[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] ready to roll uhhuh all right good to go morning everybody welcome to this October 7th meeting of the Charlotte City Council Transportation Planning and Development Committee we will start as usual with introductions beginning in that corner yes hi I'm Mo I'm the program manager for plan Department with HPV Charlotte Dr Robin with sustainability s Hazel sustainability uh temp order Urban Forester for planning Monica hols Deputy planning director Malcolm Graham Committee Member Ed drgs committee chair Marcus Jones city manager Liz Babson assistant city manager Yolanda Jones planning staff Chad hcats deputy director CFO ly Alexander Charlotte Transportation Planning department and online anybody online Dante Anderson mayor protm good morning Marjorie Molina Vice chair Johnson Miss Johnson we also have Alison Renee good morning we can't hear you I can't hear you either we hear you now can you hear me yes good morning good morning good morning this is Renee Johnson with Committee Member District 4 thank you and Miss Craig good morning Allison Craig planning director I think that's everybody right okay so we have four items today the cats update a tree canopy update the seap update and I77 South and let's kick off with Mr Howell and the cats update good morning uh good good morning everyone uh today I'm filling in for uh Mr Kagel uh because Mr Kagel is part of my update is he is at the STS plus launch today in Min Hill which is bringing our STS service to to to the city of mint hill and so that's uh that's that's great we're glad that today has has come for that uh just briefly in your packets uh we have our we have a monthly update I'll just run down through a few items and then be available for questions uh upcoming public engage agement we have a better bus which is our bus Improvement project additional meetings are scheduled throughout the fall uh the red line next meetings for the red line are uh October uh 10th October 8th and October 10th goal line we have various meetings scheduled uh throughout the fall um and the cor of Charlotte Community area planning workshops are the fall September through November um safety summary uh for our bur Operations Division in August there were four vehicle accidents two involved buses making accidental contact with a Ballard and utility pole with which there were no injuries uh two involveed buses making accidental contact with cars in operation minor damage and also no injuries with STS and rail division there's nothing to report uh rers ship summary our ontime performance highlights so for bus our goal is 85% in August we were at 83 Point uh sorry 81.3% for bus service uh with with 16.3 three being late and 2.5 being early a few other uh ridership highlights uh total system ridership increased by seven 7% compared to August of 23 so typically what we do is look one year back um if not if it's different than that we we stated here in the packet but typically we we will look one year back and so the others I'm going to talk about are related to uh August of 23 uh local bus routes we had an 88.7% increase uh local Express 99.2% decrease but there was one less day in service so we where there's a differential we do try to call that out Regional Express was also a decrease but that was because of one less Day of Service the circular circulator uh was a 7.8% increase STS was also an increase uh vanpool uh an increase as well blue line I'm sorry van pool is a decrease of 3.9% Blue Line an increase of 3.2% Gold Line 33% increase and that was the highest ridership since August of 21 um the August of 21 opening couple other things to point out here the city celebrated uh Pride on August 17th through 18th during the weekend both the go line and blue line experienced ridership that was well above average uh ridership on August 17th for the goal line was 46% higher than the month Saturday average along with blue line which experienced Ral ship of 45% above average during the same day um on Time Performance we already talked about fixed route bus was at 81 STS is at 86.6 Blue Line is almost at 100 go line is 90 almost 98% U final area a couple final areas to go over our overhaul summary of course this is the project that's underway uh with our the the truck overhaul for our uh 44 lrvs of the 44 lrvs uh just over half remain to complete the overhaul eight are out for repair uh with eight available for service so we're slowly but surely getting those back through either California or Florida depending on how we're shipping them with seens and getting them back in um getting them back ready for service um sales tax just briefly we now pretty much have our yearend numbers for 2024 um and it we're we're going to exceed our projections by around five five four to five million do we believe uh and so that's really good and it also shows that we are we set our trend lines appropriately for the current fiscal year as well I report yes yes so did you say $45 million or $425 million2 425 sorry 425 million that was a pretty wild estimate um buses are at 81% what's our goal 85 right and so we've been on a an improving Trend there right yes okay um well that's all good news I guess uh I guess last question the um ridership fell during covid where are we relative to pre-co levels I don't have I can get you the exact numbers but basically basically uh from a larger perspective is we're slowly trending back up we have not got back up to our preco levels yet on any of our uh modes of because the world has changed right yeah so we'll need to think about that as we do our planning going forward committee yes sir yeah a couple questions um you mentioned various meetings for the goal line could you be a little bit more specific um I'll have to get those exact dates we've got them forthcoming right as I've got on my sheet here so I can get those exact dates for you not the dates but the the the content of the meetings oh the content of the meetings Okay I I can get you some details on an update from them based on their recent meeting you want to share with the committee uh I don't have a I didn't attend the last meeting but we can make sure we get you an update I want to go back to your previous question okay about the goal line okay so much like the red line having a refresh we're having a Refresh on the go line phase three and much like the red line there is a public engagement around that refresh there's a public engagement around the refresh for the goal line phase three so that's beyond the the preliminary engineering design it is a part of how you get to the 30% which gets you into the federal Hopper so we're moving forward and I don't know Chad exactly when Council approved um this refresh it's been a while but I I just want you to know that there are two refreshes going simultaneously one for the red line and the other one for the go line phase three okay so you want to give me some information because I know we've been doing the P the um preliminary engineering design for the go line for um well over a year now right and so have there been any public meetings yet is that a part of this various upcoming meetings yeah let let me get back to you on that for sure let mean let me not mistake let me get back to you exactly what we've got coming up and exactly what the purposes are okay and I I guess the last question um there was no update on the pending legislation now that all six Counties have uh cities have voted um for the pending legislation I think it was 61 so is there any updates in terms of um talking with legislators about how we're moving forward now that all that's been done and is there any comments about the potential not a potential the the transportation Summit that the mayor Matthews is hosting are we participating in that and are we a part of that and I'll be attending but I'm not sure where our position is on that yeah I think uh Council Graham giving you an update at 6 o' from what happened at the last NTC meeting can help with some of those answers to some of those questions you have okay so are we participating in the summit are we providing information are resources well I I I don't know who the wi would be City C so Mr Graham this was unilaterally initiated by one member of the MTC and therefore it does not actually represent an action by the membership of the MTC I I get that but we're all in this together right and so we're trying to figure this on this occasion we aren't they they are acting on their own okay so there's no consultation there's no consensus this is not something that is being hosted by the group for the benefit of the public um I I I get that um but we're we're one region with One Vision right sort of kind of we're trying to get there and so if a member of the region is hosting a conversation on transport ation and Mobility um should we not be a part of that discussion or at least be present in the room that's so again I think an update from the MTC meeting would be appropriate what I do know during that meeting I saw it yeah and so there was a schedule of how um the numbers associated with the costing out of the plane and would be arrived at and I believe that's what was discussed at the MTC meeting how to go about a schedule to give information to not just the MTC but all the voting uh bodies as well as the general public okay well I guess my my last point and I and I'll I'll be quiet uh is that we're gonna be doing this for a while right we um whe there's the legislation working with neighboring cities and towns um trying to troubleshoot mitigate um cajo our neighbors and friends and I just think as the transportation committee we should have really and I appreciate the updates um but it's almost like burying the lead right the thing that everyone is really talking about um um from a transportation perspective at least the meeting as I go to uh it it's it's the um pending legislation uh um making sure that we try to get sometime some form of uniformity if possible probably not uh listening uh and different perspectives uh and being as as as um transparent and visible as possible in all these public conversations and so I I just one M saying that I would love to have more information um about um the stake right um versus some of the peas that we're dealing with not withing understand that the peas are really important too um but I think this the the meal in front of the the community uh is a stake and the stake is this um generational transformation of public transportation mobility in our community uh and I think we need to um have open ears open minds uh and um an open perspective for transparency and and openness I I'll leave it there all right any other Committee Member Johnson Miss Johnson yes thank you so it's on my calendar for the 19th and I'm I'm planning to attend I don't think there's anything to preclude members of council uh from attending maybe maybe it's not a council decision but I was planning to attend I think council member Graham is right it's not an US versus them and we want to seek to understand so I think that that's I think that's a fair question I think that's a great question question Mr Graham and I don't see any reason why individual council members cannot attend if they're willing and able and nobody suggested that they shouldn't I know I know you're right you're right yeah thank you anybody else yes okay I think we're ready to move on then to the tree canopy update and I guess I'll hand over to miss Craig for that good good morning um Mr chair Vice chair and uh committee members and other council members that are here um this morning um we're going to talk about tree canopy update um as you all recall there was a referral to the Triple E committee um talking about the best approach needed for Charlotte to actively protect and increase the city's tree canopy um sorry if you can go to the next slide um and we agreed that we would come back periodically to give you an update on the things that we're doing and fell to so this morning with CA update it would be a really good compliment because these are complimentary efforts to give you um give you an update on all the work that we've been doing so Tim will do a brief data uh snapshot of kind of of where we are um and then really talk about some of the things that are new in the Udo we've been very focused on Udo implementation there's a lot of new things in the Udo that are both programmatic and Regulatory that are really working towards that protection of of our tree canopy and then we're going to kind of give you um a glimpse of the future and what we're working on um in the future about with the tree canopy action plan 2.0 that's really um we really be talking about U what our future goals are um what do we want to have as our tree canopy policy as a city and then uh consider potential ordinance as well as programmatic updates that we might continue to refine um really learning from the things that we've implemented recently as a result of TCAP one that um that turned into policies and regulations um in the comp plan and in the Udo um I wanted to mention too that um you know again it's been a very busy year with um implementation of the Udo and that um we have been focused on that but we also acknowledge that you we are continuing to make um improvements in the resoning process we've heard from council members that you want more information on tree canopy information um on those petitions and we are working on that but we've been really focused recently on the implementation of the Udo and the broad um regulatory um updates that we have to protect the tree canopy across um all of our different um permit types not just the resoning process um so with that um I will turn it over to Tim to walk you through the presentation and we're happy to answer questions afterwards could I just mention by the way council member Mayfield has joined the call good morning Lana go ahead uh thank you Alison good morning um I'll be as Ellison said touching on some ongoing and recent completed work and then uh digging a little bit deeper into the upcoming tree canopy action plan uh 2.0 that's coming so uh next slide please and just to further emphasize that uh the city's always working on advancing tree canopy policy and and goals and objectives this slot is to show uh anything in green on that slide indicates ongoing work of some level that still being implemented right now whether it's policy or programs the dark or gray are efforts that have been completed um so our next step at the end of that slide is tree canopy action plan 2.0 which is uh something be presenting to council and seeking Council adoption uh in 2025 uh we're looking to consolidate multiple policy documents such as 50x50 canopy goal the urban Forest master plan um into one supporting policy document that clo closely connects to the uh 2040 comprehensive plan U next slide please so some recent data work that's been completed uh the 2023 tree canopy analysis this was based on 2022 data this will serve as uh the foundational um Baseline for our next tree canopy action plan effort next year um so also an opportunity to give A Brief Review high level view of where our canopy is uh still a very robust canopy is still very very um impactful and provides many benefits and Compares very well with pure cities but the trends uh are not ideal we're still declining perhaps not as quickly as we previously thought but we are losing canopy we're not on a path to achieve our 50% canopy goal uh some efforts are having an impact so that's a positive takeaway is that we can measure on a very neighborhood scale specific tree planting efforts that have in a localized way move the needle in a positive direction so we can move on to uh the next slide which is going to be a little bit more of a a focus on regulatory work to implement 20 240 tree canopy policy and as Allison mentioned this is um just a few highlevel key changes that were implemented regarding trees in the Udo there's a lot going on the slide so first let me draw your attention to that box on the right the 65% number what we found out in TCAP 1 in 2020 and was confirmed in 2023 with our recent canopy analysis is that the majority of canopy loss that's happening is in res residential areas which is not a surprise but it is a surprise that it's occurring incrementally lot by lot that's a combination of infield development property owner decisions uh storm damage which is very in the Forefront of our mind right now um we just started to regulate infill development single lot infill development for the first time in the Udo so that is a new customer base that's a new permitting reality um some quick numbers um we've reviewed over 6,000 total plans since the implementation of the Udo uh 1,300 this fiscal year that was a direct uh response that was supported by stakeholders and the public and adopted by Council and the comprehensive plan to slow the decline of canopy in these areas uh the second bullet down Heritage trees which was probably had the greatest Focus during udio adoption um these are large native trees that are 30 in in diameter at the trunk or greater uh greatly supported by stakeholders in the community to have some measure of preservation we did this for the first time Citywide both development situations and non-development situations so there is blanket protection um and this is tracking this is the first time we've had data this of this level over 500 trees have been removed since Udo implementation 200 plus this fiscal year um and a minimum of 500 mitigation trees have been planted um and we're still sourcing that data as we change over our uh reporting analytics in our permitting uh software uh the third bullet down represents a significant increase in residential as where as well uh across all types of subdivision development areas minimum tree save required was increased um so for our standard subdivision development in increase from 10 to 15% uh for Compact and conservation developments which were um something that also came forward in the Udo those numbers are higher up to 40% minimum provided so uh a very strong preservation response in the Udo regarding that canopy loss that's occurring in residential areas uh something also to note it's not shown on on that slide but 65% is also a interesting number because it it also is approximately the amount of potential planting area in the city so that just further emphasize that most of our canopy is in residential areas most of it when there's decline is happening there most of our opportunity to sustain and grow it is also in those areas so these regulations that we implemented in Udo uh directly targeted that and the last thing I wanted to mention is these are just four of the key major changes is the tree preservation team so this is a New Concept that it's not really happening anywhere else proactive inspections to ensure that any required trees per the regulations above and many other regulations any trees that were required to be planted or preserved by our ordinances they're intended and required to be there in perpetuity to achieve canopy goals that Council has adopted so this is a team that's going out there to check sites that have been developed so so this team has been in place since udio implementation and since uh June 1st 2023 they've inspected 1,700 uh sites uh and what we have discovered is that approximately half of the sites we've looked at are missing trees so that's really important data to know as we craft policy and a regulatory approach going forward um I think we can move on to the next slide as as we pivot to another area of ongoing work a program programmatically uh we have a couple programs I'm going to highlight briefly the tree canopy preservation program or tcpp this has been around about um nine years uh this is a program that is funded 100% by developer collected fee andl dollars uh and the goal the objective of this program is to essentially acquire and protect land that developers uh elected not to during their permitting process in some cases developers have an opportunity to pay in L of preserving and the city takes that uh revenue and we acquire and protect land um so since 2015 we preserved over 350 ACR across 50 properties we've also developed the urban Arboretum Trail model that targets more urban dense areas where significant significant canopy loss is occurring we found out um early on in the program that uh this program of course does not use eminent domain we acquire land on the market through through fee simple or donations uh we needed another way to be competitive in urban areas so that model came about um and recently related to the 2040 comprehensive plan the program shifted into planning and we we gave it a shot in the arm and it's really increased its production level if you will over the last um at this point I think 16 months we've acquired 62 acres and 11 properties since FY 24 so we're really trying to ramp that up up as we we overhaul and and change our acquisition strategy to be more effective but also have a greater impact next slide please um a program that's much younger and still in its development phase is the canopy Care Program uh we first started pilot projects for this in in uh 2017 we learned that uh with a robust canopy such as Charlotte there's a great need to help residents Property Owners to manage the trees on their property historically we stayed in our lanes we manage trees in the right of way or we regulate but we don't really traditionally have supported private property owners for tree care but we adopted a sustainable approach in our master plan in 2040 and so this program came about to help uh residents care for the proper the trees on their property and so right now there's two ongoing projects General Services Landscape Management division led by the city of Barbur currently has $1.1 million in Federal grant funding from the forest service um that's ongoing work you can see a picture on the right there of some work that's um been part of that program uh and we're just starting an exciting second pilot project this fiscal year partnering with Tre Charlotte and my team in planning we'll be supporting some operational work and developing best practices with them uh utilizing up to $250,000 uh they have an own version of their canopy Care Program we're looking to see if there's partnership moving forward where we can really leverage the greatest impact looking to stand that up in uh FY 26 formerly as a established program and so moving on to I guess the main focus of today of upcoming work uh TCAP 2 this is upcoming policy work that uh our vision right now is to make this a council adopted uh strategy for this new plan which will consolidate um the 50 x50 goal I mean I'm jumping down to the third bullet there that's the biggest question to decide here is what is going to happen with that are we going to keep it we going to uh revise it are we going to retire it we certainly have uh a great need to look at scalable strategies that are really focused on delivering impacts across all areas of Charlotte um delivering benefits to all areas of Charlotte the scope of TCAP 2 is is to be pretty standard it's um using the data Foundation we have from our 23 analysis but also conducting some secondary analysis engage the public engage stakeholders to get feedback to know where they want to go with our canopy work uh then take recommendations from that process to council to review discuss and ultimately adopt um and all this work uh we are coordinating with colleagues to my right over here in sustainability we want to build off a work um in capap and we've been working closely on areas that definitely overlap such as smart surfaces uh multiple items in corridors um recently we partnered on a very massive Grant application that I I thank Robin and Sarah for leading because it was a lot of work to get some Concepts and data together for that so that's some upcoming work with TCAP and looking to start that calendar year 25 um the timeline still developing for that but we want to make sure we have alignment and the time to build off of the work that Sarah and Robin will be doing and bringing to you um so squeeze a lot into that update but U that's what we have for you today definitely welcome any questions comments colleagues you said everything uh I I we talked before and uh so I'll just mention that um a concern I have is we have done years and years of analysis there was that long timeline um I think we need to get to a place where we have uh a trajectory that we've identified with way points if you will uh so that we um know what it is we're trying to accomplish in terms of trees and then we can measure how successful we're being on a continuing basis so you'll have something for us I guess next year uh it's what the expectation um and the challenge has always been that there is a tension between the growth of the city and the need for more housing to keep housing costs down and our desire to preserve trees and I think the Udo has attempted to address that by allowing for greater density so that we don't need as large a land land area but that's going to continue to be a problem in my mind uh I've also told you that I think uh 50 by 50 is is a an aspiration but in reality probably not attainable and the difficulty with having uh an aspiration that isn't attainable is you have no measure of your success when you see what really happens like if we get to 44% that might be wonderful by 2050 but it would look like a failure compared to the 50 we said we wanted to achieve uh I did have uh a question you said 50% of the inspections revealed missing trees what are the penalties for that so initially there is no penalty um property owners are notified they're missing it's technically a development requirement so they're notified they have to restore compliance and replant trees um if they fail to do so in a reasonable amount of time they remind it again and then at some point there's a violation process that seeks to have uh the trees first and foremost replanted but there could be civil penalties assessed if there's just no action taken and is this typically developers who who took down more trees than they were supposed to or is it people taking down trees on their property or or what is it exactly um I don't have the exact breakdown but anecdotally most of the time it's it's trees have naturally you know gone through their lifespan and they've died and they've been removed or it's been a situation where the property had some type of sight Improvement uh maybe EV charging maybe an ATM maybe restriped parking or something like that and there were trees that were removed related to some type of property owner ision and uh I think more than 65% of the land area of Charlotte is actually residential So to that extent uh is the loss of trees on residential land really disproportionate we're still early on in our um compliance inspection and we have been developing a strategy for residential it it really requires a little bit of a different approach uh to coordinate with those Property Owners so we're still looking at that data breakdown how much commercial how much residential I can look into those numbers for you but I don't have a great answer right now uh great that's all I have uh and this is important and and very good work appreciate it uh critical to us I think Charlotte has the advantage of having a wonderful tree canopy and we just want to keep it that way so thank you yeah absolutely okay mayor pm thank you Mr dggs um I I do have some concerns over the 65% number and I'd love to see a breakdown a double click on um how that actually takes life in the city and I I I understand the perspective that you shared around the policy of Ming trees um and trying to you know ensure that there's compliance in that however having a policy that effectively has no teeth isn't really something that we can administer so I'd like for that window of when we're just reminding residents and developers that they they have missing trees and they need to plant them I'd like for that window to shrink so that we can then in turn actually have a policy that has some St to it thank you Mr jerks thank you mayor protm I think all it's important that we develop our policies in consultation with the developer Community because they are the ones that are providing the housing that we need and uh so we need to be sure that actions that we take don't act against our other priority which is the housing that's a great point and quickly I'll add that in the Udo we're learning a lot and we're taking that information and trying to find the right balance of policy goal implementation regulation versus um the balance for the the housing and the other interest and we'll continue to take that data as Alison said refine our processes and make sure we have the best balance we can have good no one else uh Mr Porter thank you our next item is a capap update and for this I will refer to miss Hazel all right thank you chair and committee um there's a referral to this committee to bring forward the Strategic energy Action Plan update since we last came to speak with you we have a consultant under contract uh ey and civility localized and um we're here today to talk a little bit about what you can expect to see from this update and the engagement that we are just kicking off and then um we're going to talk uh briefly about a related opportunity that we're working on in the corridors um but for the majority of this presentation I'm going to hand it over to Dr Robin buyers um who is the project manager on the update so Robin thank you first want to talk about so the capap the Strategic energy action plan is our main climate plan it was really focused on energy and updating um what the city could internally and um really helps set the city up as a leader globally in sustainability work and so now that it's been around for about 5 years we're looking at updating it next slide you have seen the slide before but again just to talk about where we are so in 2018 we set our foundation um the C has two goals um have our buildings and Fleet sourced by zero carbon sources by 2030 and to be a low Carbon Community by 2050 that's 2 tons carbon dioxide equivalent per capita um what we're doing now after we've spent the last 5 years in implementation mode is really looking at the latest science um and really aligning with the plans that we have we have a new comp plan we have a strategic Mobility plan um Tim just talked to you about our tree canopy action plan those are all very important to the work of the cab and so we'll continue to do that as well as fold in the priorities that you guys have set over the last couple years next slide so these these are the three main pieces we talked about with you guys before just wanted to give you an update that our um greenhouse gas inventory update is in progress um we are near the end of it um but so we're finalizing that and we'll be able to bring that back the next time we speak to you we also have a climate risk assessment I know we talked about that before that is also in progress that's toward the end we're going to talk about the preliminary findings today on some of that and then all of that through the lens of equity with our latest science and technology will be folded into an updated CA document so just a highlight of our project timeline we've started the project um like I said we've been working on the greenhouse gas inventory and the climate risk assessment we've also started um our technical advisory committee um a bunch of experts in the community that we've brought together to help help us think through some of the the opportunities we have moving forward and right now we're in phase two summer and fall um we're finalizing the greenhouse gas emissions which will help give us um a lot of data behind what we're we're looking toward the climate risk assessments we're finalizing we're going to be looking at our goals to see if we need to update them we're also going to add those um Milestones uh Mr Driggs like you said before when you have a goal that's 2050 it's kind of hard to measure where we are so we're going to be adding Milestones to help gauge where we are throughout the process and we're really going to be leaning in into the the public engagement throughout this phase um we hope to be back in March of next year um we'll be back before then but um finalized to adopt the the updated CF document next slide okay this is where we're going to spend a little bit of time I want to highlight this this is our climate risk preliminary information um one of the reasons we wanted to add this in to the ca this time around is because we have a lot of actions from the original capap that are about mitigating our greenhouse gas emissions to help us try and slow climate change um but we also have to recognize that there is some climate change that's going to happen regardless and so this assessment is allowing us to pair mitigation efforts with what is going to happen regardless and try and come up with adaptation strategies so we're tackling the problem from two different perspectives how do we slow it down but then how do we adapt as well um want to be sensitive because of the state that North Carolina is in currently um with the hurricane that recently came through um on the right you can see all of the physical risks that we analyzed so extreme heat precipitation drought water stress what water stress means is um if we don't have enough water for the people that are in the city so making sure that we have enough available water for everybody um those are our CRI or our stressors so those are things that happen over the long term the more acute or the shocks um that happen uh episodically are severe thunderstorms hurricanes and tropical Cyclones Urban flooding and wildfire and so we looked at eight things we pulled the the top four um extreme heat or is one of our highest risks in Charlotte I think we all felt that this summer we also had a lot of uh record-breaking um heat days uh precipitation those are the two chronic stressors that are the highest and then for acute we have severe thunderstorms Urban flooding and then the hurricanes and tropical Cyclones are a very close third um so we'll keep looking at these um we'll get a little bit more in depth with our analysis and again add some things in to the ca document that'll help protect us and and help us adapt as we move forward next slide so really want to highlight that we're starting from a really strong position um like the comprehensive plan the seap document is a long-term plan we had goals that were 20 uh 10 20 and 30 years out so pretty long plan um again like a long-term plan you want to reassess every 5 years or so because your Baseline changes your Trends change your opportunities change and so that's what we're doing what we can say is 5 years later 5 years into this we have 55 or 58% of the tasks that we highlighted are either completed or were completed and are on an ongoing status because we realized it wasn't just a one-time action another 22% are in progress that means that we are actively working on it across team Charlotte and then 21% are evaluating and so those are the the items specifically that talked about a specific technology that might not work for Charlotte or it may not be the best technology to move forward with anymore so we're still looking at those um but we do want to highlight you guys have been great supporters of this work throughout we have a couple of examples here we have the solar panels we've been able to install a top council chambers um you see the diagram there that represents GSA that you guys supported um that big solar project we have to help offset and then we have a little clip of one of our our EVS there in the corner for you so couldn't do this work without you guys and we really appreciate that next slide we also continue to measure impact one of the I think toughest things in the climate area because it can be ambiguous is how do we measure success and how do we see where we're going um and relating that back to policy is not always one for one but we're really trying with that um so team Charlotte's been working on defining metrics to show impact we have a data dashboard that shows the actual data itself and then in our annual report um I think Sarah comes to you guys every year and talks about that annual report that's where we analyze the trends and the data that we see and compare them back to our policies but we did want to highlight a couple things um we are increasing the amount of City buildings that we Benchmark and so you can see at the top left there we're at 55% and we've seen a reduction just in one year of about 8% in our energy use so that's pretty pretty good um our Fleet is growing at the same time that