[Music] [Music] [Music] This is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Everyone, if you would join us and um and get settled, um I want to call the council Charlotte City Council straw votes meeting to order. And we will start with our call to order and it will be with we'll start with our city clerk Ariel Smith, lead city clerk, Anthony Fox, interim city attorney. Good evening. Renee Johnson and I'm honored to represent district 4. Yes, ma. Good evening everyone. James Mitchell, city council at large. Good evening. Dimple at large. Dante Anderson, Mayor Pro Tim, District 1. Vau, mayor. Marcus Jones, city manager. Malcolm Graham, District 2. District 6. Good evening. Victoria Watlington at large. Good evening. Tiana Brown, representing Charlotte City Council, District 3, elected for the people, by the people. So, um, I just want to start this meeting is that it's the meeting for the council today. Um, and its purpose and intent is to have voting on amendments or adjustments to the city manager's recommended FY 2026 budget that was proposed at the May 19th budget adjustments meeting by council. So, this is the opportunity that we have today. We will review and vote on any proposed adjustments to the proposed FY2026 budget. Council will then vote to direct the city manager to prepare the necessary documents and resolution for the FY26 budget ordinance. As a reminder, the adjustments from the May 19th meeting, I believe that they were all re um provided to the council members on Thursday of last week. And so we are going to work from that list and as we continue to begin to develop the project, the budget that we want to have going into the new year. So today, based on the information we received, we'll further discuss any proposed adjustment and vote to determine if any will be included as an actual adjustment to update the proposed FY26 budget that we vote on on June the 9th at the June 9th business meeting. for the process. I propose that we hear from the budget governance and intergovernmental council committee on any recommendations that the C committee has based on their review of potential adjustments for the financial partners for funding. Then we can go ahead and discuss and vote on other changes as seen by the council. So with that, I'm going to turn that over to our chair and our vice chair. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, all of you should have fiscal year 2026 proposed financial partners presentation in front of you. If you could look at slide number eight. Um, this is what was discussed at our May 19th budget meeting. It includes everything that our colleagues had brought up on May 19th. And we approved this list at our meeting earlier today. This is a comprehensive list of all the partners that were raised on May 9 at on May 19th. The only partners we did not approve are on slide number nine because some of those partners did not apply for the financial partner program. And I know that we had made a commitment to each other that we will be fair in our financial partner process to those who have gone through this application have attended the orientation and have followed all the rules of our process. So with that um our committee approved all the financial partners on slide number eight which will require $1.2 $2 million in one-time funding that will come from ARPA bucket. So, I hope my colleagues would support that. Uh, but it was unanimously well, it was 3 to one. It was approved 3 to one at the committee level. So, I'm here to answer any questions that you have about this specific slide. All right. Um, so I see Mayor Prom has vice chair. Uh, thank you, mayor. So I I just want to enter in a motion to accept the BGR committee recommendation on uh our financial partners for this fiscal year. Second. We have a motion and a second. Now we'll have a discussion and I'm going to recognize the mayor prom. Thank you, madame mayor. Uh just a point of u clarification. That motion is just for this particular slide or is it for Okay, that specifically for slide number eight. Okay. So, we have not gotten to slide number nine yet. So, slide number nine is not something approved by our committee because slide number nine includes partners that did not apply to the program. So, we only included the ones that went through the process and that's on slide number eight. And you would see roof above the save our children. Uh those hearts for the invisible those participants that have applied on this slide are included on slide eight because they went through the formal process. Okay, thank you. That was my my question because I wanted to make sure that right we were addressing this specifically and on slide nine there are I had some specific questions if that was a part of the motion. So thank you. All right madam mayor. All right Mr. Manager what do you want to I want to make sure that I'm tracking also. So slide eight is additive to slide six. So, it's 9 to8. I'm sorry. Oh, you could go ahead. So, I was just going to I did want to clarify a point to the manager's recommended budget, which is now your budget to adjust and review the partners that were on that page. I believe it's page 16 plus these were additive to that. So, just slide eight plus what was already proposed. Okay. So, the manager, Mr. Graham, I'm a little slow today. I'm sorry. So, we're approving everything that I see in front of me, right? I just That's correct. Okay. All right. And so, that's Hearts for the Invisible, the History Museum for the Struggle and because it's not on slide nine. So, we're not approving block Charlotte and or Hearts fully visible. That's that what I'm hearing. for the invisible is on slide number eight for 100k. Okay, I can I can I'm slow. I'm slow today. I'm sorry. And block love did not apply to this program. So that's why they're not recommended. So I think if you look at slide number eight, it includes everyone uh that were that formally applied and recommended by council on May 19th. Okay. So we can we can vote for this as a package and if I want to make another recommendation, we can vote that up or down. Yes, we'll have adjustments after we we wanted to complete this one and then we will go into what you would have any other council. I'm gonna I'm gonna support all of this for sure. Okay. So, and I might make another amendment to to the budget for another organization. Then the council can vote that up or down. But certainly 100% for all those organizations and and then we'll debate maybe one or two others. Okay. Mr. Driggs. So, uh this would leave unused capacity for future use uh from ARPA of 4 million or so. Is that right? 1.2. It's Marie. Can you tell us the total sum as the motion includes the total sum of money from ARPA? Can you give us that? Yes, ma'am. Out of the 5.3 of ARPA revenue replacement, this would use out of that in addition to the um proposed financial partners, this would use the 1.2 out of that money. And Cherry's pulling up a spreadsheet that tracks it. We love spreadsheets, Cherry. So, we'll have that coming up. Yeah. And, uh, the 1.2 million, is that one time? That is truly one time. We're not just calling it one time and with the expectation that it's going to be requested again. So, it is. So, our committee approved this one-time funding. As you know, Mr. Drikes, as a former chair of the budget committee, Financial Partners is a it's they have to apply every year. So, it's it's technically a one-time contribution because they're going to have to apply again. And what we have done this year, we did not just say, let's go ahead and approve all the financial partners that got funding in the past, right? We have this new process that looks at the value that each financial partner contributes. Um, so yeah, it is a one-time funding. That's why we used ARPA source. Well, I'm waiting to hear the remainder of this conversation. Like Mr. Graham, uh, one-time funding means you have a a particular project that is one and done, right? Operating funds, if that's the use to which this money will be put, is not one-time funding. So, uh, uh, I appreciate that this offers us a potential speedy solution and I'm in agreement with these, uh, recipients, but if it now turns out that there are 10 other things, then we're going to have to look more critically at how much of this is actually operating and therefore not intrinsically one time. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Driggs, as a reminder. So, now I think we have a motion on the floor. Yes. to approve the um proposed I'm I'm not quite sure what the word would be now the proposed recommendation from the budget and committee for the following items that are listed on the um dis on the on the on the screen. Are we done with discussion? All right. So we have a motion and a second. Further discussion anyone for further discussion? Miss Mayfield second. Thank you, Madame Mayor. So, I have stated previously and I am going to restate again tonight. We had two criteria. The first criteria being scoring, the second criteria being not 30% of the budget. I worked with Marie staff initially identified a scoring that started at 50%. We were able to redo those numbers and bring it down in some cases to 47.77 42.99 45.51 based on the five categories that each organization was able to self- select for. I had said and I am glad to hear that my colleagues are not trying to add organizations that did not apply yet. based on the scoring, some of the organizations that my colleagues have identified did not score well. So, if we go back to the printout that Marie had shared at our last budget meeting that had specific items highlighted in red, they were highlighted in red for my proposal based off of that 30%. some of them this I find it difficult to say that I'm going to have limited funds. We all know we received 50 applications. We had over 8.8 million in requests. I initially asked how much do we have to even have this conversation. I was told 1.5 million. In actuality it was less than that. Staff's proposal was 812,000. when we're talking about the one-time funding and we're talking about the opportunity to move forward in the proposal that I had submitted and recommended, we actually had additional organizations that were being funded because they actually did score well and that would have cost us only additional 444, actually 800 and some change cuz one organization was left out. What is this additional cost now from the original 812,000? So now we're we're still like at four and some change. How much are we asking.3 million of ARPA that we know we want to try to last for the next few years when we're looking at shortfalls. We're looking at over a million dollar requests in ARPA as well as funding organizations that did not meet the two basic criteria. Even though there are organizations in here that I personally love and I would love to have funded, I have to stick to what I initially said last year and the beginning of this year that if we create these two criteria, then I'm going to stick to these two criteria. So therefore, I am not going to be able to support some of the recommendations even though some that were recommended are re. So the yellow seven and you scored uh 46.5 or you were over 30% of the budget. I cannot support it and I'm not going to be able to. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mayfield. I do want to ask if you would like to make a substitute motion. No. All right. Okay. Thank you very much. So we have a motion on the floor. Any further discussion hearing? None. All in favor of the motion, please raise your hand. One, two, three, four, four, five, six, seven. Keep your hand up. Keep your hand up. Yes. So, Mr. Peacock just got in. So um how you doing? Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's let's let's just go ahead with this. Um, all of you that are opposed, please raise your hand. Miss Mayfield, thank you. Thank you. That I think that was a great point, Miss Mayfield. And I think that one of the things that we didn't clarify was referring the actual graph that you had put together to a committee to make that decision. It probably been a little bit smoother. So, but we've got another time and another day to start. So, thank you very much. All right. So, what's our next step, Mr. Jones? I I think uh madame mayor uh Marie has now queued up um different questions that were asked at the ads and deletes with price tags associated with it. Okay. Um I'm not so sure you've moved off of financial partners and if you have that's great. I thought that Mr. We still have that policy uh that's still in the committee. Okay. Okay. Great. Well, that being the case then, uh Marie then has uh cost out a number of the questions that were raised at the ants and deletes. All right. So, I would it be easier to start out with each council member so that if there's an add and delete? Oh, it's she's going. You got it up there. Thank you. Bigger and she'll go line by line. Let's go with this, Miss Watlington. Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I should have said this before the last vote. I serve on the board of um CMR. So, if it's possible to recuse me from that particular vote for funding for that organization. Yeah. You're okay. So, again, if I could hear what's what's the board? Um Carolina Metro Reds. Carolina Metro Red. Metro Red. Okay. So, um we need to have a motion to excuse Miss Watlington. So, move. Second. All right. We have us from that vote for just that particular one vote. So So in that the budget adjustment was for the whole list. So do you want us to separate that out? We're going to Oh my gosh. It's already been voted on. It's Yeah. Well, I asked to reconsider the motion. That's right. Yeah. All right. So this would be $50,000 that we would um remove from No. No. Not remove from them, just remove from that vote. The separate vote. Just a separate motion for the $50,000 for Carolina Metro Reds. Okay. Yes, ma. Do I have a motion? So move. Sec. We have a second. Any discussion? I think everybody understands this is because let me just clarify. The motion would be to remove out of your prior approval that item and to have a separate vote on the recusal and then have a vote on the item. So it's going to take a few steps for us. So let me just ask this. If there is if there is a conflict of interest, then you don't have to ask to be recused. Correct. You have to be recused because you have a conflict of interest. The conflict doesn't automatically give you the recusal. The vote there has to be a vote recognizing the conflict and then to allow you to be recused. All right. Actually, going okay. We have a couple of people that have questions about this. A a a manifest financial conflict is a cause for a recusal. You may ask to be excused if you're concerned about the appearance of a conflict and the council can vote on whether you should be excused. Exactly. That's what I understood. And so my question is does being on a board necessitate that as a because I'm making a decision past it hasn't. I remember going back to Harold Condo and so on that that he Lana you may recall. So being on a board of a nonprofit doesn't constitute a grounds for a recusal. If you were concerned about the appearance, you could ask us to vote to excuse you. Right. Okay. Well, in that case, as long as it's not um it's not doesn't fall under actual conflict, then I will um resend my request. Well, as much as I love um our council, Mr. Driggs, I'm going to ask our city attorney if he would tell me the answer to that. done it several times before. But sometimes, you're right, councils will allow people to recuse themselves to avoid the appearance of a conflict, even though it may not be an actual con conflict. Here though, the council member requested to be recused, excuse based upon her service on the board. The law provides that recusal will technically is is required and you're excused from voting where you have a financial or procurary interest in the outcome if board service doesn't necessarily confer that upon a board member. Um, but if the it's the council's discretion to what uh to allow her to or and to honor the council member's request for recusal, but now the council member has withdrawn that request and is comfortable with the analysis. So therefore, you can let the vote stand. Okay, that works. Thank you. Sorry about that. That works for me. Is that okay? All right, everybody understand what Mr. Yep. Fox just said. And so because of that, because of the it was a question more than a a statement, I think that's really what we found out here. So, um, with that, we're going to take this first motion and then I want to recognize Miss Johnson. So, on the motion to we're going to be at the same place. So, Miss Johnson, I think, is up next because we've decided that Miss Watlington did not have a conflict. So, Miss Hang on, Mayor. Well, my question's next. Um, Mayor Potim, there is no motion. There is no motion. There is no motion. I'm I'm recognizing Miss Johnson. Thank you. Um, I was just going to add to that. We all serve on boards that we that are included on the budget in the budget. I mean, there's university city partners, there's Blumenthal, we we all are appointed to boards. So, that would be clarification. But the answer will be whether or not your board service adors your financial interest. You can serve on a board, but some boards are paying boards. So, if you have a financial interest and that does suggest a conflict, so that's the difference if it's a paid board. Okay, that's that's good. That's good to know. Okay. Okay, everybody squared away. All right. Thank you. So, then our next item. Yes. So, mayor, I I I think where we're headed now is that Marie now has all of the other items that came out of the ants and deletes with a uh cost associated with them that's available for discussion with the council. And I guess one of the questions that I have, would it be um okay if we started around and we could start with Miss um Miss Brown? Is there anything on this list or anything? I'm sorry. What did you say? recommended to do line by line. I'm asking if there's any additional information that anyone wants to put up on this have something additional. I believe that we said that we would have the ability that you could have an adjustment today. So, I'm just asking let's go around and just make sure that if everybody is does anyone have an additional adjustment to the things that are on the board or on the wall? I think. All right, Miss Johnson. Thank you. So, this came from the community. I'm not sure if anyone else received this, but there is a request for $300,000 in ARPA funding for Helping Hands Foundation um to provide assistance for water bills. Uh the Charlotte water director Charles has a vision to ensure clean water is accessible to all through assistance in paying their water bill and they asked could we bring that up. Is there I know with Duke Energy and other utilities there is opportunity for assistance. So if we could have something for our residents to assist with the water bill I think if there's an opportunity for that I think that's important especially when we know how unaffordable housing is in the city. So, thank you. All right. All right, Mr. Mitchell. Uh, thank you, Mayor Council. I'd like to add, uh, we're hosting the NAACP 116th National Convention here July 12th through the 16th. Uh, Mechckinberg County has said that whatever we do, they would match. So, this is a great potential partnership for us. So, I'd like this council to consider a one time to support NAACP convention for $200,000. All right. M Mayor Prom. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Just a um just a point of clarification. I know we're we're going around and adding um entities that have not submitted any application for financial service um to the city. I just want to underscore the comment that was highlighted by myself, Mayfield, Azimir, and Johnson as it relates to uh the fire department and police department. We I I firmly believe that we should only be using these funds for a one-time use and not any ongoing use. Uh, but I just want to just be clear that if we are funding an entity that has not gone through or requests an application process to be a financial partner, I want to make sure that we're taking care of our fire and police department as well in some way. I think it's a a slap in the face really to the civil servants to say someone that hasn't gone through the process can usurp the process jump in front of the line um when they're putting their life on the line every day. Literally the fire just happened in the back. So you know I just want us to be mindful of of them. I know we city manager you you try to take care of them as much much as possible in each budget but you know they do face these healthc care uh benefit costs uh that are out of pocket and um a burden at times to them. So just wanted to underscore that madame mayor appreciate that miss mayor prom. All right. So, let's start over at the beginning again. We're going to start. We've had everyone on this side of the dis. Anyone on this this side of the room that would like to add anything or change anything? All right, Mr. Peacock. Um, this was just related to the financial partners and perhaps um this was related to the financial partners and I I just was trying to get some clarification. Um, Councilwoman Ashmeir, you can you can help me to understand. Uh, we've got Dream Key Partners that's asking for 390,000, but yet we gave them 231,000. We have roof above that asked for 243 808 and they got 100,000. Those seem to be from a priority standpoint. We go from housing someone to many of the services below that. And so my recommendation for an ad would be add $159,000 for Dream Key Partners to bring them up to 390 and then add $143,88 for roof above to match that request. Mayor, those are my two ads to the request here and I'm simply I'm simply saying I feel like they should get the full request. So mayor mayor mayor Yes. I think you address to you. Yes, madame mayor. So the reason you see there are two columns. One is the request fiscal year 2026 and the second column is the May 19th meeting which was our budget adjustment meeting. So at our budget adjustment meeting council members that made this specific request whether it be for Dream Key or Boom Charlotte uh it was to match what was approved in the previous year because not every partner received what they requested. So, um, we matched the fiscal year, last fiscal year's approved funding. Um, so Dream Key Partners, uh, got 231. That was what was requested at our May 19 adjustment meeting. Uh, same thing with roof above. That was the request that was made uh, by our colleagues on May 19th. So, we pretty much approved what was requested at our adjustment meeting. I mean, council member Amir, I'm I I've obviously come on to this to this dis here very recently, but I'd find it hard to believe that they would ask for less than what's actually here. I'm talking about not not their request. I'm talking about the council members request. So, May 19th were was our budget adjustment meeting. So budget adjustments was something that was requested by a colleague or two. There was some of this request that was specifically made by our colleagues on May 19th. And that's what we're doing now. I'm making the ad right now. So I'm making the request that we add the money to that. I'm asking that you add this in the ads and deletes 159 and then 143 to round it out to exactly what's here. Why? Because when you look at the numbers here as it relates to everything else, I don't to me from a ranking standpoint and I've I know a lot of these organizations, they do amazing work, but you've got Dream Key Partners and Roof Above at the top for a reason. And I think that they should be funded at the full level that they've requested, just like Crisis Assistance is going to get 825. I I hear what you're saying. I I guess this is not in specific order. the list that you see here, this was just based on what was uh first requested by my colleague. So, I hear what you're saying. I in fact, I was one of the council members who requested dream key and roof above to be added because in the proposed budget they should get more. That's what I'm saying. I I hear you. But I guess at our budget adjustment meeting, we did not throw the ink. How? So I think that it is it is acceptable to ask for the addition and then that would be that's why we put it up here. That's what this whole exercise is about. That's exactly right. To make sure that everybody has the opportunity that they choose. And so what um so Mr. Peacock has asked that we have um let me see I'm not doing the math. Do you have 159,000 for Dream Key Partners? All right. All right. And $143,88 for roof above. All right. So, we will have we will continue this discussion. Okay. All right. So, I believe we're still we're still coming around. Madam, we're still coming around. I don't know what her order was. I'm talking to the mayor. We got one. Madam Yes, I Are you coming around? I am coming around. That's why I'm over on this side. That's Mr. Peacock. We're going this way. All right. Here we are. Get your mic. Thank Thank you, Madame Mayor. Manager, I have a question for you. So, I recognize that right now we might not be able to do it with this current budget and especially with the way this 5.3 million is going very quickly. But can you look into over the next few months and identify and really it's going to be your team ways that we can help specifically to increase the compensation for our employees who are below the median for city of Charlotte employees. So I took on the fun job of looking at our open data portal and which we already know HR has put some funding. I had initially made a comment to request 1.5 to go to that. I'm not going to put in the formal cuz we don't have no money left to um try to figure out how we continue to help our lowest paid employees. But if we can look specifically at all employees that are making below median, not the median of the city for our city of Shaw employees because we have employees out there that make 30, 40, 50. We have employees that make 280 plus. So for the median of our city employees, what would that look like if we were to bring them up as we're talking about $23 or 24 for our lowest paid employees and including our council constituent services staff? I we recognize that they are serving two council members. They work weekends, they work evenings, they're doing our town halls. There is a challenge which is why I had asked previously about the grades and how that is identified. I didn't necessarily get that information back but making sure that we are being equitable because we have new employees that's under constituent services on one side of the building that is paid considerably more than our staff that has been with us for a while based on our public data information. I'm not going to go through the numbers. So, it will be helpful to know if we are able to do that. Also, I wanted over the last 10 years, we have been able really the last few years to increase staff in animal services and control. We've also identified some funding as well as uh realignment. I want us to look at housing and neighborhood services. We are not 300 500,000 residents anymore. We are a million. We still have a very small staff. And I recognize even with the faith and housing initiative that is even more work. but to have a designated investigator because housing neighborhood staff and I believe some council members outside of myself are receiving a lot more calls from these multif family specifically our senior multif family units regarding quality of life and we don't really have the staff to just designate on those investigations but they are also working weekends evenings Warren Wooten and I are going to be going out to a senior your development in a week or so and for a evening conversation and I've already reached out to the North Carolina Finance Housing Agency. They are receiving a lot of complaints from Charlotte with these developers that know how to work the system. So, we have some challenges going on. And so I would really love for us since I believe Marie told me it's about 73 70 plus% of our budget is in employee and in staff wages but we have some departments that have really seen a impact from the growth of the city and the needs that we haven't necessarily added on. And I know and I have not reached out to our director, Miss Hefner. So, she doesn't even know that I'm asking you, and she's probably back there scared right now. I know for all the meetings I'm having and all the emails that I'm having to send to staff, I would love for us to really look at what would the impact be for us to look at hiring the necessary additional staff. I think it's maybe like two to three people, but having a designated investigator for everything that's going on along with the initial recommendation that I made where I did ask if what would be the dollar amount if we were to create a grant much like HR is doing for other employees to help with offsetting the cost and putting requirements around it. So, it's not a free-for-all, but to help our public safety employees since we have wages from 40,000 on up, and the cost of insurance could be a barrier. Thank you. All right, Miss Watlington, Miss Brown. Yes, Madam Mayor. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. Um, so I was getting into the proposed budget that we're looking at and I know that staff did a very good job of going back and shuffling and trying to make sure that we could appease everyone that's on this list. And so whereas some of my colleagues uh roof above does great work. I I advocated for them. So did council member Ashmeir. Um, They do great work and we just don't have the money to stretch that wide. So if we get into let's add Go back to the list for me, Miss Marie, please if you don't mind. It's the list right here. If we get into the list, if we go to saying what a person or organization asks for, but we didn't get them to their request, but we have them um on I definitely am advocating for roof above as well, but I'm also advocating for Save Our Children movement as well as for the Struggle, Inc. Great. I don't want to get into, you know, Hearts for the Invincible. just do it. It's so many organizations we our staff worked and they pulled and they toiled for a reason to come up with this for us so that we would it would be reasonable and we can move forward trying to spread the love everywhere. We get into the people's budget and I'm the number one advocate for the city workers and their uh income coming up to $25 per hour. that that's not even enough because they work their fingers down to the bone. So, we won't even speak about that. But if we also go to our constituent services, yes, I agree with that, but I also agree with people that are on salary. You can't put a price tag on a person's worth. And when people come to work, they work their fingers off. Mayor, are you hear me? Thank you. I'm not done. trying to do too many things. It's okay. I understand. We got a lot going on with a little bit of time that we're trying to get things across, but I won't repeat it. We could just go back and look at what I said, but everybody deserves to be paid their worth and who you can't put a price tag on that. So, the order of operations would be I support the people's budget 110%. And so our city workers on the front line, police officers, fire chief, fire, everybody. So we we tried to come with some type of structure. While we won't all walk away and agree to what we're saying, it's going to continue to be ongoing. Our staff work really hard to put this together for us. So, I I'm not gonna keep going on and on and on, but for the record, it's the people people's budget for me, and you know, I'm just gonna I yield back to you, mayor. Okay. Thank you very much. So, I know that there has been some discussion about some things that people would add. I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page because anything that we do in addition will have to come out of the ARPA money. So, I want to make sure everybody's comfortable with that because that's where the changes will be made um for additional funding that people or council members have requested. All right. So, with that, let's go line by line to make sure that we're okay. And I'm going to start. Um I believe Maria take Maria is gonna take and madame mayor just to be this is going to be for another motion that we're doing or we're just discussing line by line. No this is we've completed I think I wanted to make sure but unless you have something that you want to put on the table. This is all we're ready to now assign where we would get the funding and look at what we whether or not we can make it fit. That's what I'm saying. We need to make sure that we are doing it in a way that everybody understands that additions can be made and if that will be voted on and if it's voted on it will come from ARPA money to fulfill anything that was an addition. And so what's the amount in the ARPA money right now? The ARPA money is one time five 5,300 and that's where we would go which is untouched right now. Right. I know we're going to go through this line by line. Okay. I because if we do it a different way then it will get confusing. Right. Okay. So, no ma'am. I'm sorry to answer your question, Miss Brown. The It's 5.3, but you voted uh earlier one point. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Just want to be clear on that. Okay. All right. Okay. Does everybody get Marie? What we're looking at now is the $5.3 million in ARPA funding and the request that we had earlier when we started on this side. Let's go through what you have listed. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Rolling it as we vote. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. And the next one would be Miss Molina brought up previously to fund and this is separate from their financial partners applicant application. The Charlotte Museum of History requested us to sponsor a exhibit coming forward for them for 350,000. All right. Miss May I sorry I'm saying Miss May one of those M. Miss Johnson I'm going to go really Yeah. No, thank you, Madam Mayor. Just really quickly, and I the the exhibit I know that we have already uh approved 100,000 for operations for Charlotte Museum of History, but this separate um this separate ask, would this actually have to come from ARPA, Mr. Manager, or is this something or or Marie, can you answer that for me? would is this something that would have to come from ARPA or is there any other way for us to procure this ask? Uh so thank you council member Molina. Um as long as it's one time in nature I would say that um there's that $5.3 million is ARPA related. Uh there's also um some money that I used in the proposed budget that was uh I believe ARPA interest if I got that right. and we did some things like the bonuses for the um police or what have you. I think um what's most um expedient is to use the 5.3 for tonight's purposes. Um I think in the information that was shared earlier, I think the county has put $350,000 in their budget for this purpose. And I I would look at this um more like um tourism that we're bringing something to the city much like the Pa Picasso exhibit that provided something that we did not have beforehand. So that's just the way that um I believe that this has been positioned. Okay. So, just to to add to this because um I know that from my discussions with the leader of the Charlotte Museum of History, I think there the the total cost of that exhibit is like a million dollars. And I think the county has already given them, if I'm not mistaken, and I I don't know that to be true or not, but I think the county has actually already provided them uh $300,000 for that exhibit. I think that's what's in the proposed budget. I think the county has already given them a portion of the exhibit cost and so I think they're doing private fundraising. They're asking us for a portion and I think the county has already decided that they would give them 350 as well. It's included in their budget but not decided yet. Yes, ma'am. For the county. All right. So that's what you would like to have. Let's do the What's the amount again? Uh, it's 350,000 is the total ask for the exhibit. It's it's a separate ask. Yes, ma'am. All right, Miss Johnson. Thank you, Madame Mayor. I just want to be consistent. Um, Mr. Manager, you you mentioned that the this this exhibit could fall under tourism. Um and and even in looking at the recommendations I said the last meeting uh the Charlotte boom that's that's definitely tourism. So I just want to say consistently that we as a council really should take a look at utilizing our tourism funds for things that are tourism related. I know it's not something we've done in the past and um I know what happens in Raleigh, but it's something is if we as a council really start looking at it to consider these dollars to be utilized before we have a deficit or before we look at increasing property taxes. If there are items or that really fall under tourism, we should really start to begin to take a look at making changes or talking with our co our colleagues in Raleigh in expanding the use of the tourism dollars. I don't have the numbers in front of me. We went through a whole exercise the last meeting if anybody wants to take a look at that. Um, but we know that there are there's extra dollars in our tourism funds and these are the the dollars that pay for the improvements to the stadium and NASCAR. Um, so if we start to take a look at tourism activities such as Charlotte Boom and such as the traveling exhibit at the museum and other items, I think it would allow us to pay for to leverage our dollars a little further and pay for um items, you know, that that benefit the public. We could use those from general funds. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, let's get your um um Mr. Mitchell. Yeah. Uh I I just want to remind council uh this one is a tough one for me uh from this standpoint. We currently have six facilities we currently own and those six facilities have exhibits all throughout the year and and and I'm afraid if we start this process um I don't know how our six partners would would feel that uh we would give money to exhibit exhibits as long as people would would ask um he here and I got to yield to uh Pro Tim and and Marjorie. I I think there need to be a conversation. How do we sustain the Charlotte History Museum? And if you all were open to her, I think this need to be a conversation. We can refer to the committee. Um and a we need to make a decision. Are they going to be a city-owned facility that'll make seven and how do we sustain them in the future? But I'm just a little leerary about us supporting an exhibit when our other six facilities that we own, they never come to us and ask for a contribution. So I'm I'm just a little I'm I'm just a little worried direction we are going when I know the Harvey Gant Center and the Lavine uh Museum and I'm just I'm just I'm just a I I want us to be a little cautious about this one. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you for that comment. All right. So now I believe if Mr. Jones if you can get the staff so that we can get this right. Okay. I want to make sure I can be helpful with with this. So it seems like it's not necessarily funding the exhibit but where the money comes from. And so I I believe that as that infusion fund, which is now gone, money was raised, there was more money raised than the money that was distributed. So I guess a question is um now that the arts and cultural board is dissolved, is there a discussion to be had about what remaining funds that were over raised by the private sector that could be used for some things similar to this exhibit and maybe some other things that our partners would love and I would love to have that conversation with Laura Mark. Okay. All right. I don't know. I don't know you were I'm not sure you that's not sure that that was um so we have a lot of comments. Um Mayor Pro. Thank you, Madame Mayor. You know, I just we're having recurring conversations about um the Charlotte Museum of History and I recall our conversations last year around this time about them and there there was an opportunity for us to put them add them to the list of the infusion fund entities and um and and that opportunity went by unsuccessfully. But I I would like to just raise that back up to to the council. I don't want to repeat everything that you've heard from me and Miss Molina, but they serve they have a they do a great service to the community, uh to the entire entire city, but specifically there's some um doubleclipped emphasis on East Charlotte residents. Um, I I would really like for us to consider if if we could, city manager, have the Charlotte Museum of History added to that list of blueb bloodoods, if you will, um, that have access to the those infusion dollars because it's a recurring need that they have. Um, and just like the other museums, I I happen to serve on the Blumenthal board. Um, but just like the other museums, they bring a service, they bring an element of tourism, you know, um, and they bring a level of culture to the to the fabric of the city of Charlotte. So, I just want to bring that back up from last year. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I am assuming that you would support this initiative for the 350,000. So that's we'll come back around, but I just want to make sure that I've captured that correctly. Right. Well, I what what I would say um just for clarification is I think what the city manager said about infusion fund dollars that were directly um targeted towards arts and culture. I think that would be a great source for this type of ask rather than our ARPA dollars. And and I'd really love for us to be good stewards of these ARPA dollars and to not um spend allocate the total amount during this budget cycle because it presents an opportunity for additional interest to uh be compounded and present more opportunities. So, thank you, Madam Mayor. All right. Thank you, Mr. Jones. I would like to add um one point of clarification. So when we start to think about so the infusion fund is over with and now it's the um collaboration between the city and the county about $21 million. What the county has done with their 10 million for any entity, let's call it the bigs that the city provides operating funds for. They have a bucket of $3 million for educational programming. So last year the county manager and I had a conversation and she said, "Well, Marcus, if you guys are able with the Charlotte History Museum to provide some of the operating funding, then that's like all of the other organizations that could have access to this 3 million. So, I will say that by you putting another h 100,000 in in the straw vote earlier, it does open it up for access to educational funding from the county. I'm not saying that it'll be for this, but it's a connection to how these dollars work together. Okay. Okay. And I think it's important that the county did recommend 350 for this exhibit. Okay. Okay. Mr. Graham. Thank Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I like council member Mitchell probably won't be able to support the exhibit fund for the Charlotte History Museum. I think the $100,000 um will help them go a long way um to getting what they want to do. And I think we're headed there slowly in terms of really having a comprehensive evaluation about the organization and then making a decision on how and to what extent do we weigh in. Right? I'm not sure we just put them on the list. I I think they got to find find a way to get on the list and we should try to find a way to assist that, right? Um so I think there has to be criteria and formed. I think it's just some work has to be done before we take on that lifelong commitment because it will be a lifelong commitment for sure, right? And so I think we need to kind of figure it out. Not saying that we shouldn't do it, but I just think we just need to figure it out and be um forward thinking, diligent, and ask some tough questions beyond the fact that they're not in the group, they need money. Um so we should give them money, right? I I think that's for me is a little bit more complicated. Um secondly, I I do like the ideas about maybe them being in the fusion front, right? Just need to I need to make an informed decision for me to say yes. Um, council member Johnson, I'm just going to say one more time with all due respect uh about the tourism fund. These are relatively small numbers that we're looking at in comparison to our operating budget. Uh, today we had an ED committee meeting when we talked about spending $25 million out of the tourism tax NASCAR for the NASCAR Hall of Fame and we got more requests than we have money, right? So I think even with that uh there should be a way to support arts through our general operating budget. These are small expenses that I think we can find within our budget to accomplish the same goal, the objective without using the tourism tongue tax as a credit card, right? Because we deal with big numbers. Uh and it would just again just open up so many can worms that I as your chairman of the committee I just advise us just please not do that and we've already asked and answered that question on so many occasions. I think we just said I just hope that we could find a way to solve the problem without that being an option. Thank you. All right, Miss Melina. Thank you, Madame Mayor. And first off, I want to say to my colleagues, I I definitely appreciate the input. I think um first of all I I cannot tell you that I disagree with the need to have a deeper conversation because you know in in some of the correspondence that I know that I've received and I'm sure that the mayor pro Tim has received from residents that live on the east side they have looked at this and seen support for other institutions and not really understood that we have a responsibility to the other institutions because we own those institutions, right? And we do not own the Charlotte Museum of History. Therefore, these are funds that we are extending to a private institution. Um, and it would make it comparable to any other decision that we make um for private institutions, but and and and I'm open to and I think it would be wise of us um to have a deeper conversation on how and in what way we will support that institution going forward. The challenge for us on the east side is that there not many locations for people to host events and to do things and to have gatherings. And so the institution has centralized itself as a place where people gather on the east side. And so to that extent, I think as a council, you know, especially with us now putting them on a potential list where they can now have access to other funding and and things of that nature. Um I I would like to mayor or council members have a deeper conversation on what that means for us like since we have extended the 100,000 those are one-time funding opportunity amounts right but then there will be next year right and there will be how do we address this next year and you know the challenge for us is that we look like we're not meeting the ask but the ask is individual like any other private institution as opposed to it being a sideby side ask with the city-owned assets that we have. So, um I I I definitely agree with the idea of, you know, uh maybe BGIR having an additional conversation at some point about you know, this particular institution or institutions like it to decide like what do we do as a body when we have similar asks. Um Mr. Manager, I love the idea of us looking at them as an infusion partner potentially. I don't know if that means that they somehow compete with the others or how that process goes. I don't know. But I I agree with my colleagues in that I I think that would be a wise way for us to support them in this one-time endeavor since we have a specific bucket for arts. Um I don't know if that's possible. Um and as far as our opera dollars, can someone tell me when they expire? Like when do we have to spend them by? They don't they don't expire once once you build once you use them that's it. Okay. So that's so they don't expire. So because you did revenue replacement. Ah okay. Okay. And that's okay. And that's all I have. Thank you. So I want to make sure that as we're going through this that so far we have the Museum of History at 350,000 for um a discussion. But I think the thing that referring to committee is important. I also think it's important for us to be clear and not just ship the funding out. I know that we have, but we we may need to have some discussion around what information is necessary and explaining so that everybody knows what they're getting and why. And I think that that's something we can do um well not the without having some idea of how people can understand this. We want them to be have something in writing. I think that's one of our things that we ought to try to do and accomplish when we're doing this. This is in writing. This is what it's going to be. And so what we have here is I think um all of the speakers for this has been have been around yes infusion fund um but also yes discussion and referral to our committee. Okay. So let's go to the next item if that's if that's acceptable. Let's go to the next item. So, Marie, can you Mr. Jones? Let me make sure. So, the infusion fund is over. There are some dollars that were over raised. I just don't want us to walk away tonight thinking that $350,000 is going to come from the infusion fund. There'll be a discussion about some of the leftover dollars and could it support something like this and I hope that that's what the takeaway is. Okay, everybody. Is that what would be best for you? Well, I I think you get a vote. You get a vote on the 350 from ARPA. Okay. Is that Miss Mayfield? Thank you, Madam Mayor. Marie question. Since council's already approved at 1.237, should that not be removed so that we can see a accurate running tab of what the requests are? Yes, ma'am. Cherry added it at the top beside the 5.3. So it's now So right now based on all of the ads minus the 1.237, 237. You're saying based on all of the ads that have been recommended, what's that total? Oh, sorry. Yes, ma'am. If you'll scroll down, Cherry, please. It's it's it's within the amount, but there's something uh when I say that there's one in there that's when we get to it's ongoing and that would make the budget structurally unbalanced because it's an ongoing fund. I just need to put that caveat out there. So, which one is that one? That is the one that is to understand cost to increase minimum wage to $25 an hour. That's the only ongoing one on the list, ma'am. So, as of right now, minus the million237, what we're looking at is $5,28156 of all the ads since we've had no deletes. And right now those the majority of that is being requested from the 5.3 of opera dollars that we had left that we thought would be able to fill some gaps for the next couple of years. That's correct. Just wanted to clarify. All right. Okay. So the next item that we have um I think is the pay plan. I'm I know that you're moving this, but um can we stay can we stay at this one page here and unless somebody calls ask for something specific. Yes, ma'am. Just so I understand your process. I believe you said you wanted to go one by one. So we I don't know if you were wanting to make So allocate. So the next one is allocate funding over a three-year period. We've um talked about to support city staff supportive services and I think Miss Mayfield just addressed that. Is that correct? to my Okay. And so that would mean that you would do you want to continue to have that, Miss Mayfield, on the on the list? I want to make sure. I don't want to remove anything that you don't want. So, it's two separate questions. Mayor, the 1.5 was in theory a recommendation over the three-year period based on what our HR director has already been doing through a pilot since we have employees that have needed additional assistance. Whereas the separate question was in regard to finding out what would that dollar amount for health care be and whether or not we have the ability to have a grant for lack of a better word to help those where if they ex if they hadn't met their deductible because their deductible was so high but they still need assistance. It potentially can be in the out of that million cuz the question the 1.5 I was asking for was over a threeyear period. I'm hoping that the needs of our employees aren't at this million dollar level that it's pretty much been around a h 100,000 so far. But if we have it over the three-year period, hopefully the interest will help us build some of the funds. So that was my initial thought with that particular request. Manager Jones, does that seem feasible to say for me to leave the 1.5 in for that three-year period, but also the possibility of the other the offset if it's a grant model that it can be for food or medical or medicine, whatever it is, we create a umbrella so that if there is a need that has been proven that staff will be able to access it. Wow. Okay. So, uh, yes, I'm never going to turn down an opportunity to do things for staff. But if I may clarify, do you want me? I'm help you out. I'll help you out. Okay. So, the 1.5 over three year period makes sense. A few rows down the 980, right? That is what concerns me a bit because it's it's that's our best guess at a group of people who may select health care that doesn't begin until January of 2026 is super super complicated. I know where you're trying to go. It would be very helpful if we could figure out something other than the the grand. I'm not sure the $250 for everybody because that's the way it's going to happen. And see that that's not the and I don't think that's your intent right of it. The intention is on a as needed basis for the simple fact of July 1 even though you're under your insurance if you have not met that $4,000 $6,000 deductible but if you have an emergency event that costs $2500 and that's going to be a hardship. Is there a way for us to assist? because it's a much longer question conversation regarding pay and the cost of insurance. The biggest question was do we even have any options out there? The initial comes back at potentially 980. What I'm asking is if I was to say now I will remove the nine my recommendation of the 980 if we think out of the 1.5 we will be able to provide assistance if needed and unless there's legal ramifications and attorney Foxwood or our HR director who I saw step in if she's still in here they say that legally that's something we wouldn't be able to do then that's a challenge in itself but it might fall under the current program that is happening through HR and and that's where Maria was trying to save me from myself is that um what are some legal ramifications of carving out a group of employees to have it just for first responders which was my initial whereas the current program and that's why I wanted the clarification so that we know what can and cannot be done. Sure. Well, the 980 that we have up there is an estimation, but there very well may very well may be legal ramifications for why we cannot do that. All right. And I believe what staff tried to do is find a way to do something that could pass the test. But once again, $250 for everybody in um public safety related is not what you have asked us to do. So I I hate it that we have something up there with a number that doesn't come close to what your issue is. So Marie, for me, you can red line the 980 because it's not going to get to the core of what I'm trying to address. But manager, I want us once we get through the budget to have a very realistic conversation because one of the other asks that came specifically from discussions with our fire department is the previous rate was a rate that was manageable. The new rate is a rate that potentially could cause some challenges. We pay 80% of the insurance even though the costs are still relatively high. I think if we're able to go back to the question that I asked at the beginning of the meeting regarding our our city of Charlotte AMI lowest paid employees, some of them that are in that 40,000 range versus those who are much higher if we're able to make appropriate adjustments because that 2.5 pay increase does nothing when the cost of insurance went up 3%. Or went up 3.5. So what does that look like to ensure that our employees have access to quality health care? Thank you. Thank you. Um and so that means the adjustments have been made a delete. So thank you Miss Mayfield. You are really doing it for roll today. So thank you. All right. So, we're going to take off um how much would a request for proposals and take off that 900 and a health review health care benefit cost for police and fire and delete that. Okay. Thanks very much. Mayor, you would go back up to line 31. I know we're going back to 31. Allocate services over a three-year period to support city staff supportive services. Who had that one? Okay, Miss Mayfield. Yes. Thank you, mayor. That one was mine, and that was the continuation of if we can allocate 1.5 million for that three-year period to help our staff since we learned, staff have had to utilize, have needed assistance, whether it was for rent, groceries, medication, whatever it was, and a pilot was started. This is a recommendation for us to actually have a bucket available. I do not anticipate all 1.5 million being spent, but if we have it over a three-year period, hopefully that will help create sustainability as we continue to work to increase the salary of our lowest paid city employees. So, Mr. Jones, um, where does this