[Music] to order welcome to the second day of the 2day 2025 city council Retreat thank you mayor good morning everyone happy Saturday welcome back to day two of your retreat um the way we're going to start this morning is by taking a little bit of time to reflect we have a as you all know a pretty packed agenda with some really important topics that you all have asked for staff to come and present to you on um but before we get into those topics I want to take a few moments to reflect on what you all collectively sort of agreed upon were the ways you wanted to spend your time in the next six months um because I wanted to and I've got them up here on in a more cleaned format than yesterday I'm going to read through them I've added a little bit based on what I actually saw you all doing together during your time um on Friday um and would be curious to hear from folks if there's ways that you want to make sure that we are able to do any of these specific actions today during the retreat that you haven't had a chance to do yet so you sort of reflected individually and then collectively identified themes around how do we want to spend our time in the next six months you said coordinating and collaborating is as a council you said uh collecting and understanding city data and National Trends and this came up many times yesterday what data do we have as a city and what data is there from partners that we can use to drive our decisions um leveraging your individual strengths and backgrounds I know I heard from many of you sharing your experiences in different ways um that you think can can lend to the the strength of the group uh staying close to the ground making sure you're hearing from the community taking care of yourselves so you can better serve the community whether that's having something to eat taking a nap or sleeping well at night um and then successfully navigating disagreement and difficult conversations and this one is fully one that I added but I heard several of you really mention it um outright and I think successfully you did that yesterday with your public comment conversation where there wasn't full consensus but everyone was able to have a conversation about something where you might not all have agreed and found the similarities that you had and and were able to also Express the differences without it um becoming uh something that broke you all apart in the discussion so um those are uh the areas in which you've all identified you want to spend your time and I'm curious if any of that feels like something you want to make sure we stress during today's Retreat as something you would like to do that we haven't done yet can you repeat that question again yeah um so this is what you want to spend your time together as a council doing and if there's anything that we may not have gotten the chance to do yesterday so I know I saw coordinating and collaborating as a council um hearing data from staff and and using it to drive the direction that you wanted to give them leveraging your individual strengths so I know for example your background you've shared several times in the conversation yesterday about what you see and I know several others did that as well um hearing from the community and using that to drive your decisions um continuing to take care of yourselves we're definitely going to give you breaks so we we'll take care of that one for you and then successfully navigating disagreement but curious if there's ways that you would hope to achieve that yeah there's only one item I know I put it on for our homework and there wasn't a place to discuss it but you know what are reasons why I ran for Council was about the Big Ideas and I think this region was driven by the big ideas and as we look at strategic Direction there was no place for that conversation I know it was on the board but we never discussed it so it may not be now but to me that's something I am very passionate about what drives this region whether it's the bus Rapid Transit uh Raleigh un station downtown South transformation of hillsbor street there's an expectation you know Red Hat Amphitheater there's an expectation about the big thing big idea so just for you it may not be today but that's certainly an expectation I had that would like over the next few months for this Council spend some times on the big yes and and this can be we won't have unlimited amount of time to do that but if that would be something that the council would like to have a few moments to talk about this would be a perfect time to do that before we get into presentation so um sort of talking about the reasons that you ran or that you reran or just the reason you're sitting at this table that are big would be we can absolutely talk about that now and if there's themes that emerge I can jot them down as well so um I encourage you to share if you would like to and um yeah I think it's one of the things that the public really gets excited about uh I don't want to be very specific but certainly there were some opportunities you know Raleigh magazine ran a a feature about the big ideas and solicited ideas and it was their top article I mean people were very excited talk about is it possible we don't know but just to Aspire to some of the bigger things for example we talk about connection from downtown the dicks it's a conversation is this a big idea we can execute the transformation of Capitol Boulevard which is so poised to have a highdensity corridor with bust rapid transit or even Light Rail uh that would minimize any displacement of current residents but offers a huge opportunity to really have a new vision for the city so those are some I don't want to dominate the conversation so whether we have a big Ideas Forum which we did back in 2008 and in subsequent years but to me you know I think residents get excited about the Big Ideas the vision where we going uh and so that's just something I'll put on the table without saying specifically what it is we had it downtown South what about it downtown North uh we're all concerned about where density should go and I think if we're very intentional about those locations uh to me that's something I think that'll excite my opinion the residents uh those that want to kind of support downtown and surrounding areas and so that's just something I'm putting out in terms of some ideas thank you go ahead counc thank you so much for that uh councelor silver I think it's a a big important discussion to have um I want to balance that conversation and make sure that as we focus on downtown we're also highlighting different areas of town that don't ever get the attention um so I'll you know my area is is Brier Creek you know we're that connection to Durham and how are we um talking with our Regional Partners to to make sure that things like uh go Raleigh go Durham go um go everything go all that stuff that meets up there in Brier Creek is is easy access for everyone because right now it's not so um I I I emphasize what you're saying and I also want to make sure that we make sure the focus doesn't always stay on downtown and we have other areas of town thank you I'm just adding and folks are welcome to to join if you want to share anything else um so I think um one thing that I'm hearing and I think is really important role of council is having the vision and the Big Ideas in mind that you can provide and share for staff to help you achieve those I mean they some big ideas are Big Ideas because they're probably hard to achieve but someone is has to drive a vision and for for you all you really are the ones that are identifying the vision for the organization in the city yeah I'll just add a couple other Big Ideas um and these are really Citywide focused on our environmental resources so we've had discussions about our creeks and streams and their impairments erosion and I know we're going to have some great data coming out soon this spring I believe um to really show where we need to add some protections to our stream corridors and so I hope that is an issue that we take on um and we continued to work on tree preservation and planting plans there is an effort right now within the Parks Board the sweat team which is council member Jones or someone could you help me with it something wildlife and urban trees sustainability wildlife and urban trees committee thank you yes um they are working on a planting and preservation plan for trees um with our parks department and so I'm really really excited to see what that looks like to again preserve and plant trees in our public rideways and Parks across the city I think we've just in terms of capturing there was Brier Creek to Durham so very specific then there was downtown to dicks was another specific I don't want to get ahead of you while you're riding yeah I know I just wanted sure captures all the ideas that came before we had anything um up there specific to my um tree preservation so specific to my district a big idea I I've been trying to activate IM mobilize around is um activation of Triangle Town Center um you know in my wildest dreams it could have Green Space and a government node and affordable housing and Retail and all the things because it's a Hu huge area of land um and I think could be a great node for people who live in the northern part of the city um I also say like when we talk about coordinating and collaborating as a council and leveraging our strengths if you ever need someone who's a small ideas girl like I'm your gal like I'm going read that whole memo like very process oriented and I know that there are other people on the council who have like very vast networks and I think we can use like play to each other's strengths to to do some of these things one of the bigger ideas I campaigned on was this reorientation towards green ways so activating Greenways inspired by the Atlanta belt line MH what one thing I wanted to mention um is that you know cuz I can list some more ideas as well but I know on February the 5th there's a big Ideas Raleigh Meetup event that's sold out and anything that we have ideas for we need the community we need you know the professionals to be a part so I think you know I really look for the readout of this event on February the 5th um so that we can really um um have this big ideas from a community standpoint um because we have to have that buyin um because there's no way we can pay for all of these big Ideas ourselves so I think having the partners that come out of this meet up on February 5th at um and yeah Council Branch I don't I'm not aware of that event so I I Googled it that's how I figured it out and it's on the city website I just Googled Big Ideas well maybe we should distribute some inform feary so not to bust that bubble but I think it's a collaboration efforts um just a small idea I'm aware that we're going to lose some pickle ball courts temporarily here at method Park during construction at least that's what I've heard um if that's true I just want to make sure that we are thinking about where are we going to provide that space and increase capacity around the city for pickle balls I know it's a really popular sport and it's incredibly accessible well the only thing I would say is if we're talking about Big Ideas it would be good to catalog in the past what Big Ideas have been and then have we actually executed on those because to ask people for ideas if we're not making progress or could be discouraging and i' just like to add that the the idea of Big Ideas I don't think means that we always have to do something brand new that's expensive it's how are we utilizing our resources and making that a higher priority that doesn't mean that we get something brand uh shiny new but it just means that we're saying this is the focus and here's the resources that we have to make that a bigger idea so um I don't think it necessarily has to look like it's all dollar signs um what what is listed here aligns with the priorities that were already discussed yesterday so it's not adding new yeah the first big idea back in 2008 it was just to have a conversation about making new history this region was known uh Research Triangle Park that was a big idea uh did it fulfill what the original idea was we don't know uh that's where the idea for downtown South was conceived at the 2008 big ideas but if we go down transformation of Mo Square transformation of Hillsboro Street the creation of Midtown all these started as a big idea did the Capitol Boulevard it just ended up with a change to the P Street intersection but it started with a conversation because people wanted to have a vision about at that time Raleigh was just it'll do and it was to Aspire to be uh a greater City and so part of his a conversation dicks for example was another big idea so I think that as you explore someone suggest Ed to catalog those big Ideas you'll find out that this region was really built on Big Ideas and so it's how do we have a conversation about what is possible Light Rail was a big idea it didn't happen now we have bus Rapid Transit but it just helps that conversation and the last one I'll mention was a Raleigh un station when people said it could not happen and now it is a regional Hub that is growing those all started with Big Ideas we also like small ideas but I think that's what gets the public excited about what is possible for our city and it attracts tourists it attracts business and it makes uh a sense of civic pride for our residents thank you council member anyone want to share any other thoughts before we sort of move on sounds like there's also a NE definitely a Next Step at least in the very near future with the conference and some opportunities to see what this the residents in the community are saying about Big Ideas as well so and I'd imagine there's some partner organizations that will be there that can you can't do any big idea without a partner um great I'm not seeing anyone else so with that um we are going to shift into your next agenda item um and so I'm going to have a staff come up should be is that for you good morning morning morning thanks for the opportunity to talk about the state of Housing and Raleigh uh which I will briefly review in updates on our affordable housing programs and strategies which will be covered by my colleague em suton our housing and neighborhoods director um before we uh get into some details let's let's level set um see if I can get this to work oh that one my apologies um yeah let's level set we we have an A housing affordability crisis both in Raleigh and in Most Metro areas nationally uh and that's due to changes in these four factors on the on the slide here um housing demand housing Supply development costs and and household income and I'll cover uh in turn how each of these have created our housing challenges here locally um in order to address the uh housing affordability crisis uh there's really three areas of action needed uh the first is to improve affordability of housing by increasing housing Supply and availability the the second is to increase the number of income restricted affordable units that are affordable to Folks At Low incomes and the third is to address homelessness through evidence-based and data driven practices and I'm happy to report as you all well know that Raleigh is doing a lot lot in all three of these areas um I'll start with the biggest Factor uh which is uh increasing the supply of housing uh increasing supply of housing is the is the biggest and most important factor in housing affordability for the simple reason that over 90% of housing in our area and in Most Metro areas in the United States is market rate housing meaning it's not committed to being affordable through a government program or nonprofit uh support or subsidy so in order to address affordability in an area of very high demand for housing like prob market rate housing has to be abundant um when we talk about affordability of housing we use the metric of a family spending no more than 30% of their monthly income on housing um which is a standard set by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and housing affordability paying 30% uh or less of your income on housing is a standard we apply to all households right we also look at it when we're looking at supporting low modern income uh families but really affordability for all is that 30% standard when we talk about affordable housing versus affordability of housing we mean housing that has support or subsidy from a government or nonprofit entity uh to keep the rent capped relative to household income for some fixed period uh usually 30 years but it can be less depending on the program um most federal programs allow beneficiaries to be up to 80% of area median income uh but most Ry programs are focused on 60% of area median income or below uh it's not on the slide but in in Raleigh 60% of area median income for a family of four is $73,345 than we did in 2022 uh and this is due both to new housing Supply and increased incomes so we talked about these four factors that impact affordability and and collectively these have pushed Rin and Raleigh up approximately 50% since 2017 um the the biggest Factor as I said uh earlier uh pushing these changes is is demand to live in Ry uh we are the second fastest growing metro area in the country behind Austin Texas uh you have all seen The milin Institute designation uh of us as the uh highest performing Metro region economically in the country out of over 400 Metro regions um because of these factors growth is very likely to to continue um demand to live in Raleigh is directly translated into land values not so much property values because that looks at the improvements but land values which have risen dramatically so the the map here it's a little difficult to show to see but the uh show shows land value changes from 2014 to 2024 so you can see that the valuation increases have been across the community but have been really concentrated in those areas um inside the Belt Line many of those neighborhoods were historically more affordable um home to um community of color uh and have now um experiencing high demand and and extremely high elevating land prices um the second key factor is housing Supply uh until 2021 uh 55% of all land in Raleigh and and over 70% of our residentially zon land was zoned exclusively for single family housing uh single family housing is and will remain a key part of our housing Supply but it's the most expensive housing type and doesn't fit everybody's needs and preferences um third construction costs have exceeded inflation since 2020 and we all know how much inflation has occurred since 2020 um although these prices have stabilized recent recently material costs are about 20% on average more costly than than they were uh just 5 years ago and F finally income and income inequality are are a huge Factor uh I mentioned the significant increase in household income and Raleigh um that that increase has been largely concentrated as the slide to picks in the upper quartile of income meaning the top 25% and especially in the highest desile top 10% um this has made it more difficult for folks below the area Med income to compete for for housing availability so all of these factors collectively oh I'm sorry I missed that I'm going the wrong I'm going the wrong way all of these factors collectively have led to the amount of income needed to afford an average home and when I say average this is 30 30% of Market average so this is not even at the median home to more than double in 18 months from mid 2020 to early 2022 you needed about $40,000 of income in early 2020 by the middle part of 2022 you need needed over 80,000 to afford that that home so we as local government um have very limited control of these factors uh and and that's an important part point to to remember the only Factor we have significant influence over uh are the regulations um which I identified as restrictive zoning regulations on this on this slide um and they're key factor in