we're trying to convert out of uh the standard gas vehicles and so we've seen um we've seen uh an increase we've avoided adding about 43% more carbon this year than last year that's pretty good um and we've grown our EVS in our Fleet by 24% year-over-year um lead buildings we have great success with that as we continue we added two new lead buildings in 2023 and then CommunityWide we've started capturing some of the CommunityWide numbers as well 16 buildings were certified or recertified in 2023 these are again CommunityWide that's lead we also have energy star certification green Globes there are a couple different um certifications you can have so again really wanted to highlight that we're we're continuing to work and and grow these numbers we are constantly looking for new metrics and how we can add um just to create a very rich data uh foundation for where we grow and then just a a quick note on this as we update our cab we will also be looking at what metrics we can add that match some of the new policies next slide so our engagement is underway um this is really exciting I really like engagement um I want to highlight the kind of Bullseye at the bottom right real quick so we're starting off with the office of sustainability and resiliency in our Consultants um that's where we're really pulling a lot of information foundationally we are talking to our technical advisory committee as well as other City departments so we have an internal team Charlotte if you will sustainability group that we meet with um so that we can talk across departments so that we don't suggest something that another Department's like wait a minute maybe we don't want to do that um this way we make sure that the whole team is relatively accepting of of everything we move forward with and then the last ring is our public engagement that's where we really go out in the community um right now we're leveraging the community area planning meetings um virtually and in person we've been at all of those we currently have a CA awareness survey out um just to see how many people know about the ca what they care about in terms of sustainability what they can in in can incorporate into their own life and what some barriers are again we have our technical advisory committee this is made up of Industry experts um in Charlotte we have a newsletter we're going to be putting out monthly for the folks that sign up for it and we also are attending popup events so for instance um we went to uh Soul Nation had an Unearthed event on Saturday and we had folks there we have been to a couple movie screening um and other type of environmental justice events throughout the community with nonprofit Partners next slide upcoming so our big public kickoff for the ca update is going to be Thursday November 21st 5:30 to 7:30 and again we have the survey live and so right there is a a link and we can send that to you guys and would ask you guys to help us get that out so upcoming work we're going to finalize our greenhouse gas inventory and the climate risk assessment and have that for you the next time you guys at see us we are going to identify or confirm and or the action areas and the tasks within those areas um update our goals add the milestones and then have a review and Adoption of the updated document for you guys in March and with that I'll turn it over to Sarah who's going to highlight our other projects so I wanted to talk just briefly about our green prin initiative um if you haven't heard about it it's an opportunity for us to really look at the overlay of the work around corridors of opportunity and the corridors of opportunity playbooks with our efforts around the Strategic energy action plan and U mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and supporting uh a stronger healthier environment for our community if you go to the next slide um we are uh intending to create green prints which are in Ence blueprints that support climate Equity uh and environmental justice in all six corridors um much like a almost like an addendum to the corridor's Playbook that will be actionable projects that we can go out and seek Federal funding for um look for Partnerships to move forward we're starting in uh the Bates Ford uh Rasel fery and freedom Wilson corridors and um we have just got started with uh a meeting with some of the community leaders to plan out uh the future efforts next Slide the lead Partners in this effort are the city of Charlotte um including our Corridor Team Clean Air andc Soul nation and the KN Foundation who is helping to fund some of this engagement um and of course the community stakeholders next slide so what does this actually look like um so if you look at some of the efforts that have come out of the Strategic energy action plan for example example our Duke Energy program where we um were working to do health and safety work while overlaying the work of Duke Energy to do deep energy retrofits to really support folks who are most in need with the critical home rehab they need which is in our wheelhouse with the Deep energy rer Fitz which is in Duke Energy wheelhouse um we see opportunities to do more work around sustainable housing um to really work with Tim and his team in the planning department around Urban cooling so looking at some of the the climate risks and then looking at the Strategic way we Implement our tree um our tree canopy and so um there will be a number of different of opportunities to take what we've already done with the foundation of our strategic energy action plan apply them to the work in the corridors uh to address issues that um will benefit not only the the corridors but the entire community and so I mentioned a couple of those projects other potential projects could include sustainable infrastructure so um we had a focus uh through our unified development ordinance of more opportunities for electric vehicle charging there is a requirement in our Udo as well as a bonus system and so as we look at where we can retrofit places and partner with people like um our housing Partners to provide opportunities not only for electric vehicle charging but also things like electric vehicle car share we see that could be another potential implementation project which Builds on some of the initial efforts that we have already and so um this is going on today right now so October 19th coming up we have h a kickoff where we'll be specifically looking to talk to folks from those two corridors that I mentioned um learn a little bit more about some of the incredible Community efforts that are already going on in this space um and then also look for opportunities to identify projects that will then be rolled into those first two playbooks um in in the coming months and with that I will turn it back over to the chair if you guys have any questions we are here to answer them thank you m Haz with Dr buers uh committee yes thank you Mr chair and uh thank you both for your work I'm actually I was intently making notes as we were going along and so I guess my first few questions comments are for you Dr Byers um so we it looks like for participation because let me let me back up a lot of the times we're having these um updates and we're Adept right we've had pre meetings and we understand and so I'm trying to make sure that I disseminate it to the public so that they understand for context so the ca was a goal kind of created or 5 years ago was created with our City in mind right and we've from my understanding we've intermittently added stakeholders as a result of this goal right we did have two sections so we had City actions and we had community actions but yes the first initial Focus was on the city actions what we can do internally okay and I see a lot of the information that we're sharing here it has to do with what we've been able to accomplish is that correct so 100% would in essence mean that we've gained full accountability from our community like is that why we won't or I guess when you say I'm looking at this it says we have a benchmark on uh slide number nine a benchmark for buildings of 55.3 those are City buildings those are City buildings right so 54.7% which would in essence say that we've had full implementation is that contingent on community input or community in or Community upfit do we know that I can I can take this so um because these goals that we have for example uh our energy benchmarking program we had we did have some technical advisers from the community who advised us on how we could get this type of program up up and running but we also have a voluntary program where we work with Community stakeholders and ask them to share their energy use data to commit to a goal of reducing that energy use intensity by 10% and so by no means are we at sort of full um full community uh uptake of this voluntary program because like many things you know we have carrots and we have sticks But ultimately what we're really trying to do is demonstrate that we lead through our own efforts um show how that can be done and create and create the environment uh and the opportunities for the community to join us and so in in that example that's where we have that voluntary energy benchmarking program um to get to a low carbon or zero carbon future by 2050 it will take uh a a lot more than City goals but by us setting benchmarks in this updated CA um we know that can accelerate CommunityWide progress and then we use the different tools at our disposal to try to incense support and in certain cases mandate um compliance no I'm I and I appreciate you making that distinction because and I don't Proclaim to have worked on this for the last five years but my my estimate would be um with it being voluntary right like how do we how do we you do you understand what I'm saying how do we push this along to say that we have a you know quote unquote goal and then how do we create some kind of policy Benchmark that would be applicable in a voluntary what my colleague likes to say aspirational situation right um so I'm wondering and I and I know this might be a little bit more difficult but I'm wondering as we move forward in this how do we how do we demonstrate to the public the our actions right as opposed to those that would be the voluntary actions of let's say stakeholders that are very important I don't want to minimize that but across our community though again that's a voluntary opportunity right when we're taking these steps intently to say we want to you know be demonstrative of of of a goal of um you know lessening our footprint in the city um how do we kind of separate those two and and say like this is what we're doing at the city you know this is what we've set a goal for at the city of Charlotte with our you know um with the things that we are able to touch manipulate Etc and this is what we have in addition you know as a voluntary perspective for the community members that will be working you know in partnership with us to achieve it Citywide right because I feel like that's really the only thing that we have control over I mean everything else in my opinion would somewhat be aspirational right uh it's it's a it's a heavy load for you guys to say 100% means that 54.7% of people who get to voluntarily decide whether they want to do these things is is where we get to 100% or not right and so I I think the challenge here is to kind of separate those two include them but kind of make sure that we're individual and saying this is what the steps that we've taken as the city of Charlotte to achieve those goals does that make sense absolutely and I think um in the in the document it's pretty clear sort of what's what's within our wheelhouse and then also what are some of these CommunityWide steps and I think I think you make a a really great Point ultimately our 2050 goal is based in science of what needs to happen so we can um best serve our community and our health and and slow the rate of change but it's very important to be clear about what what we are doing and what we have accomplished um as a municipality and also what are the different lovers from from a policy level lover to intergovernmental lover to um just partnership lover uh and so I appreciate that yeah and I mean I'm I'm a big fan of public and private partnership I think it's the only way forward is the only way a large amount of our work gets done but as far as you know a metric of accountability we have complete control over one portion of that yep um and the rest we don't right so you know just my input my suggestion uh my observation would be somehow can we separate that you know to make sure that we're indicative of what we're doing as a city entity um and and I know with everything that's happened with Helen the the you know climate is top of mind for everyone right now right I'm getting calls from colleagues across the country and they're like hey you know are you guys okay you know is there what can we do to help I mean it's just it's been a team effort right but as we continue to see what we I mean controversially know are changes in our climate I think there's um a different sense of urgency for the work that you're doing um and how it affects you know our city and our region so um I want to move on to um on slide number 10 you talked about Community engagement and we have a technical advisory committee was that something that's was that something that the council selected or was that just something that we how did that go this might be redundant I just don't know that's okay um our consultants and the staff work together to compile different areas that we wanted to make sure we had folks their perspective and then we reached out to those folks and saw who was interested okay okay that's good I mean I like that you you were intentional about experts right I mean it it's good to to make sure that we have stakeholders cuz it's always been my you know um opinion that a community is to some of its parts it is no more or no less you cannot be greater or less than the people who are the substance of where you live what you do and who's willing to serve that's all we have we don't have anything else we can't collect from cabis that's their County right um we can't collect from Concord we are Charlotte so I like that you've done that that's I'm a personal fan of that um so with the link where you're connect you know collecting information what are you deeming usable someone might say I want you to quit using gas powered cars like because that's the challenge right when we submit a link right I've noticed that challenge over and over throughout my tenure is that when we say I want to engage the population we get this just basket of suggestions and so what what so we don't have it's not as open-ended as that okay so we're trying to specifically understand what um are people's concerns related to climate risk we're trying to understand what are some of the barriers to taking actions and or what are some of the actions that individuals are taking and how do they see um our role and so um it you know we will get some information that you know will be sort of open-ended but we're really we're really targeting it to understand how much do people understand what we're already doing how do they understand what their what their individual role is and so we can mine that information to help influence the actions that we end up um adding and and uh building on for the for the update yeah that's that's kind of what I was getting at and that's where I'm going right and so a lot of the times in my opinion what I've noticed just as an observation is especially when it's open-ended right it really doesn't set expectations it really doesn't say um here's here's what we have here's what we can do right um and so a lot of the times if we're reaching beyond what we can do at this moment without setting the expectations of what we've already done what's possible right within the foreseeable future based on you know um what we have available to us sometimes um we we end up collecting you know information that that's not even possible for us to Aspire to so I'm glad that you're already considering that that's good um so you're having a kickoff meeting what is where is that is uh we're going to confirm the location but but the likely location will be the Innovation Barn oh cool yeah I like the Innovation Barn I like it over there it's pretty cool okay and then my last comment Mr chair um has to do with the corridors of opportunity um you guys you said that you created an addendum to the Playbook uh for the corridors so the green prints in essence will be an addendum to the playbooks um the playbooks touch on so many different really critical pieces um but what this does is it uses a very specific lens that aligns with uh our work around the Strategic energy action plan and climate equity and so it will um it will be more focused on the environment with some specific actionable projects so that um we can leverage this great this great infrastructure that exists within the corridors and address some pieces that weren't you know a big focus of the initial Playbook process okay okay that's good and the reason why I'm asking is because you know thinking about the differences in the corridors right the one that's in District 5 in particular album I know that we're not on this list to get started but uh you know when we do get there I'm I'm excited to um you know be a part of that conversation but each each Corridor is so different right when I was listening with intention um for the update for the tree canopy I'm you know when you talk about Cooling and understanding that different areas are you know hotter or colder you know cooler based on a number of different things right so I'm imagining that's what the addendum is involving to some degree be projects that specifically address that opportunities you know to use the combination of the work that maybe Tim's team does with some of the efforts around uh C think if you think about all the different pieces coming together you could imagine a bus shelter that has solar that has tree shade when somebody's walking to the bus right so you kind of look at what are the intersection of these different things and how can you address some of the actionable needs that the community might identify and that we know um from our own work you know our opportunities that's good all right thank you that's all I have Mr chair that was a lot that was good that was very good um anybody else so I had a couple of quick questions um as we move forward do you have an idea now of what uh what's going to be different like are we going to introduce new policies where there'll be new uh targets or requirements or how will things change as a result of the update uh I I'll I'll take this first and then you can add in Dr buers so there is some some things that we know will be new so because we are uh looking at climate risk there'll be much more intersection between the Strategic energy action plan which is mostly focused on energy it is an energy action plan um with the tree canopy work and so there may be actions that are much more deliberately aligned between those two pieces than ever before um we do know that um some of the efforts and some of the things that we've learned from for example there's a whole section on resilient Innovation districts um we have quarters of opportunity and so we're going to look more at how we can align the work of this Council and this community with strategic steps so that you know the work around housing and home rehab and deep energy retrofits that can be specifically called out whereas that wasn't um in this ini initial action plan we'll still have work around the main areas which are buildings and energy generation Workforce Development and transportation um but we're going to be um more deliberate about uh making those connections strategic Mobility plan uh the importance of uh of mode shift over time providing more and different opportunities for tra Transit and travel um we can make some more of those connections and align some of the different policies and plans so that um you might see something in the cat but you also might also see it in uh the tree canopy action plan for example which um was ideal any comment I think she handled it great well done Sarah um are we going to need to have more budget capacity for these priorities as a result of the update I think it's too early to to talk about the the budget needs but um you know prior to the CF there was um never an allocation around these types of efforts although there were allocations to different pieces that were in support of of this effort and there has been since the ca so I imagine you know some of this work will continue to come at a cost but I think our uh we're not we're too early to to say that there's some specific budget request and we wouldn't assume that we would put that into the cab document much like the first document doent um you know we want to we want to outline the opportunities and we certainly want to highlight where there's investment that's needed but um it will depend on a number of factors for example availability of Technology um to make budget requests that um we'll see actionable results and so we're going to have to do um much like we did in the first one which is identify areas where investment you know can be beneficial and needed but we're not going to make a specific um budget requests in this document because that would be premature so we're going to start an MTC transportation planning to these things as well so I I hope we'll be able to kind of coordinate that activity with our work on on capap uh I also agree with uh Miss Molina the private sector is is obviously where the great majority of activity occurs and if we can play a role in being a facilitator of a community cont conversation and getting everybody excited and encouraging them to participate have a forum type of thing anything we can do to uh uh basically consolidate what companies are already doing and then uh present that as Charlotte's plan uh I think that uh and I think that would also be an incentive that exposure would be an incentive for other companies to kind of want to participate and and get more engaged so uh good if there's nothing else I think we can move on to our final topic which is the I77 South um was that a musical accompaniment yes all right it sounded sort of like the Star Wars all right so um colleagues you're uh aware of this we we sent out uh messages last week um kind of explaining the situation so I'm just going to offer a very brief summary for the committee uh and explain what it is that we want to do going forward the uh crtp is a planning organization mandated by the federal government for uh uh road projects Transportation projects certainly anything involving potential Federal funding um it has a total membership of I think 21 communities um and uh of which Charlotte is the largest obviously and that board has been asked by ncdot to make a recommendation about uh possible plans for I77 South so as we know I77 South is very congested I77 north now has a managed Lane that has been implemented uh and there's been a discussion for a long time about what to do about I77 South the state has had uh a plan for I77 South in its funding schedule going all the way back for about 20 years uh but we are have only recently really started to tackle how this could work and what we got back from ncdot at CPO was uh that basically there were two choices there was a state funded solution managed Lanes still but a state funed solution or a partnership with a private company recently what they have told us is because of cost escalation that really the state funded option is just not going to happen the money isn't there and uh and so they're kind of I think nudging us in the direction of exploring the P3 solution a public public private partnership the cost of the project is now estimated to be $3.7 billion so uh what card proo plans to do this month is have a vote on whether to instruct ncdot to move forward with the preparation of a request for qualifications an invitation to biders uh specifying what it is we want and asking them if they will bid on that if they're prepared to do it uh they also have agreed with CPO that before that RFQ is actually circulated to bidders there would be another check in with CCO and therefore also a city council because I would then come back uh so the question that's being asked now is should CPO and ncdot work together to develop this RFQ uh as a step toward the implementation the possible implementation of a P3 or if the answer is no do we just shut it down at which point ncdot says that they will not take any further action on I77 South in the course of the past year CPO has seen a lot of data concerning congestion the travel times on the road accidents on the road safety is a big issue and um so the need is clear uh especially recognizing that any action we agree to take now won't see an improvement on the road for about 10 years because that's how long always takes so uh my personal recommendation is that we agree to pursue this further that we not stop now uh and uh see what kind of terms might be POS possible for a partnership with a private Industrial company recognizing that there is a lot of controversy around this because of our experience with I77 north and I can tell you that crtp has discussed at some length some of the issues that came out of our experience with I77 north and is committed to making sure that any mistakes that were made the first time do not happen again so that is kind of the situation uh I am requesting that the council uh instruct me on how to vote Charlotte's uh 31 votes Charlotte has a uh very large weight in the voting process there are 68 total votes and 31 of them are cast by Charlotte that would be me on behalf of the city um and again my recommendation is that we move ahead now what's going to happen this is an informational meeting that we're having right now uh what will happen is at this evening's meeting being of the full Council uh I will repeat essentially what I've said and we will also see a briefing from ncdot talking about the work they did to analyze the options the costs uh a great deal in fact as I think he'll appreciate later and then their recommendation which is pretty much as I described to you um My Hope Is that we come away from the information session tonight with confidence that if we put this on the agenda for a vote next week that it can move forward and that Charlotte will support uh proceeding to the next step and preparing this uh RFQ and and making sure that it says everything we think it needs to say so that's really for this meeting all I have if there are any questions or comments members sir no thank you um chairman Dr I I agree with you uh and your um your response in reference to how the the city should respond uh unfor fortunately I think what has happened in the mountains with the hurricane uh and state resources I.E resources from ncdot for the next 5 10 years will be going towards rebuilding roads Bridges and highways uh in the in the mountain as they should and so it's going to be Encompass upon municipalities to find Creative Solutions to solve um long-term Transportation issues um ourselves sooner and quicker and so uh I think this is the right step to take and unfortunately uh I was less than optimistic about our chances of getting legislation approved uh in Raleigh this November or December um but now based on what's happening in the mountains and the resources necessary to rebuild roses and bridges I think our chances up getting something past uh this short session um really um has to improve significantly I think based on unfortunate circumstances um in the mountains based on the flooding simply because those State dollars now will certainly be um reallocated quickly uh to solving that emergency um areas and municipalities like Charlotte and others um the state will probably looking for ways to have these communities self fund and certainly I I think the legislation that we have in front of them right now um May um be a perfect example of how communities can help themselves while the state continues to serve issues uh in Western North Carolina so I think um it's an appropriate step to take Point Mr Graham there's $600 million of State money that is currently reserved for this project that could be invested towards a P3 and we have been told by ncdot possibly precisely because of the needs elsewhere that if we don't kind of proceed that that could be reallocated so we would lose that uh thank you appreciate your comment anybody else if not uh yes ma'am just to add my salt to the soup uh thank you Mr chair um I'm actually looking forward to the update from ncdot and not withstanding you know the information that you've delivered you've been very thorough in delivering you know a perspective that's comprehensive to us to to have a good you know overview of of what's going on in your representation for us on that body so thank you for doing that in addition to this but um um I think with the update so anybody who's watching I would encourage you to take a look at tonight's meeting where you'll be able to get a full update from ncdl um and you'll be able to gain additional contexts from our chair chairman who also represents us on CPO because what he's really asking for is the sentiment of the full Council educating us so that we understand and you um on on what that decision entails from Charlotte's perspective so um I appreciate the information that You' shared with us um and I'm looking forward to tonight's meeting to get additional information thank you um I think that's our do we have Miss Johnson I'll I'll wait and I'll hold my questions for tonight during the ncdl presentation but I agree with the consensus um with council member Graham we do need Solutions in the city so I look forward to the discussion and to be able to ask detailed questions um to ncdot thank you if that's it we've reached the end of our agenda so I will entertain a motion into a joury so moved he want to [Laughter] [Music] stay e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e e e late it's something that's hey let's do it good afternoon everyone my name is malcol Graham I'm chairman of the jobs and Economic Development Council committee and ID like to welcome each and every one of you to the Monday October 7th 2024 committee meeting um welcome um to everyone in the room committee members uh staff and guests let's start off by introducing everyone at the table and then we'll introduce those virtually um second princip oh that's right work devel again Malcolm Graham committee chairman James Mitchell Vice chair marger Molina Committee Member Ed dggs Committee Member elanda Jones planning staff Wanda Brown Economic Development attorney's office offel and those who are visiting with us virtually could you please introduce yourself Dante Anderson mayor protm district one okay so we have one committee uh one agenda item for the committee meeting today a very important one from our Workforce Development um department but but before we go to her let's turn it over to the assistant city manager to te it up for us and then we'll get to work thank you council member Graham um today as you said we have the one agenda item Workforce Development and as you know um Danielle has been working on a strategic plan around Workforce Development really elevating the work that the city is doing so she's here to give an update and I'll let her jump right into it thank you Tracy and thank you chair Graham and to the council committee excited to be here today to provide an update on our Workforce Development efforts and joining me is the sherco team who has been working with us to develop our Workforce Development plan so a lot of the conversation and discussion today will be around uh our plan and they will again help help to tag team that thank you for those of you that have had conversations with myself or had conversations with shco to provide input and feedback into developing this plan so hopefully you will see some of your feed feedback uh that you've shared as we get underway with that next slide please so the two agenda items that we have today or to Pro provide a brief overview uh you heard some of us are from the office of Workforce Development so going to share a brief overview of the office and then we will get into our plan update next slide please so the office of Workforce Development was established back in May um of this year and it has joined together two functional areas which is organizational talent development and Community Workforce Development so if you look at these two functional areas as one being internally focused one being externally focused so when you look at our organizational talent development that is everything that concerns our talent Mobility efforts for our city employees and then when you look at our community Workforce Development it's everything that we focus on externally so that's how we're leaning into Community Partnerships collaborations and how we're investing in programs in the community and I will share a little bit more of what uh these two look like but we are a a mighty team of seven that uh supports these functional areas so our organizational talent development is implemented implemented through these various programs that you see here uh on the slide and they're really to support our new and existing uh team members along their career Journeys within the organization we have our community outreach and engagement which is really centered around assisting uh in career pathway awareness in our community with our Community Partners to educate them on the job opportunities that are available within the city of Charlotte we have our Career Training Academy which is focused around a six-month internship program for adult for our adult Workforce uh to help them get more work experience and work experience within the city of Charlotte we also have a part of that which is a co-op program that supports employment for uh individuals that are enrolled in college and those that have graduated we're excited about this program because of one it's it's helping to increase just awareness and opportunities um within the city but 71% of those individuals that enroll in CTA programs then go on to be full-time employees with the city of Charlotte uh our registered apprenticeship programs I think you all have heard me talk about this and brag about this particular program we have 18 US Department of Labor registered apprenticeships across our organization that's everything from a cmpd police officer to a work force development specialist to an HVAC technician Plumbing electrical many many job occupation that we have registered and registered apprenticeships are combined of classroom training as well as on the job experience and once an apprentice is completed with their apprenticeship they get what's called a journey men certificate which is a portable credential that is recognized nationally and even internationally uh depending on the occupation so we've had 150 apprentices thus far um within the city 115 I'm sorry within the city of Charlotte we have our prepaid tuition program which supports our talent that interested in increasing their credential attainment I have to say prepaid because we also have a tu a tuition reimbursement program but we recognize that uh tuition reimbursement you have to pay those fees upfront and so we recognize that was a barrier for some of our talent um and we wanted to make sure that we were able to pay those funds upfront to help individuals uh with their continuing education so this is a partnership with Central pedmont and then we have a career coaching program a couple of career coaches on staff that help support uh our town in navigating our own career Pathways within the city of Charlotte we have a number of of employees that are always reaching out to say how do I go from this job to this job what are the jobs that are available how do what are my transitional skills and so we help them to navigate our internal programs and we've had about 330 I think individuals take advantage of this program so excited about the impact that that is making last but certainly not least we have an education to employment program that we recently launched this year which we are really really really excited about and I hope that you all um are familiar with this if not you'll become more and more familiar with this but this was a partnership that we launched earlier this year with Central I'm sorry with um Charlotte meinberg Schools and uh if you all may be familiar with I think the desired goal of CMS that every high school graduate be on one of three Pathways which they are calling the three e one be enrolled in post-secondary education