to the next level residents are able to transition into that housing I do not want to move people from One slum condition to the next slum condition the only way we do that is to to the best of our ability eliminate those slum conditions in our city because we have a standard code of minimum for Charlotte that can be reimagined so when we talk about the enforcement process on slide nine this one may be a little bit more difficult but can we reduce that time period for those repeat offenders since we do have some where it has been months into year that you have not complied so and this is a question not a statement if I am understanding what I heard previously we really don't have the enforcement tools that we would like to have to address some of this because the owner can walk away we can't find them the owner can do a little bit and we just keep in the process we can put the lean on but the lean stays on that property on for that owner not for the property and we don't have a legal process to Dan Sue that owner directly so yes we don't we don't have that we don't have that legal process um but we do have a lot of different tools that are already available in the um code not all we haven't used all of them right we um we haven't used our inrm repair option um extensively we haven't uh we we haven't been doing inrm demolitions as frequently in the last couple of years um and so there there are certainly those limitations where we can't always hold an owner or a particular actor in this in this situation accountable but we do do have a lot of tools available to us in the code in the current ordinance so one of the questions as we go through and and look at the case studies and dig a little bit deeper into this is you know are those tools that you would like for us to start utilizing more frequently and what are the parameters of that those those are the ones where we have to come to city council for authorization each time so the the tools that we currently use are the ones that are within our Authority on a day-to-day basis but in rem repair INR remedy and um in Persona remedy as it relates to injunctive relief are remedies that where we have to seek city council approval on a case-by casee basis so I would say yes I think it would be helpful to bring those two committee so that we can review them and discuss them my last two questions councilwoman Mayfield can I just put a little bit of context around I think what your other question was which was I heard you say something about repeat offenders or people that we know and I am not a code enforcement inspector but I have advised code for 21 years so I've seen a lot not as much as Jerry but a lot um and I I just want to make sure that it's clear that some of the timetables that we have to use during the code inspection process are set out in the statute so for example the time from an in a an informal hearing to the issuance of an order to a compliance date those kinds of things are set out and we can't change them what I think we probably do and we can talk about again sort of non-statutory process improvements that we could make is that if we know that we have a repeat offender and we all know who they are in our heads don't we um they don't get an extension right so Jerry's got the possibility for extensions that's in this slide but I know for a fact that if code enforcement has a landlord that they've seen over and over and over again and the landlord says oh I just need 60 days to fix it my guess is that Jerry's team is going to say no sorry this is the date that you have to comply so there are there are ways we could massage and manipulate the processes that we do have and that we are allowed to use and we can evaluate that further but I just wanted to make sure that it was clear that some of the Tim taes we can't change but there are definitely process improvements that we may be able to we very short period of time so yeah and I'm going to say this because we've got 25 minutes left I want add one sure rebea I'm just going to email you these additional questions I have go to your other people see Vice chair this is how she does this is how she does um uh Council Johnson then Brown um there's 25 minutes left in this meeting I want to make sure there's time at the end to wrap up so if you could keep uh to 10 minutes a piece if that works for you I thought other colleagues took 30 no no no they each took 10 I counted I counted which is why I was trying to get her to to slow down roll me back when she at them all go ahead coun let's see here okay she like I use all first of all I want to give a shout out to Jerry green and his team for the work that you do thank you I reach out to his Department two to three times per week they're very responsive so I just want to publicly thank you thank you for the work that you do thank you all for the work you do and thanks to our chair and vice chair I think this is so effective to have one item on the agenda so we can have time to truly engage I think I think all our chairs uh could take notes so I think that I think that's wonderful thank you um um could you define in Rim please Rebecca or and maybe you can bring that next time when you okay um I'm going to say I don't remember all those years of Latin I took okay um but in in Ram means that it is an action that the city is taking um U for a property so um code enforcement you know can we can come to city council and ask for the authority to take action on that property um as the city and then the city can go on then has authority to go onto the property to make the repairs or to um actually hire the contractors to demolish the structure so it is when the city is acting um instead of the property owner actually Rebecca if I can just jump in and add maybe maybe Anna will clarify that from a legal persp perspec INR just means that you for INR repair inrm demolition it just means that we f it follows the property so the Civil penalties issue came up earlier about how it only it's only against the the then owner but the housing code violations themselves follow the property so an inrm demolition instead of inum God I could bore you to death with these legal terms but basically the inrm means that it's against the property now ultimately the owner responsible but it's against the property okay so in Ohio mechanics leans are legal I don't know if they are here so a mechanic can put a