accelerating housing prices um Raleigh with the 20 200 comprehensive plan uh led by your colleague um uh council member silver in the 2013 unified development ordinance undertook a huge step at allowing much needed housing uh Supply by creating mixed use zones and activity centers across the city that allowed um apartment buildings to be built where they were not previously allowed and that led to thousands and thousands of units desperately needed Supply um and that uh that that has been a major component of us keeping relatively more affordable than a lot of our peer cities even though of course we have seen a big increase in housing prices um but since uh the those High housing prices persisted and housing scarcity was still in effect the 2019 Council asked staff to look at ways to increase housing Supply and what we identified was opportunity to expand what's called missing middle housing so that that refers to housing like town houses duplexes triplexes quads small apartment buildings smaller than a four or five story apartment building but but more than a single family detached home so these are housing types that proliferated prior to the our modern zoning Co codes built prior to World War II we see them in a lot of our in town neighborhoods that were developed prior to World War II they allow for gentle incremental context to sensitive uh housing diversity in existing neighborhoods to meet the large demand for folks who want to live in a uh neighborhood but can't afford or don't want a single family home so um the um purpose uh stated for these changes is on the slide here and it really boils down to allowing more housing types and more places uh and to encourage housing near our planned bus Rapid Transit routes the success of highfrequency Transit is directly dependent on having enough riders that live within walking distance of Transit that usually means no more than a half mile preferably a quarter mile uh so in addition to just allowing more housing in more places allowing housing for folks at all incomes and all points of their life cycle we wanted to encourage it near um bus Rapid Transit um the effort to reform zoning in Raleigh uh to allow more housing Supply goes back to 2017 as shown in this slide uh and it evolved into two major efforts in 2021 and 2022 which you see has missing middle one and missing middle two um that that allowed for a number of changes there were 11 key changes I won't spend the time to go into these in detail but I will point out that allowing just allowing tow houses in the r six zoning District which was allowed previous to 2013 um is about about 65% of all new missing middle units are these townhouse units um so since 2021 uh when the first missing middle Provisions we have approved over 3,600 um missing middle units that would have not have been allowed prior to 2021 and that represents about 30% of all new units which is a really significant portion uh of our uh housing I think it indicates the demand and interest in this housing um from our residents both new residents and our existing residents as you can see from this map the the uh Missing middle enabled housing is geographically dispersed it is concentrated in the Northeast and Southeast parts of the city our fastest growing areas as you can see from the map the size of the circles indicates the size of the projects um since the areas in northeast southeast rale have our lowest land cost here in Raleigh the missing middle units um are really effective because missing middle housing types realize a 10 to 15% on average discount to single family comparably sized single family houses due to Shared walls roofs and infrastructure and so we are seeing new market rate housing that's available to folks below that very immediate income not far below kind of down to 80% 75% but town houses in that 295 300 range that we were not getting prior to these changes and that just shows the number of units in each development of course this material will be available to you afterwards um we also approved accessory dwelling units which are kind of backyard um Cottages or um sometimes known as granny Flats uh we have over 20 almost 250 units under review permanent or or complete so T So taken together with the large number of apartment deliveries uh and the missing middle housing um these together are a big factor not the only factor I want to emphasize that there's macroeconomic factors such as interest rates that have impacted this as well but we believe an important factor in keeping R's rents and housing prices stable um are our our availability of apartments in our mixed AC activity centers and the availability missing middle throughout the city um rents and housing prices are almost exactly where they were 3 years ago in January of 2022 we all experienced that huge increase in prices during 2020 21 and early 22 but those have really stabilized um many missing middle housing units um have been approved um are built by nonprofit developers and are legally binding affordable units including uh right across the street it's under construction now so unfortunately you can't see the final product but one method where Casa is Building Hope Village which is a um 8 unit um uh partnership uh project that this between the city and Casa to serve uh youth aging out of foster care which are a group that's very high risk of homelessness um these these youth will be under 30% of area median income there'll be a resident adviser on site and uh the city supported that with $700,000 in bond funds so that was missing middle enabled along with hundreds of other units approved as committed affordable pursuant to an incentive program in the in the Udo that allows for additional density and height in exchange for committed affordable housing so again we think that there's indirect impact of this through allowing the market to be more flexible there's a direct impact through um affordable housing units being created under these Provisions but my colleagues myself and my colleagues and certainly I know you um hear a lot of comments and concerns being raised about the fact that most of the new missing middle housing and this is certainly true and apartment units that are being built are expensive uh and how does this help low-income households and unhoused families um there's a lot of emerging research that shows that there's a very close connection between the availability and market rate housing and the extent to which a low-income housing low-income households are housed and homelessness is reduced um abundance of market rate housing is essential to ensuring uh that we have a more affordable uh City I am going to turn it over here we have a video for you it's part of a longer video that I strongly encourage you to watch we'll share the link with you it's about 30 minutes we have about 12 minutes of it here um it's from a uh person named Justine Underhill she's a city council member in Falls Church Virginia uh which is a city in Suburban Washington DC that is experiencing very similar growth pressures um Justine has a background in journalism and economics and she's very effectively summarized some of the emerging research in this area and so I'm going to uh um turn on the video and and then I'll turn it over to EML let to talk about our affordable housing programs one more time so adding housing can help keep rent prices in check but is that still true when that housing is luxury housing does high-end housing do anything for affordability let's go through the theory and then see what the research actually says so for the theory let's say Alex moves into a brand new building now his old unit is available for rent and Bailey moves into it this place is more expensive than Bailey's last spot but cheaper than Alex's new place then Charlie will move into Bailey's old unit and that chain continues with several more moves each from older and more affordable spots the chain will finally end when Tyler moves out of his mom's basement and gets his own spot his mom sets up an animal rescue in the basement and no humans move in that's the theory new units open up older cheaper units so let's get to the research here's one of the top studies on this topic researchers looked at 52,000 people who moved into new market rate units that's brand new shiny apartment buildings once these people got settled in researchers then looked at their mail forwarding addresses to see where they actually moved from and then they looked at who moved into their old unit and Then followed the chains all the way back to the end to the tyers of the world remarkably what the researchers found is that every hundred brand new market rate units freeze up 70 units From Below median income neighborhoods it also opens up 39 units in the lowest income neighborhood so those in the bottom 20% of incomes the study shows how tightly connected the entire housing market is so building new housing even at the higher end results in housing in lowincome areas opening up when it comes to to providing affordable housing Building 100 New Market rate units is effectively as good as building 39 units of housing in low-income areas the study isn't alone studies from around the world also found very similar results and while that study looked at a 2 to 5e window we actually see the same thing happening over much longer time frames too when we build enough housing the expensive housing of yesterday becomes the cheap housing of today and conversely when we don't build enough housing the cheap housing of yesterday becomes the expensive housing of today from my time serving on city council I'm very well aware that many people are quite skeptical that simply adding housing Supply will do anything for affordability for whatever reason a lot of people have just made up their minds so if that describes you all I ask is that you keep an open mind and let evidence and not ideology in form your opinion so with that let's go through the four main objections objection number one H that's not my experience we built a ton of Housing and prices just keep going up so check this out UC researchers did a nationwide survey and found that 30 to 40% of Americans believe in a sort of Supply skepticism it's this mistaken belief that if a lot of new housing were built in their region then rents and home prices would actually go up and that's quote contrary to basic economic theory and robust empirical evidence and that is an academic burn if I ever heard one what's really interesting about this Supply skepticism is that it's seemingly limited to housing most people were able to correctly apply the law of supply and demand to things like cars grain plumbers but when it came to housing Supply it just broke people's brains whereas 85% of respondents said that a snag in the supply chain for cars would cause the price of used cars to increase less than half of people were able to apply that same logic to the housing market and to be fair many of us look around our communities and see these new developments popping up and rents that just seem to keep Rising alongside them it honestly does kind of look like these new buildings are causing rent to increase but this actually gets cause and effect backwards rents usually start Rising years before these new developments start showing up it was the rising rent The increased demand for housing that attracted the developers to build a new building not the other way around now to be clear if we're just looking at that one building that new building is probably more expensive than whatever was there before it new things generally cost more and then if it makes the space more walkable with a park or restaurant fountains trees the sidewalk well people pay a premium for walkable spaces as a side note we haven't built enough walkable spaces and that premium actually means we need to build more of them but the key Point here is that while that immediate location might become more expensive the new building ends up helping lower rents across the region meaning there are fewer people that are displaced the entire area benefits or if we wanted to put it another way well housing cost might be going up if that building that additional housing hadn't been built rents in the entire region would be even higher it's easy to see all the increases in Supply the the new buildings coming up but it's a lot harder to spot the increase in demand so if you look around and see a ton of new housing going up but rent keeps going up anyway it means that even this development hasn't been enough but let's just say you don't care about your region you only care about your specific neighborhood even then on a neighborhood level quote supply has not been shown to cause significant displacement of lower income households and indeed some studies find new buildings have been shown to reduce the probability of displacement the UC researchers found that Supply skepticism is M made people less likely to support apartment and home construction the real tragedy here is that these Supply Skeptics are often well-intentioned they want to stop housing from becoming unaffordable but they incorrectly blame the new developments and then they end up blocking the one solution that could have actually addressed Rising housing costs in the first place building more housing objection number two isn't this just trickle down economics the second objection is partly triggered by this paper from Sweden This research has an excellent data set but it also has a fairly unfortunate choice of words quote overall we conclude that new homes trickle down to the poor maybe that doesn't set off alarm bells for Swedish people but I know for many Americans there's sort of a knee-jerk reaction to that and just to be super clear trickle down economics during the Reagan Era was about giving t tax breakes to the wealthy with the theory that rich people would then spend money on other things like businesses and then that would help the poor by creating more jobs and such incentives for business to encourage production and hiring of the unemployed but building more homes that people then live in is not trickle down economics it's equivocating on the words trickle down thrift stores have trickle down clothing eBay has trickle down trickle down books rainwater trickles down my window window same words but they're not the same thing as trickle down economics we're talking about building more housing not giving tax breaks to the wealthy I just blame the sweds on this one next objection investment banks are just buying up all the housing anyway the third objection focuses on the institutional investors and hedge funds that are just gobbling up housing stock it's this idea that if hedge funds are going to buy up housing anyway way building more housing won't help the average person a lot of firms are buying up properties but Blackstone is going so far as to build an entire company out of the strategy last year partnering with Invitation Homes $4.5 billion dollars later The Firm has become the biggest buyer of single family homes in America well here's what Invitation Homes disclose to investors quote we have select markets that we believe will experience strong population household formation and employment growth and exhibit constrained levels of new home construction exhibit constrained levels of new home construction they are specifically targeting places that don't build enough housing acknowledging that this is what makes prices rise they even warned investors quote we could also be adversely affected by overbuilding which could result in an excess supply of homes and reduce occupancy and rental rates continuing development will increase the supply of Housing and exacerbate competition for residents so they even concede the flip side building more housing is what keeps rents down hedge funds would not be buying up homes unless there was something really messed up about the housing market that made them a lucrative acquisition so if you really want to stick it to the greedy hedge funds make housing not profitable build more of it objection number four we already have enough homes they're just sitting vacant or abandoned or as airbnbs or even as second homes it kind of is shocking nearly 10% of the homes in the US are vacant so why would we build more housing when we already have enough homes that are freely available it's free real estate there are a few things wrong with this line of thinking first of all we do need some degree of vacancies if we lived in a world with no vacancies it would be incredibly difficult to move you'd practically have to find someone to swap houses with or maybe set up some sort of hermit crab like moving chain they're lining up with one aim to exchange properties in fact Market vacancies actually give renters more leverage to keep prices down with more options available renters can then choose the best deal as landlords have to compete on price and this is exactly what happened in New York City during the pandemic a higher Market vacancy rate meant lower rent but even though these vacancies can be good they're often in the wrong places areas where we see the high highest vacancy rates aren't usually near job centers telling a marine biologist in Miami that she can then get a cheap house in the Rust Belt city of Gary Indiana doesn't really help her situation now the vacancies that really rile people up the most are the places that are sitting empty for most of the Year these are second homes investment properties airbnbs then look if we ban Airbnb it does seem to lower rent a bit if brings more Supply onto the market and more Supply helps lower the rent that is absolutely true but the effect is pretty small when Irvine California banned Airbnb that brought back about 460 units of housing back onto the market that's awesome but they're expecting to need over 23,000 more housing units to address population growth in the coming years that Airbnb ban achieved less than 2% % of what they need and there's a similar story in Metro Vancouver where both the city and the province implemented a vacancy tax and they brought back thousands of units onto the rental market again that's great but they're expected to need over 274,000 new homes in the next decade so that tax helped them with about 6% they'll still have to shore up the other 94% of housing or else their housing crisis will get worse policies like these these can Shuffle some housing units back onto the market but it's not merely enough to solve the housing crisis on its own we still need a ton more housing and the only way to do that is by building more housing I was recently elected to city council here in false Church Virginia and I am getting a ton of flak for this building this site hosts 394 Apartments 27 of which are subsidized along with restaurants exercise Studios spaces for public events it generates over half a million dollars a year in net revenues for the city but some neighbors are unhappy with its appearance it's definitely taller than some of the single family homes nearby they're also frustrated that some of the storefronts are unoccupied and they don't like the yellow brick fine one person even told me that they missed the gas station that used to be here because at least they could get gas there they were no alic for a gas station with attitudes like that it is so incredibly challenging to get the housing that cities across our nation so desperately need the rent is really high actually there not even inventory like how are people surviving I want to know all right I hope you found that informative and interesting and certainly more engaging uh than what my staff and I can do so I'm going to turn it over to Ema we talked about at the outset of my presentation about the 90% plus of housing that's market rate housing that 8% is crucially important of of uh funds that involve government programs or nonprofit support Raleigh is a national and Regional leader in that in this space and I'm going to turn over to Ema to talk about