or enlisted in military or on an employment pathway and so this was the city of Charlotte's way of investing in our early Talent by committing to a number of jobs um for our 2024 graduates and so there were 15 student students I believe that we employed uh through various positions with our 311 contact center as well as with our transportation department and uh with our general services and so all doing well and we're looking forward to expanding that partnership uh as well as even expanding that to our our higher ed Partners um for our graduating college uh students so so excited um about that and you'll hear more about that program as it progresses next slide please so one more slide and then I'm going to pass it over to uh the shm code team but here our community Workforce Development so again everything this is external um and so we uh the office Partners um with the mayor's Youth Employment Program with the core doors of opportunity as well as with renew and helping to support those programs and and connecting where uh it makes sense and aligning uh you'll see uh the higher Charlotte initiative and you all know you approved higher Charlotte arpa funding to support a number of Workforce Development programs over this last year so we've been working very very closely with the economic development team and deploying These funds and you'll see in that gray bubble all of the organizations that we funded through that programming uh or through the renew program over uh the last uh renew has been around for a few years and we partnered with Goodwill in Urban League on those programs just to remind you all that um we are really building upon the higher Charlotte framework that was done a couple of years ago that was a CommunityWide effort of bringing the ecosystem together to really boil this down to what are we trying to solve for and if you narrow down the framework of that Focus Tracy ad lib or correct me if I'm wrong was really focused around a couple of things right it was around how are we better aligning our system around the talent and the jobs that we have and how are we doing that through addressing the technical as well as the essential skills to help uh make sure that uh that Talent is and that it meets the qualifications qualifications of our employers but then also their good quality jobs that help support uh our residents and so when we think about today and we think about the conversation around the the plan and then we think about implementation this is really where this work is going to be centered around conversations of how do we um how do we focus on and lean in more and how we're supporting our external Talent um and remember our external um support comes through collaborations Partnerships and how we invest in those in in the programming so when you think about the two functional areas internal external the internal we have much more direct support because we're focused on our our internal employees external we're really funding partners and existing programs to help support and upskill and and get folks to good jobs in our city before you turn it over to Sham can I ask you a quick question sure on on this slide I mean so all these organizations do tremendous work how do we measure the collective results I mean what's the score how are we keeping score rather not we're winning or losing winning like Smith for an example good segment you could check you can tell somebody's under thank you CH gr for that question um so so a part of this and I meant to mention that you all will start to receive regular updates on how these organizations are performing and our contractual agreements we have a set of outcomes that we've asked them to meet um some around um there's a number of them focused around uh training completion credential attainment uh employment retention on and employment as well as increased wages and so those are the key Focus um metrics that we focused on for these particular uh programming and you'll probably see that be some of our staple outcomes that we want to continue to measure when we fund uh training programs or Workforce programs and so so we do uh have that built in into the existing contractual agreements but again that will live on as we fund any other programs and I guess there's constant collaboration cooperation do you guys jointly meet together sometimes and kind of share information or actually that's a that's a good and and and Greg can mentioned some of the work that he's doing with the opportunity corridors by bringing together the funded organizations that um so so yes and there are monthly meetings that we actually have with them to talk about what are the opportunities where are the challenges that you're having so that we can continue to stay focused on how do we as a city even though we don't have direct um serving the direct population but how can we support if there are some challenges with with the programming okay cool thank you for that question so with that um I am going to hand it over to the shco team and what they are going to present today it's and uh Greg will probably mention this too is that it's not the full plan but it is where we are right now as far as what we've heard what we've discovered we would um we have drafted some things that we want to throw out there to you all to Hope create some good dialogue as well as get some feedback from you to help us finalize uh our plan that we hope we will make it on the November jobs and Ed committee to bring that final plan back to you for you to hopefully bless and send that full to full Council so with that I will hand it over to Greg great welcome thank you uh council members and everybody in the room uh pleasure to be here thanks Danielle for that um again quick uh intros I'm Greg Sher Beckham the founder and principal of shermco uh we are a social impact implementation team that does a lot of work in the social impact space both for for-profits municipalities and nonprofits uh we're based in Charlotte but have worked and operated in 18 states across the country since we launched um and started my career here teaching at West Charlotte High School um along West Charlotte High School dubc um so uh this work is both meaningful and obviously important to me that uh as a small business owner also somebody that started in Charlotte and works here uh so this work is near and dear uh fontel you want to say fontel m director of Workforce Development for Sher Co probably the newest member to the team um spent probably the last 15 years of my career in the Workforce Development space connected to a global organization that helped women in our community really Advance um their career so I'm really excited to be on this side and being able to work with the city on this project thank you uh you go to next slide please and so just for quick context for everybody in the room room and those joining us virtually and so as Danelle mentioned this is very much um a preview or a trailer if you will of the full plan that we're planning to submit by the end of October so again this is not the final plan and so still working kind of behind the scenes to clean up and add some some more specific so again today's broad Strokes to get feedback and insight from you all and continue to refine it along the way um that final plan will come at least to Danielle by October 31st and I know will soon be presented to you all soon after that and again outside of these broad strokes and incorporating your feedback and insights uh after today uh please expect some very clear suggested quantifiable goals benchmarks and timelines I think a lot of what we heard from almost everybody we spoke to mostly in this room but also from others is uh pushing Us in the city to be a specific as possible around metrics around results and around timelines and so that is is coming your way soon over the next four to five weeks I can go to the next slide please uh this would be pretty quick but again we spoke with many of you in the room again this was just the objective of our partnership and so you know with the great leadership of Danielle and support of the council being really clear and helping articulate what is the vision for the office of Workforce Development what should the office do but also what should the office not do based upon work already happening in the community duplicating efforts and are great Community Partners and so we uh continue to keep those things in mind as we were trying to be supportive and kind of build a vision over the next three to four years of the new office uh next slide please in terms of specifically what we did I won't um kind of read all these but you can see the timeline we followed from April I point to kind of phase two outside of what we'll talk about today is building an updated service provider inventory and so outside of what Danielle mentioned with the funded Community Partners is refreshing and kind of uh putting together a tool that shows upto-date Workforce Service Providers as easily and essentially a One-Stop shop for residents looking to find livable wage jobs uh within some Target growth industries that we'll talk about later and so that's a separate tool that we won't talk too much about today but that we're working behind the scenes to get updated information to make it as easy as possible for residents to find these jobs uh next slide so uh two additional slides will go over here quickly in terms of context and so as we did our research and some of our internal analysis you know A lot's happened over the past 10 years right obviously most recently uh this Council and others have been really focused on and also um set Workforce Development as a really strong strategic initiative but even if we go backwards again I won't read all these to you but some pretty significant events in our community related to Workforce Development and growth and so just a few things that we thought were important to remind everybody and bring us up to speed of how we got here you know specifically outside of what happened with uh the pandemic which I believe right we probably all remember uh safe Charlotte was obviously a pretty key initiative that focus on training and jobs that was set forth by the city again currently building off of the framework of the insights that was leveraged from higher Charlotte then of course since Danielle um and the work has been happening more efficiently within her office and then the updated cheddy report which we'll speak about um on the next slide as well and so again I think maybe everybody in the room uh is likely aware of the first cheddy report around economic Mobility but of course the most recent one and so of course uh you know we moved up from 50 to 38 right so I think all something to long ways to go to number one right progress and then but still uh with the competitive nature in the room long way to go uh you know secondly right third out of 50 in terms of progress around economic Mobility since then and so still important to acknowledge it not number one but uh certainly good progress compared to where we were in 2014 and I think really the last uh kind of update here essentially shows that all uh populations can continue to serve and grow without the decline of another population and so prosper is not a pie which I think we've heard before and certainly is certainly true with the updated chedy report so may not be too much new news we want to make sure we offer that context and bring everybody up to speed with some of the research we were leveraging as we were building out the final plan the next slide please thought council member Mitchell had a pretty uh important quote as we just think about what we're already doing currently but how do we do it even better to continue to grow the work and so um you know council member thanks again for your work but this insight as we think about how we even do it more and better in terms of the future of Workforce Development in terms of uh who we spoke with I'm going to pass it to my smarter colleague in a moment but this will just give you a sense of some early insights of who we spoke with locally nationally and even internationally and then some results we have and updates along the way next slide please all right so we spoke with uh a host of internal stakeholders so staff within the city so I won't read the slide but I think a couple things I'll just call out I think one of the biggest um questions that we were really trying to solve for is what should the city's role be in the space of Workforce Development beyond that how are we defining that as an organization and as a city and the data piece I think data you're going to see as a through line um as we progress throughout some of the other slides as well and then this whole notion of the city really being an access point and really a bridge for opportunities to fill gaps in our community next SL please and council members we heard you loud and clearly uh with regards to some of the challenges um that exist within our community around navigating this Workforce Development ecosystem and I think secondly the evidence-based policies looking at the opportunity gaps that we might need to address throughout this plan and then last again again you see the common theme defining Workforce Development what does that mean and how do we position ourselves as a city and community in addressing that Gap in the ecosystem next slide please and so throughout you'll see quotes from um council members and council member barari said we must be focused on measurable and tangible impact which I think leads into what you said council member Graham at the beginning like how are we going to measure this next slide please external insights we wanted to also ensure that we were very inclusive with regards to stakeholders that we spoke with so not just our Community Partners but we also did spend some time talking to International Partners as well and again the broad theme again with our external stakeholders was the city as a convenor and Bridge you see that again that bridge is another word that's been shared um throughout I think with regards to some of the responses that we heard and then secondly looking at how we leverage local assets within the network one of the things that I recall is that many folks said hey we don't have have to just do something new we have good systems in place how do we leverage those next slide please and so this is council member drgs you said how can we get residents from training to jobs as soon as possible and so I think that's the other piece making sure yes we know our residents are connecting to training programs but how do we get them to the jobs next slide please in comparable cities one of the things that um we did is we wanted to look at cities that were not only just comparable by size but we really leaned into the target audience and really the areas in which they focused on with regards to how they responded to the need one of the things that you will see in our plan that we'll go deeper we went very deeper in our analysis of looking at just Nationwide benchmarks and whatnot that these cities were doing that you'll see in the final plan but a couple things that I'll just lift here there are lot a lot of similarities with regards to the target audience unemployed underemployed making sure that we're addressing our just as impacted individuals with disabilities and whatnot but I think when you look at how many of these cities were supporting sector-based training on the job training learn and earn models all those things were consistent across every state that we spoke with next slide please and so these are just a sampling of some of the things that really stood out to us Innovative approaches that are happening not just within the United States but internationally company based um skills matching um employer pledges in some instances some cities and states have really asked their employer Selena and not just commit to hiring but also being very intentional about how they embra how they leverage local talent and getting them engaged into the work in the workplace and then lastly this validation around micr credentialing so we're seeing a lot of into how do we leverage non-degree credentials as it relates to getting individuals from unemployment into the job ecosystem next slide please and then lastly council member Molina um you know let's be intentional about supporting our residents and very clear about the intended outcomes and so again as you can see and almost every conversation outcome measures came up and so that's one of the things that our team is has been very intentional about ensuring that in the final plan that that's basically cleared out um broadly defined in and the lot of clarity with regards to how we create quantifiable goals um as it relates for the city and this work y thank you I actually just want to pause um I know it's a good bit of information we can go back we can keep it moving based upon your guys's agenda and schedule but any initial questions or responses around how that feedback kind of lands on you council member um any question or you just want to wait till the end let's do the whole presentation sure and then we'll just open up for questions and answers great and we go to the next slide thank you so what we'll see about the next five or six slides again broad Strokes of recommendations um that we're then buil off of after any questions or insights you guys provide and specifically going deeper with some of the Strategic goals and the quantifiable metrics we'd set forth for the office to accomplish over the next three to four years in terms of the vision and Mission outside of what Fontella offered from these other cities and international cities thought it's a best practice we found to offer a vision and mission for the early part of the office but also for this plan that we're building and so we've set forth this vision and Mission to continue to guide the work again at a macro level then we'll continue to drill down moving forward as well next slide so defining Workforce Development I think is everybody in the room or in the world if you ask them to Define Workforce Development it could look a number of different ways and so we work closely with Danielle and the team um to craft the definition that still felt inclusive but specific for the office and for our community and so moving forward thinking about how we can leverage this definition to define the work and then to measure our outcomes moving forward you go to the next slide so these next two I think might be the most interesting so in terms of the early role here are a few things that we would offer from our our research and our findings um you know we can look at the left first and so one is thinking about a clear demographic of who who the city has the ability to support based upon the capacity of the city and then how can the city work with Community Partners to continue to serve all residents in the community as well so not to boil the ocean but to get very specific and so if we think about the different buckets of demographics you can see that supply of local talent that we've been researching And discussing with different stakeholders uh throughout our partnership together uh the second is the demand of the middle schill job and so as we think about current job openings with many of the projects this council is is supported other ones coming in the community and other ones that are being projected uh Within These in demand middle skill jobs how can we go straight from training to jobs as quickly as possible but specifically within livable wage jobs and so we're going pretty deep over the next uh few weeks to make those recommendations not out not just in kind of these uh specific sectors but specific job bands um that we can begin to look at and measure so I'll pause in a moment but in terms of uh kind of key areas we' found the city can continue to be a leader in so obviously this kind of centerpiece around job Seekers and jobs particularly with small to mediumsized businesses you know uh city has strong corporate Partnerships as it should but continue to see a pretty large opportunity to go even deeper with small to mediumsized businesses particularly with job supports and job placement the four kind of key areas we'd offer in quick examples here so if we start in the top left so connector we heard pretty clearly the city is quite good and continue to be a key resource and connecting job Seekers to jobs it's connecting employers to job Seekers and a number of other opportunities to serve as a Connecting Point a second thing I'd offer is a conveners almost to um council member Graham's Point how can the city continue to convene but also convene in a more consistent basis key players in the ecosystem and so whether that's around best practices with what metrics we are measuring best practices and employment opportunities best practices and supporting opportunity youth or Justice involved how is there a role for the city to convene those key players more frequently in a way that supports um economic mobility and a lot of key issues that this council is focused on second investing how can the city fund and so people were looking for the city to keep funding then for right or wrong fund more innovative ideas um that are currently proving to be effective but also forthcoming and exciting Workforce Development opportunities based upon the projected job Trends we're seeing and then lastly influence and so as many of you know there's 9,00 ,000 team members give or take in any given month inside the city how can the city continue to serve as a best practice and put some positive peer pressure and create some positive influence in the community around uh livable wage supports around uh paid college tuition and a few other things you guys are already doing how can the city lift those up externally as the best practice for other cities across the country but also for other businesses in our community as well based upon insights and feedback from this room we'll begin to build out very clear quantifiable strategic goals over the next 3 to four years so the first strategic pillar you can see is this idea around cultivating sustainable Talent pipeline so both internally in terms of City team members and externally so how can the city continue to offer somebody that supports its apprenticeships and connection to essential resources in the community to make sure the city continues to have really strong internal Talent pipeline that can be a best practice for others in the community as well second catalyzing so this is the idea around continuing to fund and so how can it be an innovator how can it work with Community Partners how can it begin to set the course with other Community Partners in the agenda for funding current uh Workforce initiatives that are working and future ones that aren't yet in the community that need to be based upon projected job opportunities third is championing and so a lot of you know we've talked a lot in the community around a livable wage job a good job but if you drill down there's we still find an opportunity to Define that in very clear quantifiable ways and so what are ways a city can continue to Champion what does the quality job look like ins inside the city what does the quality job look like for some of the grow growing job sectors we've discussed in other ways to Champion what good career advancement and a good job looks like and then what we heard from many of you and others in the room is how can we continue to be a national leader in Workforce Development initiatives so we think a few things right we think getting us to and accomplishing these three strategic pillars will equal four if you will but continue to set us kind of on top of our other peer cities and other cities across the country uh to really set forth what best practices are in Innovative Workforce Development Solutions and what I'd say what kind of ties this all together and some of you council members already spoke to it is we can't do any of this without data and outcomes and so we need to be really clear about what's worked previously really clear about where we are now but also really clear on measuring the objectives of these four strategic pillars so that we continue to have this data continue to leverage this data to make decisions and continue to understand what outcomes are working currently and what outcomes to be striving towards um over the next few years under the leadership of Danielle and her team and we just go y thank you and so happy to stop talking or answer any questions but in terms of next steps again working behind the scenes to give you all these updates and specifics that we mentioned by the end of October outside of concluding any additional research any feedback from council members uh in this room and others thank you for the Pres presentation uh Miss Frasier and um thank you for being with us and providing us a um high level overview of the findings we look forward to the final report being delivered to Miss Frasier on the 31st and then subsequently uh it will make its way to the committee at some point so I will open that up for questions um my my comment uh from me and then I'll opening up is that affordability continues to be the city's Achilles heels and Workforce Development and jobs are part of solving that and so the the work that you guys are doing are extremely important um once we get the report back in 2025 it's going to really uh be from my perspective really uh important in terms of measuring what we're doing and I think it was quoted as saying how do we get people from training the jobs how do we get people into good paying jobs sooner than later um with the city being a vehicle as well as working with the entire Community who all at some point touch based with um Workforce Development implementation U certainly didn't see anything about Central um P Community College but I'm pretty sure that would be embedded somewhere in the final report in terms of how that collaboration work with other stakeholders so um I will pause and um give it to Mr DRS Mr Dres thank you Mr chair uh I first wanted to emphasize uh cheddy uh I really feel that this Council maybe did not sufficiently recognize uh the significance of that finding doesn't mean our work is done but for us to be third among those communities in terms of our progress and recognizing that a very large Southeastern City continues to reside at the bottom of the list uh I I think we can take some pride in that at the same time I feel that uh uh and and as you know Mr chair Dr chedy was in Charlotte a couple of weeks ago and um one of my biggest concerns is how do we interpret this good news like can we draw conclusions from it what was working was it private sector was it government policies so whatever that was can we do more of that and I hope that we will continue to focus on the findings uh one notable conclusion that I think Dr cheddy highlighted that was different from the first time was what is critical for the outlook for uh people is where they grow up the neighborhood in which they grow up and whether or not they grow up in a neighborhood in which people are employed and are kind of leading the life that you would like for young people to lead so uh I think there may be ways that we can uh draw conclusions and act on that but I just wanted to emphasize the fact I think that that result given the shock waves that went through the city when the first report came out uh is worth appreciating and celebrating so on the on on the the news that we just had the report that we just had uh couple of questions for one uh early in this initiative U and before your time I think Miss Frasier uh a lot of effort went into the creation of a portal and I'm wondering is that portal still there is it working uh how much activity has it seen what's the status of that thank you Mr Dres for that question um we there is not a that specific portal that was discussed I think a few years ago um there is still um efforts around how do we create a portal that helps to navigate uh job Seekers to the resources and the training programs and I will um shout out Kevin LS who is with Charlotte Works uh who has created a a a very um basic portal that helps support navigation to the key partners that are a part of that Workforce providers Council uh so we've been working with Kevin very closely to figure out how do we integrate an align align around that and support it also we have something internally with the city of Charlotte that is called civvi forms that most recently just launched and I'm learning more about that civvi forms and it is in essence kind of a One-Stop shop application where residents can go out and say hey I'm looking for a job or I'm looking for housing assistance and then they can be directed to all Community Resources as well as what we have internally so I'm also working with that system to see again alignment but that continues to come up that this whole navigation and helping our residents and our job Seekers to navigate Services career Pathways we will be working to figure out how do we align best with these different efforts that are happening so excuse me the chair will remember that I think he and I both had a concern about the portal in that we thought there needed to be Community facing activity so I'm pleased to see that that is what we're doing um um and and finding ways uh to access people who aren't necessarily aggressively looking for help like we they may not know what's possible and and so the question is how can we connect with them uh I did have a question also about apprenticeships uh as you know this is something that's near and dear to my heart could you talk a little bit more about what the model is like what is a typical age of participants do they they receive compensation classes uh is it like the German model or you mentioned that they do get a certificate at the end which is actually negotiable in the labor market but I'd be interested to know a little bit more about that sure and you're asking specifically about our apprenticeships within the city of Charlotte or just in general well you mentioned our apprenticeships so I'm wondering how how we're conducting that program absolutely if if you don't mind um Mr Driggs can I invite uh Sher Jones who oversees our apprenticeship program to speak just a little bit more about that Mr chair yeah sure is it you come up to a microphone she is our resident expert on on all things apprenticeship and she actually um was very instrumental in getting our first registered apprenticeship through the city uh City water so thank you for that question and yes the city's model is based similar to the German model um I understand that model has been around since the 1400s and so this is registered with the Department of Labor and there we have a hybrid um opportunity so it's competency based as well as skill-based so our average age is about 27 years old but it ranges from 18 to 60 year olds um we also are reaching out to Veterans because veterans are able to utilize their GI bill when they are an apprentice so far the fire department and police department have utilized the it's called the VA once but the GI Bill for the veterans that are in their apprenticeship programs and participants are are they employees of the city yes so as an apprentice they do receive full benefits and they are on a wage progression so every 6 months they are evaluated throughout before to 6 months but throughout they are evaluated and observed there is a skill competency checklist that is created for it to be a registered occupation with the Department of Labor and so when they are evaluated they are checked off to make sure that they are becoming competent in those skills that are laid out and if they are competent up to those points that they are observed then they are eligible to be to get wage increases so they get wage increases throughout their programs the minimum program that we have is 2,000 hours on the job training which is one year but it ranges from one year to 4 years depending on the occupation and that's laid out through the Department of Labor and so at the end when they do receive their Journey workers credentials then they are brought up to the regular salary for that occupation and is there a Target position that they are working toward like a placement uh as a result of the apprenticeship absolutely so the position that they are a participant in as an apprentice that is their their regular that is their position at the end right so they will work their way up to that during the apprenticeship um a great program thank you thank you we are apprenticeship ambassadors as well we have been recognized by the federal government as such good it was always having lived in Germany I always thought that was something that uh the city could emphasize as we try to address the needs of the community uh Mr chair I have one or two more questions can I go ahead or do you want me to come back sure sure okay so um in the past we heard that one of the greatest barriers for a lot of people were soft skills uh do do we actually have programs that specifically try to address soft skills issues yes thank you for that question to Mr Driggs um we did a little bit of research when this came up in the higher Charlotte framework around the skills that needed to address most technical and essential called essential soft skills Rose to the top um we did a little research with our training programs and our core Partners in the community to say hey are you providing soft skills along with the techn technical skills and uh favorably yes and so there there is a curriculum out there that is wide uh widely used it's called working smart we as a city of Charlotte actually use it within a few of our departments um but it's it through our our middle schools our high schools as well as uh other partners within the workforce providers Council uh so there is working smart or there is um essential skills curriculum that is coupled with Technical Training for a lot of the programs and the programs that we we Fund in particular so yes I think you're always going to find that Mr Driggs where that is a is a challenge and I think that's a challenge across all skill levels and even all um age uh groups in demographics is that that continues to be a challenge and I think as we continue to evolve um in Generations in the workforce that's an area that that's think is always a focus last thing just a brief comment there there's a big overlap between this topic and our housing uh agenda and um so a lot of what we're doing can enable people who didn't have access to housing to get an income and gain access to housing but at the same time a great deal of what we're dealing with on housing is Teachers firefighters uh and uh nurses and these are not people that need training right I mean you can't use Workforce Development to get them to a different place they're very capable uh and they do very important work so I've been kind of struggling as I look at our housing policies on um how we address that affordability challenge uh but I think what we're talking about today does a very good job of removing bar to people who can't access housing because they don't have income anyway thank you Mr chair thank you Mr drgs we go to council member Mitchell okay um let me just first start off by say I think this is uh as we say the church a great praise report uh particularly when this Council I think at UNCC Charlotte when we had our strategy session we had about nine council member who raised their hand and said Workforce Development was a party so I want to thank those council members then and the new council members who have teamed to show passion around this topic um Daniel I got to embarrass you um and then we had to get the Right leader and so we we highly uh sought you out and we appreciate though uh the way you have come in in a very quickly manner stay focus on what you want to accomplish and allow the busy people like me stay out your way and so um Greg thank you for your company I had a pleasure to sit down one onone and I think what you all put together has been one uh a labor of love for you all but more importantly it it re um reaffirms to me back when we made a decision 2023 we we was trying to do something special I'm going to Echo councilman madri's comments that some of us did take that chatty report seriously and we kept we were tired of hearing 50 out of 5050 and to come to us less than 2 years and now we're number 38 I just say thank you um to the chair's Point still a long way to go to number one and you know he's undefeated so now he's all about first place now but um let me just throw out three three ideas and just and then uh I'm going to be quiet but this this is very refreshing