lean on a property the owner can't sell it until that's paid could we do something like that in rim and so that the violations would follow the that is what we do so then the owner couldn't sell to their sister or they can sell but the lean has to be paid off at during the sale so our leans if we do an inrm Demolition and the city undertakes the Demolition and we pay the contractor $166,000 to take down the structure and clear the lot that $16,000 becomes a first position lean on the property first position before meaning it's got priority over everything else except tax leans so if if the property has a mortgage from the bank we have we have higher priority than the bank so if the property is sold then our lean has to be paid if the property is transferred the lean stays so okay so it sounds like we could use that that in Rim option to prevent um situations like lamp lighter and Timber Ridge right from the owner selling the property and just walking away well we haven't spent any money we've spent money at lamp lighter but we haven't spent money pursuant to an inrm demolition or an INR repair okay so that those expenses become a first priority lean on the property but expenses that we've incurred related to securing that property would not so it seems like and I don't want to get too deep in that we can talk about that later but that seems like that that might be an area where there is an option maybe if we if we act sooner to make repairs then we could put those in Rim leans on the property to to so that there's consequence for the owner yes yes um but the inrm repair and inrm demolition leans could still be paid off by a subsequent purchaser there's no guarantee first of all we couldn't prevent a sale it was just it would just be that we would get paid first out of the sale proceeds but it's a deterrent and not a loophole I mean I think correct okay all right um as far as the code when I reached out to code in the past I I believe that bed bugs and mold were not included is that correct is that still the case and if so is there an opportunity to add those so bed bugs are included we for good um now mold we don't have any certified mold inspectors on staff so we treat those conditions as unclean unsanitary and we also try to identify the source of the mold so whether it's water intrusion or some type of leak we try to identify that to get that corrected okay our number of occupants in the home is that part of the housing the minimum housing code so there is a space and use provision and um that's been evaluated a number of times to make sure that it's compliant with fair housing act so you can't you can put a space in use from a health and sanitary perspective on how much fresh air how much light how much egress there needs to be for each occupant but you have to be very careful you can't put an actual number because then you can run a foul of the fair housing act so here in Charlotte according to my understanding the maximum number of occupants is six even for a group home or anything and I know that the county has re-entry programs and has options to house individuals that the city's code is a barrier I'd like to take a look at so just just for clarification that falls under a different ordinance that's part of the the um uh unified development ordinance and our zoning regulations it's not it's not a regulation within the minimum housing code in terms of the specified number okay well since we're talking about we the housing safety and Community Committee right this is where the magic happens colleagues right I I'd like to talk about that offline that's that's a barrier for re-entry housing and and affordable housing in the city we really need to take a look at that um okay are there separate are there separate requirements or um programs for multif family owners versus single family owners such as a owner occupant maybe a person that can't afford to make those repairs I know we do have anti-displacement funding so do we have a different process the only difference in the process that's specified in the minimum housing code is that for the time extensions um the uh an owner occupied dwelling has up to 400 Days for compliance and the um uh renter occupied dwelling is 215 now that in process wise okay that's where it varies um but there but there are ways that that we try to work with um owners um you know owner occupied single family homes um to help them bring their units into compliance um you we in in those situations we often refer to our rehab programs or support with um or or one of our partners or support with emergency repair so though the process may not be different we're often looking at ways that we that we're not um bringing undo burden on our on our um low-income owners through the um through the housing thank you and I know you guys do a great job on that my last question I was just warned over here one minute right when we get the information information as far as the um the processes the we do a deep dive on lamp lighter and timberidge I want to have the information on the role that crisis Assistance Ministries has played um I know this last displacement they took over the utilities they um helped move the residents so I really want to understand in each of these displacements crisis's role um so that we're lifting them up um in this process in the community CU they are doing great work okay thank you that's all I have council member Johnson council member Brown wow I'm amazed that being on this hous and safety and Community Committee we have such great leaders in our chair and our vice chair she just stepped out um I would also like to thank um the staff for the great job that you all do your work is very um diligent detailed and doesn't go unnoticed and with all that being said I'd like to go to um my colleague said it all but there's always something that's left out so even with all that great information that they said I like to focus on the residents and the case studies that we're going to be doing um I didn't hear anything about a resident counsel speaking directly with the people that are affected how they feel what they've been through um to see what their mindset is and how we can prevent this from happening in the future because as we were out on the ground and speaking to some of the residents they were just taking a back and what that looks like to them we wouldn't understand because we are