um the state of the programs that we're oh yeah uh thank you so much for uh the presentation yes the video was extremely entertaining and enlightening can you talk about you showed what the demand is and those other the videos show what the demand is in those other markets uh can you tell me what the demand is I guess for the next 10 years if you know for Raleigh in terms of housing production what we need yeah so there are uh we're working internally on coming up with an estimate to to provide that to you the reason that we have delayed that is there are different approaches of methodologies on how to estimate the house housing deficit I think all commentators and academics are saying there's a significant housing deficit and Raleigh still much less than a lot of the other large metros but still some I before we bring that to you we want to really make sure we gut check the methodology and make sure that it's sound uh and commun commun Comm unicable effectively to our to our colleagues we've heard 65,000 countywide do you just have a I mean ballpark ballpark I think that's perfectly valid yes but that's countywide so could we assume about 35,000 yeah no that's just total unit okay total yeah okay thanks I'll be available for questions after Em's presentation I just have some a few questions right before we go um when thank you for the video um I think that it speaks to to one side I think there are other uh opinion a lot of things that she mentioned that neighbors uh have talked to especially my area about um I wanted to go through the numbers of what you presented in terms of how many have been approved how many have been built can you speak to the reason why we've approved you know 3600 but only 250 been built so far is there a specific reason for that yeah the reason is that it it's a takes a long time to get um uh new housing um financed and pered and developed okay and then um as we have dozens of units coming on every week and I think we'll see that accelerate but that there there's been a a real challenge with financing over the last 24 months or so for sure and I I do want to recognize that it it as we go into this change is hard change takes time and we know that and there is going to be push back because we don't have the answers right away so so I don't want to diminish neighbors concerns who are seeing this as well um I do want to say how do I answer the question when people you know this beautifully laid out in in overall when somebody moves out of an apartment and then the trickle down of that can we speak to the fact that we have so many people moving here into Raleigh that are not moving from another apartment in Raleigh and so the trickle down that feeling is not being always captured within the city that is res that they reside in within Raleigh that's a really great point I think the the model that was shown in the video kind of assumes that everyone is moving from the same region the study she referenced did acknowledge and recognize that some of the movers are going to be from outside the region so I think some of the conclusions that were reached in that that study with the 52,000 movers hold true it is definitely true that in Raleigh we have a higher share of folks moving from outside the region than the average region and we also have much higher incomes right we have about two and a half times the number of $100,000 a year jobs as average Metro so those two factors are causing that impact to be uh the impact of the kind of um filtering is the technical term of all allowing more uh uh units that are vacated when people move up to be occupied by lower income families that is less strong here because of those factors it still is an effect though right and it's really how the housing market works and it's still very meaningful the majority still a solid majority um of of movers are from if not Raleigh the region do we have a study saying how many do we know that or is that just theoretical that we so so we we have looked at some of some the process of doing the kind of study that was cited here is really challenging and time consuming we have looked at some data from IRS keeps what's called mover data and about uh in 2023 about 65% of all um new movers were from the region right and so I just want to highlight that that one uh slide that you had in there that showed the income level and what we have um 122,000 is now Ami um 83,000 I think you said that's 80% and then 73 is 60% so as we see in Raleigh because you made that chart that a lot of our uh housing that's being lost is affecting that lower income bracket that is below that 80% am I so the the fear that we're experiencing that we're witnessing here is that we're pushing it feels like we're pushing out the lowest income so I think a lot of the I don't want to diminish everybody thought I understand that there's some people who don't want change that don't I get that but there is a valid concern that we're watching people being at their lowest level incomes being pushed out of the city and how are we so that's I think what we're trying to I know that Emil is going to speak to that I understand but I while I appreciate the video and it was cute I don't want it to to Encompass like that's the the only view because there are many other feelings that attribute to this so I just wanted to highlight that yeah I don't certainly nothing that I said or that was intended by the video was meant to undermine your point which is that and I I tried to emphasize in my comments it's increasingly challenging for folks below median income particularly well below median income to to find housing I think really as you start to get below 60% of me are median income because of land values because of construction costs it is impossible for the market to in building codes zoning codes it's impossible for the market to deliver units that are available new units that are available to folks below that so that's where the programs that you're going to hear from emla are so crucial last thing that I had is the first slide that you put on I was saying that 8% of um current affordable hous you mentioned that 8% is there a goal that we would in if we could hit would be a better goal is that what Emil's gonna say yeah Emil will talk about that she's got a plan underway that I think May address that okay thank you thanks very much any other questions again i''ll be happy to take questions at the end of Emo's time thanks Pat appreciate that um so the beginning of that video actually um talked about homelessness as a housing problem so the beginning half of that I really encourage you to go back and watch um she did a she does a really great job of summarizing Greg Colburn's research on the book homelessness is a housing problem who was our keynote speaker at the affordable housing Summit last year for those of you who were able to attend so I'm going to just summarize that a little bit but she did a great job of sort of talking about the link between housing Supply and homelessness as well by starting out talking about homelessness is a housing problem so you know we know that homelessness rates are driven by market conditions and not individual behaviors the video repeats that um people mostly attribute homelessness to mental illness drug use weather other factors but as his research shows um the only credible link is housing market conditions which are largely dictated by housing Supply so the bottom line is that more housing Supply opens up more housing for lower incomes reducing the numbers of people who need homes um and in fact issues such as mental health and drug use are exacerbated by experiencing homelessness um a recent study showed too that more than a third of people who are experiencing homelessness did not have any issues with mental health or substance used prior to experiencing homelessness the trauma of homelessness exacerbates these issues um and as Greg curn said at our Summit and says a lot you know if if there is a substance use issue um allowing people to remain homeless is like throwing gasoline on a fire it's not solving their problem to offer them just substance use help people need housing to heal and to become stable and we know that's true we know that people just do better and they heal um if they are in housing so not ending someone's homelessness again just exacerbates these issues I think too you know we are in this really unique place in time uh what Pat referred to is you know our we have really high incomes and that Ami number is just climbing and you know Greg curn also really points out that in areas where there are really high incomes and there are low vacancy and there are not there's not enough housing Supply that's where you see the most homelessness so even in areas um where there's really high poverty poverty is absolutely something that can be a triggering factor um just as substance use and mental health issues those are triggering factors make people more vulnerable to homelessness but poverty in in and of itself um while triggering where you have areas of really high poverty you actually don't see high numbers of homelessness and you can see that in States like West Virginia and Mississippi where they have actually pretty low rates of homelessness comparatively um and high poverty so it's really in those areas where you have high incomes that you see um higher homelessness rates so we've talked about this um before uh but just to sort of summarize that homelessness comes at a really high cost so that doing nothing to address homelessness actually costs people more but then uh taxpayers more than it does to actually address and end homelessness we have examples of this um HUD did a study in 2017 showing that the taxpayer cost of one person experiencing homelessness was around $335,000 per person per year um that was 2017 those numbers are are much higher now Houston recently did um an analysis and said $96,000 uh per person per year and that included hospitalizations Mental Health Services emergency room visits incarceration as well as emergency Sheltering which shelter is very expensive um it's actually more affordable to house someone in their own home and provide them services and case management than it is to shelter someone um Dallas also recently did an analysis um and they showed um they released this just and November showing a total annual cost to taxpayers in two counties totaling nearly 194 million and that is again all of those um high dollar items that were on the list so Camp cleanups so cleaning up encampments also comes at a high cost to municipalities uh the the parks department let us know last year that within a year they spent more than $200,000 on cleaning up camps and then the North Carolina Department of Transportation also let us know that it costs them around the same amount just for the camp cleanups and again none of those funds go towards actual Solutions and ending homelessness we also know that um and we have done this analysis uh and compared to other communities we'll show a little bit more on that but um housing one household again and providing case management so this is not just the rent assistance this is rent assistance and case management can average anywhere from $8,000 to $31,000 per person per year so that's even the highest need folks so the if you average all those costs it comes out to around $224,000 per person per year so Pat spoke a little bit about what the city is doing to increase overall housing Supply and improve affordability from that Angle now I'm going to share what we're doing to specifically increase the supply of Legally binding affordable housing units and targeted initiatives to address homelessness so you'll see here um what I think is a really exciting number uh in 2016 the City established an aspirational goal to create 5700 units by 2026 shout out to my predecessor who really did um an incredible amount of work to make this machine start running and keep going um so as you can see here we have around 7100 units in the pipeline um so sorry we have 30 3,300 units in the development Pipeline and if you add that to the total of um 38 48 that are on the ground we have uh over 7,149 units Al together in in the development pipeline which I think is really exciting there are some things to note about these numbers which is that you know these developments and these numbers can be volatile in a sense because as you all know a lot of projects are delayed to do project increases mostly or cost increases um and so you know some of these while we predict that they will be on the ground by the end of 2026 may not be doesn't mean that they're not still viable units that we should be touting and counting and counting because um they will be online um to date you know this year there's already been more than 700 units um and and we have around 1,00 units to be completed so three times that amount in the pipeline I think we're looking pretty good when it comes to achieving this goal so we're setting our sites on maintaining this level of production in the coming years we're currently developing a new affordable housing plan which will evaluate production to date and project out the costs to keep this momentum going um staff is using production through the most recent affordable housing Bond as a basis for those future estimates so we're excited to bring that back to you all in draft form um we will be doing that soon so we're excited to show you those numbers and those projections so just to review a little bit more about where we are and what these um affordable housing Bond buckets if you will look like um Raleigh voters passed an $80 million affordable housing bond in 2020 and here's the different ways that these funds are allocated we have public private partnership and that is aimed at facilitating Partnerships between City for and nonprofit Partners to increase affordable housing production in new and different ways outside of the low-income housing tax credit program um just an example of recent Awards we had $10 million awarded through an RFP in the first year of the bond um 7 million uh has gone to Casa for Kings Ridge and three million of that went to Healing transitions for their men's campus renovation we also have $2 million made available each year for smallscale rental programs so that's captured in uh it's a $10 million total under that public private partnership bucket um there is $8 million carved out for voluntary inclusion area or other Transit oriented projects and then we also provided $700,000 invested in cottages of I Idle Wild for that um specific bucket then we have our um low-income housing tax credit Gap financing and that is 4.8 million made available each year for five years through the city's Gap financing program and bond funds specifically go to Transit oriented projects and then we have site acquisition uh 4 million are carved out for those the investment in the Wake County preservation fund um which helps to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing as well as housing that is aging out of affordability restrictions um there is 2 million went to Casa um to preserve housing and then we had 560 in that bucket went to cottages of ell again another 7 million has been invested in acquiring sites through Zach's grocery mart and the Western Boulevard um Hillsboro site there's also some home repair funds and home buyer assistance um that is for the home revitalization program that goes towards um providing um Rehabilitation to uh homes in need of a repair people who are living there are low income and uh seniors who have disabilities and then there's also the home buyer assistance uh program so um you can see there's just a lot of work and a lot of different different areas happening under this um under this Bond so um so far that bond has supported about 1100 units so far we're currently in that fourth year so we are 75% allocated committed um or spent 800 of those units more than 800 of those units um have been through rental development Gap financing that again goes towards Gap financing for the low-income housing tax credit and public private partnership funding funds directed at homeowners have assisted more than 100 households and then site acquisition funds um are anticipated to ultimately yield 300 more than 300 units so in addition to maintaining unit production we need to Target solutions to address the homelessness crisis so it's sort of like an upstream and a downstream solution you really have to address both at the same time and this map was provided to us by our partners in Parks um parks and rack and it shows places where people are residing outside in places not fit for human habitation so the blue dots here show where people experiencing unsheltered homelessness were identified by the annual point in time count um which is a really important way to capture homelessness data it is not perfect um but really excited and and grateful to hear that we had two of our council members participate in that point in time count um conducted by the Continuum of Care each year such an A A crucial way for us to get um the you know the best way actually for us to get a sense of people experiencing homelessness and what we need to do to address that the orange dots are places identified by city parks recreation and cultural resources on Parks property so just the interesting thing to note about this right is you can actually see the limitations of the point and time count just in this map alone because they don't line up right so you see there are several dots identified by prcr for example that we're not um accounted for excuse me in the point in time count so we know that the number from the point in time count um is limited um and it is not quite accurate what what usually communities will do is they will take the number that they know and they will triple it so in our community we know that there are just around 500 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness from the 2023 point in time count and so we'll triple that to get a real sense and a better estimate of what that looks like um so we know that again increasing that housing Supply specifically affordable housing Supply is critical piece of the solution to end homelessness and in addition targeted interventions that directly either increase income and or lower powering housing cost for people currently experiencing homelessness can rapidly move us closer to the reality of what we know as achieving functional zero and that means homelessness is rare and brief so we know that there are factors that we can't control for all the time we the inflow of people experiencing homelessness but the city is also addressing that and I'll talk a little bit more about that um but overall functional zero is the goal where you set up a system where um people are house very quickly and they are um not having to spend more than 30 days um experiencing homelessness other communities have achieved this I'll say in the veteran space specifically there's been a lot of incredible work to achieve functional zero in recent years the state of Virginia um actually announced functional zero homelessness for veterans a few years ago they've been able to maintain that due to increased targeted funding for housing focused Solutions so there is a need for coordinated action that involves everyone impacted by the issue both private and public involvement and resources are needed in order to achieve that functional zero because homelessness is a housing problem and it's about affordability the research shows that the key to ending homelessness again is providing access to permanent affordable housing and to make housing affordable housing costs must be reduced or households incomes must be increased this can be done through low barrier tools like direct assistance which we're providing through the bringing Neighbors Home pilot or through subsidized housing and vouchers um it is important to note though that only one in four households who are