uh number one when we talked about uh the Innovative approach on slide I think it's slide 21 or maybe page 10 I don't know how maybe it's um but the first one was a customer service approach and I'm still old school but I I I need to get into the new technology but it's nothing like having a dedicated hotline for people to call in we still in that customer service era and people like to say can I call 704 555 find a job and so I do think we can move to to approach allow our citizens to call in and kind of find Opportunities and then the fourth bullet point I think is very critical when we talking about shid being the lead so cross industry and public private Partnerships so let me just throw out two uh ideas that we have talked about but we it has never materialized and one is uh engaging more with hm on the Pearl development the city in County we all put in tremendous support and we're are committed to make sure that it's a world leading um opportunity once it's finished but to me when you talk to Atrium one thing they talked about from a hiring perspective they don't have enough coders right and so to me how do we tie in a industry Pacific skill that's lacking and how we can be a champion and help facilitate Daniel I like your approach we don't need to spend all our money all the time but how do we leverage other partners out there who are doing great things the second one I would tell you in my conversation uh with Keith cockro at Bank of America is this new cyber security you know so so once again we got our corporate Partners who need to find talent and I think we can help facilitate that talent I think it's a win-win for all of us and then let me just show kind of the new trend in the construction so I'm glad on slide 25 you mentioned construction so I I can tell you now we're finding more and more um construction r P that are requiring a Workforce Development initiative CMS has been a Pioneer in in that particular area but I can tell you my company bid on opportunity Gilford county and Wake County and in the RFP they required that we hire a person from four nonprofits they gave us the nonprofits to select but we had to choose at least one and we had to hire one and we had to give a plan what that role would be so to my chairman that's how you measure right it's one to say we have goals but then to measure say I'm a hire James Mitchell from Goodwill Industry and he's going to do brick mason so you see that Trend in construction I would like for us to get to the point that part of our big projects that we support from Economic Development we started having a Workforce Development initiative last but not least um I see m protim is on the phone but you have three council members that were born in livian communities uh myself and mayor proam we were both born in Southside U council member Brown I think was born in Brook Hill and so you think about those communities and the demographic of those communities if we can work with elivan be another external partner and so how do we take some of their residents in their Community provide them some skill training and development uh ecosystem and how they continue to improve themselves I'm Echo with Council madri and my chair said affordable housing so we're not going to build our way out but we can provide root Toops and provide jobs I think it's a pathway that we all can be successful thank you Mr chair thank you uh Mr mitcho uh council member Anderson thank you Mr Graham um really great points uh made by my fellow council members and thank you for the presentation really great information um I have a similar question two two questions one very similar to Mr Mitchell around um technology opportunities and how I love everything that we've laid out um from a strategic pillar perspective but within those um Mid skilled job areas what are we doing around or partnering with entities that are doing work around um tech technology skills coding um Mr Mitchell mentioned cyber security Etc that's my first question and then I have another question thank you mayor htim for that question so currently um with our arpa our higher Charlotte arpa funds we are supporting uh Road to hire and so they have uh I believe it is software development cyber security may be a piece of that up but I think it's more uh software development apprentices that we're supporting through that program we also are supporting an organization called generator management which is an online virtual um technology um uh platform it's they they leverage uh LinkedIn learning as well as Microsoft it's more so it's not so much cyber security um or software development but it's more so around applications around um office and and other I there's a plethora of um of uh learnings with LinkedIn learning as well as with Microsoft so there is some technology related but not directly in cyber security understood understood I I feel like Atlanta is sort of leading the way within the South Beast of becoming a Tech Hub and really leaning into not only attracting uh tech companies but cultivating and curating technical Talent um Tech Talent within the city and so I I want to make sure that we're not uh missing out in that space and that we're not being left behind so we can talk more about that offline um Miss frer because I love to speak to you more about that my my last question is with all this great work that that you have done and um and we're doing currently how do we evangelize incorporate this information um in with the work that the alliance is doing for example when companies are looking at at the city of Charlotte and trying to go through the decision calculus of do we have the right Tech and do we have the right Talent pipeline um would they choose US versus another city do we partner with the alliance or do we provide this information to them to evangelize the work that we're doing currently uh we we do not partner but there's going to be probably a whole communication roll out uh once the plan is is defined and once implementation gets underway uh that will be probably a big piece of our community work of um partnering and collaborating not just with Workforce Development part ERS but of course our Ed partners and I'll let Tracy tag into that too yeah mayor pretend we do have a lot of conversations with them when we have a perspective business that is looking at Charlotte we're constantly trying to understand why are they looking at Charlotte right and it's usually around talent in today's age um and so what is the talent they need is there questions around that those are some of the first questions that we ask um when we're talking to these prospective businesses some companies look at Charlotte and say hey we want to come to Charlotte cuz we know the Talon already exists some companies say we think we like Charlotte but we're not convinced that the talent sits here today how are you growing that Talent or if the talent comes for us where could they go if they don't stay with us right making sure that there's options um as they look at as they look at the market but that is something we have a lot of discussions around today excellent thank you thank you Mr chair that those are my two questions thank you uh Miss Anderson Miss Milena the floor is yours thank you Mr chairman um God there's so much to so many places to start I want to first thank you guys for being here today it's good to see your smiling faces um and and as all of you know and first of all I think it matters that you demonstrated to this body that you were paying attention to the body right that that you were intentional about mentioning things that you've collected from us along the way um as you you know ideate around you know what we should do from a policy perspective so I want to you know make sure I uplift that but with that being said I'm I'm thinking about this comprehensively right and I you know um based on where we are and and how we see this it could be very different and I think I have uh a few comments that could be takeaways U Miss Frasier you know how very passionate I am as as everyone on this Council right everyone on this Council particularly this body uh we have a specific interest in the idea of Workforce Development and what it means to have a living wage job in Charlotte right and as we've attempted to try to nail that Target the Target is actually moving away from us and I think that's a challenge right we keep talking about how do you quantify human beings right how do you take and and make something quantitative when it's really qualitative right there's a there's a qualitative piece in this that we have to keep in mind so in other words when someone considers success they often consider success once they've reached a milestone that's in their head that doesn't mean often times that we're not making incremental progress right so there's for an example along a Continuum if you're introducing someone to the idea of a particular outcome because again when I think policy I think access and I think outcome right and we're speaking and ideating around an outcome perspective as far as policy is concerned and anytime you start talking about outcomes you're talking about long-term implementation you're talking about the idea of taking a human being along a Continuum where there will be multiple successes along that Continuum right and so the person that the qualitative piece of this is when you're talking to a community member as all of us do as elected officials a lot of the times a Community member is they they're not very spefic in saying I see myself with a $25 an hour job right and and I'm going to make an analogous statement in saying that from a GPS perspective we have to start where we are right we can have all these great ideas about training people for the future but I think about my particular District as an example the average income for District 5 the 28 precincts that I represent is about $35,000 that is that is sadly lower than the County's average which means and and 93% of the humans that I represent have a job of some type but what that means for them is that they're probably making uh a very low wage they might be working two job but they're going to work right and so when you talk about livability let's say for an example we introduce that human to training job training and then they successfully complet that train that's a win that's win number one it's not it's not something that that is going to intend the outcome but I think the objective is is is an outcome over time and I think that outcome over time is uh demonstrated by access again access and outcome not the same thing right so what are we patting ourselves on the back for I think we have to make sure we intentional about you know um saying which one that we're do doing does that make sense so access to an opportunity is one thing because I think about the chedy study and some of the uh incremental changes that have been made and and I'm encouraged by you know the entities that have jumped into action but even that has taken a 10 year timeline to say we've made you know 12 percentage points of change as far as what we were initially qualified to be 50 as now as opposed to be 38 right it's taking uh a number of different Community uh Partners to come to the you know the table to offer their resources where we have Partnerships where we have the intention but I would call all of that access and along the way I would also say there's a both end that we've achieved many outcomes right so I the way I see this Baseline is something that we're continually monitoring and controlling right and I don't know how we isolate that from a a quantitative and a qualita standpoint but I think it's very important that we collect that and we display that in in how you know we're achieving this work and and what we're actually achieving along the way um I'll share personally all the way up until a few months ago I was the face of continuing education for Central pedmont it is I've never gotten an award for anything that was the greatest thing for me ever I've been here 20 years I've never got the 40 under 40 it's too late for that anyway now um never got any of that but Central pedmont when I was in a transition in my life I went through a 9-month program for data analytics and they used my story and put my face all over it was the greatest honor that I could say that I've had uh since I've been here but I I also know what it's like to be an educated individual to need to go from one place to another just because I got and you know how I am about this Miss fras just because I got a piece of paper in my hand it does not mean that someone is going to hire me and so after I've given 9 months unpaid of my life to train for something but then I don't have the handoff of a business being ready to hire me to what aail right now now NC Works who paid for my training right so I'm NC Works actually qu trained me to be a project manager 10 years ago and they trained and data analytics both they paid for both over more than 10 years so I'm when I tell you I'm absolutely Adept at this from a personal perspective I cannot tell you how much I am and so I said all that to say that um you know we we can't force a private entity to hire someone who's newly trained but it is a success to say that we have trained somebody right so along this incremental Baseline we've achieved something but we haven't achieved the outcome and I think those gaps are where we're going to have to be strategic about saying we have humans that are coming through the pipeline they're getting trained and maybe they're not in you know an apprenticeship where they can earn and learn but they're in this sacrificial state where they're going to work and they're training and they got to take care of a family and they're da D Blas blah there and then they need a job right um so like I said I I see this BAS Bine as a Continuum right I see this Baseline as I am a huge proponent that when we Empower someone to help themselves we make the most fundamental change that there is when we give people stuff we give them access we don't really have a a say in what that outcome will be but when we Empower that person enough to make their own decisions enough to work and feed and and and change their own destiny we create impact you guys are doing some of the most important work in my mind and in my eyes that we can do you know and and it's inextricable from everything else that we do but the first thing is getting a human to work where they can make a live livable wage and they can be in charge of their Destiny right that is what has changed my life that is how I grew up with a single mother and I am now a extremely educated woman because I have control of my own death Destiny right by way of what I've able been able to do right and I've had angels and great humans along the way but I think the more that we do this and the more that we understand that it's a Continuum and not just an outcome that's immediate because outcomes are longterm access we can do that incrementally along the way I hope I've been clear in what I've been explaining but just some takeaways to consider as we continue this project and and like I said everyone who is on this body knows that the work that you're going to be doing is fundamental to changing so many lives across our community but then how we're intentional about and and and understanding where we're grabbing the people that we represent along different places they're at different places in their lives you grab some people and if we keep grabbing people who are at the finish line and taking them across the finish line and considering that a win then are we winning right we're also grabbing people who like my colleague Mr D said who don't have ACC at all and trying to bring them along an an extended Continuum to where they can earn a living wage and if starting from a GPS perspective they may not even have soft skills so that's not the same as someone who's going back to school with a bachelor's degree who's a project manager who's multilingual who's do you understand what I'm saying taking me to the Finish Line is easy because I'm going to do most of the work myself I you I'm I'm going to do it or I'm going to do it that's but I've learned that from coming from a place where that wasn't an opportunity for me right so when we're continually reaching back grabbing those people who haven't yet had that level of access I think we have to remain conscious of of the path of growth that they'll have to experience in order to realize what a living wage is in an economy where that's a fleeting you know idea so that's all I have Mr chair thank thank you so as you can tell there's a lot of interest uh in terms of this particular Topic in general and specifically outcomes and so we look forward to getting the report Miss Frasier at the appropriate time uh and U thank you for the presentation and I'll give the final word to the assistant manager so there's just a couple things I was going to add one um in the housing committee this afternoon you all will receive or the committee will receive an update um for the cheddy study so there's another touch point I just want to make sure everybody knew that that was on the agenda today and then the second thing I think somebody asked the question about meeting people where they are in neighborhoods uh Council Mel I think that was you and I just want to remind um the committee that uh while back you voted the council voted on the creation of these opportunity hubs in our corridors of opportunity uh Mr chairman I think that you attended one of the grand openings um for Freedom communities and the whole goal on these is working with people in these communities handson um for that that might be job Seekers for Workforce Development but also small business support those are the goals of those so that kind of thing is in the works and we'll only get stronger um as we put the Strategic plan into into place and into work okay we all good good thank you very much for the presentation Miss Fraser we look forward to continuing conversation and can I get a motion to adjourn so move let's go eat lunch thank [Music] you e [Music] [Music] e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e I'll let you know when I see it come up Studio we're ready to go live please we we're live M chair thank you Marie good afternoon everyone I would like to welcome you to the October 7th budget governance and intergovernmental Relations Committee I'm dle Ajira committee chair let's start with introductions with those in the room first and then those who are attending virtually Dana Fenton with the city manager's office Sean Heath assistant city manager James Mitchell Committee Member Lana Mayfield Committee Member Cherry Smith strategy and budget Marie Harris strategy and budget J strategy and budget Tanya Jameson cedc and Lo Sheila Anderson procurement division manager Ashley price Department of General Services Steven Coker Charlotte business inclusion Julius Deadwood Charlotte business inclusion Kathleen seuk General Services py Helms General Services John Long General Services that's everyone in the room Miss chair thank you Marie for those joining us virtually Dante Anderson mayor protim district one Nelson Freeman contract representative for the city anyone else online all right well for today's meeting meeting of the committee we are planning to cover three topics for our discussion today uh first our intergovernmental relations manager Mr fenna D Dana Fenton will review the Federal and State Legislative update and provide us an overview of the state proposed issues for inclusions in the 2025 Federal and State Legislative agenda and then we have a referral that we have been working on to review the city's current procurement and CBI policies used for Capital project Contracting and last but not the least uh we are joined here today by Miss Tanya Jameson who served as the chair of the Charlotte Equitable development commission and she's planning to provide a report out on the work of the commission so with that um let's get started uh and I'm going to turn it over to Mr f to walk us through our federal and state legislative agenda thank you madam chair members of committee again for the record of Dana feton the uh City's intergovernmental relations manager we have for you today a presentation and presentation only no go today uh of proposed legislative issues for 2025 that originated departments here in the city and then we'll uh we'll talk about a little bit before we get into that we'll talk about just a little bit of refresher on agenda development and talk about the upcoming sessions and then the legislative request and then of course our next steps but we'd also like to get feedback from the committee today and I know also that at this time of the year I've had a few years here with the city now that uh I'm always going to get a lot of ideas from people so um we'll be ready for those uh next slide slide number three please thank you very much for there uh you have the uh again our agendas they communicate your policy uh your federal legislative request to the U uh General Assembly to the US Congress every year and we try to base these requests upon uh your strategic priorities uh where those current political climate is the current economic climate whether the uh the ideas are actionable or not and those i t to strengthen our relationship with legislators and on this slide here you've got uh sort of mapped out process and of course we're at the very beginning there we'll be back next month we hope that you all will adopt uh committee proposed legislative agendas present to the council then there would be a committee chair report out on November 4th followed by an action review on the 25th and then possibly if it has to come back here to the committee we would we could take up any follow-ups on December 2nd uh and then on December 9th is when we'd be looking for adoption by the city council and that would uh prepare you real well for 2025 uh you could get start to have a uh delegation briefing with your state delegation they do start meeting in late January of next year and then of course the Congressional briefings uh during the NLC trip to Washington next slide please and let's talk about the US Congress first um when they come back this year after the election it's uh it'll be back in about 30 days from now they still have to enact federal budget they're going to have to take care of some Hurricane Relief hurricane Helen and then they have a defense policy Bill and farm bill reauthorization so they have they have they still have quite a bit on their agenda but then next year Shar sorry was stop it thank you Mark share screen okay okay now that we're sharing um sorry about that no worries okay great and uh when they convene on January 3rd next year po after the election uh they're going to have to deal with some pretty weighty issues not just a another federal budget at the end as usual but they're going to have to deal with an increase in the debt ceiling uh potential extension of the 2017 tax cuts and jobs Act and the surface Transportation Act reauthorization that's that's a bill that comes up every several years and that we're always weighing in on with our delegation uh and uh we go to the next slide please uh the first topic we have here is about surface Transportation reauthorization under Mobility um we have spent this year we are competing for many federal grants and ear marks uh out there uh in the transportation Arena uh we have had some uh we have had some success and we still have a lot of Grants outstanding right now where the federal government just has not made their final call yet in uh 2025 uh we'll continue competing for that funding but also 2025 is when the Congress will initiate reauthorization of that dig plan and believe it or not uh it is the the plan itself service Transportation Act was part of the bipartisan infrastructure law that only passed three years ago so it's coming it's only a 5year window so they need at least two years to deal with it uh in the Congress and so um it's coming it's coming around again next uh slide please Aviation uh we had great news in the last few weeks the Federal Aviation Administration awarded a $290 million letter of intent for the fourth parallel Runway at the airport and then there's uh some success they've had in terms of getting a competitive grant for uh ter uh for the boarding Bridges at the at some of the gates and then they also did receive formula funds of $43 million for airport infrastructure grants I believe that funding itself was being used for part of that fourth parallel Runway project and then in 25 uh they'll continue competing for the federal funding but we're going to have to go back and ask our delegation to get a specific appropriation for the first year of that funding for the fourth parallel Runway so there will be a legislative ask uh that you will need to make of the delegation in March while you're up in Washington next slide please talent in Workforce Development you may recall we had a position like that or we we have a position like this in 2024 it's still still in effect of course and uh We've we've have uh uh basically broaden it a little bit uh at a end uh this year year Well actually this year you have been let me talk about this year first before I get to next year sorry getting ahead of myself uh you have advocated for immigration policy changes and funding for digital inclusion and we are also competing for federal uh funding for digital inclusion uh and also corridors of opportunities projects uh they're also included with all the all the different grants that we talked about in a couple of the previous slides and in 2025 uh we can continue all of the above but the really the big change there for 25 that that uh you may you may have seen this elsewhere in the legislative agenda the immigration policy changes and the funding for digital inclusion there are strong connections to Workforce Development for both those areas so we thought that was a logical this is a logical place to house these and then but also we're also U going to uh recommend uh support the reauthorization of the workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act this is an act that comes up every several years and it directs funding to local areas for uh Workforce and uh for talented business needs and uh the big thing here is local control of the funding uh a large part of that funding goes to your Workforce Innovation your Workforce investment board and that's where it should stay uh uh it is it is better spend here because we know what the needs are uh your local business know what their needs are so together they can come up with some very good Solutions and also at the same time we're recommended adding in support for child care resources child care has been a has always been a struggle but it it certainly came to light during the pandemic just how much of a struggle it was it was even worse off so there are several ideas that are being floated uh with the federal government for supporting those needs next slide please Public Safety you did not have a public safety position in 24 but we thought this was a good year to add it for several reasons one is that uh your departments are uh competing for federal grants and also for a marks and um and then they would ALS they would continue competing for those next year but also at the same time working with the airport uh there are a couple of Public Safety needs they have at the airport one of those is the Transportation Security Administration you all have been in those lines before they can stretch pretty long and there is a need for more Staffing there and then also the Customs and Border Patrol um station at the airport they they run the international arrivals area and there have been some cases of some of their staff being uh being uh sent down to the southern border of the US with Mexico to help with surge and immigrants so there does need to be a uh additional resources there for uh for for the for these purposes next slide please the environment uh we have pretty much the same position uh proposed for 2025 uh we have been advocating for financial assistance for the mandated improvements related to posos and Lead service pipes and then also uh departments are competing for the uh federal grants uh that are out there uh just recently a u a community a charging and fueling infrastructure Grant was put in and that is still under consideration of course and next year that we will continue with all the above but also adding adding in their advocacy for legislation that protects local governments for Posas claims or forever chemical claims uh local governments were not the ones that invented forever chemicals we're we're the recipients of them and uh we just need to make sure that we have protection from any liability uring from that next slide please then the final uh legislative request under the federal side is housing uh you did have a position in there the current year uh you do need to continue working on reforms to the uh to the federal Housing Voucher programs and also we do need to be able to speak up on the cdbg the home investment Partnerships and programs like that but also there are some other other federal funds that we're trying to compete for this year year and next year of course um there would be there would be um a lot of competition especially for a quarter of opportunities project uh under the uh the choice neighborhoods um competitive grant that the housing department the corridors of opportunity and a few other departments are working on and then of course you've got the uh we always need to be able to say something about the low-income tax credit program at the at the federal level uh there is a need for more resources for that program and with that uh that completes the the Congressional side of things now we can transition into the general assembly and for the Mr Fon uh before you proceed with the State Legislative agenda I just want to check if there are any questions in the room or virtually on our federal legislative agenda yes ma'am there are okay so why don't we get that address thank you madam chair Dana quick question under the previous Slide the federal request so we have on here competing for earmark funding for the faith-based development initiative we actually have a million dollars that's earmarked so why do we have that is competing because we did we would be competing for other competitive grants in your competing for addition but not necessarily that same one okay so competing for cuz we want to make sure that the language we're using because what we have on here is competing for earmark funding I.E fake base whereas we actually have been awarded a earmark funding for fake specifically for Faith Bas not not yet not yet it it has to be approved as part of the federal budget that right but what the notification we got earlier this year after we submitted was that we have it earmarked so that once the budget it is a pooled but it is ear marked okay okay all right thank you m any other questions Mr Mitchell yeah thank you madam chair uh Dan and one um the first one holl and night uh I think they've done a great job for us I just want to ensure from a contract contractual obligation um I are we good at 2025 with them or do we have to renew yeah yeah we've already initiated the renewal of that and we've also initiated the renewal of our state contract lobbying firm as well for 25 okay perfect and Madam chair my last one a Dana on the environmental uh the federal request uh slide I think Slide Five you know this this oh I'm I'm sorry team I'm in slide 10 I'm sorry and Dan just to get your thoughts but on environmental uh Council map and I we uh we had a tough uh neighborhood issue as as relates to landfill and I know locally I have to think our planning department we kind of changed the category so Landfield can no longer be built but I think what what was very frustrating to us that we wasn't plan in environmental space and a lot of the issues that the residents had was more environmental the the water table things of that nature so I didn't know if this could be a conversation with us in the county to have a conversation about some type of environmental regulations we can put around uh the landfill Ju Ju Just a thought you know the county might come back and say you know we'll take care of everything but I it it it was frustrating to us the only thing we really could address address was the planning standpoint which the neighborhood appreciated but now a lot of the questions surrounding the environmental and I think as a count member who pride ourselves on taking care of our neighborhoods I think we should have kind of a dog in that fight as it relates to environmental so okay just a thought if you can just talk it over the county is that something we can lend our voices to to kind of strengthen some uh regulations around okay thank you madam chair thank you Mr Mitchel so Mr Fon if you could provide us an update on that um whether we need to add that to our legislative agenda or not uh I am so glad to see child care as part of our federal legislative agenda I mean Child Care is one of our most critical and underinvested piece of infrastructure in this country so and it has a direct impact on Workforce Development Economic Development so it's great to see that we are advocating for that because I forand uh see the impact um in terms of of the environment uh can you go back to the environment slide P ask I need to better understand the protection we are asking um so advocate for legislation to extend to local governments protection from the liability claims related to Forever chemicals but isn't that our responsibility thank you for the question um uh chairperson as miror the um what happens sometimes is that is that local governments and others who have had no role in producing these chemicals in the first place will be sued uh for various damages and there could be life property and other types of damage and so I mean I understand that we don't have we are not playing a role in producing but we are playing a role in treatment so that water is safe right um so I I need to better understand this uh what kind of liability claims uh we have seen what happened uh across the state when water has safety concerns so I just I I can't sign off on something where if you're asking for protection from liability claim if uh if our job is to provide safe water and if if if you're signing up that we are going to eliminate pasas um from our water because that's mandated by the federal government what would this do so I need to better understand its implications yeah I I would be glad to get more information from you about that but I can assure everybody right now that the water that is being sent to homes for consumption is safe it does meet the uh proposed limits that have been set by the federal government but I would be oh yes we did get a report on that that it is safe but I guess now there are additional requirements by the federal government in terms of the pasas so what does this legislation does um so I need to better understand that yeah I I would be glad to get more information for you about that Madam chair okay that's all I okay okay are we ready to move forward with the state legis lady mainga I think I see a thumbs up from Mr Mitchell so okay I will I will go ahead okay all right the general assembly for the rest of 24 probably the biggest issue they have before them is the hurricane Alan aftermath general assembly is getting together this week uh and they'll probably start to address uh some sort of uh a bill for the impacts in the hurricane probably have to deal with the uh impacts the local education and also to elections that may be coming up and uh then as I've seen in previous sessions they they are apt to come back in later parts of the year in November in December and maybe do some do some more of that work they have staff out in the western part of the state right now trying to uh assess the damage and see what needs to be done immediately uh and then heading into 20 5 uh they will be starting their regular session at the end of January January 29th and essentially if I have a list here some of the Statewide issues to be addressed they have their uh two-year budget uh to be done they have a two-year Transportation budget to be enacted and then a couple of other issues that you have seen in previous years they would probably be some more gaming legislation more medical cannabis legislation and then also more regulatory reform we see regulatory reform quite a bit in the development sphere and uh we're certainly very active in that area next slide uh Mobility uh the position here is the same as last year uh in 24 of