sit inside the organization? Well, uh, thank you, mayor. Or if it if it's approved, it would be HR. We started a couple of programs this year and they have been uh very very helpful for our employees. Okay. All right. So, number six is up. So, let's go to um item how much would I'm sorry doing I was just getting the list and going through every one of them before item for allocating funding over the three-year period. Is that the one? Yeah, you're not voting on it. Well, I was going to actually I wanted to make sure we got through all of this because we're taking money from the ARP of money. So, I want to make sure that we're still good for that and then we would have a f a vote totally for the next sections. Would that be is it easier for you to vote immediately? Yes. Okay. So, if it's because it's crashing our mind, but I I just want to make sure that you know if it gets short and we don't have the 159, we're going to have to make I mean, we need to know how much money we have first, right? So, so I'm sorry. All right, Miss Ashmir says let's go ahead and vote each time as we have the discussion. Miss Selena Molina, I I just got to I just got to I just got a comment. I think I mean and look, I I this is this is these are all great opportunities, but once we spend this money, it is gone. And I and I think that has to be the lens that we're looking at this from. And I mean not to say that we are you know not making good decisions at this moment right I like I said I think everything here is stuff that we all feel very very passionate about but to understand that like you know because in my mind and somehow I had the assumption that once I think we had I thought we had a deadline for ARPA. I thought we had to like spend it by a certain date, but the the very fact that we that we could literally keep some of this funding for future opportunities or something we meet next year um where we want something discretionary done. I just next year I feel like if we're empty, we're going to regret it. And I think that's something that I mean I'm not imposing any importance in one over the other, but I'm just saying that literally everything on the screen if we voted yes to all of it and all of the ARPA fund and I think at the same time we had people that had said we wanted to make this adjustment and we're walking through this to get to that point of everybody saying this adjustment. So I suggest like I like what you're doing where we have the discussion. I think individually so that maybe we can grab some context on each one. So then and then we go and vote based on I I I know that may be a little bit longer but I think if we can contextualize each one of these and then make informed decisions for voting purposes as opposed to having a conversation in voting having a conversation in voting. I think if we can test, you know, like you're doing kind of right now, contextualize them, you know, and then have a vote. I I actually think that's a better way considering that this is to empty out the bucket for ARPA. That's my suggestion. I don't I I think what you're saying is continue on and if we start moving more quickly, perhaps it would be easier. So, why don't we go ahead and start with um how much would a request for proposals and contract with an outside firm cost? So the next item 32, are there any changes or any questions about that one? Which one is that one? That's uh see what 32 is. Yeah. Uh 32 is uh the proposal to submit RFQ uh council. That is to protect our 26% that we agree we're going to get on the Bank of America stadium since we funded it at 650 million. 27. How much is it? 27. Oh, it's 27%. And so that's a fiveyear contract. And I just think it's important us to send the right message to our small businesses that this the largest investment we'll ever make and we want to make sure you participating on this project. Okay, that explanation. Mr. Graham, I want to take a different perspective. Council member Mitchell. Okay. We got an agency department, right? CBI. Mhm. We got AK Monica Monica they should be doing and Right. And and even if it's I I hear it but I got we got to have real conversation. I I'm I'm aware. Uh I know what's happening around me. But even even that that expenditure should be paid for by the Panthers, right? I I'm not sure we should bare the burden that. and and we got resources that we're spending for tracking and sourcing and internally already. Uh and a million dollars that should be something that they should bear uh and we should have quarterly or by yearly check-ins to make sure that numbers are being achieved. So, Mayor, could I do a followup? I just I just want to make sure everybody has the same information. Um we we went down this road to Councilman Graham point probably in July and uh there wasn't a lot of interest on behalf of our Panthers for minority participation. Um, that's not true. And and and so, Councilman Grant, I'm just saying we need to make an an investment what we're trying to accomplish if if they're not willing to step up and and be committed to minority small business participation. And so, um, they have hired Clock Constructions. Clock Construction has hired, uh, Carol Liy. We all know Carol. And I'm just saying over a 5-year period and and city manager if if we think we can do a RFQ and propose it at a different rate, I'm okay. I think the intent is what we need to be clear on that we intentional making sure our small business community participated on the renovation. Yeah. And again, C with all due respect, Council Member Mitch, I I think they are committed to to reaching the goal and I've been in con constant contact with them um significantly since the vote and I care about minority participation, too. I'm glad that Carol is on the job. I've been talking with Carol for weeks to make sure that happened. And so I think there things are in place to ensure that those goals are will be met without us spending a million dollars. Mr. Driggs is next. Um I know I know but Mr. Driggs hasn't spoken except once and I think we've had Mr. Driggs. So on on this point I agree with Mr. Graham. Uh we have a lot of contract compliance minering processes. It's not just about the 27%. We are tracking their performance in all dimensions. There's a whole procedure for reporting and so on. Uh and I wouldn't the 27% is a generous uh offer by them. 27% is a lot. And so for us to go back and sort of act like we don't trust it and we therefore need somebody on the outside to verify that they actually do it. Um that's an accurate statement. Okay. Speak for one person. That's an accurate statement. All right. I know, but I I I'm just saying I I I I don't agree. And having been through a lot of this discussion as well on the thing, uh I believe that they demonstrated good goodwill by committing to the 27% and that we should just be able to rely on ordinary contract compliant processes and not spend money to demonstrate that we don't trust them. All right, Mfield. Thank you. Thank Miss Mayfield. I want Miss Johnson. And thank you. I just wanted to clarify that Mr. Driggs was able to speak before me because he had only speak spoken once. Is that what you said? No, I was just saying that I'm just looking at that side. Okay. All right. Um, so I keep talking about the hospitality tourism dollars and the fact that there's there's this exclusive fund that we won't even talk about using. So surely if we spent $650 million out of this fund, any oversight of that money could come from that fund at least. So I would not support spending a million dollars to ensure that they do what they said that they were going to do, especially when we do have a CBI department. But if there is an an audit, I would definitely hope that this council would support uh using the oversight funds from the fund that the original expenditure came from. Thank you. All right, Miss Mayfield. Thank you. Attorney Fox, question for you. So, have we completed the negotiations on the contracts with TP? We're still working with um outside council and the Panthers on the contract and contract terms. So to my understanding, what council approved and what hopefully you and your team are negotiating is we had the clear expectation of what construction will look like moving forward. What we committed to is we would pay as projects are completed. We have some triggers along the way or are the triggers being negotiated now? Because I hear Council Member Mitchell's concern with making sure that the diversity of our local community benefits from this multi-year, $650 million investment. Do we have the language in place that gives us the clawbacks and the protections to ensure that happens? Again, we're negotiating. The final language has not been finalized yet. There was an agreement that relates to the practice facility that is underway. Uh there is the uh the request for council action as I understood that was adopted prior to my time did and was specific with regards to the 27% 12% SB and 15% MWBE and we are ensuring that the language in the agreement reflects that commitment. So, as of right now, manager Jones, we have not spent any money because the contracts have not been completed yet. So, we should there should be no money from what was allocated spent towards anything with TPE while we still have a contract that has not been signed and completed. Correct. So, we have not spent any money. I'm going to make sure. Matt, that is correct. No funds have been released yet since no agreement's been finalized. So, as of right now, while we're having the conversations, we're still in negotiation. You have a clear understanding as unfortunately having to step in after the fact as our interim attorney of what the expectation from council was regarding opportunities with development. You're negotiating that for us, but right now nothing has been spent. No final contract has been executed. That's correct. And the terms that were directed from this council are we're attempting and will carry forth those terms in contract language. That helps. So, Council Member Metro, I definitely hear the concern regarding making sure that our intentions are met and exceeded, especially in this current political environment because we are seeing a lot of challenges that are happening specifically for minority owned businesses and very be very direct specifically African-American and female owned businesses. So, there is a lot of challenge. I do have a hard time with us funding versus them funding this oversight especially when the contracts have not been completed yet because once the contracts are actually completed and it's clearly identified what the expectations are I am also under the anticipation that what is going to be presented back to us is going to have some very clear clawback clawbacks in there if these certain checkpoints are not met and or exceeded. So the million is a hard is a hard one to just set aside when we don't even have a contract in place yet. And we're in June and we approved this initially back December, January, June of last year. We in we in June of 2025 and we still don't have this actual contract. Okay, Mr. Manager. Okay. Thank you. Uh may me M members council. Uh so um I I'm looking at this a little differently and it's just like the million5 in the proposed budget to help small businesses with the opportunity for the transformational mobility project. same thing that Daniel Frasier has money set aside to help the workforce be prepared for the opportunities that come with the one sales tax. What comes with that? What I read into that is we have consultants all the time that help us negotiate deals and things that nature nature. I look at this a little differently and maybe a million is not the right number but it is over a period of time. How do we make sure that small businesses are getting the opportunity with the uh $650 million? How do we make sure that the workforce is getting the jobs that are associated with the $650 million and it's bringing in additional help to make sure that we're aligning the opportunity with the the investment. So, Mr. Manager, I agree with part of what you said. We have an economic development department. We have an economic development director. Now that we've identified the scope of what her work is because HR was already taking care of city employees with employment and your focus and your work is around community as well as small business growth and development. That is a great opportunity for you to actually dig in on what your role is as our director of economic development and job creation versus us finding another dollar line item to pay someone else to come in. When we pay staff well to do amazing work, here's falls under your umbrella of your scope of work in partnership with our assistant city manager that is over CBI with them working closely to make sure that we hit those targets. But that falls in the category of the staff person that we already have within the city of Charlotte in my opinion. You know, like a bump, we all got one. I I I know Miss Azir then we'll come back around to the two of you. Okay, Mrs. Esmeira. Thank you, Madam Mayor. [Laughter] I agree with some of the comments that's been made by my colleagues. Um, Council Member Mayfield and Graham, I agree with you. We already have a department, but I guess my question is for the city attorney. Uh Mr. Fox, uh in the contract that you're currently working on, uh you're negotiating. Are there any um mechanism around accountability for the minority small business participation and and second question followed by that for our um city manager, Mr. Jones, I know we have an internal audit team. Uh could you after Mr. Fox is done, if you could help us understand if there is any audit work being done on our participation on small business participation for contracts above certain dollars. Okay, that's all I have. Okay. Well, first of all, the 27 U% goal uh is aligned with and incorporates the CBI program and the CBI program allows for the goal as a commitment, but it also allows for exceptions to the goal attainment based upon good faith efforts and we have to keep those processes in place. As I mentioned, we will the contract language will reflect the council directive for the goals and I will add a caveat consistent with state and federal law because that's an evolving area right now. So we will but we will carry forward the message and the edit from this body with regards to the goal attainment and achievement. All right. Yes. And so there was an audit of CBI uh last year and there's going to be a followup with it. So yes, uh the internal audit has looked at our CBI program and how um we are accounting for spend. Yes. So Mr. Jones to follow up on your comment earlier about consultant if we already have the department CBI as well as the internal audit team then we have external auditors that does uh render an opinion then we have city attorney's office do we still need a consultant to do an assessment I I'll leave it alone I will tell you there are other cities that are that are hiring Ice Miller that are hiring a bunch of consultants because this is a patch that we we haven't been through before and so but but that's it. We would not be unique in bringing in outside assistance. Okay, that's all I think. All right, I had you have you spoken on this one yet? I haven't, but I could All right, Mr. I'm getting old. I'll forget what I'm going to say. Right. Like you going to be here all night. U but here's the thing right? Um, I am not opposed to oversight for sure, Council Member Metro. I think you're absolutely spot on. We'll get measures gets done, right? So, I get it. Um, but I also said the same thing about the pearl. A lot of commitments we we made, Ron. I said we should be auditing and having these big firms come back to us at least by yearly to report on where they're at. and that internally inside CBI wherever supplier diversity the commitment is really really important but these big projects that have a big spotlight on them like the pearl like Spectrum like the Panthers like when we do any major renovations at the U convention center if we were to do Bojangles right very high profile projects big dollar amounts there should be an an internal component tracking those um commitments that were made and signed upon by both parties. So uh I just think so this is not unusual but Mr. manager. We we we you know we need for that department right to um to not only to connect the vendors with the with the end users internally and externally but also to have an auditing function um especially on these very highprofile projects that we shouldn't have to go out and spend a million dollars and again if someone's going to pay the bill it should be the other guys on on the side of the street and Carol Lily is a honors broker Lily and associate. She knows the vendors. She can talk with them from truth to power, right? You know her, right? She's a honest broker. And having them on that construction team is amazing. And um there's more news to come from what's happening over there. So, I think there are enough measures in place with the city attorney's office and others. Uh, I just hope that we take away from this conversation about a greater spotlight on on not only the the the matching of folks, but also making sure that on these very highprofile projects that goes well beyond just the Panthers, there are others that they deserve the same level of scrutiny, oversight, and that they should be required to report back to the council to let us know what's the score. Okay, Miss Anderson. Thank you, Madame Mayor. Um, city manager, I do remember the audit of the CBI function last year and our discussion around that, which I think is helpful. There are a couple things here. If there's a tone, if there there's a tone of the conversation that we have a department that we have a little faith that can really oversee this process with a level of um accountability to achieve those goals. I I think that is a separate conversation and I did hear that throughout all of my colleagues comments that that's a separate conversation. Um this is a place that we have not been uh Mr. Mitchell and city manager. This is a a large amount of money. It's a significant capital outlay and we we're making commitments. I think we need to ensure that we are tracking um those commitments and ensuring a level of accountability of how extensively we are pursuing um the spend with um the with underserved uh companies. I think that onus is on us. I understand that we might want others to pay for it, but the onus if it's really a city program that it's on us to to oversee, to administer, uh to enforce and to audit. So when we begin to hand off those types of responsibilities to other entities like this responsibility or others, then it loses its integrity and we really lose the opportunity. um to make modifications or to even um make changes um as we go through the process. So, this is our program. This is something we want to do as a city. This is the largest spin we've done in a very long time. We are accountable for that process and we're accountable um for the auditing process of it. Now, having said that, I do believe we need some outside help and that's clear uh just from our conversations over the last couple of years and given that