eligible to receive vouchers um actually receive receive them because it uh the vure program is not an entitlement program in this country so like other entitlement programs such as supplemental nutrition assistance which is our food stamp program in this country that is a an entitlement program and that means if you're eligible you can receive that assistance housing doesn't work the same way in the country in the in in the US in that um it's more of like a lottery you just get really lucky if you're one of those uh small percentage of people who's actually able to receive uh a voucher that is eligible and even of that number um a third about in New York City recently it was found that a half of people who even have those vouchers in hand are not able to actually use them and that's due to a number of factors things like discrimination um just not being able to find a landlord um who will accept a voucher sometimes the the lack of of housing Supply overall all of those things impact this um and direct assistance by contrast is a direct payment to a low-income household which they can use however they choose to cover rent food Transportation child care and any other expense um we shared a lot in in Prior um presentations about how when people are provided with direct assistance the amount of spending on what we call Temptation Goods does not increase so people by far are spending dollars on things like Transportation housing Child Care Etc and we're already seeing this um with the bringing Neighbors Home pilot initial um sort of results so we're just going to look at peer cities um so Houston is really the the community that has done the most targeted work around unchild homelessness in recent years and they have reduced their unsheltered homelessness number by 64% um it it's thousands of people uh they've housed 7700 people in fact and they have a goal of 7,000 more and they've also found um that 90% of people that they house directly from Street to home have maintained their housing after two years they also found that when offered housing so when you're working with people who are living in encampments and living outside 90% of people accept the Housing Resource that they are provided and that sort of dispels a myth around some people just are uh Services resistant or resistant to housing we've done a number of focus groups as well for bringing Neighbors Home pilot and overwhelmingly the sentiment has been when when asked what it is that you need in order to end your homelessness it's housing overwhelmingly the second one is a job and people really expressing how hard it is to hold a job when they don't have um a place to take take care of themselves I know for me I could not hold this job if I had no place to shower or cook food for myself um or know that I was safe so uh we heard a lot about that in these focus groups so Dallas has done similar work within three years they moved 3,000 households experiencing homelessness into permanent housing through again this street toome U model that provides rapid rehousing as well as connections to case management and services by need um Houston I do want to go about Houston actually used to be like one of those troubled communities identified by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and so they did get some infusion of funds in order to carry this out uh but we'll talk a little bit about the funds too that that folks are utilizing in order to address this uh so 90 camps closed in Houston um you know we saw Dallas numbers they went from 8500 people to 3200 people Oklahoma City this is a recent uh more recent um initiative in Oklahoma City and they house more than 300 people uh from more than 20 different camps in a little over a year so again let's talk about how much it costs and so these communities have similar numbers to what we have come up with u the per person per year cost uh you know Houston looks at 18 to 24,000 Dallas is around 24,000 Oklahoma City says maybe a little bit more for us at 25,000 so um and in Houston the initial investment was a city and county partnership and that was around 165 million most of that were were American Rescue plan uh dollars philanthropy kicked in around 15 million so um the mayor in Houston announced a new $70 million plan to continue this progress because those arpa those American Rescue plan funds we as we know are diminishing or and um fully spent so this new $70 million plan announced by the mayor in November uh 25 million will come from the city 20 million from the county and again 15 million from philanthropy as well as corporations 10 million um they're expecting from other government entities um the least Outlook I think it's another a good point is that they made a point to say the least amount of funds that are allocated from their homelessness dollars doing the street to home are for what is called permanent Supportive Housing because that is the lowest uh amount of need so permanent support of housing is a really high level is for people with really high level service needs and mostly what those look like are single site um everyone there has a disability or is exiting homelessness they have a really high level of care sometimes the the care is on site and that's a fantastic model for people who need that level of care it's extremely expensive and so it should really be tailored and right siiz to the amount of need in your community and in general around 20% maybe up to 30% but that's a really high estimate um need that level right so most people just need rapid rehousing which is rent assistance and case management um and Which is less expensive and and just as effective so um they've been really intentional about making sure there are also a number of communities that have low utilization for their permanent Supportive Housing and that's due to the fact that some people really don't uh want to live in that single site sort of model um or because there's a turnover and people get well and they can move on and then there's just no one to fill those units so we really want to make sure that we are targeting our investment so that we don't have those high level of vacancies and utilization issues that other cities see Dallas has invested 72 million initially in 2021 again those were American Rescue plan act funds and they um aimed to house 6,000 people by the end of this year with a rapid rehousing model the 2026 objective this is a new objective was established um by the new um city manager there and the all neighbors Coalition Coalition which is this group of local organizations that are aiming to take to tackle homelessness and uh some funds were put into the U budget for this year uh and they also have a private public partnership that they anticipate will be around $30 million to help them address this um they also really talk about uh reducing emergency shelter costs by investing in these permanent Solutions again because their emergency shelter costs they estimated were $33 million a year which is again far higher than what it is to actually offer folks these um permanent Solutions um so Dallas has a new goal again with that $30 million public private partnership they've also increased funding for their street Outreach so that they have Street Outreach folks that have those housing resources in hand to connect people with immediate medely um also part of the city's 1.25 billion Capital bond package that passed last year in Dallas will be allocated towards ending homelessness and increasing affordable housing they also have a $3 fee that is added to their residential and non-residential utility accounts um and that fee goes towards encampment cleaning as well as homelessness Solutions um that was a recently enacted um fee and that generates around $10.5 million in revenue for them and Oklahoma City launched a housing focused effort to reduce homelessness by 75% in 2023 with an allocation of 12.5 million and again that effort is the same as it mirrors Houston and Dallas um bringing housing and services directly to people living unsheltered through coordinated Street Outreach and ensuring that camps are cleared and closed and not repopulated okay so now we'll talk a little bit about the work that the city is doing in this space um bringing Neighbors Home is really something that provides ground tested and research back strategies to end unsheltered homelessness it combines um evidence-based and best practice and camp decommissioning with that direct housing assistance to provide Financial stability and housing Choice the pilot is also accompanied by a broader CommunityWide planning initiative to address unsheltered homelessness there's a 45 member steering committee um that includes people with lived experience and expertise that have really informed um everything along the way that this steering committee has done it's been a really meaningful initiative uh we meet every other month at this point um actually no we just recently met monthly and um it's just it brings together folks who are directly involved in the work um RPD is represented uh Transportation director Callum is on that um deputy chief Boyce is in that group um Stephen Bentley is in that group there are a lot of folks that are in that group and so it's real cross-section of Interest as well as service providers people with lived experience um it's a really amazing thing to be a part of and they are building this plan that's really going to provide the infrastructure um and identify the gaps in resources for our community and what it will take to end homelessness and so they're really coming up with what is our plan of decommissioning what is that strategy as well as what are the resources needed in order to fully um provide that so they're doing needs assessment and gaps analysis um coming up with shared protocols and prioritization methods there's also something called housing surge toolkit and that develops actionable strategies to rapidly expand housing opportunities for people um there's also an implementation guide as well as a monitoring and evaluation process and it really is an inclusive and data- driven process and will play a critical role in shaping the city's affordable housing strategy and ensuring sustainable Equitable solutions to meet the needs of our community I just want to do a little partner shout out right now we so we are going to come back to you all in March and do a bringing neighbors home um download and tell you all exactly everything that's going on I just had a story that I wanted to tell for a little preview and also just take this time to let you all know how many partners are involved in this work um so healing Transitions and Oak City cares are contracted on the ground folks who are connecting people and enrolling people directly into the pilot they've done incredible work um our Consulting Group sarado is also helping to lead this effort we've had several resource popup and enrollment events at um the the camp at Dicks Park which is the focus area for bringing Neighbors Home pilot the initial Focus area we have successfully enrolled 40 people in the pilot um last night I just got the update from staff almost everyone is housed um we are working at an incredible Pace but this group of Partners is really allowing us to do that uh we've had these resource popups that have been great for enrollment and I just want to shout out the partners in that it it's incredible uh we have Alliance there helping us to coordinate doctors to come on site we've been able to identify highly medically vulnerable people and expedite them into housing I'll tell a little story about one of those folks we have South light out there acorns we cannot do this work without acorns and RPD they are essential to this work um how housing neighborhood staff Interfaith Food shuttle is there we have the familiar faces initiative from the county we also have their housing department Department of Social Services we have wake Med Dr clausner and Arlene Smith for those of you who might know their amazing work United Health is out there as well and of course um our parks department and their staff we we can't do any of this without their help and support um and I do want to shout out all almost everyone in this room has actually helped to make this happen so you all made this happen um but in addition uh you know every almost everyone has helped to make it happen from Transportation it um the city attorney's office of course the city manager's office Communications budget HR I mean the list goes on um none of this work could happen without all of these Partners we'll tell a story okay so there's so Oak City cares at one of these resource pop-up events that were enrolling folks they U met a gentleman who was highly medically vulnerable um the doctor that saw him said if he spends any more time living outside he he will most likely die very soon and so we worked very quickly in order to get this person into housing and so we were lucky enough that we were able to get him into housing um that same day and um the Oak City car's case worker uh who was fantastic she you know drove him over there got him some uh food for his dinner and and you know said I'll come visit you tomorrow and so she the next day is calling him can't get him to answer his phone she's growing really concerned and she just goes over there and she shows up and he and he opens the door and you can tell he was like disheveled he had just gotten out of bed and she's like and he's like oh my gosh I'm so sorry I've missed your phone calls he said I've slept for the last 20 hours I had no idea that this would happen and so she goes in and she had like a welcome basket for him and she goes in his apartment and he had all of his things like perfectly organized up against the wall it was like spotless and he told her how grateful he was um to have a place to one sleep where he felt safe and warm but then to um a restroom in a shower he just couldn't stop talking about how those things were important to him and since that time um his health has improved he's been able to visit his grandchildren who he hasn't been able to see in quite a while um so we're just seeing story after Story like that I just wanted to give you all a preview um now we'll talk a little bit about this other amazing work that you all made happen which is diversion prevention and Rapid exit um the city of Raleigh's Department of Housing and neighborhoods is administering a program that provides $855,000 to prevent divert and rapidly exit res residents from the homeless response system now this is something where we're able to address you know folks that are potentially coming into the system and facing homelessness and prevent that um which is an essential strategy um nationally in order to end homelessness a note too that these programs can help strengthen the Continuum of Care's annual application for competitive federal funds so the Continuum of Care for wake and Raleigh every year has to compete against other communities for federal dollars for homelessness all of these communities Houston Dallas um I don't think I'm not Oklahoma City I'm sure is going to increase this year have seen increased federal funds because they've been able to successfully end homelessness and employ these successful strategies so by doing these things we can actually be eligible for um additional federal funds after a competitive RFP process for these funds we have five organizations that we're working with in the community to administer them so we're very excited about that work moving forward we think that should be very soon we're just sort of um the ink is drying on those contracts so just want to take a moment um to imagine a rally that has functionally ended homelessness I think we know that homelessness impacts so many areas of our city to include um the economy downtown businesses businesses anywhere stability for families and children the um you know the feeling of safety um also you know have a more functional housing market and overall healthy residents and this is a really important piece which is that the city is just one piece of this puzz right and I think uh that is evidenced by all of the partners that we have brought together for bringing neighbors home but also in the amount of funds that it takes to do this city cannot do this alone this is really something that has to be a collaborative effort through healthc care providers non-profits housing authorities um foundations philanthropy as well as the county um so again the the pilot and planning initiative are really laying out a great infrastructure and a path for us to reach that functional zero uh the pilot is meant to provide a proof of concept for this powerful new tool to connect our neighbors living outside with the financial and services support needed to move directly from camps into housing and to say stay safe stably housed the planning initiative contemplates the pilot as one of these tools in the overall toolbox and we know that reaching this ambitious goal of ending unsheltered homelessness will require a collaborative CommunityWide effort again and the city cannot do that alone really good examples out of other cities who have done this successfully one is in Oklahoma on their website they really shout out 50 different players who were involved in this work it really does take um full collaboration and everyone moving in the same direction so these strategies and are the and priorities are the building blocks of the new affordable housing plan and just a preview here that it will synthesize key housing goals and put forward a road map to the for the city to achieve those next goals over the next 5 years and this table we just wanted to show other plans and how we align in our affordable housing plan with all of these other plans so that's just um a little um preview there and that is all Pat and I are here to take questions yes yeah emila just thank you so much for the tremendous work I hear from residents that live um near um the camp that has been um used in our pilot and I know they're grateful for all the work that you all are doing there and for the communication that you provide to um it just you've really been there to talk to Residents about what we're working on and showing up at you know Wednesday nights um and that helps that just helps people understand what this is about because it's new and we need to keep communicating that out um really impressed that you've gotten almost everyone house through the program already the 40 IND indviduals maybe this will come up in March but do you have a sense of what is going to be a the budget need to keep this going how long do those 40 individuals do we anticipate keeping them in our housing versus moving on to new individuals to support yeah that's a great question so we contemplated a two-year period for payments for this um and I don't have the answer but we will um and really appreciate that question and and um So currently the funding allows for two years of payments and I think we know that some folks will need longer term subsidies especially people who are more senior we're seeing a lot of seniors and people with some pretty um severe disabilities and so people who are unable to perhaps uh return to gain full employment uh will need those longer term subsidies and so we're planning on working with the casew workers to help transition people and identify those additional subsidies um but we do know a lot of people really do just need this initial sort of springboard to get them to a better place uh we've seen and I think I shared this with you all the Last Retreat um you know findings from other programs that have done this work have found and and researchers are always stunned to see this but the increase in income and employment for people is pretty stunning so we're hopeful to see that happen in this pilot group definitely thank you for the information and this is um I think very enlightening for the the community so I hope people who