course you did secure access to the o line here in mecklinburg county and seven of the eight localities the governing bodies have approved the resolutions and in 25 we would and also the remainder of this year we would continue working in with our stakeholders and legislators uh to advance the draft legislation to enactment and then continue also working on securing access to the remaining portion of the o line uh north of the meberg aale County Line next slide please under the aviation position uh it would be supportive of the North Carolina airport investment program that's a program that provides about 30 $3 million per year just to the Charlotte Douglas International Airport and they were just they just used the uh last couple years allocations for the phase two of uh the The Concourse expansion Concourse a expansion and uh the great thing about this program is that c Capital Improvements at Charlotte Douglas enable more flights to be flown to North Carolina cities that is the biggest sailing point that we have and then the next slide please uh Public Safety uh you all added in last year a position on public safety and there was a legislation passed addressing the backlog in the juvenile justice system and then of course in 23 24 U the police department has been implementing the civilian traffic investigators uh uh model and we don't have a specific legislative ask for this area uh committee but uh knowing how important Public Safety is to this area we thought was important to add it nonetheless there will be discussions on various topics during the year and it's a good idea for the city to be at the table for those discussions and then the final one is uh environment uh Charlotte water earlier this year initiated a regulatory process to increase it's the amount of money amount of do number of do number of gallons per day that they send to the Rocky River Basin the Rocky River Basin is the roughly the Eastern third of the county includes uh the towns of Davidson Cornelius Huntersville and Mill plus of course portions of the city of Charlotte and uh there's been a lot of growth in that part of the county and uh in order to get more water there we have to go through What's called the interbasin transfer process and it's a regulatory process um but you know uh Charlotte Waters started that this year there has been some um some some communities that have opposed uh our request and there could very well be legislation next year uh to as they say to reform the process uh at the same time uh we we understand there could be legislation to make it easier to do these interbasin transfers so um we have some uncertainty there uh as to what actually is going to happen but I will leave you with this uh in terms of uh the interbasin transfers being approved is that a growing locality Community like Charlotte in the rest of meinberg county has never been uh denied an increase in their permit to transfer water from one Basin to another because of growth the growth is coming as we know it's here more people moving here every day and with that that was the last position proposed and here is the calendar for the rest of the process uh we basically went over this before at the very beginning with that flowchart and um we'll be back next month on November 4th for asking the committee to approve uh proposed Federal and State Legislative agendas and uh and right now we would welcome your feedback and any questions you have and of course as I said before I know that the committee's going to come up with some ideas uh for other issues to be added into the agendas so he Madam chair uh uh Miss Mayfield raised her hand thank you Mr friend Miss Mayfield thank you madam chair so two questions for you Dana wanting to get a little more information regarding the Charlotte Waters what Comm Community conversations I know there was some in May but we're now in October going into November regarding the water basin and we have received emails where residents are concerned and impact especially now that we've seen the impact of Helen and we've seen an entire area over in Mountain Island that was destroyed thankfully vice president Harris was in town over the weekend and that neighborhood has been designated for FEMA relief but before we move forward with this one I would like for us to have another update a more recent update when we take into consideration what the impact of Helen was and the fact that we are no longer really looking at 100-year storms they are happening much more frequently even though a lot of that land is directly tied to Duke Energy still that what could the impact be if we were to release more water into the Kataba when we've had residents reach out to us so update on that will be helpful also for our for the state and Madam chair this is actually a question I really think for committing if we need to have a conversation regarding us looking at some language regarding the gaming that is being approved and location of the gaming because we see a lot more gaming businesses in certain areas of the city specifically in our corridors of opportunity where we already making a lot of investment to try to improve the area these are the areas where we're seeing a lot of the gaming and having the ability to have a limit I would say restriction can't say that well you can't say it cuz I said it in its own record but having a limit on the proximity and the number of Gaming facilities that are in a zip code versus a area that's something that I think as a committee we should have a real conversation about because I believe all of us received an email or I know I read an email this morning that came from a resident basically asking that question I think they had a chance to see the um agenda that we were going be talking about today but they asked how how is it that Gaming facilities are able to go in certain areas and it seems like there's an abundance of them in certain areas of the city where other areas do not have them so and Sean I'll ask you would that be something as a committee we need to identify as a legislative priority cuz we need to have that conversation I'm going to defer to Dana for an initial answer based on what you think would make sense in terms of something between now and next month's report yeah i' be glad to uh to answer that I I think um a couple options here available one is to um I could have a discussion with the chief of police about this I know there's there's crime issues with some of these locations um I think it would also be helpful the chair person Ash could bring this up tonight uh to the city council in terms of uh I know usually an issue like this may need to go to the U housing safety and Community Committee uh perhaps uh so there just a couple of options right there but I would be glad more than glad to speak with the chief about this and we'll see if there's any ideas that he has in terms of that and then also I think I think also this is a planning and zoning issue as well to say um so um I'll be glad to have those discussions with uh with also with the with the um director of planning as well Madam chair how do you feel about us being able because we're we're in the next committee at 4:00 yeah so thank you coun no I appreciate you bringing this up this you know I passed through multiple fish table shops on my way uh to the government center and on my way home back and you know every time I see those many of them are actually not even legally permit so I know there is a gray area and I've heard uh as Mr Fenton said there is this is also these are also Sports where crime is occurring so um certainly we need to address this uh I but it's going to take a collaborative approach we can certainly add it to our State Legislative agenda because uh currently these are not uh I was told a couple of years ago that there was a bill on this and it was not uh legally permitted I don't know where uh where that is uh so if we can get an update on that Mr Fenton and also what are the steps that we can take as as the BG committee to uh bring this issue to life because it is an issue uh as Miss mayfel said it's concentrated in certain parts of our City and I have seen high traffic high crime in those areas in in those specific locations and um and it it targets unfortunately certain population that is already historically marginalized and I think we have a responsibility to do something about it so I appreciate you bringing this up let's let's research this get an update and we can go from there uh do you have any recommendations uh Mr Mitchell yeah uh M chair I just want to lend the support to you and Council Mayfield um and Dana I think you brought up one Department we really need to engage that's planning uh Allison Craig because when I when I drive home there's one in District Two it used to be a Circle K service station and now it's converted to gaming and then when I get to District 4 kind of about 5 miles from my house it was a old Blockbuster and they have converted that into a a gaming so I I agree with councilman Mayfield if we can come up with some language uh where they could actually be located away from a church away from communities and and then Madam chair I do remember you got a very good memory because I remember there was conversation about the permitting process and I thought it was still kind of a open-ended question that uh if I can remember Madam chair I think they found a loophole cuz I think we were able to stop them on a permit side but there was a loophole cuz they were trying to bring grandfathered in so getting in that count oh speaking of which we just got our legal attorney to come in perfect timing so so I I I just want to live my support but I do think having planning and and getting out uh legue of representation to talk about game and is in a way uh we we can restrict the US it I think it'll be helpful for our neighborhoods and I like the fact and maybe one bit information would be the police report right off the vet in November how how many calls are made to the gameing establishment throughout the city thank you madam chair thank you madam thank you uh Mr Mitchell do you have anything on State Legislative agenda no ma'am okay so I I have one item for our State Legislative agenda in addition to what council member Mel brought up uh we also need to look at funding for our Judicial System every time we have a conversation with our chief he always brings up judicial system and revolving door soly the resource funding is an issue and I think we need to do our part to advocate for it so how do you all feel committee members about adding that to our legislative agenda um after we uh consult with our chief but I know he he brings it up each time each time a crime topic comes up uh yes for me I support that do you want that in the form of a motion Madam chair for it to be officially on the record yes ma'am so do you want to State it or and I do you want to State the motion so Mr Fon do you need a motion or is this something you can just bring it because you already know mous Madam chair this is this is really already in the uh statement uh where it says administered Justice fairly and quickly U yeah it says the the whole statement is support initiatives to reduce Community violence improve disaster preparedness and administer Justice fairly and quickly that last part I think addresses it and uh I I think we need to be more specific in terms of our ask just like how we have with other ask it's more specific that we do need additional funding uh and if you have a number that's great from the District Attorney's office or the judicial system uh that we do need this number of Staff uh to serve the county our size um so if we can just get more uh specific ask because I've seen when the ask is specific um it's we can we can we can actually track whether whether that request was successful or not fairly and quickly that's great how how do you define fairly and how do you define quickly within a month within two months I so I think just having more specificity would is something what I'm looking for Madam chair she's on mute why did she go you hit mute you're buffering we didn't get the last part after that oh I'm not on mute Madam chair can you all hear me now now now can you um you buffered a little bit so we wanted to make sure we heard everything you said yes so I was saying that I'm looking for more specificity then just fairly and quickly uh we need to find out from our DA's office and our judicial system as to what is the specific ask that they have and how can we collaborate with them because Public Safety is an issue that we all need to Champion together and Champion also the funding that come goes along with it and Madam chair that's what I was going to ask if our language should specifically state for us to advocate for additional funding specifically to help address the backlog because that not what we're saying agreed agreed so I think that's where Mr Fenton if you can have a conversation with our chief our um District Attorney's office as well as um our new chief of the court I I can't remember because I know that's that was a new appointment um it was Judge yeah I'll I'll be speaking with the chief of police about this yes okay okay that's great and uh we can add uh that item because I think that is very important um so that because Chief and cmpd and his staff I mean chief staff they're all because of the lack of funding what they are seeing is just revolving door they are arresting people not two not three I mean we have seen 10 plus times and we we got to request more funding so that helps cmpd with fighting crime being all right and that's all I have on our State Legislative agenda I do want to recognize uh acknowledge Mr Dres is here uh the transportation committee chair thank you for being here uh we do have the mobility ask on both of our legislative agenda uh do you want to say anything do you have any comments uh no I've looked at the agenda and I think we are advocating in support of things that are underway and uh so uh I I appreciate what's in there I think we're good great all right uh so next we have our mwsb goals and capital investment plan so I would like uh Mr Heath uh can you go ahead and introduce the staff I do I did hear Mr Cocker was in the room from the CBI and uh we'll we'll dive into this next topic I know this is something that Mr Mitchell and Miss mayfel are very passionate about so I do anticipate spending um good amount of time on this topic thank you council member azir this is Sean Heath had a little bit of a lineup change today because Phil rer is significantly under the weather so let's do introductions here and then I'll provide some very quick framing before we get into the me of the presentation thank you Sean for the record Steven Coker business inclusion officer for the office of Charlotte business inclusion good afternoon I'm Ashley price deputy director with the Department of General Services Sheila Anderson General Services procurement division manager thank you very much and we've also got other folks from these various departments represented in the room as well council member asir if I may just quickly from a framing perspective because the last time this topic was discussed in committee was before your summer recess so it's been a little bit of time if you recall the committee's work around this particular item with mwsb participation was initiated with the mayor's May 9th policy referral which posed the two following policy questions one how is the city ensuring procurement and capital project delivery methods are fully aligned with advancing the city's overall strategy from WSB participation and two what policy considerations may be feasible for incorporating within the city's procurement processes and methods to optimize participation by mwsb so we've had many conversations cross functional over the last couple months we've received some some great feedback from various committee members I think we're we're more grounded today and what the expectations are of the committee and there are a lot of moving parts here in this area unquestionably uh I won't claim to be an expert on any of it so it's always helpful for me to just distill it into kind of the simple View and what what I what I encourage everybody to listen for today is various strategies that all focus on one desired outcome and how do we increase the availability and utilization of nwsb and as a team we we've really been with some with some good feedback over the summer asking ourselves a few fundamental questions and these aren't the only questions that we're asking ourselves but just to give you a sense for the types of things that are on our mind one how can we build earlier involvement of the CBI team particularly for capital projects into our procurement and Contracting process U Stevens materials today have a heavy dosage of that topic because getting that right can have so many related benefits so you you'll hear a lot about that number two how can we be more proactive and targeted in our Outreach strategies to certify more mwsb in underrepresented sectors so not just increasing the number of certified mwsb for the sake of having a larger number but being as targeted as possible in underrepresented sectors number three can we unbundle more projects we appropriate to create mwsb opportunities number four what opportunities do we have to enhance our CBI program compliance monitoring and Reporting and just to pull the PB back on that a little bit subcon contractor goal achievement is certainly something that's been been on the radar the past few months I did have a chance to speak with our city auditor today because that topic came up last month when Tina Adams was here doing a report out on her plan and I I can share with you definitively that part of our fy2 plan will include a focus on subcontractor goal achievement and that'll really be a follow-up some from from a previous audit that was released within the last few months so that's an area where CBI has agre to some very intentional strategies in collaboration with departments and our internal AIC group will be doing some work around that area to affirm that we're hitting the mark so those are just some examples of of questions that we're grappling with we don't claim to have all the answers here today uh but directionally it's where we're headed and and today is an informational update so what will be most beneficial is to get a sense from committee are you comfortable with where we're headed and if not where do we need to reshape things so with that as the backdrop I'd like to hand it over to Mr Coker thank you Sean and uh good afternoon uh Madam chair committee members uh I'm going to move through this presentations and at any point in time feel free to uh ask questions of course uh my colleagues here from General Services uh will be uh you know presenting as well but beginning this uh presentation I want to talk about number one the great work that we've done or I I'll call it good work uh because there's so much more that we need to do to go from good to Great you know we will tout uh our growth relative to spend the last five years and right now we're knocking on the door of $200 million and of course we have more certified firms probably a thousand when I first came in almost 1700 at this point we've increased MBE spend and wbe spend but guess what there's so much more to do when you look at you know 1,700 firms you know there's probably under 35% who we actually utilize and we know we can do more you hear time and time again from those firms and I have to say that the the Partnerships that exist within this city is unlike any that I've been a part of but we know the questions that we get from you uh based on a uh a council policy you make this uh you know a Hallmark of the work that you do and we will match that effort some of the things that we've heard uh from you you know we've talked about you know the low mwsp participations particularly on the CIP projects uh and those are both vertical and horizontal there's uh contracts that have been presented uh without the mwsb goals and that's due to you know things such as Soul sourcing State contracts lack of certified firms we hear you uh that messaging is something that uh it's connecting to our activity and that's so important uh our strategy moving forward is to engage early uh I've heard from council member Mitchell particularly about that when he says you know CBI uh gets involved too late well you know there are tweaks that you can make to make your program stronger and that early engagement is so important when we first got this assignment uh there was a a infograph that we created and that infograph was basically before and after and and in that infograph and I I'll sum it up it's not going to be spelled out in this uh presentation but it it really was something that I like to call E PT early engagement early engagement of CBI P Pro proactivity we need to be proactive we can't wait uh for something to happen a question to come up and then react we want to get out in front of that so that's uh very important and I think uh the work we're doing will demonstrate that and of course the t is uh transparency you know so often these things happen even sometimes we don't know about and and so we need to get behind the curtain and see what's going on there but we need to be involved engaged in such a way that we can have a yield that results in maximum inclusion uh so that's very important again Sean talked about unbundling we've talked so much about that that's represented in our disparity study of recommendations that's represented in our uh procedure manual now we need to actually show up and where it works we want to make sure we get on top of it and and be able to unbundle some of those larger packages again uh exemptions and exploring subcontracting and otherwise exempt contracts that's going to be a uh a dual exercise more so than uh CIP and and we have something that we're working on uh relative to that uh as far as targeted Outreach marketing that's uh very important I have Julius Edwards and Artur Rosa working with me on an assignment to better understand the gaps there's so many areas that come up before you and you'll see no participation well we have to do a better job of taking on a role of Economic Development I mean that's what we are you know we're trying to grow this economy and so we have to find those firms and get them certified and get them competing and participating on our projects so the early engagement what does that mean that means again getting in front of the uh projects collaborating with our department uh in this case you'll see where we've done it uh very effectively over the last couple months with General Services uh as far as a uh process outline we're going to create that timeline of how all of this looks that's to be determined uh align early with the Departments to identify potential areas uh for opportunities for our certified firms and of course the maximum inclusion that's what we're shooting for we want to be able to again hit this south of the park in such a way that others are looking at Charlotte uh versus US looking at how they do it we can do it so how do you do it and and be efficient about it well you know there's a question about well are you staffed enough to be able to get in front of all this well we have ways we can do it through forms uh our ideal relative to a form is to have it completed early in the Inception phase of a threshold soon to be determined it'll ensure that CBI is well informed ahead of the game and we'll explore ways to automate this uh we have ideas but we have to work through how we'll actually uh create that uh efficiencies uh in the fields or the key uh components of this for these are the items that we need to know early on a project the scul of work uh the budget uh tentative timelines of the project uh we need to know about the potential mwsp participation areas uh unbundling opportunities alternative delivery methods uh as well as proposed uh strategies that we can get in front of and be highly effective uh and then there's the need again as I I talked about earlier for this targeted Outreach not just simply do Outreach for the sake of doing it doing it for a purpose and then of course uh being able to understand preliminarily early on what are the realities of a goal that we can set uh the benefits of all of this will be uh being us being proactive identifying the opportunities enhanced problem solving and inclusion greater time for targeted Outreach uh improve alignment between CBI and the uh departments to identify goals and objectives a reduce need for last minute waiver requests uh increased uh potential for innovative solutions nothing's new Under the Sun there's just a way for us to get in front of it and take what we already have and apply it to our projects and then we want to drive collaboration across departments we're starting with General services but we we believe we can do it with all our departments and do it effectively and again uh you know early engagement is going to be less disruptive uh to project timelines and costs so moving forward uh what are we going to work on or we going to continue to uh develop the mwsb master utilization plan we've been at a couple months we've made major progress you'll hear from uh General services on the great work that we're doing uh we also have as I talked about another team that's operating side by side the Strike Team you know there's other uh opportunities other than construction well we want to focus on them as well uh we want to collaborate with Bloomberg ey team we have our new director here shout out Lisha and of course uh Sarah Hazel from sustain ability that's a grant that we won uh and CBI is going to work with them uh working toward the intersection of sustainability in Black wealth creation and then of course we wanted to uh be extremely transparent in our reporting uh we have some uh talented staffs staff that can help us with uh you know some of the uh the different components that you'll be able to see uh live time and how we're progressing and that's uh a major component as far as dashboards but again uh we're looking forward to driving this in ways we've never done before and be highly responsive not only to your questions but be able to uh serve our constituent mwsb e so we're going to now transition to an update on the pilot program which we reference before they really just a few slides here but Ashley is going to breathe life into some things that we're doing now as it relates to procurement processes to push us in this direction thank you Sean good afternoon everybody I'm Ashley price deputy director of the Department of General services with me at the table today is our relatively new uh City procurement division manager she joined us um late 2023 and has been a great partner in helping further the efforts that we're going to talk about today um I also I believe this is probably the first opportunity we've had to introduce her to you in person and so uh she comes to us with more than 20 years of public and private sector procurement experience and we're really glad to have her thank you Sheila thank you um been quite busy since I've been here learning the city uh learning City procurement and uh potential enhancement opportunities so I'm just happy to be here to be introduced today so we're going to jump right into it what you see here on the screen represents what we consider the universe of CBI and procurement so these are all the different things that make up the work that we do to procure the things the city needs uh we're going to start with the first pillar here it is the governance framework that we are working within when we go out to get services or Goods or construction or Commodities the state law sets the foundation for our CBI and our procurement operations and it covers key areas including thresholds for our formal and informal bids approved construction methods bonding requirements contractor licensing and solicitation requirements we also of course have City of Charlotte specific policies procedures and documents those are intended to complement and build on those State statutes together those uh documents ensure that our procurement processes are robust transparent and aligned not just with legal requirements but also with organizational goals we um uh we procure things through a number of different methods and you'll see that in the middle pillar there RFQ uh if we're talking about the informal range that is going to stand for requests for quotes um ITB is invitation to bid that pops up into our formal range uh RFP is requests for proposals um RFQ in the formal range also uh would be requests for qualifications um we also use things including State contracts and cooperatives those are competitively bid by another government agency that then a second or separate uh government agency could leverage and of course Soul sources uh under pending all of this is the intent to maximize mwsp participation we do that by looking at and making sure that we're setting um great utilization goals evaluating our delivery methods helping graduate our subcontractors to Prime contractors when that is something that they strive to do or would like to achieve as well as working through our pilot program which I will update you on shortly to create a target market which is an invitation only Market um and you see here the breakout of contract values along the right the referral specifically for this committee are dealing not with the entire world or that entire universe but with the items that you see outlined here um and so we are focusing primarily and only on the processes associated with our Capital program which is construction and we use rfqs quotes and qualifications itbs and inations to bid and requests for proposals to do that okay so this is something that you all saw um back in June we described initially to you this framework as the road to growth and it really just attempts to meet our contractors where they are so if you're a small contractor just getting your feet under you we've got opportunities for you if you are an established contractor and you're looking to grow um potentially become a prime we've got opportunities for you if you're a mediumsized contractor and you're looking on to take on significantly more complicated work we have opportunities for you finally if you're a large contractor looking to lead those large projects we also have opportunities for you we really what we want to do more than anything is to leave you with the idea that we are intentionally making opportunities for the vendors that would like to do work with the city so moving from left to right you're going to have projects that are increasing in cost or an estimated cost and also in complexity and so that's enabling that just the right size approach contract for venders of all sizes and all capacities we have those that are in the if you take the left two boxes that under 500 range are those that are in the informal solicitation range that is where we have defined the target market that I mentioned on the previous slide uh the target market um is where we are By Invitation Only requesting our CBI certified vendors so that is our mwsb certified vendors through the city um the city Charlotte business inclusion office inviting them to bid on this work so we are able to do that just because in this informal range we have a significant significantly higher amount of ability to be nimble in the way that we're inviting folks to do that and so we have kept it on that left side also because we do not set utilization goals for that under 300,000 we do not have bonding requirements associated with contracts that are going to be under that 300,000 Mark we do however kick up into having fonding requirements when you get to the $300 to $500,000 range and there is some additional workload because while in the under 300,000 we would anticipate much of that work to be single Source in the 300 to 500 range we would expect some level of subcontracting to exist there so we know that there will be somewhat of an increased administrative burden associated with that when we're getting up into the 500 to 5 million we're having um open competition these are not invitation only because by State Statute we must post them because they are now in the formal range for solicitation so um we are then directed by State Statute in the way that we must solicit for those as well as for the over five million um the over five million are the ones where we are actively evaluating for alternative delivery um and these are the things that you would hear about so our large facility constructions like police and fire stations or um large roadway projects as well along the bottom you'll see the number the quantity of projects associated with each of those categories of solicitations as well as the total approximate value so this changes over time as projects are initiated and they of course change over time as projects are completed as well so those are not static numbers so we're going to delve into the pilot program specifically so our pilot program uh was introduced to you in this committee's June meeting we reported staff reported that we had 10 projects that we had identified at under $500,000 of anticipated value um that were ready to go this summer and would be great candidates to test the framework that we just talked about um you'll notice by looking at this chart that we have awarded seven of the 10 initial uh contracts for the projects we had initially identified um three are either pending a ward or still on the street and staff has identified continue to identify new projects to add to this list so we're not stopping at 10 we are going to continue to add to those um we have I think had a a wonderful partnership with CBI we would not have been able to do any of this work without their support and help ensuring that we had accurate vendor list based on individualized scope of work for each project um also CBI has been actively soliciting with Hub businesses that may have been eligible to be certified through our Charlotte business inclusion office but just had not yet uh certified and we've been working with our private partner Maryweather Williams who's been a great partner as well to all to all of us providing support to our Contracting Community um through the services that they actually provide on behalf of the city of Charlotte leveraging their resources to get the word out that the city is doing something different um and something more and we've also staff and Mary weather Williams have been engaged with multiple contractor associations we've held uh two separate contractor events as well including a webinar and they've been really well attended and we're excited about the kind of Engagement that we're seeing in the community um as we get this information out there so as we've gone through the process of testing these out as you can see the just the seven uh that have been awarded are represented here we've had some really important Lessons Learned so first is the impact of having the appropriate license to do the appropriate work Licensing in order to do work in the roadway is very specific and we've identified that there's an absolute wonderful opportunity for training not just for bid preparation but also in helping contractors understand how to become licensed at the level that would then coincide with the work they'd like to do um we also really appreciate so strongly how important communicating in ways that are meaningful to the contrac and Community is and how impactful it is when we meet them where they are and spend time engaging with them I'm going to pause here and open it up for questions and discussion I know um we've gone through all of the slides and you may have questions for any one of us thank you all so much for your time and your attention thank you so much committee members any questions oh yes uh a lot of them Mr Mitchell followed by m Mayfield okay and uh and councilman Mayfield I know has uh some so you smack me on the hand we overlap I feel like you're getting ready to hit all of mine so go ahead okay U so first of all St thank you I'm I'm going go to we could start at the very beginning if we uh staff if we could the CBI certified growth and um so the CBI spend $7 million I think the good thing we see the trend that it's increasing uh I guess two questions on this SL one is what was the total spend for 2023 for 2023 was was the 197 no no no the total overall I I want to see how CBI spin relates to the overall the discretionary amount that we worked against believe was 1.5 billion okay uh but but you use a key word Stephen you said discretionary so why are we separating that from all the construction opportunities