not in their shoes and though the conditions are here the conditions the enforcement process uh I was out there when some of the children got off the school bus and ran into their parents' arms so that was their home and so we can prevent um this from happening in the future I I'm a big and huge advocate for the resident Council and I didn't hear anything about that case study what does that look like what are we going to do let's dig a little bit into the case study for me sure so the the the resident perspective will be included in um the stakeholder meetings and engagement sessions so U the um we have a number of Partners who work directly um in apartment communities um doing resident organizing so we'll be we'll be partnering with those groups to make sure that we're reaching um resident organizations will also be leveraging our neighborhood engagement uh staff and their relationships with uh resident organizations to try to get more of that input directly from residents who are impacted on on a broad scale so that will be a part of the community engagement and Community survey component um and and we welcome you uh recommendations for who to talk to and who has those direct relationships um in addition to the partners the city already works with um and then so when I say case study what I really want to do is take these two um situations that council's been very familiar with um from last year Tanglewood Apartments and Lamplighter in and walk through the um code enforcement activities starting from day one from the first um time that we received a complaint all the the way through um the the time that uh that we kind of determined there wasn't there wasn't anything else we could do and it was declared a displacement event um now of course code enforcement extends beyond that um because code enforcement continues um uh even even Beyond those moments but but the idea council member Brown is just help you see the process as it gets applied and all of the decisions that are made along the way you know who gets brought in things like you know at Tanglewood we when we learned they were planning to sell the property we connected them with all of our partners who do Noah um uh uh acquisition and Rehab um as you that's outside of the code enforcement process but it is um you know another lever that we can pull um a tangle wood for example we we um uh with the help of our um Partners at community relations committee we organized a discussion between the new owner and the residents right so a lot of the things that we do are actually even Beyond The Code Enforcement process um so that you can see what are all those steps along the way and also what we want to be able to talk about is okay there are some remedies we didn't use right we didn't do an INR repair um and and is there a moment in time where that would have been advisable partly to get to get a sense from Council about you know to what extent do you want us to pursue those remedies more aggressively is that answer your question about the yeah it it digs it it's a deeper dive and that's right there it's just a blanket statement it's a broad statement so you um elaborating and giving more insight and information definitely helps um also some of the residents were mentioned something about and I just want to lift their voice up and this is the time to do that a stabilization Center if that ever happens again what can we do about that you know is there something that we're considering in the future cuz we know that we want to prevent this but is there something already out there that could happen again that we are not aware of and I know the city stepped up in a major way um as council member Johnson said with going out there crisis taking over after they stopped paying uh the light City of Charlotte turning on the water over the weekend but a lot of times in the community they don't hear the good deeds they go unnoticed what happens is people are being displaced children they're being displaced and so it doesn't look good especially right at the holidays even though we didn't have the backdrop to this this is not our fault but we have to take ownership of it as we step out and move forward as a community of lead leaders as a body as a council of people that care about people that we want safe housing affordable housing for all people and the people at lamp lighter and and and Tanglewood are our people those are the people that we're fighting for that we want them to be able to live and have stable housing so that's something that I told them I would lift their voices up when we have this meeting so great work um for us to do this and especially to have one agenda item once again that's hard to do cuz we always get stuff in this rush I love the process proc and how we are processing what happened and how we're trying to be proactive and come up with something that's very tangible to move out and maybe other people can learn from us but as big as we are the city is growing so fast so many people moving here so many new buildings going up there's got to be something that comes out of this that's going to be good and positive for the people that were most directly affected by this displacement and that's what I'm looking forward to and that's why I get up and come and sit on this board every day so thank you so much thank you council member Brown alrighty um I know we've heard a lot today I think you all I'm sure have some notes in regards to what we're looking for but I think overall if we were to sum it up we want to make sure that um that we're doing as much as we can to make sure that uh that we're able to enforce and that we're also clear about what is truly the minimum standard that we're looking for um as well as how do we think about how the city make sure that we are protected if we're making these Investments are there things that we can do to recoup our money and to tie some um uh tethers if you will to that investment uh given the need to do so all right so with that then I know we talked next steps already but is there anything else that you all wanted to touch on awesome well fantastic ladies any last comments we have a great team here we do we indeed we do ladies I love it I really do enjoy working with each and every one of you so thank you for that we'll go ahead and wrap up I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so move all favor [Music] good e