see this can really see that we're working towards trying to you know eradicate homelessness as much as possible but back to the funding question in a sense I know we're talking about two years for the 40 people that you're helping right now but my question is overall how much funding do you believe is needed um and then is there a phase approach to that and then another part is you're putting people in units um and we've talked about building units and we're only doing 300 roughly 350 roughly average per year um in our current plan so how many more units do you feel we need um know to help eradicate this and then I have another question for you um Pat after this okay um let me address the second one because that's the one I remember and then I might ask you to go back to the first one um so you know I think that deficit is pretty close to what it is that 30,000 number so I from what we've seen here you know this is what we're currently able to do with that last Bond I think we're projecting out being able to maintain that number um you know of course if if we wanted to increase that goal it we would need to figure out like what that number is and so if that's something you all want to see happy to provide that to you um and look at sort of this is what can be done with this number and um we can do that type of analysis but for our our draft plan now really just looks at what are is the current rate and how we're going to maintain it but we're happy to get you other yeah I think it's helpful because I mean we see in Houston no 165 million 72 in Dallas in 12.5 initially in Oklahoma City I think us having what an idea of what that number is is helps determine you know what how we plan and map things out in the future um as much as possible and my question for Pat for you um was we talked about um the number of units that were approved and constructed as far as you know the plan and everything um can we get an update over the last 10 years of how many just units overall in the city have been approved and how many of those have been constructed um because I know we see zoning cases that come before rezonings but there's a lot of things that come before you all that's by right um so I think if we could have that information no or I don't know if you know off the top of your head now but if we have that I think it'll be helpful yeah so we we'll we'll get you that in the in the very near future one of our goals with the comprehens the new comprehensive plan is to uh stand up a data dashboard that has that type of information online for visibility by you and the in the community at all times um because we have that that data now but we have to pull it from different sources um because there's different programs which we track that but um yeah like I said the missing Ms about 30% of the new housing um that since 2022 um we we are in the range of 3,000 a year per permits for new okay thank you C Pat and I saw your hand you can go this is where to help everyone out yeah sure um well you're back at the podium so I'll ask my questions for you first um first I told you I was going to brag on you and I am um council member Jones and I had an opportunity to participate in the point in time count and we were tasks with going to the encampments that are being decommissioned around the edge of dicks and and healing Transitions and there was so much talk in those communities about the cards is sort of like how they're colloquially termed um because they're just they're like a debit card that arrives and looks like a normal debit card and then are pre-loaded with the funds and we were cat sh like when we were counting the last of the five or so residents who received their cards yesterday were were waiting on them but the other 35 had already received them and been housed and there was such like respect and appreciation for the program and I thought it was a real Testament to you and the the members of your staff and healing transitions who have designed the program it was simple I mean we heard anecdotes from residents who like got their card put in their pocket and then just searched up on their phone an apartment unit and went and and got a lease they just went and got one um and it should be that simple for everyone in our community and so the fact that we've made a a type of CARE program or subsidy program as simple and as dignified as it would be for someone who's operating as a private citizen um I think is really important and I think it built a lot of trust we heard a lot of anecdotes from residents who were like oh yeah they always tell us they're going to give us something good and then they don't deliver but there was an like an understanding that that this program would deliver that that Trey was going to come back with that card and activate the pin number and those people are going to go of right off into the sunset and be able to get their apartment um and I thought it spoke nicely to we heard an anecdote that I thought spoke nicely to this perception about like service verse so we heard um one person who's still living in the encampment talking about his friend who's now housed and saying oh she didn't want to put her name on things she didn't want to be in the system she didn't want to sign anything but I told her to I told her to and now she and he described went on to describe like where she's living now and so I think like it was just speaks to the idea that when you provide the person with the service they actually need they they will take it um in a way that's usable so um just hats off to you and your team I thought the was a real Testament to the program and so I'm eager to see how we can continue the work and grow it you said it's proof of concept but uh I think we'll have really good proof of it and so um can't wait to see how we expand it um on to questions the chart that has the affordable units I got a little bit lost sof it's tough about we try to make it as pretty as we can but still okay uh yeah that one so I got a little bit loss out of these numbers how many of these units like have residents living in them so we don't necessar so 3800 that 3848 um is the progress towards our goal meaning like on the ground they're built so built yes okay so and and I yeah go ahead did you have further question that that I just wanted to so cuz I was seeing the 1800 and the 38 and the 71 I was like so 38 doors are out in the world right since 2015 when we started okay got it and the the remaining is that 1,00 number so that's what we need to be on the ground in order to meet the 2026 the goal uh goal however you know we have between those and then 3,300 are in the pipeline meaning so not on the ground but in development or funded and beginning development or at some point in in that um process and so if you total what is on the ground with the 3,300 that gets us to that 7,149 overall units that are either on the ground or in the pipeline that are moving towards this goal um um and and you know the mention of the dashboard from um the mayor and council member silver uh that is something we really would love to do I think this is tough to you know we what would be great is if we could see a better visual of where we are for each project and how we're achieving the goal more clearly we do have a um an argis map where you can uh go and see it's linked on our affordable housing web page under the affordable housing Bond um subtitle but subheading but that goes to a map where you can see all of the projects funded by the bond and where they are on the in the city and how much funding has been put into those but again that's an rgis map I think there's a way we could probably really enhance what data we're having from different sources like what Pat was talking about to to make something better yeah I was going to say that um planning director Young's map earlier there is incredible data so really appreciated that and yeah if we could get to the spatial distribution of these that would be really great agree can you pull back um pull up your slide about the um allocation of funds from the 20120 housing bond is that it yeah that's it so you said there's about 75% that's been used already and 25% left can you give a brief synopsis of what the 5% is remaining and I guess maybe a timeline for when it's going to be um distributed or used great question mayor protm so that is about $4.8 million and so that will be our funding that is provided in the next in this next year's um joint venture rental Gap financing RFP so that is sort of the last of it so then by the end of 2026 will be fully expended after those funds are committed thank you thank you so much for your presentation uh first question is how did we come up with the 5700 units as a goal that's a great question yeah I um so back in 2016 2015 when we first did the um one penny penny for affordable housing um working with Larry Jarvis at the time um in the council we they he did the math he said it comes out to about 560 units per year so 560 per year over 10 years is where roughly where that number came from so that's that's that was the goal um so that's where that number came from and we were on a rooll to break it probably even more than Co hit and that's where you see that one year there's only like aund and some units awesome thank you for that clarification uh I do want to spend just a moment talking about the pick count because uh it was an eye openening experience to to be a part of and I want to highlight your work but also I want to highlight councelor Patton thank you for sending the email out and and asking us to participate um it was really really cold that night and just so you understand we weren't looking at that evening we were asking them where they stayed the night of the 22nd please remember that the 22nd it's snowed which means that many people were in Emergency Shelters and were not able to be counted in that so a big red flag for me and this is not anything with you because this is a national count that happens is why do we do that count in the winter when we're a lot of people are in Emergency Shelters and why don't we do a follow-up not us but just general uh a followup in the Summer where that number is going to be much bigger because uh it artificially makes this a low number um for that so I just want people to understand that all of that that count allocates res resources and um I think it's put here so we have less resources to give to the communities that need it the most so just wanted to highlight that for a moment echoing counselor Patton's um experience in hearing how grateful people are people who did not get the money right away were still Thanking us and saying I know I I trust you now that this is going to continue um and it was beautiful it was a beautiful just conversation having uh with people and understanding the needs of the community um so thank you guys for your work thank you for prioritizing the most vulnerable in our community because that's really where we have to do in all of this work so thank you thank you um I have a question for Pat I asked a question earlier about our growth projections and how many housing units we going to need uh I don't know what the new comp plan time Horizon is whether it's 2050 but I'm just trying to understand as we look at housing production you know the previous plan had a growth framework map predicted 65 to 70% of the growth would happen in those e growth centers or 12 multimodal quarters it's not just the deficit we have today but as we project out to anticipate how many residents and housing units would need by 2050 uh is that going to be part of the plan so as we look at housing production we know exactly where to we expect the most density missing middle kind of changed the equation because it's not going to be within these growth centers it's going to be throughout the city but is that going to be part of the exercise so it's kind of a blueprint where we as Council residents develop Community know exactly where we expect growth to go and the urban form map helped it because it is now tied to Transit so do you have a number about by 2050 we expect uh we need 10000 th000 units just trying to know in terms of order of magnitude as we contemplate zoning cases and plans what that number is sure so that's a great question we we are in the middle right now of working um with a Consulting team to come up with exactly the kind of data you're describing right what are the estimated population growth we have what number of new units do we need to accommodate that growth over the last 10 years we've been U remarkably steady at kind of that approximately 8,000 new residents a year I think in the ballpark it would probably stay in that range but we want to really test that assumption um carefully and and look look closely at it you're correct that the uh time frame for this plan would be through 2050 so um we would bring that to you so what we're doing right now as I think you're well aware is community conversations on key topics around growth getting listening to the community getting their feedback we're concurrently doing those conditions analysis and projections and then we'll bring that all to Council in uh right after your summer break probably this year this calendar year to begin to get some feedback but that'll include that data then okay perhaps related to that um Pat um sort of Ling to a personal experience like I um purchased my home in Raleigh in 2017 and by a good deal of privilege and a bit of luck was able to get into it um our home was $200,000 as was kind of the range we were shopping in and and much of what we experienced at that time was like people significantly outbidding us bidding double on the home and I would be like okay well if you can afford to double the price of this home you need to go shop for the $400,000 homes and what I am learning in time is there were not enough $400,000 homes for those people and that's why they were bidding against me um so to as we project out um is will that data include like some stratification about the like the number million doll Mansions we need to build versus $300,000 Town Homes like will it kind of break out the full 65,000 units that are needed we certainly can that's a great question um and I think uh as I tried to suggest earlier talking to Custer Jones's question the the new housing is generally more expensive housing um because of the cost of of construction we're really probably closer to that 80% Ami than 60 right in that range depending on credit score and down payment and other factors um which of course we don't control but but we can certainly look um we have some data now we can enhance that data on um what uh cost of housing is needed to meet our residence our current residence income sure that'll be part of what we what we look at Great questions I'm not seeing any other questions I know that we are potentially at time perfect so thank you to and EM um and I'll just comment before we we're going to take a f minute break um in addition to getting to facilitate this Retreat I also get to listen to you all as a staff person from your Regional Council and I will say You are not alone in the conversation both around Supply and homelessness um both from your Urban partners and your rural Partners which is something that we're seeing in our region more um because of the supply Challenge and so um our staff actually just at the same time as your council members did can participated in the the point and time count in chadam County which is seeing rapid increases in homelessness which is something they had never experienced before and that's a much more rural County um so I just wanted to reflect on that and say you have Partners across the region to to work with you on this challenge um and find solutions to it so with that um we're going to take a five minute break and get right into our conversation on growth and annexations [Music] [Music] no [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back welcome back everyone um so we're going to be moving on to a conversation about smar grow and annexation but I believe we may have a question that's for our P our most recent presenters yes just a quick question for emila um in terms of the Raleigh Housing Authority I noticed they weren't mentioned in the affordable housing conversation a very important asset we recognize it is not a city entity but there's no question it's an important partner in terms of providing and protecting housing so can you talk about our relationship and partnership with the Raleigh Housing Authority great question council member we have a a great relationship with the Raleigh Housing Authority we have regular meetings with them um to talk about different ways we can partner on development initiatives um you know we keep in touch with them quite regularly uh we are talking with them along with the planning department about new models potentially for affordable housing funding um so we're we're really excited about that we're just in the exploratory phase of that uh but they are very important Partners to us in all of this work thank you thank you yeah should should have been mentioned so apologize if they were not they were a puzzle piece up here but probably shouldn't have got you know should have shouted them out a bit more so thank you for that question and I'll just add we do typically have a presentation from Raleigh Housing Authority annually I believe um so we should get some updates from them thank thank you all right and with that I think I'm going to be turning it back over to Pat good morning again Pat young with Planning and Development this is an awful lot of Pat young for Saturday morning and I'm sorry for that but I'm glad to be joined by some friends uh who are representing the service delivery departments that are impacted by our growth so uh I'm here this morning good morning again thank you for this opportunity to talk about how we can grow wisely in the coming years um you can see on the slide here the topics we'll be covering um during this uh hopefully we'll be brief and engaging presentation um you'll be hearing from me this morning but this represents the work of uh these gentlemen and a lot of their team members in their departments as well as Matt Clen and Ray all of my staff who I want to spe especially recognize because this is a lot of data to be to pull together in a short period of time um we talked in our earlier presentation about the milkin uh Institute designation best performing City out of 400 Metro areas we've been steadily climbing the ranks for the last decade or so um this ranks economic performance uh in Metro areas we have a strong sustainable uh employment growth in diverse sectors that um that fact alone is going to continue to attract a lot of new residents uh and residents that are wealthier on average than existing Raleigh IES um and of course the economic success is in addition to our wonderful people in climate world-class educational opportuni ities so the the city um looks like I'm missing one slide yeah it's right there I'll go back the city has grown by about 20% since 2010 from right around 400,000 to right around 500,000 today um but our density as you can see on the right side there remains low um relative to other Metro areas um it's and it's uh increased since the turn of the last century and that's a lot of the policies that were put in place um in 2009 2013 but that has implications for how we provide Services infrastructure we'll talk more about that um the um and I also mentioned briefly that the slide is hard to see but um we're not just growing we're we're growing with residents that U are bringing a higher income and higher wealth than most a lot of our Raleigh residents that impacts The Way We Grow um as you can see from this graphic um our City's population has growth grown significantly as we just talked about but the the growth of uh wondering how I paused this the the there you go how about that the the the the the the