why you say discretionary instead of the discretionary is not inclusive of you know salaries benefits everything else is that 1.5 billion that we work against a lot of that uh includes the actual construction which is uh as we know our largest spend area okay and does that 1.5 billion represent um cats Aviation Economic Development general service water department the entire or is that 1.5 billion just general Services no the entirety okay including including the airport yes okay any money related to City spend not inclusive of federal okay and um so on the 1700 certifi firms uh I see CBI and I know we changed our policy to include all 100 counties so if you break that down cuz I'm kind of going to council member Mayfield what we've been trying to do for a long period of time is do a kind of a local preference so to speak so you think of those 100 counties where does where is the breakdown Per County for our CBI firms do we have 97 for mecklinburg we have 21 from Gilford county we have 13 from cand County do we have the breakdown Per County of our certified firms uh yes I don't have that with me that would be wrapped up in our disparity study okay but I could get that number for you okay um so the good news is I I like the grow I think I I don't want to get away because um we believe that everything is local and so we would like to see the the a local minority uh small business really benefiting benefiting from the opportunity uh well let me go to slide two and uh the second bullet point on our under our strategy un bunding consideration to create opportunity for smaller firm explain to me the process how we will make sure that would be accomplished because I think some of my frustration over the years we have not been successful in unbundling Opportunities so as we move forward what does that process look like well we know that word is uh theory in in many instances but when you get down to the the Practical understanding it has to come with understanding the Scopes of work right and knowing what those scopes of work are I think I heard you most recently talk about flooring right so if we understand that there's a million dooll flooring package then we can Target that as a potential area where we can unbundle and we have firms who do that type of work so uh to to better uh assist them with being able to bid and participate uh we have to break it down in such a way but it starts with a better understanding uh what the work and scopes of work consist of and and that let me do a followup Stephen so that unbundling would take place in your department not in the other departments which I so let me be totally transparent I'm okay because to me the new infograph puts you at the top of the of the food chain and not in position four and five and so if I know of a project coming in for a police station I know the first group who going to touch that project is CBI and you going identify all the unbundling then you will send it to general service and say do you sign off on our participation uh go so I just want to make sure if it stays in your department I'm fine but I think you have to control the narrative at the very beginning so that's why I'm asking the question where would unbundling take place in your department or in the other departments I think it'll uh start with CBI making recommendations of course there's so many nuances uh relative engine Ing and understanding and those conversations happen at the early stages but coming out of those we're able to better assess if there is in fact opportunity to under bundle and be able to Target specific uh scopes of work if it makes sense okay so stay there for a minute so you have the database of all certified firms correct that's correct so to me and in my my narrow View you have the Bible so to speak right so I guess I'm a little worried if other other departments are saying the numbers should be different what database do they have that they're looking at that's not the Bible well they're looking at the same one that we're looking at so so everybody's on the same sheet of music most definitely okay um the the third bullet point review uh except uh exemptions and explore subcontrac and in other wise exempt uh that's a hard one for me so I guess explain to me who makes a decision on when we exemp or or give a waiver well it all depends you know we remember August 26 and the questions that came in my direction and they were About Soul Source uh they were about State contracts cooperatives of course ones that related to no availability uh no subcontracting opportunities so in saying all that it depends but when we look at sole source or uh State contracts those are uh Guided by State uh guidelines so we have to operate uh in accordance to the law but in getting out front early and I'll make this up let's say it's a state contract but uh and I think I might have said this to you once before let's say there could be a transportation component to it transporting from A to B not doing anything that makes that soulle Source uh any different than what it is but just adding an element of from the budget line that could be an example where we can get out in front again we're talking about CIP mostly here but that one be would be more of an issue that we're working on within the the Strike Team oh so I'm sorry so let me say this different state you get a project that comes to you the project is $4 million they ask of you for an exemption of 2 million who makes the call to grant that waiver it it occurs uh at the departmental level so depending on the dollar value it occurs at the departmental level or at the J services oh depending on the dollar value it depends at the it um stops with the departmental level or at the Jal Services procurement level and and I say from my standpoint I have a problem with that and that's where we are looking to engage CBI in the process so um again we talk again we talk about doing forecasting so there in the forecasting um uh looking at what might seem as a small process change uh by uh in the budget process annually procurement sends out a forecasting form to the Departments so we have work we're working with CBI to have a portion so once that form is completed for the Departments to incorporate um another portion of the form which sta talked to earlier about how they could possibly incorporate mwsb participation um so that is that is one of the things that we're looking at um also with the implementation of the workday system we're going to include CBI in the workflow flow for all exemptions so that would be S source that would be um your Cooperative purchasing that would be your state contracts and we're available they may be able to say at that point say Hey you know we have enough participation for from mwsb and of certified vendors that we feel that this should not be done through a cooperative and we could actually bid this project successfully so can can we create a new model that the new model would be that all waivers and exempt will come from CBI and then ask staff to sign off on would come from CBI be reviewed by C CBI and then have CBI make a recommendation to Grant a waiver or exemption then have staff cats Economic Development General services to say we are in agreement with CBI recommendation and and and so just to the viewers out there um you have you have Council very passionate about CBI and where it's going and I think I'mma speak for myself I I think I'm trying to make make sure the CBI is put in a better position at top of the food chain and so in order doing that we have to empower them more and allow them to count set more Direction but here here's what's not fair to CBI we sit down at city councilman on the Monday and we open our package and the participation go is 10% and we only get 3.7 we fir bullets at Steven Coker for not hitting the goal and stepen had no indication of setting that goal for that particular project so one it's not fair to his team who's working hard it's not fair for his policy makers because we thinking that CBI help set the goal in the very beginning and what we finding out through this process the other departments are setting the goals for those projects and sometimes CBI is not included so there's a big disconnect on what the policy makers are expecting to get feedback and what's actually occurring in the in the procurement process so I'm trying to say can we create a new model so the policy makers feel more comfortable that we got to help we got to hold one group responsible in our participation we point at CBI well I will say when I made those statements earlier I was referring to the exemptions um exemption categories CBI is in involved when we are going to competitively bid in setting in setting goals um but that is is a process that we could discuss in our work group okay uh I have six more Madam chair is that okay okay I try to be quick um the Earth so uh Slide the the project assessment form for early mwsb here's here's and so Stephen just explained typical one thing we go into an assessment form and it but is that form going to be electronically based so they can go on the CBI website and just fill it out and then complete it so when you say create we got two forms we introducing one is a project assessment form for early n wsbe and the one is the assessment form and I'm I'm just being sensitive to a lot of our small businesses one thing they don't have is a lot of staff and I don't want to indate inate them on a lot of additional paperwork and so it kind of explain to me these two additional forms and how we going to incorporate that and is that something that's on our website or is that something they got to inquire every time they choosing a project well this this for supports CBI okay uh allowing us to kind of like I said get behind the curtain to understand uh what's going on the inner workings of uh when it starts out it Inception and then the development if we're able to get these uh a better understanding of these components we can then make our recommendations uh out front uh in a way that's uh more favorable to our mwsb firms so this has nothing to do with them as through assessment so correct me if I'm wrong Mr Koker this is for the Departments when they're working a project not external faces okay so my my small business don't have to f this this is this is Administration from the back office CBI staff will put the project name and say oh Lana Maya has a company this estimated budget so you'll fill this on the back end okay the uh then slide number four um I'mma go back to this because this is a uh just go over one more it say key fields for project assessment um oh there you go I early unbundled analysis so stepen we sliding this over to your department who would be the person your staff responsible for doing the early Unbound analysis uh as we sit right now uro Roso okay he's our uh I I'll call him I'll give him a favorable title Guru and so he would be the one okay um take I think um explain oh here's the one cuz we didn't know about this the last slide collabor ation with Bloomberg one team oh that's Lanas let me stop no no no no do that one no I was hoping you hit that okay uh explain the collaboration with Bloomberg our team for Innovation solution to Black wealth creation first time ped that up first time I didn't know we had this collaboration so I'm a big Bloomberg fan yes he is but I I could could you explain that partnership well I will uh say it's led by Sarah Hazel and her team uh CBI lat on uh oh great so um it may have been six months ago when uh we probably slipped it in a in a slide with our annual uh strategic energy action plan report but we were named a Bloomberg sustainable City okay and so uh alongside 25 other cities um the focus of this effort is um working with Johns Hopkins University policy link um and Bloomberg philanthropies is really wanting cities who have a strong focus on addressing climate um and climate equity and also the intersection of building black wealth and so um we through the application process I had a great chance to work with Stephen um alongside other city departmental leaders to really put together an application that was the intersection of the work that city council has been incredibly focused on recently and so um we this is lisha's first day oh this our first day so welcome Lea yeah welcome thank you so so we're not going to ask any questions we give no free pay no questions so Lisha will be here uh with us it's a it's a three-year Grant she's running an innovation team so she will have a Civic designer working with her on her team as well as a third person um who we will identify sort of what the need is down the line but the real goal here is to use a human centered design process so focusing on on the people who are most impacted by these efforts and helping to support building um a stronger opportunity through the city to you know meet this um this big potentially generational infrastructure investment while while really focusing on building black wealth so that the MBE and the focus of CBI is so so very much aligned with that um but we're just getting started so uh um we're super excited to have Lisha here and um we're glad we could snag her into this meeting for today and so please hope you get a chance to talk with her and happy to um talk more about it anytime you'd like great thank you welcome to the city we giving you a free pass no questions today no questions so let me go to the pilot program and I promise Madam chair uh just give me two more minutes um so I think that overall uh let me go to say road to growth General CIP pilot framework what slide is that that there we go thank you and so let me just ask for a broad conversation we got our Target our mwsp why didn't we target our CBI firms well those are the CBI firms the nwsb so who we're targeting uh relative to uh I guess the first box and the second box those are the actual uh certified firms the mwsb that cited at the top but later on in one slide the project number six we awarded they were not a certified firm so we if we were using the CBI certified firms why did number six get awarded that project that's a great question I'm going to speak to that so um we have invited only those firms that are mwsb firms are certified firms um with our CBI so someone in B tog right um however we cannot refuse to accept a bid package from someone who submits a quote so while they are not certified we cannot reject them based on the fact that they are not certified and that and that canot is a state that is a state statute so it is not a city of Charlotte policy procedure document ordinance resolution that's something that we are bound to by State Statute I will note however U The non-certified Firm that was awarded is a vendor that has two compan sort of two arms of a company and they are a certified um mwsb they're an SB they're yeah they're certified SBE um in their other arm of it so they did receive the invitation as a result of being certified as a different part of that vendor uh the arm of the vendor that submitted the um actual quote was the one that is not certified I can I say this nice so from um a cred a credibility to people ensure that it's a fair process and they plan by the rules if we can't close that loophole I think then we need to be very intentional about who can bid on the projects right and so if I'm hearing you saying from a legal standpoint we cannot prevent a non CBI firm to be then I think we need to so let me see if I meeting you halfway that's why you use the lane Target an invitation only Invitation Only sheltered Market is another thing you might hear staff use to refer to this pilot program so you use the word Target I apolog I interpreted that that this was only for CBI firms but now I hear what you're saying from a legal standpoint um if Lana bids and James bid we not we're not certified you still have to accept our application that's right and we must award based on the lowest responsive quote and we cannot choose to do otherwise one thing I will add is when we do these invitation only target sheltered Market if you are a vendor and you go to bonfire you will not see those opportunities just posted so you cannot just you cannot see it you can only access it if you have the link if you um have then if you've received our invitation that's when you could access it okay so there is a little bit of a sort of a safeguard around the invitation specifically and it not being publicly available to anyone who searched bonfire so on this one a little hotb burn is the invitation sent out and the responses received when you look at all these that that has to be almost less than 10% response have we did any analysis why the responses are so low I mean 17 and only two bid 171 only three bid so have we looked at and did some analysis why why the responses are because I think everybody would like to do the work with City of Charlotte right we pay our bills uh we do extremely well uh knock on wood AAA rating so why the responses so yeah that's a great question well I would say that's another uh point where we need to do a better job in our Outreach efforts we need to uh let's say go to M mmca talk to them directly go to uh the Hispanic contractors talk to them directly let them know that okay this is in your email uh you've received some type of notice but you got to show up if you want uh you know to get opportunity with the CBI so I I would say uh it's got to be more of a uh a stronger connection with communicating these uh way we typically communicate might not necessarily work all the time and this may be an example of that and in fact one of the lessons learned that we've acted upon and have met with many of the trade organizations and I think we have one or two more scheduled actually is the importance of that communication and in ways that is Meaningful to those contractors and in a lot of the meetings with the contractor associations that um City staff has had what we've heard is yes we appreciate getting these Invitation Only emails and you coming here to tell us about it and what it means helps us know that it's something really special for us or could be potentially and another thing that we've also done is heard from them in those meetings the importance of the training and the partnership that we have with Maryweather Williams and so another lesson learned is really leaning on them to make sure that they are working in that contract community and getting the training out make you know training for uh bid preparation training is the other lesson learned we've got there and another thing we heard is the concept of after care almost so if we've got someone who bid uh maybe they were just a little bit off Maryweather Williams could sit down with that contractor and say hey it looks like this line item is a little high or this one could be a little low um and so that that is something that we think would be really helpful because if we've got someone who's interested who is bidding if we could help them be successful or marwe woms could give them tools to be successful in future bids then we think that that's going to be a great opportunity for the city I promise my last slide can can you go back so Mr Mitchell let me just do a time check here I know we're uh 2 minutes over our 3:30 uh are you all okay with staying till 3:45 to finish this conversation and we'll have to table the last topic to our next meeting are you both okay with that okay I'm good I'm here for 4 o' so as far as I'm concerned I'm good it's at 350 cuz I would like to get through I know that we they do need some time for set up so they have said 3:45 is the max that we can is that correct Mr Heath yes I think we should try and adhere to 345 okay okay so yeah let's in next 15 minutes if we can get all the questions addressed from Mr Mitchel and Miss Mayfield and I'll go last because a lot of my questions are being asked so go ahead Mr Mitchell and then we'll just um hand it over to Miss Mayfield thank you madam chair so uh the last slide is say the world of CBI and procurement uh there you go and so I just want to make sure we're on the same base we talking about solicitation types so RFQ we understand RFP we understand ITB invitation be only and so is that in my construction world that's that's sing that's hard bid or sing or single Prime what language do you all use that is the language request for qualifications and um invitation to bid and you are correct ITB is based on lowest responsible bid right um where request for qualifications is the best qualified and there is an evaluation process included we do have RFP circled there and that really should probably not be circled and and so here's my last Point construction I think it's been a it's been proven um several years when we have did a dispar study that our most successful Pathway to get participation is see them at risk and so if we would like to do this exercise again if we review review 2023 it would be interesting to see what of our numbers when we do ITB what is percentage numbers that we're getting because I would tell you in the industry it's hard for small businesses to be the lowest responsible bidder mm our Pathway to success is when to see him at risk and so Madam chair thank you for allowing me to talk way too long but I I I appreciate the latitude and that's my last question okay I'll try to keep mine short Madam chair council member mitro did address a lot of Vine I would like to just throw out there when we go back to slide 13 the road when we look at the pilot project updates actually slot 14 one of the other things I think Steve and I actually had a conversation about it and James you have been a really big supporter of kpn as well one of the so I'll be the bad guy that throw it in the space I'm a preface it with this amazing work thank you for hearing us and bringing back the information that we require requested we still have a disconnect in community regarding trusting our process and doing business with us so Mr CER and I had a conversation earlier because also the city isn't showing up and other spaces so there are a number of business opportunities business conferences business workshops business Gatherings where the city could be a sponsor having our local there makes a difference because we can't be the one that's always at the table saying you need to come work with us but then we're not showing up in support of what you have going on in the community now that's a budget conversation that as Council we're going to need to look into as far as how are we providing CBI with an appropriate marketing budget because that does make a difference because if these businesses are getting getting together and working together outside of us that's causing a challenge and we've had some opportunities where we've had some small businesses that did not receive contracts with the city looking at the Hard bid process but have gone on to other cities and been successful because those cities have actually invested and created more opportunities for those businesses to grow so this is a great start I will say it was shocking for me when I look at the number of invitations sent and responses received I think we have an opportunity to do more intentional digging in why didn't you respond because the Republic Le honest it's been more than five years that ago when we charged CBI to actually go out and build small businesses up and to identify y the gaps that we have and to create opportunities now I took a threeyear break we still having the same conversation so I'm a little concerned about that yet I do see the progress from where we are moving forward in certain areas but I want us to really consider being very intentional to identify why is this Gap at the level that it is when we look at invitations sent versus responses that are received and and where are we showing up and support cuz it also does not look good that our partner our sister the county is showing up in a number of these spaces and it will also probably be helpful to get a update and look at a comparison of where is the county in their minority business Outreach and opportunities versus the city because if they are hitting Much Higher Goals we do know that some of our neighboring cities around North Carolina have some different goal settings that they utilize but if we just look right here in this building we need to see if our numbers are comparable and also what is their chain of command because I really do believe that once we fully transition into CBI being the first point of contact that is going to help to address some of these other concerns because then you have first chance that identify the opportunities but also the expectation is to fill in the plugs to help grow the business that's not being grown so it's a couple of things in there some Madam chair again as committee and as a full counsel we're going to need to talk about regarding budget but there should be an expectation that CBI is showing up as much as we want businesses to come to CBI we got to have a presence when they're out in community at doing the work to figure out how to close this gap on when we send our imitations we should have so many responses that is difficult for us to choose versus having anywhere from 2 to eight responses we need to work on that thank you madam chair hey M Madam thank you so yes thank Mr Mitchell do you have additional comments of course he does don't kill me but it was two things I forgot uh and now I'm looking over my notes one was Sean you gave us that Tina is doing the audit and and I want to make sure if we can kind of narrow that Focus for her to me the audit should only be on those departments to have a lot of construction opportunities and to me this I call them the big five airport Economic Development cats General services and storm water right and so I I I I don't it would be it would be help we can concentrate on those five because we know they had a lot of construction opportunities and the last thing I thought we had a discussion about looking at the county model how the county on their side they have County Commission to serve on the interview panel when talking to um chairman Jorge dlac he said he actually selects which County Commissioners who serve on the interview panel so we like some feedback on the county model as they use elected official to be part of the interview team I promise Madam chair that's it for me all right well thank you all for your feedback and this is a very important topic I understand so there is a lot of passion around it so I appreciate all the feedback that you have received uh let me say this uh Steve St Mr Cocker you and your team I appreciate the work that you all have done I see a lot of progress here from where we were and I you know I every time I have been to minority women owned business event women owned business sponsored events you have been there I have invited you to number of events and I think you have been there so I just want to highlight the work that's being done but I also recognize the staff that you have um uh so from this discussion it may look look like that there are a lot of exceptions which are some some of it's just by state mandates uh but I appreciate the work that you all have done and and I think the report that you provided last year um where it showed increased participation by minority women owned businesses we have seen our um our contract City contracts have the participation has increased tremendously so I appreciate the progress that's being done uh certainly there is more work to do as you heard from Councilman Mitchell and councilwoman Mayfield uh but I'm sure we will do this work uh towards developing a more recommended plan at our future meeting so with that uh any comments question concerns from Mr Heath Mr CER nothing for me council member asira nothing here all right so um I know Miss Jameson was in the room uh I apologize this okay so we only have two minutes left and I know that's not enough and I I want to be fair to give you enough time to provide a recap of the work your committee has done uh and I apologize this Grand longer than we had anticipated but uh Mr Heath what I would like to do at the next committee meeting is to have the report from Miss Jameson as one of our first topics so if they can have um if we can let uh Tanya present first and then we'll dive into other topics including the CBI understood thank you m Madam chair I have to go on a Rec and apologize to Tanya for for taking so much time I apologize please forgive me I'm here Florida you right now all right I'll let you go for mine with the next one all right I guess that's all I have uh thank you all and I see you all later second oh [Music] yes for e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e thank you for joining us everyone for our housing safety and Community Council committee meeting we're going to be getting some very good information from the fire department today it is 4:00 I believe our chair is on her way down I am Lana Mayfield Vice chair for the committee we're going to go around the table and quickly around the room good afternoon Renee Johnson District 4 Committee Member Sean Heath City manager's office Reginal Johnson fire chief Gil wicom housing and Neighborhood Services Harold Thompson housing and neighbor Services Janine Simmons housing and Neighborhood Services Rebecca hner housing and Neighborhood Services hello oan Hunter United Way Kevin John Wood Charlotte far AJ Calhoun leading on opportunity Daniel Fraser office of Workforce Development Monica Holmes Deputy planning director Kevin Miller charif Fire Department fire m fit Dr char fire department Pete scar Charlotte fire department and I believe Temple arar Committee Member thank you council member mayor we are going to jump right in because as I mentioned we have some really good information for today so we are going to start with our fire chief chief Johnson thank you Vice chair uh good afternoon everyone Reginal Johnson fire chief of the Charlotte Fire Department uh today we're going to do a review of the after action report from 7741 Liberty row also known as sou excuse me the Five Alarm South Park fire next slide please although that was a significant incident here in Charlotte one that was probably the largest fire in recent history if not all the history of the Charlotte Fire Department we are not alone there are a number of construction fires that have gone on for decades and I have three examples up here Raleigh Fairfax County Virginia and Las Vegas in recent uh within the past year or so next slide please this is a picture of what 7741 Liberty row would have looked like uh upon completion um this is the type of construction that's going on all over the city so it's important that we have this conversation and I'll point out that 355 ft long just to put that into perspective is as long as a football field including both end zones so just think about how large this structure is and there are many other like it in the city next slide please so let's talk a little bit about the fire this was a seven story building first two floors being uh concrete and the top five floors being wood framed uh this wood frame uh had no fire suppression systems which means it had no sprinkler system no working standpipe no fire department connections that were working there was an open Elevator Shaft from the first floor all the way to the top floor no drywall uh in this facility and what we call that and I'll talk about it later on as well is a vertical lumber yard uh we did have winds on that day of 13 to 14 mph which obviously affect wind conditions when trying to fight that fire next slide please our response we had our first unit respond after the 911 call within 5 minutes which is under our six minute goal uh so we did meet our goal there we had over 90 units and over 200 plus firefighters that responded to the scene it took us uh almost 6 hours to get a control time on this fire we were able to rescue 15 people uh 15 construction workers I I should say uh and we had no significant injuries to Firefighters that day although we we did put ourselves In Harm's Way and we'll talk a little bit more about that as well we did have uh support from cmpd they provided traffic support as well as uh crowd control and Charlotte water helped us out by boosting water pressure sorry okay M I can wait for you mhm next slide continue all right just to give you all a little bit of a timeline here so the first 911 call we received uh was 9:02 a.m. that morning which was 7 minutes after the discovery of the fire and that will play a huge role I think into um how fast this fire was able to spread before we were able to do anything about it uh ladder 16 got on the scene like I said within the 5minute time frame upgraded to structure fire and there were plenty of calls for rescue which we did do uh or at least attempt we did excuse me we did rescue 15 folks and we knew that we had two trapped workers U there was some confusion early on on their location but we did uh make attempts to rescue them uh the third alarm uh uh was called and latter one had a Mayday situation A Mayday occurs when a firefighter is lost or trapped uh in a fire they end up calling that because they were making attempts to rescue Mr Holmes and Mr Cheryl next slide please once we have a Mayday an extra alarm is called that was why the fourth alarm was called we were latter one was able to self evacuate on their own even though we sent units to go and help them uh we did put water on the crane um and keep the crane from collapsing if the crane had collapsed similar to what happened in Raleigh in 2017 you would have had significantly more property damage but you very well could have had more loss of life including First Responders so I Tipp my hat to ladder too even though uh we end up losing that unit uh spraying water on that crane to keep it cool and keep it from collapsing was the right move at that point in time A Fifth Alarm was declared uh just for additional staff uh and the rescue 10 was able to go up and um save the crane operator which by the way he is a hero uh for just staying and trying to use his platform to get people from the construction site to the ground uh and thank God he was he was okay next slide please so let's talk a little bit about the after action and elements of that the after action um which we do after actions after every significant incident that we run but this one was a little different obious obviously being a five alarm fire and so we broke this down into four chapters the first chapter is done by strategic and tactical operations uh the second one was the MayDay like I mentioned uh earlier whenever we have something that significant we want to learn from that uh experience and so that's the second chapter third chapter is going to be your uh fire investigation from the task force and the final chapter is a fire Communications response report that was completed by siza which is a federal agency cyber security and infrastructure uh security um agency and in there they have emergency communications Division and they're the ones that come in listen to all the radio traffic figure out what's going on at alarm and they provided uh the fourth chapter on that next one all right so some of the key challenges that we faced uh as I mentioned before 7 minute delay when calling 911 uh and just by standard we typically use a fire will double in size every 90 seconds so if you take that 7 minute delay in a 5 minute response time you can see how the fire could quickly be out of control before we were able to to get there uh we talked about the vertical lumber yard the fire did start in a trailer which was used to be spr uh used to spray insulation phone and again it was parked about 20 feet 25 ft away from that open um Elevator Shaft and so now you have runaway fire that has access to every floor of that building without any dry wall there's nothing to slow that down plus you had winds um ultimately three construction uh contractors were cited by the North Carolina Department of Labor um because of their lack of safety initiatives in that case uh we talked a little bit about the confusion of the trapped workers and so I'll try to explain that a little bit so when we got on the scene the first thing that the captain did was start to make sure that the workers were accounted for with the superintendent they said they had two people missing on the fourth floor ladder 16 made an initial entry into the fourth floor where they were basically run out of there by the changing fire and rapidly changing fire conditions but realized that they were on the sixth floor not the fourth floor so I think in the construction terms when they said fourth floor they meant the fourth wood floor not the first two floors and so there's some two were concrete yes and so