this is such a high spin, we might want to be strategic and thoughtful about how do we go through this process and allow this process to then inform um you know how we would oversee the spin on a go forward basis. So, I just want to say that this is a big deal. It's a big moment and it is fully up to us. It's not up to any other partner that that we're working with. It's up to us and if it fails, it will be we will be accountable for it. We can't point the finger at others. Thank you, Madam Mayor. All right, Miss Johnson. Thank you. I think this brings up a very important point. Um, yes, the $650 million we need oversight, but for every dollar spent when we're expecting um minority participation, we talk about this in council meetings constantly. So, if we have to ask how are we going to ensure that this is done, how are we ensuring that this is done generally? I think that that's a a question that we should be able to answer and that oversight should be across the board. I also wanted to ask where in our budget is the CBI can someone give me the page number the CBI department and um while you're looking that up uh the $650 million that was that was uh approved last June where will that be reflected as we are spending it in the budget Mr. manager. So, is it going to be um captured as one aotment or is it going to be captured as we write those checks or how will we and the public be able to see those funds allotted? Sure. Let me start off by saying answering the first question. Um CBI is not going to be reflected in the budget the way it was reflected in the current year. That's one of the proposals I have in front of you to take procurement and CBI and merge them together because clearly we can do better. Uh and this is part of the process raising that up to a department level. Um, in terms of the funding, Matt, help us out with how that's going to be reflected the spend for the 650 as as far as how the the dollars will go out. So when general services will receive monthly pay applications through the uh construction manager and they will review all pay applications to ensure that they meet our our understanding of what the work that's been done. We're verified the work that's been done. Once this uh ter sports and entertainment and the city have all signed off on the actual pay application, that is when funds would be released. So no funds would be released without general services being able to verify that the work has been done and that would include all subcontractor work. So that'd be an opportunity to to sort of have a tracking of the MWSBE commitment on the actual um payment out to vendors and ma man I think more specific to the question it'll come out of your what particular fund that would be coming out of the convention center fund. Okay. So if someone wanted to track that at any point, they could look at the actual spent next year, I guess, next fiscal year in the in that fund, right? There will be a pro there there will be a there is a Bank of America stadium project that would have ability to track all spending on it at any time. Okay, good. Okay. And so you just said before those checks go out, that's an opportunity to make sure that they're meeting the standards. And if we could do that across the board, that would be awesome. like if and before those dollars are spent, there's these checklists and these outcomes because surely for that type of money, there's outcomes and outputs and reports reports that we're going to be expecting. Thank you. All right. So, and not just that for that money, these are all public dollars. For any public dollars that are spent, we need to be tracking. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. And I think this will wrap this up for us. And this So, Mayor, thank you. So, let me just share all this uh with my colleague just so uh we can kind of level set where we are. Um there's a practice facility being built right now for about $42 million. Uh they sent over to our CBI a waiver for 21 million. So, I want So, I want y'all to hear those numbers clearly. There's a practice facility being built right now. The cost is 42 million. The Panthers and the current GC sent over to our CBI a waiver for $21 million. So some people say, "What's a waiver?" A waiver is you asking, "We not going to get any small business minority participation on those trade partners." So let me give you another number. We talking about making a million dollar investment to get 27% of 650 million. We talking about putting 175 million spending with our small businesses. So we talking about return on investment. If we say a million dollars over five years to generate 175 million for our small business in the city of Charlotte, I agree with Mayor Pro Tim. Then the buck stops with us. So, mayor, thank you. I'm just gonna I want to give you the numbers so everybody understand the magnitude what we trying to create in our city. Oh, good point. Councilman Johnson, what happened to the waiver? So, the CBI is pushing back on the waiver because they believe in our program and it's not been received very well. So CBI is doing his job. Uh but they they they need they need help. They are. So CBI is doing his job. I Right. I just Okay. All right. So um now I think that we close this out. You've heard the remarks and you've heard what people's positions are. So the next item on our agenda is not there's one that's it it's on 33 and that has been deleted. Miss Mayfield, thank you. Oh, Miss Mayfield. Yes, that's ex That's what we were we had another conversation earlier about that one. And so now we're at 34. Understand cost to increase minimum wages to $25 an hour. This is an ongoing um request once we do this. It's not I the the staff does not recommend that we do this with ARPA funding because it is not going to be available on an ongoing basis. So with that, um any questions or comments on that one, Miss Mayfield? Thank you, Madame May Manager Jones. When we're asking about or when I ask about the increase, are we saying this 25 for again our lowest paid workers for the city of Charlotte based on our area median income. So those that are making 14, 15, 16, 17, getting them to 25 because we were able to get some employees to 23 24 over the last few years. So that is giving them an additional dollar but also giving up to5 to eight dollars for our lowest paid. Who exactly is our target in this? So um let me start off where the target was with the proposed budget. Okay. So the proposed budget um got everybody up to $25 an hour. There may be some with apprenticeships but nobody no $24 excuse me 24. Sorry that I know no there's there's no full-time general fund employee that's making $40,000 a year today. So $24 an hour as of November one of this year would essentially get everybody up to [Music] $49,920. Did I get that right? Okay. That's that's all employees that are 40hour a week um employees. So going to 25 what what happens is it's this thing called compression. So you just can't all of a sudden bump it up to 25 without making adjustments all the way up. So if you approve the proposed budget um as of November of this year, everybody would um be at $24 an hour, 40hour a week employees. And guys, if I'm missing something, just I don't want to be wrong. Um and all what this does is instead of it being 24, it moves it to 25. And with that, the reason why it's almost a million is because you have to make adjustments to deal with compression. The only other thing I'd say about this is we would highly recommend that you don't do one time for this. Excuse me. Yeah. One time for this because one, we would have the first structural imbalance budget since I've been here. And secondly, it's going to cost you that again in FY27, which we haven't budgeted for because we always do a two-year lens with a structurally balanced budget. And again, as I started off earlier, Council Member Mayfield, I'm never going to say, don't say never. I try never to say anything that doesn't support employees. I just want to make sure that the the proposed budget did take another leap forward in terms of getting folks close to $50,000 for our city employees. So, our minimum pay right now is 23. 23. Yes. Okay. Any other questions on this item? Hearing none, let's move to the next one. Yeah, I'm sorry, Miss Amira. Thank you. Not um I don't see the item that I had requested for uh parental leave on here anywhere. Yes, ma'am. If you scroll down, cherry, will you scroll to the bottom, please? And it's answered in your packet on page I read it in the packet. It's on the package, but I don't Okay, I got it. It's all the way down. Mhm. Thank you. Okay. All right. So, our next item, let me get back to it, is um Helping Hands Foundation one-time $300,000, Miss Johnson. So, I'm not sure if the board reached out to all of the council members about this, but if you have any questions, um Miss Charles is prepared to answer questions. Can we bring her up for just a second? Are there questions for Miss Charles? I don't think there are any questions. Well, I have a question. Sorry, Mr. Jones. And maybe Council Member Johnson and I can help you and Miss Charles out. Um, and I think this came up in one of the committee meetings today when we started talking about the ARPA funds maybe in October. Um there were a number of opportunities for opera funds. One was do greater. Another one that we listed was um the um water foundation. I'm sorry Angela if I'm saying it the wrong way. Helping hands. Um another one I think was the Boys and Girls Club which actually applied to be a financial partner and another one was caring which didn't apply. So uh the only reason I say that is as we go through this tonight those entities will still exist and there may be u questions about um funding those and many of these things are one time but what I'm saying is that um helping hands has been something that was discussed as opportunities for one-time funding. Okay. Yes. All right. All right, Miss Charles. Thank you. Yes. Good evening, Mayor, Council Manager, Attorney Fox. I'm Angela Charles, director of Charlotte Water, and I will now take your questions. Bless you. Thank you, Miss Charles. Currently, if someone is behind on their water bill, what are the resources? There are uh many uh resources in the community like crisis or DSS. Um the objective of helping hands is to streamline getting to those resources. And so for example um what we found out in COVID is that many people in our community don't know to go to crisis, don't know to go to DSS. If you live in Davidson, you go to the Ada Jenkins Center. If you live in Matthews and Mint Hill, you go to the Matthews Health Center. And so there are many different agencies that serve people in our community who are in need of water bill assistance. And so in COVID, we made over 19,000 phone calls, 15,000 individual phone calls with the assistance of general services and 311 to figure out um what was going on in our community in terms of why people were delinquent and were they knowledgeable of the different resources. The other thing that happened during that time is we got over $4 million from different agencies in our community different churches, different organizations in addition to the traditional organizations that exist. Charlotte Water serves 1.2 million people. It's time for us to streamline uh the assistance for folks in our community. This is not a new concept. We're the 13th largest water wastewater utility in the country and there are large utilities right now who have a relationship with a nonprofit because people do know to contact Charlotte water if they have problems uh with um paying their bills. So you can go to many of uh web sites and pages of other utilities and there's a link to a nonprofit that is associated uh with the utility and then that nonprofit then can refer that particular individual to a nonprofit and or with helping hands also have funds itself because we also found in those 15,000 phone calls. Not everybody's going to meet the federal guidelines. Okay. Okay. So, that's a that's a long- winded answer, but that's that's the goal. So, it would be a direct partner with Charlotte Water to help. Okay. And so, it's something you would and the agencies in the community. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. So, it's not to replace it's not to replace anything that's existing. It's to facilitate folks in our service area with getting that assistance. And it has to be large enough to cover the customer base of Charlotte Water. So, it's not just city of Charlotte only. It's the eight different jurisdictions that we serve. knowing that there are nonprofits all over our service area. So, it's disjointed. Okay. And I know you weren't expecting me to call you up. Do you have any Well, I got a speech, but I want to do the speech. Well, you were prepared. Thank you. Yes. I can tell you that this is needed in our community. And I feel qualified to say that because we made over 15,000 unique calls. Thank you. In co we led the nation in this. Okay. So see that's the benefit of staying ready so you don't have to get ready. Okay. So she was ready. So question. Do you know how many disconnections there are per month? We'll say about 2,000. Okay. And this would help first. Yes. Streamline that. That's right. About about $130 overdue. About 2,000. We have bought that down since co in co we had over 18,048. I believe it. Well, thank you. Thank you for the work that you did. So, I I can get on my soap box. Don't mean to. But I just want you to understand this is and I have to be careful because I have to, you know, I don't want to give the perception of a conflict of interest. I am exeicio on the board. We created this nonprofit 13 months ago. Uh we had legal counsel from Park Capo. Um you know, we created it, but we knew we had to step away from it. Some of you have heard from some of our board um members and they have taken that vision and they're taking it to the next level for our community. It's going to be transformational. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mayfield. Did you have a comment? Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Miss Charles. So, I want to make sure that I'm understanding it's a new organization that was started. Mhm. Charlotte Water is an enterprise fund, right? There are Go ahead. Charlotte Waters is an enterprise fund. We increase the fees on Charlotte Water annually. We see that in our taxes. We also receive in our bills the ability for individual residents to overpay or offset to help others in community. Are we tracking how much is the funds when people do donate extra though are those funds going being directed through Helping Hands Foundation for them to go back out or are they coming through Charlotte Water? Okay. Uh Council Member Mayfield, we don't have that provision yet, but that's where we want to go. That's the roundup. That's like a roundup program that other utilities have. And um we've contacted our folks in it and our and with our billing system uh to do that because that is a way that other utilities are getting funds to the nonprofit to help folks to help folks in their community. So certainly we want to we want to implement Roundup. Right now we don't have it. So you're in the process and when and if the roundup program is implemented it's going to be through partnership with helping hands foundation. Absolutely. So currently what other government entities is has is the county funding helping hands foundation? Not yet. I I I can tell you that um I have discussed helping hands with the other political bodies that we serve in Meckenberg County, but I think part of I always get asked how much has the city contributed. It's like we're everybody knows we're managed by the city of Charlotte. So part of this is also um you know being leaders um in our in our community so that when we talk to the county and we talk to the other towns um we can say hey we've already uh got the support of the council uh we report to also understand that any funds that the city of Charlotte gives would be for city of Charlotte residents only. So, your point is very well taken. County funds can be used all over our service area. Uh, Matthews funds can be used Matthews. Um, so there's there's opportunity there um with with where we need to go. So, because I'm trying to understand, we have an application process. Mhm. where we actually get the chance to vet whatever organization it is that's seeking funding. And if I'm hearing correctly, and I want to make sure I have clarification, Council Member Johnson, this is a request for a one-time dispersement using the ARPA dollars, that same 5.3 million to allocate 300,000 to Helping Hands Foundation. Is that this request for it to come out of opera as a one time? Because one time isn't going to help based on what I'm hearing from you as the ongoing need. But is your line item 35 for a one-time $300,000 request utilizing the ARPA funds. I want to support the project. I want to provide assistance for res for residents and streamline. If there's a more efficient fund or more efficient way, then I I'd like to discuss it. I mean, if you have another recommendation, Mr. Jones. No, I I think that it's what some of the members of the helping hands board wanted from this council is $300,000 one time from the ARPA funds. So that the request is one time from ARPA dollars. So where I have a challenge again, Charlotte W is an enterprise fund, right? Seemed like there would be a conversation within Charlotte water for you to identify some funds to go towards this. Can can I respond to that? Our funds that we collect are restricted. Okay. And so, and our bond and our bond covenants prescribe um how you um allocate funds that come in into the utility. Now, there was a revenue contract on tank funding that this council passed uh I guess it was in last month. Um, and so that's the only source of funding that is not restricted by our bond covenants. So, Charlotte Water, in other words, cannot we we cannot fund helping hands. It's it's restricted by state statute. Thank you for that clarification. For me, I still would prefer helping hands to actually go through our process in order to be in the system to get vetted. One of the challenges we saw last year is a number of our organizations, it seemed like it took a long time for them to get their checks. And that is because they were brand new. They had not been vetted doing the paperwork and doing everything to get them caught up because again, we're short staff and a lot of these departments. It took six almost eight months for some of the organizations to get the funding because we didn't do the pre-work that would happen if you actually applied. I would prefer for helping hands to apply when it opens up in 202. So, what is that? October when we open up the new cycle and actually go through that vetting process versus looking for one-time funding. When we have no information on an organization that's been around for 13 months, we have other organizations that's been out here doing amazing work on the ground in the community. I still said no to them because you ain't meet the minimum requirements. So to not even have the requirements in place is difficult for me just to ensure your long-term viability. Yes. And and that's something that um that the board has been very intentional with because we understand that helping hands needs to be around 20 years from now. As a matter of fact, the foundation of the count of the Carolinas has stated Jesse Herman, VP of nonprofit services, that Charlotte Water should do a class on setting up a nonprofit. So, we have set this up with a a spirit of professionalism knowing that 20 years from now when we're serving 2.4 4 million people. There needs to be an entity that has a relationship dotted line uh with the utility for water bill assistance. And the mission of the organization too is to also facilitate new connections. So, you're starting out with water, wastewater, uh water bill assistance, but we also have people in our community who are on whales, septic, um it's it's quite expensive. Yeah. To do that. And so that's that's part two of the mission. Thank you, M. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Yeah, Miss Molina. Thank you, Madame Mayor and uh Miss Charles. Thank you for coming and and speaking to us. This is something that um I think all of us can agree with. You know, I I think we're all looking for ways to be good partners with the humans we represent across this city. Um I and I think this sounds like it's operational in nature. it it and not to say that it's it's not important because I I think like I said and I think to uh Councilwoman Mayfield's point if we if we do this one time understanding that this particular entity sounds as though it has a mission that should be in alignment with what we consider on a regular basis I think this would be probably one of those organizations that maybe is entertained during this BGIR conversation um as far as what do we do with with with partners that are, you know, maybe adjacent but not, you know, internal to the city of Charlotte's organization, right? And I mean, not in the same lane of conversation, but to say from a sustainability perspective, how do we make sure that something that is this, you know, institutional to to what we deliver to our residents, it, you know, it's continuity, right? Um, and so not to say that I'm against helping, but I think the one-time help is is not going to be, in my opinion, the best way to meet this challenge. I I really do think that this should be something that we have an additional conversation around um, you know, how how we orient around the help, right? Um, again, it's it's not internal to us and it it's a challenge to to because we do have discretionary funding that we're able to administer, we've put ourselves as policy makers in the lane of being more of of philanthropist, right? Um, and and although there's a lane with the policy and the institution that could be understood that we have, it's not the emphasis of what we do. And so you know our fiduciary conversation is really about the continuity of this institution on an ongoing basis. The 14 different departments, how do we ensure their vibrancy? How do we maintain our assets? How do we you know promote uh economic stability so that we continue to grow and not fail but then in that we have this you know small ability to have a philanthropic you know lens in in how we do that. So I I do think as we do that because again I I have institutions that I would love to support that aren't going to be supported. So I you know I think we all feel that but I like I said I just I I feel confident that we should support but it sounds as though the help is more um it it's more a need for you know an operational you know longevity conversation so that this institution can continue. That's just an assumption based on what I'm hearing so far. Okay. Okay. Mashir. Yes. Thank Thank you, Madam Mayor. Uh Miss Charles, uh thank you for your work on this and for your leadership and your vision. Um certainly making 15,000 calls to understand and assess the need. It's a huge undertaking. Uh, I did receive an email uh a message from board member Mr. Greg Fipps and former council member uh for supporting this ask. Um I I'm I'm going to support this ask because the need is there knowing that you already have done deeper analysis. But I also um agree with the comments that's made by my colleague uh Councilwoman Mayfield uh in terms of our policy which was recently adopted and this doesn't quite fit in to our policy. Uh so it I I wonder does that mean do we open the doors to other organization? Uh but I know this financial partner policy is still uh on our uh is still something that's being worked on and we are going to fine-tune it because this is a perfect example of where we we will need to uh revise a policy because this is an organization that um that would benefit from it but also not just you but other organization that might be in the same category. So, uh, we look forward to having that conversation to Councilwoman Molina's point at the committee level and we we will certainly keep this organization in mind as we are developing the policy um, and try to perfect the policy that we have for financial partners. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Let's go next to our next um item which is item 36 NACP convention. Um I'm beginning to remember that we no longer go double A. It is NACP. I'm very much aware of that and this is about their convention being held in Charlotte. Um, only thing I want to add, uh, mayor and council, and this is a great opportunity to partner with Meckllinburgg County. They have already put it on their agenda because they say whatever the city would do, we will match. And so, I just think once again, uh, return on our investment is 200,000, but they are projected to spend about $16 million in revenue in our city. And so, once again, a great opportunity. And we do have the two uh, blue ribbon co-chairs in our presence. uh two corporate well-known icons uh Mr. Lenny Springs a retired Wells Fargo executive and uh uh a senior VP at Wells Fargo, Miss Gi Dixon. And so council, I will hope that we will move forward and continue to sell our city. So this convention that's upcoming um this specific ask is for that. Yeah. J uh July 12th through the 16th. So is this once from tourism or from the ARPA bucket? From the ARPA bucket. Yes. Okay. So would this convention bring visitors to our city? Yes. Uh they're projecting youthwise with the AXO between 500 and 600 youth across the country and adults about 12 to 14,000. So just a great way. So we are looking at significant economic impact $16 million which is one of the criterias for our tourism dollars. Um Mr. Jones would would this something qualify for tourism bucket? I know we have done that for other festivals um that bring tourism. So, would would this qualify um for tourism tourism ask? And I can't believe Matt has left the building. Oh, there he is, Matt. Sorry about that. Thank you, Council Member Merch, for the question. It's certainly a project that I think that we could certainly look at. Typically, we work with the CRVA because they do have programs and procedures as far as recruiting big events. Um, so I definitely think it could be something that we could work with the CRVA to to make sure it sort of fits within sort of their bucket and look at the convention center fund because this would be a convention. So, it would be something that's potentially eligible for that. Could also be something depending on how the council wants to look at it. Sort of do the ARPA as a back stop while we explore the convention center fund as well. Okay. Yeah, I I think that's fair. Uh is for us to look at no the convention center fund. And if not, I think Miss Hashmir that um there might be I I think the question is that this is coming up in the next couple of weeks, right? And I think that um and we got the county who's voting, got the county that's going to support and it will mean much to have that support for the from the county and the city. That's right. And this is an important conference um yes um in our community and in the city. Um, I think that if you can look at who's going to be here and the number of faith-based housing, I mean, fa faith-based folks and people that um are consistently looking at equity and inclusion and so I believe it is of value, but I think that I would really want to have the money out there. If it you can get a reimbursement from the CRVA later, that would be I think that's what Matt s Matt what Matt suggested is that we can look at it. If it's not then ARPA would be the option, right? Um, and did I understand that correctly, Matt? So, what I'd say is that it's it's a possible use of the the services. I know I think CM Graham may want to speak to this as well. I think it's I think the the timing of this and sort of doing the due diligence to make sure cuz one of the things that becomes a more challenge with these is making sure where our money is actually going and if we don't have time to develop the contracts and sort of tracking procedures that can become quite challenging on actually utilizing the hospitality funds because their uses are so restricted um based on a a timing and being expedient that the ARPA funds would likely be better for for this particular project. But as a going forward basis, you know, we always work with the CRVA on their recruitment of these types of events. Um, Mayor Pro Tim, thank you. Thank you, Madame Mayor. And I do and thank you for that um yeah, that uh understanding there. This is a time-sensitive issue. Um, but what I what I'd like to say is, you know, we have these packets at our um at our desk here. And if you just go to the second page here where it talks about the numbers, just let alone for $200,000 to be matched by the county to have the NAACP convention here is the economic impact of $16.7 million. Even if you took a haircut off of that, still well over $10 million. Um, a little over 5,000 in-person attendees. And what's really interesting to me is this this notion around the live streaming and the social media impressions which all will say Charlotte North Carolina in in a run marketing teams before and spend money on on ads and impressions for 200k. You could not get this amount of impressions and eyeballs for $200,000. So, not only would it be fantastic for opportunity for our city to host the convention and to work intergovernmentally with the uh county commissioners to provide this ask. It's a tremendous spotlight on the city of Charlotte for several days uh throughout the summer. So, I I think this is a no-brainer. Falls right into the one-time spend as well as we're only asking ARPA to be one time and not ongoing. So, um I I I definitely would support this particular um ask, Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um I I do see this as as a a no-brainer. Um I I do believe we ought to keep it simple, right, and and make the one-time allocation from ARPO. It'll probably be the only item that I will support tonight coming from that fund because again I do believe we need to have a rainy day fund with with those dollars for sure and I don't think we ought to extinguish it. I I respect council member Mayfield uh while I understand her earlier vote in terms of putting parameters around what we're doing and I think we will be best served to um to be consistent with that notwithstanding your vote. I get what you were saying. Uh yeah, but but I think we ought to do this one and um it'll be the only one that I'll be voting on tonight. Go ahead and move on. We have two items that were submitted by our newest colleague. Um item 37 and 38 adding funding for roof above and adding funding for dream key partners. Um, it is no question. I just wanted to have a real conversation and acknowledge we have 1.3 million already allocated to Dream Key. I love Dream Key. I also love Laurel Street as well as several other organizations that we have in this city. Charlotte Meckllinburgg Housing Partnership now in Livian. We are a pass through basically for the funds that have come through. Dream Key is the only organization that we have a designated dollar amount allocated. Plus, you can go through the process to receive housing trust funds and we will still fund a project as well. Plus, have a designated grant line item. We have to have that can be a conversation down the road, but they are our only development partner where we in essence have three different designated line items to them. We do not offer that to Laurel Street. We do not offer that to Crosslin or to any of our other workforce housing development partners. We do not offer that to historic West End or any of our organizations that have created a trust that have created CDC's. We do not offer a designated funding line item for you plus money for grants plus tell you that you can apply for housing trust funds and still potentially get funded. I support the 1.3 million because they do great work and they are one of our greatest partners, but they are not our only partner. Not to mention our down payment assistance program, which they have an amazing program to get you ready for home ownership. But I need us to have a real conversation that this is the only partner where we have designated dollars that are in essence allocated to them. And none of our other development partners have that same opportunity for us to have money that is designated for them to tap into. All right, Mr. Driggs. So, uh, I I have an issue with the one-time description. Just because we're talking about doing it only once doesn't mean it's actually one time. One time means I want to buy a bus. Will you help me out? And we buy the bus or whatever. But if this is just operating support and it doesn't have a unique non-recurring purpose, then that's not one time. And just because we only intend to do it once doesn't mean so so I have an issue with that from ARPA funds and uh I would love to see us preserve more of the ARPA funds for strategic use in genuine non-recurring situations instead of putting it into uses that are likely to be the same next year. Thank you Mr. Peacock. Um, well, I would just simply say that the test of a good decision is the test of time, Madame Mayor. And I've noticed that Dreamkeep Partners, uh, in my 14 years prior to being here have continued to do just that. Um, on the nominal side, again, I'm trying to shore up what I saw from the committee and what I saw at the committee. I know that it wasn't set up in a manner in which it was alphabetically or scored above. I just didn't see a whole lot of equity in how we were distributing those funds. I felt like we should start with housing first, start with services and other things. And again, it just didn't have parity for me. I share my colleague Mr. Driggs comments as it relates to uh to being one time. I think that one-time label here is probably being broadly used if I'm if I'm just guessing what the committee worked on today. So, notice the Republicans said equity. Just uh Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I am equitable. That is a very good comment. Okay, that's why I'm here. That's going to be That's right. Mayor Pro Tim before this dissolves, you know. All right. What I'm hearing from what I'm hearing from my colleagues on my left is she she's very supportive of this organization. So much so that she wants to fund $159,000. Going once, going twice. Are you ready to support this? I'm a fine. So, we have one no. Let's roll. Let's keep moving. I think I've got six. Mr. P. Mr. I think there's somebody that's trying to rescue you here. Okay. Is that how they did it back in the day? It was it was an auction. I see. And it was the Mayor McCroy and they were they were auctioneers. Really? We'll have to we'll have to get the mayor one of those cowboy hats so she can be the the auctioneer. But um but but seriously, I I appreciate the the comments from um all of my colleagues on this particular um issue. I do agree uh that Dream Key partner, they're both wonderful partners. They do phenomenal work. Um I I do also firmly believe that we support uh Dream Key partners in a variety of different ways. Miss Mayfield, um we one would could never look at the city in Charlotte and say we don't support Dream Key Partners in the work that they do because they're integral their work's integral to our growing city. Um and I the same can be said about roof above tremendous work and we support them and we will continue to support them on this particular issue. These are both uh financial partners that went through a process that was established and out the outcome of that process is what we saw come out of the committee. Now I I totally I totally within your right Mr. peacock to add add them here because we're we were adding people but I I I believe that we have addressed both roof above and and dream key and I would not support the these additional funds for these two entities. Having said that, I in no way, shape, or form want to um color my comments as not supporting th these two entities because I fully support them and the work they do and I think we show up with our purses and and manifest that through support throughout the year. So, thank you, Madam Mayor. Molina. Um, thank you so much, Madam Mayor. And actually mine is totally unrelated although I I guess I'll go ahead and add an addendum and say look I need an addendum just for a moment just for a second to say I echo the sentiments of the mayor pro Tim and that you know again one time uh ARPA related is one total thing we have actually had a full scope conversation around roof above dream and key partners they do great work um but it's just not a one-time implementation and so for that I'll I'll rest that there but also Uh, madame mayor, just for a point of clar clarifications, we have a member that was actually present in our meeting and she has now left. And so for voting purposes, I would like to make sure that we clarify with our attorney clearly what that means as we go through this exercise so that there's no Yes. I mean, I know, but we've had some issues. So, I just again, she supported me before she left. Peacock. I already counted them all. Okay. Okay. Unbelievable, guys. We got We got three. You guys, if we can't do contracts unless we get this thing done tonight. Okay. I I just want to make sure that we add that in so that you know for reporting purposes or anyone who is on the outside looking in where we are and what that means. So, uh, Mr. Attorney, will you humor me? Just quickly, as I've stated before, uh 1687 uh- 75 of the Northcloud Jones statutes is pretty clear when a member of the board who is present and leaves without being excused, that members vote is counted in the affirmative. So, okay, thank you. All right, Miss, do you need four more people to leave? I think you guys are working just fine. This is going to work. I've been here. This is getting good. Okay, I'm going to take my bio break in five minutes. Okay, just real quick, um, while we are at this, I I just want to reaffirm our commitment to roof above and dream key partners. Uh, because we have members from organizations in the room in the first line item that was approved 1.2 $2 million additional funding. Roof above was allocated 100,000 and Dream Key Partners was allocated $231,000. Uh so the committee made a decision because we have limited funding uh but we wanted to show our commitment to these uh organizations that do great work. Um