growth um of our city geographically has outpaced the growth of our population which has been significant um over 70% of our built environment uh has been built just since 1980 um and a lower de development uh density development which is what most of those uh uh colors represent since about 1970 um uh is more expensive to serve per acre of land with city services and infrastructure uh than than more dense development we'll talk a little bit more about that later uh the map shows this map shows the in Orange uh annexations that have been done since 2011 uh 2011 is relevant because there was a major change in state law in that year that prohibited cities from doing involuntary annexations so prior to 2011 it was a very common practice that theity would extend utilities which is really the service that um most developers and most Builders and most people want is the water and sewer utility that allows you to get Urban densities without it you can really only have about one unit per acre with it you could have well over 100 units an acre easily um so prior to 2011 the general assembly allowed us to extend utilities and then once there was enough a critical mass of growth that was producing Revenue tax dollars for the city we could go and involuntary Annex large areas bring it into the City and provide services more efficiently because um we had allowed um utilities to expand there and growth to to occur um with a change in law in 2011 cities are required to provide these Services kind of upfront in advance of the time that we have a critical mass really at the time in which we have even one development in a in a new service area so that's a big and a big change that impacts this conversation as we um go forward so before we before we dive deeper let's take a moment to level set the three types of areas that the city has control or influence over in managing growth uh the first is the city limits uh City Limits uh is the area where property taxes are paid to the city and residents are entitled to the full Suite of Public Services that the city provides um I am not an attorney I don't pretend to even play one not even on TV we do have two in the room that could speak to this but the standard in the statute is that the same Services be provide provided um in North count Ina the statute does not specify a level of service um there's some ambiguity about whether that same level of service is required but the statute says the same Services um and so the term annexation also for those of you at home um is the legal process of bringing land into the city from outside of the city extr territorial jurisdiction or etj is the area where zoning and land use controls from the city apply but where land owners have no right to city services uh this was put in place many years ago 1930s I Believe by assembly to allow cities to grow right to to ensure that property at their Edge meets their type development standards appearance um and is ready to be brought into the city um uh property in the etj requires annexation before coming into the city uh by count only Council can do that and by policy the city requires properties in the etj that want to AC access City Utilities to come in to the city through annexation but there are some exceptions we'll go into that in a minute and a third category is uh a potential our potential future jurisdiction you'll also hear that called our Urban Services area these are areas that are outside the city limits and outside the etj but where we've agreed by policy and and agreement with Wake County and our peer municipalities um particularly in eastern Wake County to eventually Annex no legally binding commitment no timeline just that we would eventually Annex those again that's through policy so the the city limits on this map I'm going it's a little bit to see from where you are uh is in light gray or looks almost light blue in this in this slide um the potential uh future jurisdiction is in the dark blue uh and then the etj is uh uh is in that kind of medium uh blue color the orange represents the annexation since 2011 you also notice that dashed Gray Line uh on the bottom right represents the plan final portion of i54 which is slated to be completed in 2028 that will unquestionably accelerate growth pressure in southeast and Northeast Raleigh so before we dive into the impacts of growth on our city services and infrastructure take a moment to talk about law and policy um annexation as I mentioned earlier is a legal process of bringing Land from the etj or the unincorporated County into the city um the key Point here is that this can only be done um except in very limited circumstances such as city land land through voluntary Petition of the land owner or act of the general assembly so that's again voluntary on the part of land owners but it is something that we require by policy if you want Utility Services which most folks do if they want to develop their land uh we do in our current comprehensive plan have policies that talk about how growth in within the existing city limit should be prioritized um followed by the extr territorial jurisdiction and then the potential future growth area also called the urban Services area here um that I mentioned earlier we have a series of resolutions that that kind of try to enact that direct staff not to accept annexation petitions outside of the extra territorial jurisdiction except in limited circumstances uh shown on these following slides um I'll pause for a minute let you read those but these these first several are quite limited right these are spec specific limited carve outs that prior councils have made for allowing annexation petitions outside the etj um these last to here um are driving a lot of the requests you're seeing now from Northeast and Southeast Raleigh uh where that is adjacent to a satellite area of the city limits um the uh rather than the primary city limits satellite means it's disconnected from the rest of the city limits um or that it's adjacent or close to utilities and we'll talk more about the implications of these policies and how we could how they impact um Service delivery yes can you go back to the uh the first I I thought I saw Durham County and I just that's my area I just didn't read it I'm sorry sure so we we have an area uh in your District uh that's uh in Durham County the City of Raleigh we have over a thousand residents at least that are in Durham County um that was agreed to for What's called the annexation agreement which is an agreement between two municipalities about where annexation will occur right so that there's not um Property Owners know where who they need to go talk to if they want water and sewer Services whether that's Durham Nale rolls spille and any of the adjoining towns we negotiated an agreement with Durham County back in the 90s and it was re uh to to that was before there was significant development pressure out there before Brier Creek existed and then it was re-upped in 20 19 or 2020 awesome thank you so much so it's it's difficult to to generalize about the costs uh of of growth and tax revenues associated with growth but there are a couple things we can say um the more nodal and the word I'm using there is nood meaning kind of concentrated where you have a mix of uses around a a a center area and more dense development is more Revenue positive than low density sprawling development and and most development is revenue positive in the short term because the roads and infrastructure are new right they're accepted from the developer for the city to maintain they can become Revenue negative when there needs to be reinvestments in about 30 years usually is when you start to see significant costs um something that interferes with that calculation is when major infrastructure Investments like new fire stations new fire Crews new police Crews uh have to be uh provided in order to serve these areas and so we'll get into some examples of that a little bit later so how does how does our growth pattern impact Public Services um first of all just kind of keep in mind we provide a lot of services uh and this is kind of an overview of those from our website and we need to provide all services uh in in any area that we bring into the city limits um so I'll start with Transportation uh the map here depicts the city maintained streets in green with highways and white which are um owned and managed by North County Department of Transportation in most cases of new commercial development or residential subdivisions the developer will build the internal roads uh network but we are very limited to in the the extent to which we can require off-site improvements of existing roads and most of the roads in Northeast and Southeast Raleigh as you will know are um because those areas were until quite recently really rural areas they're what are called Farm to Market roads they're sometimes very narrow they don't have um curb and gutter they have can have soft shoulders they're kind of ribbon paved um we are not legally obligated to improve these roads but it is likely that if we allow Suburban development in these areas we will see significant political pressure to convert these these roads to more urban streets with crosswalks curbing gutter signal sidewalks things of that nature there is president for this in the leeville road area of Northwest Raleigh which was was again until relatively recently a rural um agricultural type area uh we've spent millions of dollars uh mostly through bonds uh improving leeville Road uh to a more urban street section to accommodate the growth that's occurred out there over the last 30 years or so you can see um outlined uh in purple on the right are the what we called our Southeast special study area cessa is on the on the bottom of your slide and the Northeast special study area Nessa is in the is in the um Northeast area these are areas where that are in that future um anticipated growth area that we agreed by policy with the county and our partners to serve eventually and then um so that you'll see that repeated on these different slides when we talk about the different Services um in terms of fire this is the service you've heard the most about right those little red dots are the existing fire stations um as you've heard from Chief Griffin and others there's a wellestablished national standard for fire response um called NFPA National Fire Protection Association standards it's strong it's a well established standard it contributes to the lower home insurance rates we have here in Raleigh through What's called the iso program Insurance Services office um but it is not a legally binding standard it's a standard that we've adopted so that we have good fire service that we can get lower insurance rates for our residents and that we can help protect their safety you can see the location of existing fire stations uh many of these of course need replacment are retrofitting to meet modern standards and equipment and the lack of existing service in the Northeast and Southeast area is going to necessitate new stations and new service uh and so fire I'll remind you is an entirely general fund Service uh impact is is directly on the general fund rather than uh uh serve uh end users such as uh Builders and Developers next is police uh police has currently has six service districts they're shown on this map police is less reliant on facilities to support their operations in other words most services are deployed from Patrol vehicles but there's still a need uh for uh districts and for facilities uh certainly vehicles and Personnel to serve newly annexed areas uh in the face of a large number particularly in the face of a large number of vacancies that we have been talked about here in PD and the same as fire that's the general fund uh m act so again I'll let you address any questions you want to uh deputy chief Boyce but there may be new service areas or expansion and service areas to serve these areas uh Parks is another service where there's not an firmly established service standard although we do have an aspirational standard to have a park within walking distance of folks residences um we do of course have a very robust Parks program those are shown in green on this map um but we would expect there to be demands for new parks uh with a diversity city of programs in these Northeast and Southeast growth areas uh and these services are very limited today uh Solid Waste is is a uh partially offset by user fees right that's a partial Enterprise fund uh but partially by the general fund as you can see from this map they are currently four service days uh so a significant expansion of our service area these two areas in purple are about twice the size of inside the Belt Line uh for context um so a significant expansion of our service area would lead to a conversation about how to ensure comparable service in these areas likely involve more vehicles and personnel and then finally Public Utilities you know Public Utilities is the main driver of urban growth as you well know we are a regional service provider for uh I think it's six towns in Southern and Eastern wake as well as Raleigh um the need to install infrastructure uh to serve those towns is a significantly and kind of almost dramatically attracting development because folks are seeing that those lines are available um and of course that's the prerequisite for urban levels of development um it's certainly not Ry Wilder's intention but that is part of what's been happening um it's it's important to note that uh uh utilities are an Enterprise function which means that substantially all the costs of extending this very expensive service are are borne by the end user so as I noted earlier growth into areas that aren't currently served by servic and infrastructure um that NE uh that necessitate general fund Investments upfront as I said because we can't do involuntary annexations we have to serve those areas as soon as we bring them into the city um that mean means uh uh a large uh and sometimes not Revenue productive development can can occur at Suburban densities uh it's over it's more expensive overall than denser growth and more expensive per acre of land um I'll show some examples here this happens to be um in the Oakwood neighborhood but this could really be anywhere inside the urban portions of our city um this is Wataga Street on 460 fet feet of Road there's 45 units paying tax paying units uh making Services very cost- effective very efficient easier to serve and more res more Revenue positive right than um than lower density development so this is an example um from a newly developing area in southeast Raleigh off rck Cory Road it could be anywhere where we're growing um you'll see there's a significant development to the Northeast which excuse me Northwest which is in the city but um the subdivision to the Northeast is a county subdivision very unlikely to come into the city limits they have well in septic tanks and then the land to the South um and the East is largely rural or undeveloped and so providing services in areas like this is more costly less efficient and more challenging um the uh more compact development especially with a mix of uses is valued higher uh than than lower density development uh yeah this these this is the location of those two examples so you saw a very similar slide earlier this is a total assessed value per acre um the uh uh development that's in more mixed use areas and in more compact areas is usually valued much higher it therefore uh generates a lot more revenue and is a lot more cost- effective to serve it ends up subsidizing significantly subsidizing uh areas outside of of the uh where you see that higher valuation so it is that's kind of a side conversation not directly related to uh growth but that in maximizing the value of those areas where we can receive more efficient uh provide more efficient services and receive more tax value is critical to maintaining um our service levels in existing Suburban contexts but um this is especially true out in these Nessa and cessa areas so I will say let me go back for a minute from from a policy perspective the the cessa plan which was adopted in 2022 I believe it might have been 23 and the Nessa plan which is underway soon our goal and intent based on council's feedback was was and is to encourage and in some cases require more nodal compact development at denser development densities to make it more cost effective to serve these areas the the recent State legislation s SP 382 um impacts our ability to create non-conformities and act down zoning that might be required to deliver on that so we are working with the attorney's office and with our staff to uh in context to that new legislation to see if we can do that uh if we can realize that Vision but we really have concerns about our ability to deliver um with with in light of those Provisions to deliver the level of density that would be um long-term Revenue positive for the community so uh we have a very relevant recent nearby precedent uh this is uh what happened in the town of uh Apex in 2013 I'm picking on apex we could have used hly Springs or few or other areas in Western Wick County but um in 2013 uh in 2014 the i54 project came through the edge of the Apex Community um so what happened in a period of about of less than five years they um almost doubled the size of their Town 5200 Acres was annexed into the community um and that was done at very low densities right that's about 3.1 One units an acre that's a average Suburban density here in Raleigh and in most places um so that was uh over 10,000 uh 14,000 units and uh almost 11,000 constructed since 2013 so we could and should expect the same type of development pressure you're we're already seeing it with some of the the cases that are coming before you and Southeast and Northeast Raleigh um so what are we doing to make sure uh that we are growing wisely we have three things underway um we are aligning our annexation policy with Raleigh Waters utility connection policies to ensure that Council gets the opportunity to approve uh any development uh before any development approvals are sought um with concurrent roughly with the adoption of the Udo we allowed folks to get some reviews and approvals as a as a courtesy before but not final approval we we realize there's concern with that that it kind of paints coun in a corner we want to make sure that you all have as as much discretion as possible in deciding who's brought into the City and when and so that's well underway there are some cases that are in the pipeline that will not meet that but coming within the next several months you will you'll be seeing these before anybody else does um we're working to hire a consultant that will help us provide a more detailed cost of services estimate for the cessa and Nessa areas and you're well aware of the fire master plan that is scheduled to be delivered in April that will look at the cost cost of services and uh to provide both within the existing City Limits and out in cesa andessa so in addition to these steps we're recommending an additional three items for a total of six um to help give you the information you need to make good decisions about growth in our community especially at the Suburban Fringe um we want to work with our service delivery departments to develop a level of service standard we talked about the NFPA standard again it's a great standard it may be we want to have a modified standard that meets maybe our budgetary constraints and needs better we want to work with the other departments you don't have a published service standard to have a service standard and then that would be really something that you could use as you deliberate on zoning and growth issues uh and budget issues because it really is at the end of the day a budgetary issue um what level of services are we able to support and provide and to try to make a um really what M to a political commitment because it's not legally