they just a different way of counting the floors however we did have ladder one make it to the sixth floor and made every attempt that they could to get to the to the Lost fire uh the Lost construction workers we did have uh five other buildings that were damaged either due to Flying Embers heat uh we had a number of cars that were destroyed in the parking deck next to it and we actually end up having a a separate working fire like a couple blocks away from there meaning the the Embers were were going so far that actually set another building on fire so when we say we had five alarms here we actually had another alarm not too far away from there so really six alarms worth of companies were working in the South Park area as a result of this fire next slide please so the conclusions the fire load was unbelievable we talked about that and I think once you look into the report you'll see that uh Chief Wilson who did the first chapter in there said that we would need over 14,000 gallons per minute of water just to put out one floor of that wood Flo of that wood frame and we had five floors of that and so uh that was we were already uh delayed or I should say strained in water uh even with that as well as the apparatus uh I can't say enough about the The Bravery and the courageous efforts that our men and women did that day to try to get to the two construction workers um when we use the term risk a lot to save a lot and so we have men and women that are risk their lives to go s go save a stranger that's in danger and they did that and um I'm very proud of the work that they did although we weren't able to save them it wasn't as a lack of effort I can assure you that um we do have a need for increased safety when it comes to construction and we'll talk a little bit about that as far as some of the things that that we've been able to do uh there next slide please some of the lessons learned that we had uh from this fire is that the fire spread faster than our incident command system could keep up uh that's definitely identified uh in the report uh radio and personal accountability reporting is uh the discipline there was also noted in there we did not have radio discipline which means means too many people were talking on the radio and not enough people were listening to the radio and so those are those are two things that were identified uh control of additional resources was another um Everybody in the Charlotte fire department wants to come and help and so when you see something this significant you want to come and help uh and sometimes that's good and I'll talk about our second shift of alarm showed up uh early and started to assist in not only the fire but also making sure that we're able to cover the rest of the city and then you have too many and it becomes unmanageable and then you start having uh people making decisions outside of the chain of command and things of that nature and so that was identified there uh water supply and master streams was another one that we've uh started to address through our training but these are Lessons Learned here next slide please so just some of the key recommendations there is a list um you'll have a summary that by the fact that latter one and and their Captain did exactly what they were trained to do and they were able to self-rescue even being in in a position that they were in with the fire impinging on them and being low on air uh they did a good job there uh developed some mutual Aid s so's uh and software to track the mutual Aid companies as well as a Citywide coverage which was identified in the fourth chapter as being something that we need to to make sure they were able to do there uh and last but not least you all's favorite discussion would be the JCC which is a combined joint Communication Center with cmpd fire and medic uh although we do know that that has Financial restraints on a building location Etc there are some things that we can do uh to meet that need without necessarily being in the same building uh which is being in a consolidated CAD system and we are currently looking at that now next slide please all right so although we still have a number of recommendations we still need to get to I can't go without highlighting some of the things that we've already done uh we worked with NFPA um to as well as members from the general assembly and NFPA is the National Fire Protection Association have to watch using acronyms but uh NFPA and general assembly to make some changes to our building code uh effective in January across the state uh superintendents at the construction sites will have to have an NFPA 241 certification and that is a fire protection program manager position uh which is there to make sure that during construction there are certain safety things that that go on right and so you would uh you would expect um a difference in the way people handle such incidents going forward because of that certification shortly after the South Park fire we had discussion with some peers in Boston they had a similar fire and then they converted to this in their building code and they've seen a reduction in construction uh issues and so that was that's huge there and I have to tip our hat to the NFPA as well as the Fire Marshall and their group for kind of pushing that forward some of the other changes we added uh thanks to manager Jones and strategy and budget and you all signing off on we added 12 inspectors to uh fire prevention that allows us actually to make a new construction team that does nothing but focus on new construction to make sure that they're meeting the safety requirements which would include making sure you have working stand pipes when you're supposed to uh sprinklers Etc uh during that time period uh incident command training we've sent a number of folks to the national uh fire training academy just last week week we actually had them come down and do some training for us and so we've already started to do some additional training we've done water supply training we've done Mayday training with alarm which was one of the things that was suggested uh the big ask up here is the is the field technician program we were able to do a pilot program um I think January to April of this year uh and we got rave reviews from the Battalion Chiefs and the captains that this is something that we definitely need um it will be an ask for us um this fiscal year coming just going ahead and putting that out there but the reality is let's be proactive instead of reactive right we had some very close calls on this particular fire where we could have lost up to four or five firefighters trying to make an attempt there as I said the fire outpaced the incident command system but let's not be a Baltimore and I don't want to call them out but they had five line of duty deaths before they decided to make this happen five in like 18 months and so there's a number of other cities that do this it makes perfectly good sense it's well received in our department and that's one thing that we will definitely be pushing for uh in the coming fiscal years to do that next please and so I want to assure you all that although we haven't been able to accomplish all the recommendations as of today that our goal is is to meet and Implement each one of those recommendations and so we are always about continuous Improvement and I'll be glad to come back to you all in 6 months and 12 months and give you a status update if that's what you so desire I'd love to be able to do that for you all um but I I put this additional information on here so that you know and everyone else gets a chance to to understand that Charlotte fire department is a ISO class one rated that is the highest rating that you can have in there uh it it lowers your insurance cost just because we have ISO class one for businesses and residents we're also five time accredited through the center of Public Safety excellence and to have both of those puts us at the top 1% of every Fire Department in this country and so that's nothing to sneeze at very proud of the men and women here and the work that they do every day and and putting their lives on the line when it time when it's time to do so and with that Madam Vice chair I'll turn it over to questions Chief thank you and for all of our representatives from fire that are here and to all of those that may be tuning in thank you for all of the work that you have done and that you continue to do to protect our city I believe council member Johnson has some questions thank you madam chair um and thank you to the firefighters for for the the hard work during this fire and just every day so thank you my condolences to the family of Mr Cheryl and Mr Holmes I just have a couple of questions in the report and correct me if I'm wrong previously was there information that there was an inspection 7 days prior to the fire so I have the fire marshall here and he can go into uh more depth if I need him to but that was a a false report that we had been there to do that inspection that that is not accurate uh we were not called to come there and do uh an inspection and the reality is we were never notified that vertical construction had even started in that building fire didn't even know they had started building so what are we doing differently to to prevent that in the future so the Fire Marshall worked with meinberg County and right now the fire is now being engaged in Pre permitting conversations and meetings where we weren't before and so now we're able to sit down on these Mega projects and these multi multif family dwellings and get ahead of the time and say hey this is what you need to do to meet fires requirement whether it's hydrants systems those type of things get discussed early now versus them having a a requirement to contact us so is that where those 12 inspectors and the field technician p pilot program is that where those will come in so the 12 inspectors uh is where that comes in the field tech is really for operations but the 12 inspectors uh do meet that need now like I said they created a construction team that does nothing but focus on new construction and making sure that they're they're following the requirements okay and when will this report be presented to the uh to the Chiefs or to the staff and to the employees so we Representatives we have just emailed that to the entire department I believe uh Mr Snider is going to make sure that you all get uh your copy um so that should be hopefully in your email um soon if not there already okay and if there's questions from the um employe employee Representatives then you guys will sit down and meet with them absolutely okay yes all right thank you that's all thank you all for the work that you do thank you thank you coun questions uh thank you again Chief thank you and to our team out there thank you for the recommendations you and I had a chance to have a conversation I was wondering on a legislative end if we needed to try to move forward with trying to get some state legislation to add to budget and governance to help give the support needed regarding construction the type of construction it was also just for transparency's sake there's also a conversation regarding how we identify the Bad actors a business person can change the company name at any time but you're not changing your name so if there is a incident being able to file the necessary reports that would then follow that individual chief I didn't say that clearly I think you could say that in a much clearer way what we talked about was that you can file a complaint at the licensing board at the state and so that now that that complaint can be investigated and that complaint follows that person and that's kind of what we talked about there uh we also talked about permitting here in the county uh and the city and unfortunately we can't stop people from applying for permits if they meet all the requirements um but anything dealing with U City contracts that go through procurement you can definitely U have some discussion with procurement about the statement of work and and the requirements um for those uh contractors that we work with which really goes on now uh to a degree that we make sure that we're not Contracting folks that have uh uh previous lawsuits and things of that nature or tremendous safety violations thank you Chief um Council M Johnson I see I'm Sorry Miss ashme I just want to follow up so well yeah I would imagine that bad actors would have OSHA violations right so are we checking OSHA violations and lawsuits when during the permitting process I don't believe that that's part of the yeah I don't believe that that's part of the permitting process um I did ask the question and we're not able to legally stop people from applying for permits if they meet all the requirements but during the proc yeah procurement process the ocean violation well the so for for clarification and chief keep me honest on this one that permanent process is through the county not through us okay two the North Carolina General Assembly hasn't necessarily given us the authority to say no yet by having this ability and really putting energy around filing a licensing complaint then that will go with that individual contractor and that could help us have a lot more Authority but the most important part is the fact that now fire is going to be at the front end of the conversation with the county with permitting so that we don't have another opportunity where this development going vertical happens and no one on fire is even aware of it thank you thanks council member as mayor thank you Madame Vice chair a couple of questions uh first Chief let me thank you for your leadership and to all firefighters we appreciate your bravery and courage uh you talked about a new construction team uh did we have that in the past so I believe how had worked in uh Fire Marshal can correct me if if I'm wrong is we had inspectors that were responsible for certain areas of the city and so they did inspections on current current buildings that require inspections and then new construction and so they were doing a little bit of both now we with the 12 folks uh we have a construction team that does nothing but focus on construction and so I I I believe they have that right correct yes so so was was the construction team eliminated um I I know we had a construction team prior to 2018 was that something eliminating I don't believe we had a construction team like we're talking about here uh that was eliminated ma'am I think uh what we had was uh inspectors were doing two jobs at once I guess because it was in their area and now we're able to focus with uh some of these new inspectors uh on construction a little bit more than we were able to before got okay um so this is more comprehensive model to ensure the safety during the construction process that's correct yes to make sure that they're meeting the uh fire requirements as as dictated very good well I uh I had another question on the report that councilwoman Johnson addressed earlier so thank you for that councilwoman Johnson um I had heard some concerns around getting water in the fire um after the first fire truck had arrived do you know how long did that take to get water after the first fire truck had arrived and I don't think we had uh I had not heard that there was a delay in that I know that I have Chief scares here and he can correct me uh when we say we had problems getting water to the fire I know that we had one engine that had we were told by construction that the standpipe was working in operation so typically we stretch our hoses off that stand pipe in these type of situations and we did that however the stand pipe was not working so we did not get water to the fire and that may be what you're referencing but as far as having uh hydrants and Waters to our our ladder companies Etc uh we did not delay much into that in that action con um were there any engines and letters that were writing without a captain in command uh I would have to go back and look at the Staffing on that day we typically allow up to uh eight units where we'll have firefighter 2os ride up uh in the captain's uh seat if due to vacation and things of that nature but I don't know I'd have to go back and check the Staffing for that day okay um first let me just say I appreciate the work that was done by uh all the firefighters this is the questions that I have were sent to me uh by certain folks that were concerned about the Staffing and not having enough uh resources um on shift so I just wanted to make sure if those are if those concerns can be addressed in in the future but that doesn't discount the work and The Bravery that firefighters have shown uh to get this fire under control so uh council member azme I can assure you that our goal and we do this every day is to make sure that we're fully staffed uh we can have some additional conversations about firefighters riding up into Captain's positions I'd be glad to have that conversation in the future but there was no uh units that were short staff that day okay that's good to hear well thank you chief for your leadership and that's all I have Madam Vice chair um thank you council member ashme Chief unless you have anything else to add on this we're going to release you all so you don't have to stay with us for the whole time and jump right into the next but again thank you and please share that I'm going to say on behalf of myself and my Council colleagues that we are still in prayer not only for our residents who families are facing the loss of their loved ones but for all of our firefighters in reality the trauma that was faced to go into a f alarm and not have everything that should have been in place we do appreciate that uh our men and women uh do a great job every day not only here in the city but even outside of the city right so I'd ask for you all to pray for our First Responders as we continue to send teams West uh to provide assistance out there um for all the First Responders that are that are providing assistance from all over this country thank you Chief as we transition this one we're going to step into our changing opportunity update we have a number of resources leading with our from our city manager's office Mr Sean Heath we have Danielle Frasier Rebecca Hefner Monica Holmes Aon Gillespie and we have guests today because we are going to get our update on leading on opportunity and I promise promise Miss Jameson you have the time to share with us what we need to learn and I am turning this over to Mr sha he all right as everybody's getting assembled what we're going to do is we're going to have Tanya and AJ from leading on opportunity provide some perspective on the recent chedy refresh and then we've got leaders from cross functional departments that are going to give you a sense for various ways that we're already leaning into these types of opportunities so with that chair if you're okay we'll turn it over to Tanya I was telling I was telling Monica y'all roll deeper than the uh fire department with staff you got like cmpd you're not playing well thank you all for this opportunity to present to this committee uh as you all know just from uh me personally and with leading on opportunity this housing and safety is near and dear to my heart and the cheddy report and the recommendations in the report re really align with the uh work that this committee has been doing and um future work in the way that we're moving as a city I was listening to the uh jobs and economic development uh committee meeting earlier today and uh Ed was asking council member Driggs was asking you know was it J he was really excited about the cheddar report he was like was it jobs is it government is it private is it corporate and so we're here to answer some of those questions and again dispel this notion that any one of those things are what led to the Improvement that we see today so with that I'm going to turn turn it over to my colleague AJ koun to kick us off and then I'll wrap us up in the policy Social Capital Area and we'll go from there yeah thanks so much Tanya and thanks for having us to share today if we go on to the next slide I'll give you a sense of kind of what our plan for the next few moments is you have a speak oh sorry I'll scoot it over yeah my name is AJ calhon so over the course of the next few moments what we'll do is we'll walk through a handful of things related to this new uh research by Dr chedy uh we'll talk a bit about the headlines that you may have seen in the news or if not uh I'll recap them here uh we'll dive a little bit into the data that's driving some of those headlines talk about how our community Stacks up against other places around the nation and then I'll begin and Tanya will pick up what are some of the things that are behind this like she said it's no one thing but there are a handful of uh pieces in this research that I think will be particularly interesting to this committee's work uh and then Tanya will share about what those drivers mean for program and policy work so if we go to the next slide uh you'll see some of these headlines and I think it's helpful to start with the title of this new paper uh a lot of folks talk about this around town as the cheddy study uh but the title of the paper that was released this year is changing opportunities how changes in children's social environments have increased class gaps and reduced racial gaps in economic Mobility I think the whole title is helpful because it grounds Us in some of the key findings of this report some of the uh pieces that ched's team has been lifting out as key headlines are that growing up in a thriving Community dramatically improves children's outcomes and that that primarily happens through social interactions we'll talk a bit about that here shortly uh that new data show that Community level changes have reduced black and white gaps in terms of income uh and that's what's improving economic mobility and this is Amplified by uh changing parental employment rates and finally the piece that I think maybe has been most resonant with folks here is what's up on the slide which is that intergenerational Mobility has improved substantially in Charlotte due to improved outcomes for low-income black residents uh in particular as well as stable outcomes for low-income white residents and I think it's important to say that while these are what the data are saying that we're we've moved from 50th overall to 38th overall and that we're now ranked third in terms of progress uh that the findings of this paper of course are not true for absolutely every person in our community and so while we'll talk about the trends in the aggregate uh I'm I am confident that there are residents in Charlotte that are not experiencing the progress that this uh paper speaks to uh before we dive into the data I want to lift up what some of the new aspects of this data are so uh you may have heard of the chedy study from 2014 that uh was called the land of opportunity study and it used data from uh the census as well as tax records to focus on children born around the Year 1980 follow them for about 30 years to see uh by the time they were 30 if they were born to low-income parents how did they fare in adulthood this new study in 2024 uses an additional decade of census and tax data and it links those data with data from Facebook as well to understand how friendships play into economic mobility and it's able to look uh a little bit further back to 1978 all the way through 1992 so uh while you may hear us talking about data from 1992 think about these are children born in 1992 who are uh by 2019 age 27 so we're looking at over the course of a life uh if we go on to the next slide what we can see is Charlotte's growth rate by comparison to changes in upward Mobility across the country you'll see that on this chart we're one of the few communities Across the Nation that has made progress uh such significant progress on economic Mobility over the course of the past few years in fact if you look at how household income is changing uh for children born to the bottom 20th percentile of families in Charlotte uh the national rate has fallen by about 4 4.2% so the fact that we're seeing about a 5% Improvement in Charlotte is uh not only above the national average but it is actually almost the inverse of the national average one of the main things driving uh this Improvement is that for people who were born in 1992 who grew up in low-income households in meberg County uh they went on to earn about $1,200 more than they did in the last study uh which may seem like a small amount but actually is significant when we look nationally if we go on to the next slide we can see what this looks like uh particularly for individuals uh of different racial groups and so what we'll see here is that uh for white individuals we have seen almost no progress at all which in fact is relatively rare um across the country in most parts of the country this is moving uh in the opposite direction um I think it's important to say when we're looking at these data uh a handful of things one that uh these are not correlated to one another so for instance the fact that in many communities around the country incomes are falling for low-income white individuals uh is not a zero sum game with the incomes of other groups so uh these are things that generally when the communities that saw the most progress for uh for instance Black and Hispanic populations saw the least change uh for white folks which which I think signals to us that improving uh the livelihoods of all residents is good for everyone um amen what we'll see here on this chart is that uh the incomes for black individuals in Charlotte who were born to low-income families improved by about 27% um that translates to about $3,200 um of increased income if we look in 2023 uh for Hispanic individuals in Charlotte um it's an increase of about $1,000 um so the black white income gap shrank by about a quarter and the gap for uh White and Hispanic just to give two examples shrank by about half um if we go on to the the next slide we'll look at some of the key reasons why this is happening um ched's paper is almost 150 pages of very very dense academic uh research but a couple key pieces really rise to the top when we look at what he is speaking about and what we're seeing locally uh three drivers of improvement are public private Partnerships uh an expanding economy uh and nonprofit navigation so when we talk about public private Partnerships I think it's important to remember the time frame that we're talking about children born in the 9s comparing them to children born in the 70s and watching them grow up across 30 years and so some of the public private Partnerships that we've been thinking of when we think of what may have contributed to this were things like the United agenda for children or the workforce in transition plan things from the early 2000s that were happening at critical moments in the lives of children in our community um that were born in the early 90s when we think about the expanding economy think about the economic growth um both in terms of uh new businesses and growth of the businesses that are here um and we talk about nonprofit navigation um we'll get into this more in just a moment but this is really about uh providing Social Capital to folks who uh may not have access to some of the resources that are available uh whether through public programs or through uh nonprofit organizations um on the next slide one of the key findings perhaps the most important finding of ched's research is that parental employment rates uh where those were highest are places where economic Mobility increased the most and I think it is common to think that if employment rates are high that that means that uh a individual child's parents being employed is the Difference Maker but actually after the research that ched's team did they found that it's not about having your own parent employed necessarily it's about what's happening in your entire community and I think this is really important as we think about economic Mobility at a community level that it is not about um maybe blaming individual families for not achieving something or for uh maybe not being in the workforce but about creating the conditions where jobs are accessible for instance to All Families across our community uh one of the reasons why this may be happening is that higher parental employment rates could be leading to more resources in schools or local programs uh or it could be leading to uh more Social Capital style interactions like access to job referrals or mentorship by using the Facebook data that I mentioned at the beginning of this ched's team is actually able to test between these two hypotheses and what they find is that uh higher employment rates leading to for instance uh improved schools or programs uh is actually must much less impactful than the social capital component of this that having access to uh a strong network of folks uh really is the Difference Maker here that it's about who you know who can make an introduction I think uh I can speak for myself but perhaps this resonates with some of yall in the room that if you think back to how you got your first job or a recent job it was likely from someone that you knew or someone that you knew knew and uh how those introductions happen is true for folks uh all across different kinds of jobs and and so this social capital piece I think is is really important and that's what this new paper is speaking to so I'll summarize the data piece on this next slide and then I'll turn it over to Tanya to talk about the policy bit here um the three pieces that ched's team lifts out uh in a recent essay in the New York Times uh which thankfully highlighted Charlotte as an example of a community that's really been leaning into this uh first we need to start in childhood um what they say is that every extra year of exposure to uh High opportunity communities leads to improvements later in life second uh we need to focus on communities rather than individuals or individual families as the of change uh I spoke about this just a moment ago and third and finally um the third key to this opportunity economy is social capital uh the strongest predictor of differences in economic Mobility across neighborhoods is the degree to which lowincome and high income people are connected to one another so that's a little bit of a deep dive into the data I'll hand it over to Tanya to talk about what this means all right next slide please so from the policy perspective of um going back to what AJ was saying with the uh the three-legged stool and what led us to the progress that we're seeing it's really important to remember that what AJ pointed out were Investments that were made back in the early 2000s are what we saw uh what we are seeing in the progress that we see today so as we look at you can go to the next slide at what the city is doing now in potential areas where the city can continue to lean in to continue this progress his first policy recommendation is around increasing connections between communities and so when we think about that um what was laid out in the city's 2040 plan and the Udo which is underlying underlies that it's creating these more Equitable communities so that we're providing the interventions providing the services and am amenities to help us have thriving communities another part that we I looked at when I was looking at his recommendations is the cedc puts forth a catalog of elements of Equitable development for centers and neighborhoods I was going to Brazil said about that earlier this afternoon but apparently it got way late but when you all learn more about this catalog um for Equitable development that's also going to be a way that we can create these more Equitable communities Equitable neighborhoods and thriving community centers that we want to see so that these children have the opportunities they need um next slide please um and his next uh recommendation is prioritizing two generational approaches to Workforce Development for communities I know this has been near and dear uh to council member Ed DXs talks a lot about Workforce Development especially when it comes to affordable housing and how we're looking at building more affordable housing but what's interesting about his latest recommendation with uh Dr cheddy is having a two gen approach to Workforce Development so not just helping the parent that's unemployed but helping the child that's unemployed but then when we talked about it at our um panel a couple of weeks ago when Dr chedy was in town he actually mentioned that it's not just the way we've always thought about it like we're just helping this individual family but it's how do we do this for entire communities and so I lift it up um Mech county has their Mech success program which is H has a two gen approach and they've been doing it like this for a while but they are piloting this year um really embedding it in a specific in livian community so I'll be really curious to see uh how the results and what the ROI is on really embedding this mexus wraparounds uh two gen approach in Workforce Development in one particular community and if we see the outcomes that we are hoping that we'll see because that will be something that we could all replicate um his next recommendation is around combining Financial Resources with social support and connections so AJ talked a lot about nav about um Social Capital so Dr cheddy uses navigation support so we tend to call it here in me in Charlotte we call a wraparound support but navigation support as a proxy for Social Capital so individuals who do not have access to Social Capital who do not have can't pick up the phone and call somebody navigation support provides them with that Social Capital that they don't have so I lifted up um our nonprofits who have been doing this work for a while because I as I said or as AJ said before our three-legged stool talks about uh nonprofit and nonprofit navigation support is why we're seeing the progress that we've seen to date and so I lifted these three up um Freedom communities circuit l in communities and schools because what we saw is around 2008 especially uh in the recession that our nonprofits realized that they couldn't just focus on their core tenant and they had to provide wraparound support so these are three examples of nonprofits doing that navigation services that their clients needs Freedom communities is primarily helping mothers with children and then we've got circuit to lose in communities and schools helping grade school all the way into College and Career Readiness uh next slide please uhhuh it is Latina yep where are we so when we're talking about um investing to turn High poverty housing developments into mixed income communities to change children's lives I know we don't have uh projects here the way that cheddy describes projects but we do have very high poverty neighborhoods we have high poverty apartment complexes too and so when I saw that recommendation it made me think about the quarters of opportunities that we're already doing but also the business hubs that we're now putting in those corridors and then I sat through earlier the lengthy discussion around mwbes and thinking about our mwbe and as we're looking at the business hubs and how can we really help these mwbes Thrive so they're not just making and going paycheck to paycheck but they're really thriving businesses and so this is the way we think about if we can help our mwbes that are in our corridors in our business hubs that we can change a high poverty neighborhood or Community into a mixed income community so that's one of the recommendations that he puts forth too and his final recommendation is sectorial job training and that's something that we do already um as a city as a community is really targeting um trying to create the workforce of the future as well as the workforce of today but really targeting disadvantaged communities with those types of Workforce Development programs that are more sectoral when we do this uh next slide please uh next I want to talk about social capital and so Dr chedy released uh previously a couple of years ago the importance of social capital and talked about you know basically that Charlotte didn't necessarily have a really good Social Capital recommendation but he talked about the importance of having social capital and how Social Capital really does help improve lives so Dr chedy released a study a couple of years ago looking at Social Capital then he reinforced it and reiterates it a lot in this most recent study and then was about two years ago now AJ and I were out in the community when we were building the opportunity Compass the first version of it and we asked individuals and