so I will be continuing to support what was approved by the committee. Um however they can certainly uh bring in additional requests for housing whether it's whether it be different housing programs that we have whether it's new development Noah and so on. So there is obviously an opportunity for both of these organizations to apply for additional housing dollars that is specific to a project which I would which I would um be willing to review and support if it meets our criteria. But at this point for the operation dollars I think we have already made our commitment uh and shown that in our first line item. That's all I have. Thank you. Okay, Miss Johnson. Okay, Council Member Peacock, I just want you to know that I will be supporting these organizations with you. Okay, so remember that. Okay. No, I and that's because I, you know, I work in the the field. I have a peer support organization. We rely on roof above and we rely on Dream Key and organizations like that. We know we have I don't know if it's 16,000 or 40,000 or whatever that deficit is for affordable housing. people are hurting and organizations like these really step up when needed. So, I will be supporting these organizations. Thank you. All right. Thank you everyone for taking the time to go through all of this information so that we can make a result or have our votes now. So, this is the way that I hope that um Marie will help us and Hannah will help us. I've got them numbered by the way that we went through this um board. And so I'm just going to um say I'm going to ask for a motion. Mayor, before we get to the motion, may I ask a clarifying question on Yes, please. Thank you, manager Jones. So, I didn't put it up here and we It looks like we're at 4,63. But here's the question I have. We started myself, you myself, staff members, different members have had conversations with Mr. William McNeely regarding do greater. There was a presentation to council last year, November, December sometime, but it did not have a dollar amount. City staff throughout 24 and parts of 25 repeatedly have during presentations in community and different events highlighted the work that do greater has done. We the conversations were them expanding into Uptown and taking the training and the programming that they started over on the west side in partnership with Shallow Institutional Baptist Church and expanding that. They got their corporate dollars and other funding and there was a understanding of support from the city and then conversations stopped. We've all received quite a few emails. I have responded to some of them because I was also under the impression that this is a economic development partnership. This wasn't just a financial partner. This was uh economic development as well as education partnership where we were having conversations of working together through the city. Somewhere that conversation changed. has this turned into something that needs to be on the financial partner list in order for them to get the funding in order for them to move forward because I believe in the conversations they were having some of the corporate funding was also in line with city support based off of communications that were happening in 2324. Sure. Thank you, Council Member Mayfield. Um so I believe what occurred over the course of the last year were um conversations just as you said um with $750,000 come coming from the city 750,000 coming from the county and the rest being um raised I don't know where that is as of this day but it was very consistent with what we were doing at that time it hit workforce development it hit training and even vacant office space. So, I don't see it as anything that's inconsistent with any of the discussions we've had along those lines. I I don't know um where the other fundraising has come would come from, but as I mentioned earlier, there was one of a handful of um opportunities that we mentioned last year and I do believe it should stay in play at at some level. So just for clarification because I think for myself where some of this was lost in translation is I thought we had already did this last year. So we've been having this conversation now for eight plus months. So now that we're in the budget cycle, we only had past tense 5.3 in theory to work with. If this is correct, Well, that doesn't even make sense saying that the remaining ARPA is 4,63. That still hasn't been updated based off of everything we talked, which is which is what I was hoping is that we were doing a running real time as we were talking about these numbers to see exactly what it is that we're looking at having available once we take out that million237 because we've already allocated that to know exactly where we are. I don't I didn't interpret the conversation with do greater and support of do greater as a one-time ARPA deal. I really thought the conversations were a economic development conversation. But if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying the conversation is still at play, but they need commitments and need to move forward yesterday. and we city have been the hold up with this conversation because this conversation's been happening for a while. So are you saying that in order for us to move the conversation forward I need to do a recommendation now of another ad which I don't like the idea or you're saying we have a opportunity to really move this conversation forward through another funding source. I I would say both. I would like some direction from the council. So what do I mean by that? There's workforce development funds, right? There's funds and corridors. So there's a combination of being able to pull some together. I just have not gotten the nod from the council. So because council hasn't so we got a presentation, but that presentation didn't give didn't ask us anything from last year. Correct. So for clarification for those of us that are here in order to have a real conversation around do greater which does touch economic development workforce education it touches at least four if not five of our key areas. We have to then have a real conversation like within the next few weeks as I'm having a conversation with the manager. We got to have a conversation within the next few weeks before we go out for July when we're off for a month. Absolutely. So, mayor, does that mean we have to have a recommendation to get cuz we got to have this conversation yesterday, which is the next three Mondays in order for us to make a clear decision and give staff a chance to come back and say, "Here is where we could support it." I just want to make sure we're on the same page and for clarity. Council member Graham is our economic development chair. Did you have Yeah, I I just whispered to the man. I'm sorry. Send it to committee and we'll scrub it up and make a recommendation. Um I think that should be workforce development, small business. It fits a lot of buckets quarters. It does. And so send it to committee. We'll scrub it up and have a conversation with you as well as do greater. I think there he was here I think. So if possibly then if we need a recommendation. So I'm not going to add it to this process because I want to keep this process. We'll go to the committee. But if we can get it recommended so that we can have it and I think it would be helpful for all of us to have as much wisdom because that's that's a long time ago and there probably some people that don't really ever, you know, have not experienced and and because I was with it a little longer, I just want to make sure that we are as transparent and as accountable as we possibly can be. So thank you, Madame Mayor, Mr. Manager. Miss Molina, this is our last question. Okay. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much, Madame Mayor. Mine is just clarification. Um, so I for for Charlotte Museum of History, just to be clear, right? Is there a possibility for us to look at another avenue for funding this this request outside of ARPA? Just to make sure before we vote so that my colleagues know where we are. I'm sorry. Yes. Again, going back to the infusion fund which is over but their funds still remaining where the private sector over fund raise the$ 18 million or whatever the number was 62 but yes um and I'm willing to have that conversation to see if there's something we could pull out of that residual amount for this purpose. So I just for my colleagues purpose. So if we don't and and for the public and for consumption so that I don't get eat up on Twitter, please uh we are looking at the possibility of this funding coming from another avenue that is specific to arts if we do not allocate ARPA dollars tonight. Is that absolutely if you can give me a little leeway that a portion of this and just like we talked about do greater is there an opportunity to cobble together enough to to meet this request? And now you know Mr. Jones said I the first item on here was saying $350,000. Now that I think is the question that it it may not be $350,000. Is that the question that you're asking? Well, no. I'm I'm just saying so for for voting purposes, if we vote ARPA, then we don't look at this funding, right? Because then we're allocating it from ARPA. But if there are other funds that are available and specific to this particular type of funding, you know, mechanism, then if we can look at that, okay, I think it would be a better way for us to, you know, and and and we did, you know, I know that there was a total ask of 750, Miss White Prima. We did the best we could. I know you watching. Um I know you're watching Prima. Um but you know the 350 if we can get that from another avenue, right? And and there's a possibility a strong possibility and that's great. Um and it and it won't come from ARPA tonight. And I also um well we'll go ahead. So um so Miss Ameir, is everyone ready to begin to vote? All right. So the first the first item is the Charlotte History Museum for a decision to be made somewhere around 350,000 um somehow after a conversation with the manager um to say that there will be some funding in that area. So yes, can we clarify that it's saying yes means we're g are we giving him permission to look for that funding? Yes. Okay, good. Okay. Yes, we are. So, not necessarily funding to allocate not to allocate the funding, but it will be in the Wait a minute. I want to make sure Yeah, we got to make sure we're one and sorry if we can do this when we are reviewing these items and people vote on them, they are going to go into the manager's final board um final budget for council to vote on next week and that's where we'll end. So I think what I want to make sure is that when we each person each council member is voting that you are recorded for your vote and as well you we're recording the team is going to record you for the total group v vote by everyone. So just to make sure we're clear if we say yes we're authorizing him to look into the other funding mechanism as well. This is just giving him permission to say yes or is this saying yes to ARPA funding? I need to make sure that we're clear. What What do you need from me, Mr. Manager? I think you made it very clear just now whether or not this is from this bucket or from some other place. Can I make a motion then? We're we're going to make motions on every one of these and I think there are about 30 of them. So, we'll have a lot of time for motions. So, all right. So, we have um a motion on do I I need a motion on the floor for the Charlotte Museum of History, $350,000 to be reviewed by the city manager and reported back to but but in this year's budget, but reported back as we go into the next budget session. I mean, not the next budget session, as soon as we're back from um our break. and then he would have the opportunity to have this already settled in. Madame Mayor, will you accept a friendly amendment? So, I would amend that to say to authorize the manager to seek the funding through um the arts funding that he described in this conversation for budgetary purposes. Um you know, for that amount to have our colleagues authorize him to see seek that funding available. have to come back to council again, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay, we have a motion, Miss Mayfield. Thank you. I'm waiting for staff to update the language so that we're very clear cuz right now I'm not voting to allocate 350. What we are voting on is for the manager to seek other funding sources. That's okay. That's what we voting on. I think we're getting staff support over there. So manager to review funding sources. So uh alternative funding sources. Am I correct? Okay. So Mr. Jones, if you do not find alternative source, what what happens? It doesn't get funded. Okay. Got it. All right. Other than Okay. other than ARPA dollars. But we do have some more money somewhere. Sick funding source. Okay. So we other than ARPA I just want to make sure. Okay, that's good. All right. Okay. So this is our first one. We're moving along. So we have a motion. Is there a second to the We have We need a motion. And we have Who made the motion? Molina and Johnson for the second. Okay. All right. All in favor, please raise your hand. Um, anyone opposed? Okay, Mr. Graham. Thank you very much. And Brown. And Miss Brown. Thank you. All right. The next item is the allocating fund for the three-year period to support city staff. It's one time. Um, do we have a motion? Oh, yeah. Yes, we have a motion. Do we have a second? So moved. Did I need to see the motion or you just capturing that as the motion? We're waiting for them to type it in so that we can make sure everybody sees the same thing. And so that's where it is. Do I need to state a motion or we just allocate funding over three-year periods to support city staff supportive services one time 1,00 1,500,000? I have a question. So move. All right. There's a question here. So we have the motion. She made a motion and she Brown there was a motion and Miss Brown seconded the motion. So yes, so for this this is our source correct and supportive services. Could you elaborate on that? Does this include healthc care insurance premium that the firefighters and that had requested? We discussed we discussed everything. It's time to explain. went through all. So the answer to my recommendation to my motion actually what the manager clarified is by law it cannot necessarily be used. It can't I can't separate it for first responders for insurance purposes. This is going back to the original request based off of what we learned three Mondays ago that through Sheila Simpson's office at HR, we started a pilot program where we had employees that needed assistance, whether it was for groceries, bills, whatever. This is a request of 1.5 million to last over a three-year period to help if we have employees of the city of Charlotte that run into financial challenges that have and they already have a application and identification process and Miss Schiller is here if we want to have her share a little bit more if she can about the program. But it's a program specifically to help our city of Charlotte employees that are facing financial challenges, but not for the insurance piece because there's legal ramifications through the North Carolina General Assembly and Insurance Commission that we can't do that. Okay. Okay. So, we have a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hands. One, two, three, four, five. actual. Okay, madame mayor, just point of clarification, we have to make sure that we include um Watlington Lington as in the count as a yes for all of her vote would count as I just want to make sure. So, Watlington, I can't hear. Excuse me. I really just, you know, I I I really need to be able to hear. We're having a discussion with the attorney over the absence of Miss Watlington. On the motion that was made by Miss Mayfield, seconded by Miss Brown, the vote was recorded as five in favor. Miss Walton is has left the meeting and was not excused. Her vote would count in the affirmative. And so that's six votes. Six votes. Okay. All right. I am going to get to the notes. No, you didn't have enough. Let me check this one off. All right. Who all of those who oppose? Anyone opposing? One, two, three people in opposition. Four. Four. One, two, Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Graham. I could not see you. Okay. And five. Five. Oh, you're post. All right. So, then we have So, the next item is um five and five and county. Oh, that's right. County. Okay. Yeah. and and for the staff when you record the vote the the the vote I mean the actual vote should include an affirmative vote added for all matters for Miss Wallin's absence. Oh, okay. Okay. So, the next item is the how much would a request for proposals in the $1 million to ensure small business utilization targets are met on BA's stadium? Okay. Okay. Do we have a motion? So move. We have a second. Second. We have a second. All right. I thought this was referred to the committee. What? Okay. I have my hand. All right. Mayor Pro Tim, I just have a question for the city manager. City manager, you mentioned that line item 33 would be one that would uh make your your budget unbalanced. Are any of these other line items would any of these other line items make your budget unbalanced? So uh 34 would make it unbalanced. $25. Okay. But outside of that, you're good. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, we're still back on the um 32. All right. Do I do I have a motion and a second? All in favor, please raise your hand. One, two, and three. Four with Oh, yeah. Three. Wling and brown. No, not me. One, two, three, and Watlington makes four. Okay, so that fails. No, the nose. All right, the nose. All oppose. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. All right, thank you everyone. Okay, let's go to the next one. I believe that is that was deleted. What can I ask for question? I'm sorry. Question about Yeah. So, how was that deleted? Was um Mayfield the only one that recommended that the first time? Yeah. Well, actually, I did too. You did? Yeah. So, you're okay with deleting it? No, I I didn't say that. So, so how do we just get to delete it? Is it Yeah. Why is it deleted? Can we put that back on there and we vote? Well, Miss Mayfield, I think I initially re Sorry, Madame Mayor. I initially proposed it. I believe there were a couple of other council members whose names were also on it for my proposal. After speaking with the manager and learning where we have legal challenges and we are not able to legally identify just support for our first responders and have money set aside just for health care. I removed mine. So that's how the delete got up there. So we could just remove my name off of it for those who still want to continue that conversation. I just removed my name off of it. Okay. If I can finish it right there. This is all of us. If if Yeah, if we could just leave that on there and then if we um if we move it forward and then we we have a week to to figure out if there's something else that can be added or something else we can do or we can vote on it today, but I didn't want it removed either. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So, we got I'm not quite sure what's what the what is the motion. Mr. Jones says his ends up hand up. We would have to vote on this because you have three other council members who if you if you guys will slide back to the first column. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, Mayfield removed her name from it. That's what she was saying. Okay. So, Mr. Jones. So, let's just go through and vote it like everything else. Yeah, Mr. Jones hands it up. So, I'd like to make sure we understand because we're going to put the budget document together. It's going to be the option I believe that's before you is $250 for every person that's in the public safety pay plan that has insurance. It was and it's been updated based on um further discussions with legal around with HR and legal. It's for everybody in the public safety pay plan. So because we can't again whether you have insurance or not, if you're in the public safety pay plan, you're going to get 250 bucks. That's what this you're voting on. And that wasn't addressing my original right intent. Yes. So if I recall this from budget adjustment meeting, we did not discuss 250 for public safety pay plan. So motion that I remember supporting is when we had a couple of firefighters speak at public hearing. They expressed concerns around rising cost of health care benefit uh which was sign well the cost for this year is significantly higher than previous year. So they requested onetime ARPA dollars to assist with this health care cost rising health care cost. Um I I don't know how this $250 came about. If I may I can help with that. Thank you. So yes, we definitely heard the intent, but then looking with legal and HR, we discovered that you we're healthc care self-insured, you can't carve out different subsets of your population. So we proposed something that maybe could get towards what your intent was to because we could give a lump sum bonus to those people. We can't directly offset health care costs. So do I know a couple of well back when I had first started uh in 2018 we approved sliding scale healthcare premium benefit. So your insure healthcare insurance cost is above certain percentage you'll pay that sliding scale premium would with would this No ma'am this does not impact the offerings in the healthcare. Okay. All right. That's all right. Thank you. Well, I'm not quite sure. All right, let's go ahead on the item um for review healthc care benefit costs for police and fire grant options. Um all in favor is I need a motion. Okay. No, you have I thought we had a motion. No, we didn't. No. Okay. Is there a motion for this item? Move to deny. Move to deny. did. So, who said that? Me. Oh, thank you. Okay. Second. All right. And a second from Mr. Driggs. All in favor of the motion to deny, please raise your hands. One two three four five. Six. That's six. Okay. Thank you. All right. doesn't. So the next item is Oh, who's who did not who was not supportive? I mean, who who wanted to support it? Raise your hand. Who? So, one, two, three, four. Five. Five. Okay. All right. So, let's go to now our um It was five of us. It was five of us. You want to do it again? Cuz it was six of y'all. It was five. It was five of us and six of y'all. It was six. and Walton's vote counts in the affirmative. Now, the affirmative uh So, she's considered yes. So, the she's considered yes to the motion to deny to my mot. Oh, you're okay. Right. That's it was a denial and then Okay. She's considered to motion. Okay. So, first one didn't get the missing person. The next I know you were jumping in there pretty quickly. So, our next one is the um I believe this is the one that was an ongoing issue. I'm sorry, ma'am. Just so so how Marie, how are you going to register that? No no but so there five five. Got it. Yeah. Okay. I'm with you on that, but we're all right. So, I think we got that one. All right. So the next one is I think the question was okay it understand cost to increase minimum wage to $25 an hour ongoing and so do we have a motion on that to move it to $25. So move move to approve move to approve. We have a second. Who made the second? Um council member Brown approve motioned that I'm seconded. Okay. All right. Um, any other comments about it? Okay. All in favor, please raise your hands. One, two, three, four, five. Makes Watlington. All opposed. Don't want to pay. One, two, three, four, five, six. I have six. Well, you got six with Wallace, right? No, I did. I already counted her in the positive. Yeah, we already counted her. Okay. No, we Can we just clarify something? Yeah, they got it. Did you Did you say It's crazy. Mr. Jones, did you say that uh paying $25 an hour the the the budget would not balance with that? Okay. All right. We're going to be structured. Well, that that let's clarify that. That's why the no is for me. Yeah. Okay. The next item is um helping hands, but you'll make an exception to helping hands. Do I have a motion in favor of helping hands? So move. All right, we have Please raise your hand so I can see. One, two, three, four, five with Miss Watlington will be six. Wington be six, right? No, no, that's No. One, two, three, four, five. Wington. and Watlington is six. Okay, there we go. All right, so that passes um NACP. Oh, all right. Oh, those that are opposed. Everybody else. All right, so do the math. We have one, two, three. You got those guys? Oh, they got to see their hands. This is Yeah, everybody got that? Molina and everyone else. Okay, thank you. So, the la the next one is the NAACP funding. So move. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this hearing? No discussion. All in favor? Oh my gosh. This might be the I'm shocked. [Laughter] This is This is like, oh my god. It's that equity, right? Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Okay. Um the next ones are um items 38 and 39. Do you mind if I um put them all together? Um Mr. Peacock, I'm sorry. Yeah, you put it both together. Yeah. Put We're talking about 37 and 38. And those are dream key and roof above um to go back and increase their funding. May I have a motion to approve? Some moved. We have one. Second. All right. And a second from Mr. Peacock. All in favor, please raise your hands. One, two. Got two hands, Ed. Two hands. Going like this. Victoria name of the people. He's got Victoria. So that's three, four. All right. So, um, all of you oppose. Okay. One, two, three. Four or five. I thought I said, but that that's that's the end. Can we see who who who supported it again? All right. The support folks for it. Miss Johnson, Mr. Peacock. Yes. And Miss and Mayor Proim. No, not me. No, not you. Who was it? Watlington. Sorry. Still only four. I just had my hand up. Yeah. Four. Okay. Oh, yeah. I think that is the conclusion. How about the dream? That together. It was a joint vote. That was the problem. You put the two together. separate us. Okay, they were included in that one motion. So, and madame mayor, all right, wait a minute before we go any further. I mean, we need to take this very seriously because this is going to be what the staff will be working on, the manager will be working on to complete this for the budget. Um, and don't hate me everybody. Can we keep scrolling because you have more items on here that I want to make sure that someone doesn't say that we've missed an item. All right. So, the additional items reviewed in the information packet. I just want to make sure that are there any votes because a lot of it says review, but clearly the first one is funding support of the people's budget. The review of resources for 911. I just want to make sure we're not missing something. So, all that if you miss if you are wanting to have something as a part of a discussion. Um let's go around and make sure I'll start with Miss Lana Mayfield. Let's go for it. Which do you will you tell which one? mine. The mine was that staff was supposed to bring back, excuse me, the the conversation regarding the pay grades for our liaison staff and it still goes back to the conversation, but at the end of the day, we just voted whether or not we're going to give employees a raise and we said that below the budget. Okay. I have challenges with that because for clarification if we were to move with the proposal two to three% that includes our highest paid and our lowest paid would be in that category. Uh you mean the proposed budget right? So for the um operating folks it was 4% and but for our salaried salaries three but that's just a that's just what we put into every department's budget which is an average of 3% up to 3%. Okay. An average because I still would love of which I asked it at the very beginning. If not now, will you look into over the next few months to see? Sure. Paritywise what we can do to make sure that our employees don't need to go to HR for assistance. All right. I don't believe that that requires a motion or or any action by the council. All right. Miss Brown. Yes. I was just saying that we've already went through the people's budget and I made it clear for the record that I was supporting, but we went through pages 3 through 8 and we realized that some of the partners that we were supporting did not apply. So, it made it difficult for us to try to push it through. So, I yield back to you, mayor. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Miss Brown. Miss Johnson. Thank you. I wanted to ask I wanted to ask about uh council member Mayfield's recommendation the constituent services paygrade last year did we approve uh each was there a change to the OCS structure in last year's budget? No, we had another person. We had another person. Did we ever hire that other person? Okay. Not It wasn't Alexis, was it? Yeah. Yes, it was. That's who that person was. Yeah, she's had a couple of assignments. Well, I know Alexis is here, but I thought there was somebody else besides Alexis or another structure. Okay. And then also, just to clarify that we did support giving city staff a raise to $24 an hour instead of 25. Correct. Yes. Yeah. That's the minimum. Okay. So, it's not that those of us who didn't support the $25 didn't support a raise. We support a raise. We just didn't support an imbalanced budget. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay, Miss Melena. Well, I was I didn't know. Are we If we're going in order, but absolutely we can talk about 911. We have to do something. Um we've been talking about this for 5 years. I can remember being in your office precoid, Mr. Jones, and having a video of of a 911 call on hold. I just think that that's unacceptable. So, I and I know that there's a plan and we're hiring in August, but I think that that's dangerous. Um, Council Member Mitchell and I talked about it, right? He was on hold for 17 minutes. So, we have to do something immediately. Thank you. Okay. M, what would that be? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you So, so, so do you have any suggestions or what can we do? Uh so the plan uh council member Johnson is I think there like 23 vacancies. There is a couple of tranches of um staff that are coming in and I think by August Marie help me out. We'll be as close. Yes sir. According to um police and their division they feel like um those will be filled by August and then they'll have some more in the hopper for attrition as well. But this has been a ongoing problem. So if we're hiring, is this something we're doing differently this year or do we always have vacancies or do we need to look at the hiring practice or the structure or departments or or something? I think it's two pieces. Uh, Council Member Johnson. One, when this came to our attention maybe three years ago, we did a lot of different things around um compensation. Okay. So, not to say that we're perfect with it, but clearly it has helped because by August we feel that we will be fully staffed and I'll tell you I'll make and I will continue to report back to this body about the progress we're making in terms of filling those positions. Thank you. Because the report we got we I think we met the goals 70% of the time. Um, I asked for the KPIs and it was I think 70% we were meeting the goals. I imagine our our our goals or aspiration is to meet it more than 70%. Yes, ma'am. It's 90 and we're and we're trending in the right direction, but you're right, we're still in the 70s. Okay. So, yeah, if we could get an update monthly and I don't know if we can roll some of those calls to 311. I know 911 operators do have specialized training, but I don't and I and I think when there's an overflow and if there's more than 3 minutes hold, then it rolls over to 311. No, ma'am. It would run roll over to to medic or the other. Yeah. So, I think 3 minutes is a long time. So, if we could look at a shorter uh period of time for rollover, I mean, I don't want to get too far in the weeds in the operations, but from a public safety perspective, I don't think anyone should call 911 and be on hold. Thank you. Thank you. I have Hold on. Thank you, Miss Johnson. I will say that um you know, they they track that on national metrics as well. So, how other metropolitan areas are doing. Okay, I have Miss Molina's hand. U, thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. Um, so what I brought up was it was with reference to an anonymous email that we received and I think it was widely distributed um with regards to the pay of our salaried employees um and and making sure that we were competitive with our salaried employees as you know in the same way that we are with our hourly employees. Um and and it was really just to review and and this isn't like an ARPA funding request. It really was. I don't and I don't know if we can make that adjustment in um this particular ask and and like council member Johnson, I think I want to be clear in saying as much as I would love to say we should all have our you know um we should all have our um Okay, I'm sorry. I lost my train of thought. Um, we should all have our our our staff members making at least $25 an hour. I think we would all say that, but again, there is a raise. There is $24 an hour. Not to say that that's good enough, but you know, I know that 25 was on the board and we definitely got to clarify that that didn't mean that we weren't saying that the $24 was merited. It's just that the 25 would mess up the budget. Clarify that. But then to also say that um like I said to make sure that we are um being just as competitive with our salaried employees um to maintain you know the pipeline of leadership that we have and the talent that we have. I think that's important to make sure that um we're competitive, right? And and that we're I I I think it's important I know we don't want to drag it out, but I think it's important to look at our employees almost as three different units. One is public safety that uh never ever stopped working during COVID, right? I mean, they had to come to the office every day. same with hourly hourly, you know, whether it's solid waste services, you know, more and then salary had so much more flexibility, hybrid work schedules. Um, and so as a an organization, we understood the differences and there were some tradeoffs. And so while the 3% is um just an average, it it's really 0 to six. So there are some salaried employees that can make 6%. So I just want to make sure when we talk about this whether we're if we if we zero it in on public safety you're going to have one story if you zero it in on hourly. So but together we think that we put together a package over the years for salary that that flexibility is what they wanted almost as much as anything else. No that that's really good Mr. Manager. Thank you for clarifying that because I don't you know that wasn't articulated. So that's that's good to know and that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. So, we've discussed line item 48 with Miss Brown, 49 with Miss Johnson, and we just we discussed 51 with Mayfield, 52 with Molina. Mr. Mitchell, we jumped over yours at 50. Did you want to make comments? Yes. Uh, Mayor Proim, thank you. and and this go inside the presentation we we received today in jobs and economic development committee when we talked about uh corridors opportunities and focus on our small businesses and so the institute just uh landed a new head uh my new office here that council member Mayfield and mayor pro Tim and I attended so I think this would be a great opportunity to reach out to them uh to partner and leverage state funding because we still here in our small in our corridors small business need capital. So I still like for us to talk about how can we leverage to institute funding and capital for our small business as well as inexpens inexpensive space when it come to some of our small business in the corridors because they are looking for space. So city manager if you could bring something back on those two fronts. I I think that's great uh council Mitchell and we can do it one of two ways. It can be a part of the referral with do greater. Okay. or or we could, you know, try to bring back some information. But I think the more that we can get some of these asked, right, into committee, right, so that we can get some guidance. I I think we won't we can be faster. Uh, my chair, can can we tee this up for I'm sorry, mayor, can you refer to my chair for August? Let me do it the right way. Um, of course. Okay. Whatever you want, Mr. Mitchell. Let's just go home. Oh, I got Oh, let me put another ass in. That's right. Wait a minute. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two separate conversations. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Okay. So, we will now go to um line item 53. Miss Azimra, did you have any comments or follow-ups on the review paid parental leave? Um I I did get a formal response. Uh Murray and the team, great job putting together this very detailed package that addresses my question. Thank you. Okay, great. And lastly, oops. And lastly, we have Miss Johnson with the uh review of tourism funds. Did you have any additional comments there? Yeah, I'm you know, you all know how I feel. I'm going to be consistent. And if if I understood, Mr. Jones was willing to send something to be considered for tourism funds. we we talked about tonight. What was that for the Was it the um the museum or what was it? It's a different pot. It is the arts pod. Okay. It's a small victory, but it it Okay. Thank you. Welcome to the tourism firm, right? The arts motion to adjourn. Yeah. Yeah. For Yeah. For clarity. All right. Okay. Hey, sorry. We're if we may. Let's make sure. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Marie has a clarifying statement. Hold on. Thank you. We have to make a motion to direct the manager to um make the budget and I believe it's in the notes. Mayor for the manager. Instruction. So much work to do. Manager. It's right here. Mayor Pro Tim has it. Mayor Early. Okay. Yes. So, yes. So, is there a motion on directing the city manager to prepare the necessary documents and resolutions for the FY 2026 budget ordinance? Some move. Second. There is a motion by Mr. Graham and a second by Miss Mayfield. Okay. Okay. All in favor? All in favor? I. And everyone is not here is a yes. Any opposed? Any opposed? Good to see you, Mr. Speaker. That's unanimous. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Motion. All in favor of adjourning the meeting, please go home. Raise your hands and then go home. Thank you. [Music] [Music]