binding to provide a a certain standard minimum level of service I think another thing we want to do is identify by what we're calling committed and uncommitted uh growth areas committed areas are areas such as um that area inside I'm sorry let me find the right map areas inside um there it is the city inside the etj and and near where those annexations have occurred we we want to develop some criteria for example um you know proximity to utility lines uh existing service for some of these other uh Services represented by the gentleman to my right um and really work with our budget and finance folks to give you all a detailed plan for how we will fund and finance service improvements in those areas where there's been prior commitments made to growth we also want to identify what we're going to call uncommitted areas which are these areas where you see uh limited or no uh city limits or J and and really do two things there um recommend policy to you that would uh recommend no further annexations or growth of the extr territorial jurisdiction until and unless we have a fiscally constrainted plan to serve those areas um without a significant impact on the on the tax base or we find Partners in eastern Wake County if you all have the appetite to do that such as Garner nil Wake Forest rolleville that may want to provide service in these areas um that's an that's an alternative that you all have so um with that I'll be happy to take questions or direct questions to one of my colleagues here who are operationally impacted by uh these issues thank you all I will start off with the questions um and and this is kind of like a a general question for the entire panel you know one of the things that we hear a lot from our constituents is you know Raleigh's growing really quickly um the annexations are contributing to um stress of pressure on our ability to deliver service to folks and so I guess in each of your respective departments you know how would you address the city's ability and capability to respond and provide service to um you know to the community even with um the increase of annexations it's on okay that's a great question councilman for um the primary thing that uh we talk about in the Raleigh fire department I have to educate my employees the education is on the safety aspect there's three risk associated with annexations number one is firefighter risk all right because they're responding to a structure that's a 15minute response time at the seven minute Mark that structure can Flash over if a person's trapped inside they know they have to make entry you getting back feed for [Laughter] mine break your news we we heard everything Ric we heard everything all right continuing on uh a flash show over mean the structure of the flashover uh due to intensity and heat it said 7 minutes that's with lightweight construction and that's what we're using right here right so lightweight construction versus Legacy construction is a 45 minute for a legacy structure to burn versus under 20 minutes for lightweight constructions which we're primarily building here in the city second risk is for the person that's trapped in that house or we doing CPR you're talking about a 15-minute response time for somebody that's doing CPR or structure that's burning the third risk is property conservation if I have a 20-minute response time I just told you to burn time on the structure likelihood of us saving your property through property conservation is going to be very decreased so education has been the biggest thing the last six months every time we have annexation I speak about this in my command staff meetings to talk to them about the actual risk associated with it our goals are to minimize risk for the community but also have to educate firefighters on firefighters safety all right uh first time here and first time on the panel lucky me right um who are you oh yes Gregory Jen is the second I'm the in room director in solid waste um what I would say in my short period of time and solid waste is that kind of like the chief said it's a lot of conversations with staff trying to to figure out the level of service that they're seeing out in the field right so like we know we have routes that we run Tuesday through Friday residential and then downtown Monday through Friday and one of the things that I think we are just seeing right now with annexations is how do we maintain that right a weekly service and you continue to add homes to it when which staff is already thin right vehicles are limited it makes it kind of difficult to kind of keep it going because then we we get misses because people are trying to reach goals that might be unattainable and so then we having to navigate that right to make sure that we're delivering the same service to everybody and so I think that in short is kind of how I would answer that hey so Paul Transportation director so great question uh we really have to lean on our partners at ncdot as ped mentioned a lot of what we're seeing uh in these areas around annexation a lot of the Interior roads or City of Raleigh we can uh look at regulatory requirements and exactions through our uh through our code but a lot of the development that you're seeing are touching major ncdot roads so we are really leaning on our partners uh to make sure we are looking at uh Mobility not just from a vehicle standpoint but we're looking at uh bicycle infrastructure sidewalks again walkability uh those again are the challenges that we have and we can continue to work with our partners at the Metropolitan planning organization as as many people know Campo Capital Area Metropolitan planning organization but many of the council you hear about traffic ingestion and again we try to get out in front of this as much as we can based on some of the growth areas that we're seeing in the city but as y'all have heard in many of your conversation over the last couple days construction dollars are just continuing to go up uh so for our forces and NC do uh dollars just don't go as far and so a lot of those are going to continue to be challenges I think we see at least around Transportation not only building something but then we've got to maintain it or those organizations have got to maintain it at the end so those are just some of the challenges that I see here in our transportation deputy chief Boyce you had stepped out but my question was um with the number of annexations that we've got we're hearing from residents and consti who've got concerns about the city's ability to provide service as we're bringing more people more communities into the city so just could you address briefly what RPD is doing in terms of being prepared as we're increasing the annexations uh yes ma'am may protm uh first of all within the Raleigh Police Department we've been looking at growth and where it's going and just like the slide indicated we have six police districts we realized that we soon will need a seventh Police District in that Northeast South East section of the city until we get to that point what we what have we done is when we get additional recruits coming out the academy we've added an additional Squad to those districts our Southeast district is our only police squad with three three squads right now we're looking at adding a third Squad in the Northeast district and what I mean by Squad is a sergeant and 20 officers that can cover that additional area uh that's annexed into the city that is I guess Band-Aid right now until we can get that Seventh District uh it's been working very well for us like the southeast District that all the growth out towards Battle Bridge the Chastain area the barwell area that has been covered by our 430 squads uh back when even CH Chief deck Brown was here we looked at adding a 440 Squad to the southeast District that is a very easy way to cover that area uh it increases our response time into that in that new annex uh area that we're seeing along Rock Cory Road po Road New Hope and we can just duplicate that throughout the city until we can get that physical building that Seventh District online and obviously that would be a CIP issue down the road for us um as far as uh some other internal strategies that we're doing uh our detective division you know bottom line is they're officers first a lot of other agencies our size uh they utilize their detectives maybe one shift a week one day a week and put them back out on patrol to answer calls that's something we have not done here at RPD but something that we're looking at doing going forward just to cover the the growth uh here in the city so we're we're prepared it's just which option we're going to take you know with me being on the operation side you know I would like to use the option of just adding a another Squad to the existing districts Northeast and the southeast because that doesn't involve like say building a physical building I will say when we get to building a physical building I would like to explore the option of a dual police fire building we're building one building half of it fire half of it police and we're going to cover the same coverage area anyway so to help tax pay yeah taxpayers we're only building one building but we're splitting it between the two Public Safety departments so that is something that you know I look forward to in the future of of starting to do that here in Raleigh the city manager said and save money yeah oh sorry I did not know he was going to say that but I'm glad he did I have kind of lifted that up for the past two or three years that is the wave of the future that is the only way municipalities are going to be able to afford the growth that is happening without raising taxes to the point that it becomes detrimental to our growth yes hello so um lots of folks have questions about water supply and of course we do our water supply planning in decades right so currently we're working with the triangle water supply partnership uh do a a regional plan it's a sount area to look at what the needs are for all of us in the year 27 2070 thankfully um we are are are forecast suggested what we would need a new water supply by 2045 some of the new modeling with climate change projections could possibly extend that to like 2060 because we're expecting more wetter years so big picture-wise we we are looking for our next water supply but that's not like the need for tomorrow we are expanding our water plants to be sure that we you know provide that capacity em Johnson water plant is currently in a project that will extend its capacity from 82 million gallons per day to 120 million gallons today per day so we can stay ahead of that um back to the chief's point about fire protection so our water system uh that infrastructure is really sized to meet fire flows it's all about how much water can make it to that fire hydrant so we work with our developers and extensive modeling to make sure that uh we're we're getting the right size pipe in the ground to meet that fire protection the the actual water consumption is very rarely uh a driver in how that infrastructure sized and we're also trying to work with our Master planning to make sure we partner with developers when we can to um upsize a main if you will so that it's available for the next development um we've been very fortunate we' we've taking advantage of technology that we haven't had to add a lot of Staff in the last several years um but better equipment better Technologies help that uh but we are rapidly growing and adding infrastructure in the Years So eventually that's going to catch up we're going to need more folks do the maintenance when you mentioned that we're extending perhaps the water supply to 260 instead of 2045 and I missed why okay so a lot of that has to do with the climate change models so we're we're looking at those forecasts and so we're we're seeing wetter years and so for a city like Raleigh that gets their water supply from lakes that gives you the ability to store those larger storms now a community that pulls out of the river like you know a Johnson County for instance can't really depend on that because you know run of the river has no storage but you know for Raleigh and Carrie it's actually showing a benefit so so thank you um couple questions um and this is kind of for Pat we we know our challenges and things we're facing um and I understand your planning department does I don't know if others know Raleigh planning meets with night Dale planning um on certain things because we're growing literally on top of each other so what how are other of our neighboring towns addressing some of these growth challenges as they're expanding and I'm sure they may not have as many anization as we are but they are growing yeah that's a great question question I mean I think all of our our peer jurisdictions Wake County there's 14 municipalities in Wake County are looking at the same Suite of issues right I just think it's more um significant for us given the the scale and size of the area that we had again back in the 1990s agreed to grow into those Northeast and Southeast areas um the I think an important Point uh and wi alluded to it is any of those Eastern weight towns the six partner towns uh are are growing off of our water supply right so um that's really that's been their biggest constraint and so their ability to get additional allocation out of that is is really the the regulator on on the main regulator on their growth right we don't really have that as much so it creates the potential for more growth which puts a bigger burden on us to to identify um uh uh how we're going to provide all the other services besides water and sewer so I'm trying to answer your question I mean that there's been a a whole uh between the 14 jurisdictions the other 13 a lot of different techniques I think there there's interest in growing from all of those Eastern wake towns Garner Nale rville uh Wendell zilon and and Wake Forest from our conversations with them I think they are trying to do the same math and evaluations that we're trying to do in terms of these these complimentary services but because most a higher percentage of their growth even more than us I told you 70% since 1980 is New Growth so they've made these Investments and they're in a slightly different mindset of they're trying to get as much revenue kind of capitalize on Revenue to pay for those Investments they've already made so I think they're in a little bit more of a progrowth posture whereas we're going to have to catch up on some of the Investments if we want to continue to grow in that area in the way we have in the past did I answer your question it it does it does I'm sure we can go more detail later but um question as far as the water when's the net some will get an update on the little river expansion conversation cuz I'm aware of it from being here but I know not all council members are yeah so I'll I'll be sure to include a brief slide on that in the budget presentation we are we are working on two Alternatives really we're looking at Little River water water supply Reservoir versus a pipe in the New River just Upstream of the New River plant those are the two Alternatives we're evaluating okay thank you council member Jones I know had a next question yeah thank you so much um I just want to kind of talk to the public in every annexation in every resoning we have our backup materials in which you got each department says hey this is this this where a lot of us when we say hey we see a fire concern we see it in that backup material so first of all I really encourage residents to take deep dive I understand it's a lot of papers a lot of words but there's important information from each one of these and more departments to to let you know and shed a light on what the city is already communicating about U my first question is is there anything that in those back of materials that we need to highlight more so that isn't reflected in there or is that really a comprehensive list of all the concerns that you guys feel regarding annexations and rezonings I mean I'll I'll start so I think we we have worked with the partners as you suggested and they worked with us to try to get these these concerns communicated um more and better and I think they've done a good job I I think when we look at a fiscal analysis of these it's it's for a 10-year period and it doesn't contemplate because there hasn't been any direction um provided about what level of service we're trying to make there hasn't been any major new Investments new stations new Crews new squads and for police that's not baked into those analyses really it's just kind of a stay the course use existing resources to serve these areas so I think our commitment from the planning side is to work with these departments to make sure that that more nuanced analysis is is in there and then that we that we uplift that when it's in in one of these annexation areas but I'll let my colleagues talk about how they are communicating that that thank you well pardon me uh I'm her witht Griffin the fire chief and director of Emergency Management for those that don't know me in the room from my perspective uh I started incorporating a fire service concerns roughly two years ago to give you an idea of what the challenges are uh I guess the question would be for me is what else are you looking for as it relates to Public Safety or what you want to see in those packets of annexations I think that's a question we can definitely delve into and come back I don't know that I had the answer for you right now but I will take that back and I'm sure other counselors will as well um but I think as I review those because thank you for in the last two years including those that's really what I'm looking for to highlight what question should I be asking to the developer to this you know at the at the public hearing so that we're highlighting the concerns of the community and making sure they understand that we are encompassing all of those concerns into all of our growth as we move forward so I'll have a better answer in the future but uh thank you for that uh question I will think about it absolutely mayor PM did you have some I did I know um with about two or three years ago we got an update on the um projected cost to do a um uh update on the storm water system and it was about 800 million at that time does that sound familiar to you um sorry yall so that that is accurate that so I was I was wondering if that number is still accurate now or if you would be bringing us to like a more updated or yeah yeah I'd probably have to divert a rich yeah bring us a more updated number hello Rich Kelly Engineering Services director and uh storm water falls under my purview uh the number you heard 800 million was correct I think if anything it's only gone up some since probably the last time you heard it but you'll be getting an update of that with the budget presentation coming up soon so you'll hear more I'm just following up if we got a 15-year extension on our water supply you would think that would have big impacts on storm water if we're expecting that much more rain for for storm water absolutely we're experiencing more and more storms more intense storms as we all know so you're completely right May CC member silver and then Pat Uh Pat can you go back to the ray all slide and please thank him on my behalf for the years of great work on these slides um just responding which one Ray did all these Maps oh the one with the spike with fiscal more efficient less efficient there it is yeah so uh council member Jones asked a question about what should be included in the uh resoning applications whether it's annexation or just a regular zoning uh you had one that toggled less tax efficient and more tax efficient I don't know if it's just the toggle uh is that part of the conversation basically what it's saying is the areas that are showing more tax efficient basically help subsidize other development throughout the city which help keeps our taxes low and