communities what are the drivers that help improve economic Mobility for you the number one was they said child and family stability no surprise but number two was social capital and this was before ched's first study on economic connectedness and social capital came out so people in the streets people in neighborhoods as toana as you know Lana too they know what they need it's just trying to get people who are in powered to give them uh the power and the resources that they need so next slide please so chedy talks about um the way he defined social capital is economic connectedness cohesiveness um really creating that sense of belonging and Civic engagement which is how we were thinking about it the first time which is like CSA 311 Etc but this time he fleshes it out even more with economic connectedness and um cohesive Ness so we hear about a lot of programs that are touting that they're doing Social Capital work but are they really strengthening the bonds between different socio economic groups that translate into resources and support and opportunity or are they meeting with a kid or or an adult like once a month so what kind of support are they really providing people that's going to help them get ahead so Social Capital really is all about relationships and when I think about this I was telling people that in my neighborhood I'm over in uh East Charlotte in the mar Oaks neighborhood walked down the street one day this nice little young uh couple is they there one day and then they moved out the next day and I'm like okay then I walk by another day and this dude is moving in the house never had a for sale sign but the guy's moving in I'm like yo nice to meet you I'm your neighbor what's up and he's like oh I just got a divorce and me and my husband split up and I had a big house down in Steel Creek and I didn't I needed I needed to downsize and change my life great he's like so I knew a friend of a friend of the couple that used to live here and he recommended to them instead of them putting their house in the market they let me rent this house for a year he didn't have to search they didn't have to do they didn't have to deal with the the uh Market but through a friend of a friend he was able to find a place to live we got all these people out here trying to find affordable housing and he knew from a friend of a friend that is social capital and so how can we really Empower people to have more social Capital next slide please so one of the things that I think about when we talk about social capital is how can the city as an employer help employees get access to Social Capital and it takes me back to the time when I was a young reporter at The Observer I started out in the Rock Hill Bureau nobody wanted to be in a bureau um at the newspaper you want to be in the main Newsroom and so I started out the paper and my editor and I we were chopping it up and he was like um I told him I played softball out of the various Sports I played back in the day and he was like Hey we've got a softball league at the paper you should come out and play I'm going tell yall straight up softball is not my favorite sport I do not like softball at all but I knew that if I wanted to get out of being in a bureau I needed to shake more hands in the main Newsroom I needed to make a name for myself and so if doing it on the softball field was a way for me to meet people I was going to do it on the softball field so when you think about the city as an employer itself how can the city create opportunities within different City departments to increase social capital for some of your lower wage workers that we have here um uh next slide please so things for us to think about is what do we do oh yes wait did I did I skip apart I don't know I might have go back to that last slide yes oh so one of the other things that we talk about a lot are and we were I heard the BG no I think jobs and economic development I was talking about this earlier um when Danielle's was presenting we're trying to hire more people who have barriers barriers to getting into the workplace and so we're providing them with the soft skills to get hired we're providing them with the hard skills the skills that are necessary to do the job but what are we doing as employers to to prepare ourselves to receive these individuals that we say we want to help so do we have uh trauma informed workplaces are do we have Humane workplaces so we can understand the struggles of a mother who may be homeless but she's just trying to make it to work or a mother who's got to get her kid dropped off at child care and she doesn't have a car so how are we making our workplaces more hospitable to the individuals that we say we want to hire so that we can tap all of this hidden talent so one of the things that we lift up a lot with this uh Atrium uh Novant and radal Hospitality are examples of organizations that are trying to provide more wraparound support and two two gen wraparound support for the individuals who are working there with them um some of the best practices that we've identified are some of the these are the challenges that some of our lowincome individuals and workers are facing and how can us as employers really help them with these challenges Beyond just giving them a job and thinking they should be glad that they have a job um next slide so to wrap it up I just want us to think about especially with the city that the city could really be leaders when we are thinking about um social capital and the importance of social capital in an individual's lives so I know you all talk or listened earlier at some of the meanings about the importance of Workforce Development but how do we think about social capital being a part of Workforce de uh development making it one of the pillars of Workforce Development so that we can not only just giving people a job but helping them gain the connections that they need to be able to thrive in our communities the other thing I want to just make sure we hit upon again is that it's not one thing that's going to improve economic mobility and we have to continue to work toward improving economic Mobility often we think about especially when that first chedd came out we were like well when are we going to be done with economic Mobility you all don't ever ask when are we going to be done with economic development every time we make an investment in Economic Development we continue to figure out ways to invest to improve our Economic Development we have to think about economic mobility in the exact same way it is a commitment that we owe individuals who who are living here if we want this city to continue to thrive yes we need to attract businesses but we need to take care of the people who are currently living here and the people who are moving here as well and with that I'm going to um turn it over to Rebecca to talk about from the city's pers perspective and what staff is doing so Rebecca before you jump in because I want to be respectful of time and I know this is going we want to get through all of it if we can pause right here because I believe counc member Brown has a question regarding the chedy study that we're talking about right now so council member Brown thank I want I know I came in in the middle but I heard some information on the data and I wanted to know kind of like the background where it came from and how accurate it is that's all I have yeah so this data uh includes Records On every person born in the United States to parents who were citizens or legal residents between 1978 and 1992 um anybody who filed a tax return during that time and anybody who was captured in the census so it's relatively comprehensive it includes tens of millions of individuals um and so we our team did not do the number crunching on this this is a team uh at Opportunity insights which is a research lab at Harvard run by Raj chedy they um they feel pretty confident that this is accurate data um and I just shared a couple of clips of it here but happy to to anyone interested talk through they have a tool online which shows really really detailed information by Race by class by gender all sorts of things I'll be I'll be interested I fallen into that category me and my mother so I just I'm interested as to where the data came from um I noticed that you said that was 27% if I'm correct uh the reduction in the black white uh Gap in income earning yeah was about 27% okay all right yeah so I would just like a little bit more information I know I came in in the like almost mid but I heard enough information where it was very um it caught my attention yeah and I just wanted to to dig a little deeper and see you know where the information and the data came from and and and just read about it I'm interested we can definitely okay set of time to that's that's walk through all the all the information that ched's team has okay thank you and as you're thinking about this to don't think about it just as closing the income gap between low-income black and low-income white because the goal isn't to close that Gap the goal is how do we get low-income black folks or low-income white folks to become middle inome people that that is the goal of economic Mobility we're not really interested we talk a lot about and the media focuses on gaps but what we're really trying to do is lift people out of poverty into at least middle income well that I'm on board with that so that's why I want to know where the data came from and what what will be the action items to move forward so I agree with you totally it's not about the Gap it's about closing the Gap keeping it closed and moving forward so I'm I'm on board with that as well but I heard some things as he was speaking there's a lot of information I know he said that it they condensed it but there's so much more to it and I'm just interested how it even came about and how accurate it is and then what we do to move forward as you spoken on some of those key points so thank you so much for coming back with not about the Gap but closing the Gap and making sure that we can make sure that everybody has that uh econ econ economic Mobility rise and increase thank you thank you Council m brown Rebecca we're going to jump right in because Council M Johnson um has said that she'll wait till we get to the end of the presentation great and I've I have uh orchestrated this in a way that we are going to Bam Bam Bam Bam so time us if you want we're going to get it through it at under five minutes thank well not that but bam back to burning back who who was starting off Monica yeah I'm GNA be leading off and so we're going oh wait a minute wait a minute my apologies council member ashir I I apologize I didn't see your right saying did you have a question on the cheddy piece yes yes um thank you councilman mayor thank you Madame Vice chair there recommendations can we go back to four recommendations so while you're pulling up that slide I'll just say Dr chenny is an award-winning Professor Economist and um he's certainly well respected in this work of just on the city side if if you go back to the previous slide where was there any recommendation specifically around housing and child care he didn't put specific recommendations around housing and child care he gave basically broad recommendations so what's in the blue are ched's recommendations specifically so the increasing connections between communities blah blah blah that's ched's language what's in the green are the things that we've lifted up that the city is already doing so he yeah he's not giving specific recommendations like child care or affordable housing he has talked about the importance though of early childhood education which is he said that in the very first study which is how we ended up with um Mech prek and having free Universal child care so that was in the first one so he didn't really rehash that in the current one got it um yes I I had read that first report that was uh that was years ago uh and I know there was a second so have we have you received any Matrix or a follow-up report on the programs that that we had implemented for an example Mac prek and its impact you would have to talk to the county to ask them for their specific metrics on it I would not want to speak out of turn on that but I know the county has the data on merrique and a number of slots Etc so like in the presentation that I was going to share early earlier is like the number of child care classrooms that we're going to be losing as a result of the child care crisis is one of the things that I'm lifting up and the need for us to have facilities and increase that Workforce but um definitely we would talk to the county to find out more about data on mecree K specifically right so the reason I'm asking it's you know certainly the city of Charlotte the county the nonprofit Partners all collaborated to implement many recommendations from Dr Cher's first report um so I would like to see matrics around whether that has really moved needle in the right direction or not and it might and the answer might be that it's too soon or it the time is not enough I I I'm just trying to figure out are we I guess how are we measuring our performance certainly the city of Charlotte has made number of Investments so does so has the county and the CMS um if there is a way to measure that that would be what I'm looking for that's all I have thank you thank you council member ashme and we're going to kick it over to Monica Holmes yes and you can just a couple slides forward so what we're going to do is just quickly go through with this um band of City staff different things that we're working on to kind of look forward from um both the cheddy study but also just things we're putting in place that we feel like kind of continue to highlight some of the work that Tanya was mentioning um so I'm going to start with just planning and Mobil and then I will hand it over to Rebecca so um again some of these things are things you've already adopted so I just want to highlight the work and the Equitable growth framework and really how we lift up the 20 240 plan as we look equitably across the city and then really drill down into that data and policy work to kind of look forward as we make policy decisions so a vulnerability to displacement how we can Access housing uh daily goods and services that really ties into that last bullet point too which is when we look at even resoning cases and at Future development we're really talking about is does this create a 10-minute neighborhood does this create the social interactions and mix of uses mix of income to again build that Social Capital you're going to see that continue through the community area planning work that you'll see later this year and into uh next year uh and then the two in the middle I just want to highlight the placemaking program and the community- based projects those can seem like micro small projects that are as small as $5 to $10,000 but upwards of you know maybe 25 or 30 but they're really uh the seed that starts to build relationships for meeting your neighbors uh meeting people who may uh come from different backgrounds in you how you can build social capital across uh communities the placemaking program really started with a Genesis Park double Oaks and brightwalk uh partnership where brought those three neighborhoods together and that was about 78 years ago and has grown into a Citywide program but that that is a seed of um that social capital and then the last thing uh that we're working closely with housing and Neighborhood Services on is just how we address that missing middle and give um kind of that gentle density so you can get housing uh that is Affordable uh duplexes triplexes quadruplexes in areas where you're accessible to goods and services but also Al in areas where um the person next to you may live in a house that cost significantly more than yours and might be a single family house and how you can kind of build a relationship across that line right where um you get to know somebody that's a little bit different has a different background so with that uh I'm going to move it over to next slide please so a couple of of points that Tanya and AJ made that I think are really important to uh reiterate um one it's not one thing okay so we're going to talk a little bit about planning a little bit about neighborhoods a little bit about corridors a little bit about Workforce it's not one thing and the investment has to be sustained over a long period of time um the good news is that as a body city council has already been investing in in economic Mobility for our residents uh you may not always have called it that um but the Investments you're making in housing jobs Mobility are all investments in upward Mobility for residents including your recently adopted affordable housing funding policy which has economic Mobility as one of the primary goals and then touches on uh many of the connections in that you heard about the opportunity study including things like the beyond the bricks model so this idea of not just doing housing but housing and um housing investments and services that create stronger outcomes that includes that navigation and social support and connection piece um that's so important to economic Mobility you've also been investing in mixed income communities um so um for example and I missed some parts of the of the word here Renaissance West Community initiative which was one of the um early uh opportunities to create a mixed income Community where there had been a former um High poverty uh housing community um but also more recent uh developments like Springhouse Square over at Aldersgate baric on 7th right here in uptown um and next to North End which you'll be hearing more about at next month's committee meeting two two other quick points um also in housing and neighborhoods you invest every year in youth employment opportunities um nearly 500 youth uh every summer yes they're doing career exploration and they're getting paid but they're also creating that really important social capital for themselves and for their families and we also have a number of new initiatives that we're working on through your recent investment following the youth crime referral um that are actually looking more at the two generation approach so how can we do career Exploration with younger kids and involve their families in at the same time um finally I'll just note that the Leadership Academy that the city um runs and that you invest in each year brings leaders from across uh every neighborhood together to help um plan for uh what they want to do in their neighborhoods and across the city but it's a rich um Network that's then created of leaders from all parts of Charlotte who are then sharing those connections and I'll share quickly some corridor of opportunity Investments that uh tie directly to some of what we've heard earlier today uh corridors is really a framework that is investing in specific areas of the city our six targeted corridors not just infrastructure but we're also layering that with housing investment jobs and Community oriented programming um we've already heard it before it was already uplifted um our opportunity Hub so that was your investment of nearly $4.5 million into establishing six on the ground physical places where folks can go in as a One-Stop shop to access small business and Workforce training programs and resources one within each of our corridors this grew out of a direct recommendation from our corridor's engagement through our Playbook process and grew into a really robust program that um doors are already opening and those uh organizations are working together as a cohort so even tying back into that social capital of Bridging the information or knowledge Gap um between the different organizations and corridors and uh another organization that was mentioned earlier Freedom communities is uh one of those opportunity hubs so they've now been able to evolve their um very Community um Family focused programming into now Business Services uh really building out a pipeline of resources for their families and the wider Community I think corridors also is a great model for some of that public private partnership and nonprofit um collaboration that was talked about earli we've been able to invest in a number of smallscale development projects that are within the corridors that are really led by the community or driven by the community's wants and needs and those are providing affordable spaces for small businesses that are also from those communities and neighborhoods also helping to really strengthen and solidify the corridors um you know placing the place brand and identity um what that neighborhood is and what it means to be a business or a resident in that area and then corridors has also um been able to invest into some of those youth employment programs at the city to make sure that corridors um located youth or schools are really getting um a full participation rate within those programs we've been able to um increase the participation rate in some of those programs over the last year significantly when it comes to either corridors Bas based youth not just those youth employment programs but also the uh career job training skills programs and then a partnership we um were able to invest in between mayap and Teach for America helped Bridge the summer Gap so that the uh Teach for America fellows were able to provide um the soft skills coaching and mentoring to students over the course of the Summer where there's naturally that Gap um and that has been phenomenal really really well received and um we're looking forward to building off of that next slide please well good afternoon everyone I'm going to bring up the rear and talk about some of our other Workforce Development efforts internally as well as externally so I was lucky to get two slides so I'm going to try and get through these as quick as possible I think most of you all of you are aware of our uh Community Workforce developments that are our grant funded Partnerships that supports individuals through skill development credential attainment and access to Quality Employment we've had our long running program uh of renew under our Economic Development Department which supports skilled trades and construction training programs and you'll see the other uh logos there of the organizations that we have recently supported through our higher Charlotte arpa funding um we typically fund organizations and programs that are um centered around our Industries in demand so that's healthc care that's technology that's construction that's supply chain Logistics Etc to ensure um these are the jobs in the industries that show high high demand uh high growth now as well as into the future so we're intentional about uh those programs that we invest in the other thing I'll say is that um outcomes and data is is very important as I know to this Council and and to us as well and so with these funded programs through the arpa higher Charlotte uh funds the uh outcomes are focused around uh skill attainment credential attainment um employment placement as well as uh retention and wage gain so you all will be hearing and seeing more of those outcomes in the coming uh months next slide please so to share a little bit about what we do as an organization for our internal Talent Mobility as well as what we uh offer our employees to support um on the left hand column you will see and many of these programs let me say um were created on the heels of the first chedy study as well as our local task force report that came out in 2017 and so if you look on the leand side you'll see a number of programs and initiatives that uh we support and there everything from career pathway awareness of city jobs uh to our earn and learn programs through our uh Career Training Academy and our registered apprenticeship programs uh as well as we have a career coaching team that supports individuals that want to move from one occupation to another within the organization and uh works with them to set goals as well as um uh support by connecting them to our prepaid uh education assistance so those are for individuals that are wanting to continue their education we realize that we do have a tuition reimbursement program but that was also a barrier that we noticed and and made sure that we addressed that through a relationship with Central pedmont that now does prepaid education assistance and so um we've got a lot of uh individuals taking advantage of that program the one other program that I will mention and go just a little bit more deeper in because we're really excited about is our education to Employment Program and that is a program that we just recently launched it's a partnership with Charlotte meinberg Schools uh you all may be aware of Charlotte mecklinburg Schools has a um goal or desired outcome of all of their graduating high school seniors to be on one of three paths when they graduate and that is either enlisting in um in military or enrolling in postsecondary or on an employment path and so this was the city of Charlotte's um uh role and helping to support that early Talent pipeline by committing to a number of positions uh for graduating students and so we are happy to say that we employed 2015 2024 CMS graduates in a number of positions across uh General services our 311 contact uh Center as well as in uh C do and so this program we will continue to expand and ultimately expand it to our higher ed Partners as well um I'm going to switch and transition over to where and how we're meeting our employees employees where they are these are programs that are supported mostly through our HR department um as you can see the the top portion is around compens compensation and minimum pay uh the city of Charlotte's minimum wage has been increasing has increased 70% over the last8 years so Something That We're extremely intentional about and I know we may not be where where some want us to be but we've been uh growing in that uh every year and I and I I I think I can put on record to say that we are the uh highest uh paid minimum wage municipality in the country don't quote me but I've done a lot of research and I I think it's Charlotte so um we also uh support uh we have a financial support coordinator that helps our staff uh navigate Community um and internal Financial Services we have a financial plan resources that we have um for our staff uh as well as an emergency loan program which offers uh $1,000 loan at a zero interest rate for individuals that may have hardships our last um program that we have is our home ownership support which is our uh House Charlotte and House Charlotte plus programs that uh support uh down payment for firsttime um homeowners and then a pleora of other um services that we provide around um financial literacy counseling and preparation for um home ownership so these are not comprehensive but these are our main programs of how we are helping to support our in Talent internal uh Workforce Development Mobility as well as helping our our internal team members with uh accessing resources that they may need you you all stat done yeah so I just want to wrap up by saying when um the report came out and I read the recommendations that he made I was blowing AJ up like excited I'm like we are already doing a lot of the things that he says a community needs to do to improve economic mobility and so seeing the staff presentation just reiterates my thought that we are moving in the right direction things that we did before in 2000 like I said got us to where we are today and the things and the programs that City Council Members have been pushing staff to do is going to take us even further in the future so I'm excited about the progress that we have made and the progress that we will continue to make in this and I just ask you all um to be thinking about like we saw this great information from staff but how do we do this two gen approach to families for Workforce Development how do we Infuse Social Capital into our Workforce Development and then how do we take our opportunity hubs and help with our mwbes to create businesses that are not just service oriented businesses or just like restaurants and there's nothing wrong with restaurants and Retail but how do we grow it so that we've got mwe that are making millions and they are really thriving companies that can employ people and have a bigger impact in our community and so with that I will turn it over if you all have some recommendations for other committees that we could present to I'm thinking uh uh council member ashmir BG would be a great committee to present to as well potentially jobs and economic development too if you all could help us PVE the way because this information we were lucky to have all of these different departments represented by staff but we don't necessarily have all these voices here from city council members who hear this too thank you so we have about a good strong five minutes I'll start with council member Johnson I was going to ask when will this be presented to um Council as a whole the cheddy study this is this is huge and I don't think five minutes is going to do this Justice obviously so I think this is something we need to see in a strategic planning session I mean this is this is huge we've all talked about the cheddy study and being 50 out of 50 so this is great news but this is not something that we just want to rush through this is something that we really need to take a look at I would recommend that this when you say how do you talk to other committees this is a council discussion and how we move forward with our policies in the city so I think that's the way to move forward um I'm I'm proud to be on the council where we where we are doing a lot of this work but we definitely need to a a deeper dive to hear more about the study and I think that's the way we should proceed I did want to ask you what is the name of the report changing opportunities is the the headline you there was a long name what speak in the microphone I'll I'll I'll read the long name we can also send it along afterwards okay and if you put it on uh Facebook or something on social media so folks can take a look at it as well this is great news but we won't it's a lot of information we need to process this and talk about it thank you so what would be the next step to get in front of the entire Council repeat that question what would be the next step to um to council member Johnson's suggestion that we'd present like a strategic council meeting like what would we need to do for that I would say the it will probably be better to go through Committee in order to have these conversations so with today being Monday committee report out it will be reported out you had could have had the opportunity of two committees today my colleague had a lot of questions in the last committee so you didn't get a chance to do your presentation we definitely need to work with staff to get you back on their calendar as soon as possible thankfully for ours Rebecca and Sean do an amazing job with this committee with having two important conversations on there that they knew would probably take some time so we need to try to get you back into to rotation for the other committees and that way we can have the Fuller conversation since this is now the model that we are having to work within where all the Committees meet on one day councilman Johnson did you have an additional followup and again we can bring it up at during tonight's recap it's definitely something I mean even at a committee level we need to break this down what are we doing cuz even when you talk about mixed income housing yes that's great if your neighbor has a a home that's hundreds of thousands dollars more than what yours is but there's also opportunity for gentrification and displacement and what are we doing to bridge those gaps so we really need to talk about this um I think it's an argument for inclusionary zoning right so we there's just a lot of information to digest and really work with so I I we'll bring it up I'll bring it up tonight and and push for this to be in our strategic planning session I think so thank C Brown did you have an additional question no just sacking what council member Johnson said the um just all of the information and we it just always seems like when we get information this is amazing information but it always seems like there's no time to do anything there's no time to get it out to understand it the landscape of it so that we can actually be able to present it in a way that people understand it and like you said there's a lot of information when you say there's a lot of information then we crunch information together just to get it out that's one of the things that we're I know that you know time is of the essence everybody's moving there's a lot that we got to get done but we for me in my term on city council that's the one thing that's been my pet peeve everything's got to be done in a hurry and nobody really understands for me to take it back to community leaders when I go into um my um my district and I'm going to the neighborhood meetings and asking all these questions this is great information to present that we want to be able to close that Gap people want to hear that that's good stuff but it sounds good but then on the back side of it there's so much other information that we're not getting and that's the piece that that's why I say I wanted to do my own research I'm going to study I'm a study person that's how I've been able to learn on Counsel thus far but I think that the crunching piece and the all of the information it's just an hour and 30 minutes I know I came in late today normally I'm on time but hour and 30 minutes it's just not going to cut it I want to get it before counsel because it is one of the best things I've heard in a long time I know about ched I didn't know where the information came from but just being able to get it out so that we can understand it is one thing but then for our constituents that it's really going to affect is another thing and that's the piece that I'm concerned about so as we as we're getting ready to wrap up the great thing is this was just the information so we do have the ability to have a followup to this discussion I think Rebecca and Sean and team what you heard from some of the com the questions that came up is that we are primed to have a part two of this discussion so that we can have time to get into it a little bit which is perfect because there's no decision on this this is giving us the initial information and seeing about getting back into the loop because for me the information is great we're moving in the right direction we also need to have real conversations regarding impact and intent so Council has received an email in one Community numerous emails where you've had Direct harassment of a homeowner a family who is African-American by individual who is non African America who is a white male and the level of harassment that is happening so we talk about these 10minute neighborhoods but we also are not talking about the additional resources that need to go along with that for you to be safe some have heard me share on more than one occasion the challenge that I have personally with him in the neighborhoods is whether you realize it or not longterm we're res segregating because a lot of people are not leaving out of their neighborhood so then when they go across town if I'm off of over behind the outlet if I go into South End I don't necessarily know how to navigate South End and vice versa so it's great to have the 10min the neighborhoods but we also have to figure out how to continue having opportunities outside of festivals or including festivals and arts and culture which should be a part of this chedy study the impact of arts and culture because that's when you really see Community come together learn share we this particular piece didn't go into the impact of arts and how it helps to change the narrative and conversation so I think what we're I'm hoping you all really hear is that there's an opportunity for us to get additional information back to the committee and as well as getting to all the other committees to present to help move this conversation forward with full counsel we got our next one starting at 6 I want to be respectful is there anything committee and council member azir has she dropped off yet or she still she still okay no questions councilman rir I'm good thank you thank you so much any last thoughts so with that I'll take I'll entertain a motion to adjourn some move second second thank you so very much committee and hopefully what we heard is we're going to get a followup to this cuz we're so excited about what's going on with this conversation staff team thank you all so much thank you guys e