I'm assuming the less tax efficient our development patterns including on an annexation that may require some level of subsidies because they're less efficient is that part of the zoning conversation because I don't think most people understand if you if you are concerned about downtown and Midtown development as the slide is showing they're basically helping keep your taxes low uh is that part of the resoning application because if we have more growth where we want it it can help pay for some of the services that are less efficient in our lower density areas and particularly in the areas that may experience or at least close in annexation yeah that's that's a great question I think the the only way that we do that now is through reference to some of the um policies um that that relate to um which I I displayed one of them um capitalizing and investing in um in town development as a priority in terms of actual more detailed fiscal analysis no we have not done that historically as you know it can be a challenging issue because we we do need de development in areas that are lower cost and maybe not as tax efficient but that provide housing or some other benefit to the community so we've we've been really careful about how we communicate that we there's more we can do but I think your o your overarching point that's tried to show in this slide is very well taken which is really in order to maintain these uh service levels in these other areas we need to get the maximum efficiency out of the more efficient tax areas c p yeah I have a handful Pat can you go to the one that has the dark gray with the Nessa and Sessa yeah this one that one that one yeah um okay so I'll have a handful of questions but I'll stick with this map for a sec so yours basically these two areas are at high development pressure but like also putting a pressure on our resource and and likely to create Financial like like going to come into financial and resource providing issue rate so you're going to bring us back some options it sounds like one of the options is to kind of just draw in a really tight line here and these areas that are mostly solid dark blue we would it sounds like option one will be like just kind of commit to doing nothing right now or opt another option is is to ask rolleville or night Dale if they want to have them right and and like it will depend on the appetite but there will be tradeoffs to choosing either one of those can you kind of characterize the tradeoff I mean in my mind I'm thinking if we hand over some of that land to rolleville it's going to develop in much the same way like it's still going to be Suburbia and so so things like traic congestion will not be mitigated Our obligation to provide fire and and police will be mitigated but we'll still be providing the water and the roads will still be congested so what are like and maybe we'll be sacrificing things like Street trees or um I mean I don't know the zoning codes for all these places like perhaps building in the flood plane will be allowed if we um hand over these lands so kind of what are the trade-offs for either of those options yeah that's a that's a really great question so first of all I'll say I I think we believe AA and and again this could be something for further deliberation um because of the existence of 540 and the and the uh trunk utility infrastructure to serve the Eastern weight towns eventually these areas will have to develop so I think that's just I just want to get that on the record that we think um they're outside water supply wers sheds there's really nothing inherently uh keep that uh against I think so I think what we're going to have to do is really begin to uh assiduously develop a fiscally strain plan to serve those areas or find a partner so your question about these Partners yes I think it's fair to say Raleigh's development code is significantly more exacting than all of our other weight County jurisdictions except Carrie which is roughly comparable um different but comparable in a lot of ways um uh it would depend on which jurisdiction we're talking about and we could we could bring you that breakdown and that assessment of right do they require sidewalks do they require Street trees what are their flood plan development rules you gave several examples I don't have that in front of me I I can just say that that is probably part of the trade-off that those would be lesser standards are they meaningfully different are they meaningfully lesser I think one of the issues that's a real question mark and a real challenge area is because of this recent um state law uh SP 382 now known as SL 2457 I believe we um our ability to to reone areas um to try to accomplish the outcomes that would be meaningfully different right maybe maybe having something like one of the things we've talked about internally just for conversation is like 10 units an acre that's kind of where you start to get really efficient provision of service and and high levels of return those the spikier spikes as you saw on the last slide um we really probably can't do that now because we can't take away the Agricultural and and some of the other commercial zoning that we have unless that law is changed might and it might be this the session starts next week so um does that answer your question I know that was a lot yeah know I think so and it sounds it just sounds like you can bring us some of those trade-offs when you come back to us again that's right I think first we want to we're already in some conversations with some of these communities if there's any appetite whatsoever like if there's not then I think we're kind of back to square one of under what timeline and what cost are we going to need to to uh invest okay are we at time we're getting close but you're fine okay um another another question um when we are presenting with the backup materials for an annexation we are given a chart for 10 a 10year financial Outlook and I do look closely at those when I'm considering the ones in my district as well as the fire service levels that are provided to us um but it's just 10 years and I noted that in your presentation you said that 30 years is when the sort of Revenue negativity comes is when you come back to us is there are like a a way that can be Illustrated or is 10 years really as far as we can forecast out yeah so that's a great question as well you start to get into some real method methodological challenges about how you discount the value of money in the future in the distant future um we can work with budget Management Services helps produce those analysis um that 10 years is really where we can kind of the very edge of what we can foresee in terms of Trends and costs and therefore the discount rate you use to apply what constitutes positivity and negativity so there's there's some challenges it's a short answer but we can um characterize those more fully um I I think over the really long term uh you know most of this development is revenue positive it's just how long a period are you going to have to carry subsidize it through other taxpaying funds elsewhere in the city so that's we'll try to help tell that story better that's one of those six items we committed to do tonight council member Harrison and then I may wrap up just so we can unless there's any strong questions okay we'll have two more go ahead yeah um I just wanted to uh say I really think this is an important conversation that we have not had in full at least not since my time on Council and I want us to really assess whether these new areas on the East are worth it financially because what I hear from a lot of residents that are from areas of Raleigh that have been you know developed for a long period of time is that they don't see the benefits of growth and so when we talk about our affordable housing goals and missing middle one of the struggles that we face is they say well my infrastructure is not getting any better there's more residents but we're not getting the sidewalks or seasonal you know loose leaf collection doesn't happen as often um I was out with the loose leaf team just a few weeks ago and you know they have to go down every single Road and look for leaves and the more roads we have well it's going to take a bit longer and our folks who do loose leaf collection if they weren't doing that they would be fix ing our potholes or um you know mowing in the right away and so all of our resources are constrained with this growth and I don't want to be known as sprawly anymore I really don't and if we can think of a way or figure out a way to move forward that doesn't continue this kind of development pattern you know I just I just want to emphasize that this is a challenge we should take on as in this term I think that's a good point to make that I was going to share about sort of a next step for Council in terms of discussion you be having I think you mentioned this in your slides Pat in terms of what you see as the standard for Service delivery that can guide your staff as they give you in give you information right so what do you think is and I know C Branch go ahead yeah thank you and it kind of leads to what um councelor Harrison um stated um but my question my more this a more PR comment is we talk about people moving and even people here moving we just had a present ation about housing and someone in a certain house moving to another house so a lot of the development that we're driving as a city is rental and one of the things I hear people say is well I want to own and if we know even for town homes or you know things of that nature in order to build them you need land to build it because you know no one wants a town home on top of a town home on top of the town home so you have to have the land which pushes out people people to move where there is land where there's farm land that's no longer being farmed so how do we balance the desires of someone who's been in an apartment for 10 years and says hey I want to finally own a home how do we balance that growth with also looking at these services and needs and maybe the answer is we give it to another municipality well Raleigh water Raleigh sewer is still going to service those areas so how do we make sure that we're benefiting from that in some way it may not be the profit margin may not be 15% it may only be five but you know it's still a margin that I think longterm benefits everybody and also the residents know when they hear a Raleigh service is something extra comes with it that I think they hold home to so just something to think about when we say hey we want to balance house I care about taxes I care about making sure taxes are as low as possible but then we have people who want to own a home where are they going because they can't be built on fa street thank you I just wanted to add to the discussion um when we got the uh number one ranking from the U is it Milan Institute um so many folks were saying oh Raleigh is a big city a question are we a big city uh I think what people fail to appreciate is we are bigger than Minneapolis and Miami and P Pittsburgh we're not that much smaller than Atlanta the issue is is we just grew in a really sprawled Manner and so we have a high population but they're not most of our population is not centralized and I don't want to be known as spry anymore either and so we may be getting to a point where we have to say as a collective body we do not want to Annex any more land we don't want to grow in that manner but it has to be accompanied with a willingness to make the necessary zoning changes that have been sticking with them to allow for the population growth to occur in areas near existing employment and amenities and I think that is a struggle sometimes for our constituents and residents is they say I don't want my neighborhood to change I don't want density but I want low taxes and I want high quality city services that version of the vendet diagram doesn't exist and so if we want low taxes and high quality city services and to prevent sprawl we have to make it easier for folks to build in existing areas and so that may mean town homes on top of town homes that may mean that we have a high frequency of uh Transit and high density of housing surrounding it and so our neighborhoods will change over time and the built environment of our city will change over time um but we have to be able to explain that information to folks and sometimes just like the video we watched is what people are feeling there's a disconnect from the policies that are being put in place I think that is the challenge but I agree I don't want to continue to sprawl um I want to get our first bus Rapid Transit line up and running and I want to be able to provide amenities like parks and green spaces and Retail that folks can walk to and that's the goal that that I see but we just have to be able to get there thank you okay I know I saw almost at one thought but it looks like we're we're wrapping up so with that anything any staff want to add before we wrap up perfect all right we are going to move into lunch so it's 1210 um so we're going to try and be back here around 1 says Michelle 1 o'clock um to get started on your next agenda item thank you if [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] e [Music] [Music] n [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] know [Music] [Music] if you need m all right welcome back from lunch everyone um we are going to get started on the next item of our agenda which is boards commissions and committees um broadly Community engagement focus and I'm going to turn over to the assistant city manager um to kick us off for this discussion yep working yes great good afternoon hi so hi so I am excited to bring you this presentation today I will say I am pinch hitting today for uh Miss taish Mosley who is our community engagement director unfortunately she is home ill um but want to acknowledge her hard work in uh putting together the information that you're about to see and I'm going to present to you also want to acknowledge our city clerk's office specifically uh our Deputy city clerk uh Cassidy Pritchard who also played a really really large role in pulling together um some of the information I'm going to present to you in pretty short order and I know that there's a strong desire to uh to expedite the afternoon so I will not uh belor the hour and try to deliver this information to you as concisely as I can so um just a just a couple of level setting things just to frame again this conversation so we are presenting this topic we we understand that as uh the agenda was being built for oh thank you as the agenda was being built for the retreat there were some some conversations among you all about uh boards and commissions broadly uh I think in kind of some more specifically questions about uh the way that they function the way that we support them as staff uh and ultimately this question of are the boards uh committees and commissions as they're currently constructing delivering on your expectations of them uh and vice versa and so I will say we are not in position to answer that question for you um but as staff but what what I'm hoping to do with this presentation is at least uh give you a very uh kind of a foundation to to begin to answer those questions give you some insight and some context for what currently exists how the boards are structured now how we support them uh to kind of help lay the foundation for you all to uh um ultimately answer that question uh about whether you want to see changes and if you want to see some changes maybe what uh character those changes may may look like so I'll start with a snapshot um I know there's a lot of numbers on the page I'll try to uh kind of make sure you understand what all these figures mean so we have about 29 boards and commissions um 26 of which you can see are on granicus and when we say on granicus that is publicly available to to submit applications for uh we track data for them I think you all are familiar with the dashboard um so we have 26 of those boards that are on granicus publicly viewable with all the data that you all are now accustomed to seeing of the 26 20 are supported by our um Department of Community engagement and when I say supported uh I'll get a little bit deeper in ter in terms of what specifically that means in terms of support but for the purpose of right now supported just means uh the staff Liaisons for those various Boards of commissions um are are sort of uh are brought together by the department of uh Community engagement and uh the the department also does agenda management and planning for those boards meaning they forecast the calendar for when those boards will be um making their presentation of their annual work plans to you all for their approval so as you know we have different different C categories we have advisory boards qu judicial boards um so again 16 of the 20 that are supported by Community engagement Fall Into The Advisory Board category four of the 20 uh fall into the category of qua judicial boards all right so this is just a snapshot again this is something that you should probably be pretty accustomed to seeing this is uh the dashboard that uh we maintain uh of all the 26 active boards that are on granicus you can see the applicant data how many are filled um whether terms are expiring it's it's it's something that we've uh put in place here recently uh to kind of help you see the district representation break down of uh composition of the boards I'll say clearly all this was a a snapshot I think we took about last week uh so you can see Pat yourself on the back you've been doing really great with appointments so just 10 currently unfilled seats across all those boards and this is just a a a visual representation further breaks down some of uh how those boards split out in terms of categories and support so the 20 that you see pictured here are the 20 again that our uh Department of Community engagement supports um you will notice that there asterisks beside two um the community engagement board being one then the Civil Service Commission being the other the reason for those asers is because they are not purely just councel appointees as you all know there are staff appointments or other appointments that are made um outside of just the council uh appointment process so that's the purpose for the asteris there and then you also have these uh what we just characterized this external agencies these are um as you look through the list you can can see these are not necessarily boards or commissions that Council makes has full appointment Authority or oversight of um they are um entities that we either have representation to whether that's staff representative a council representative a combination of both in some of these instances so this is these are just the some of the others that that are out there that have some Nexus to the city U but aren't supported exactly in the same way as the first list that I just showed you oh let me go back yes 14 is that on top of the are they included in the 30 no so that's another so we're really at around 44 when you consider these external agency yes yes and then to muddy the water even more we got these other entities which really don't fall for various reasons which I won't get into that's one of the things I didn't lay out of the F initially when I started we're not going to get real unless you want all want to get deep into the function of some of these specifically um but these groups uh for different reasons have just a different character to them um they're uh again some Nexus to council um but have some uniqueness to them that falls outside of kind of the normal appointment processes or normal uh ways that we engage again that first set of 20 that I showed you yes Council not to complicate thing but I know very often there's a special task force are those listed as well because I'm assuming they need be appointed it has a sunset specific task is that part of this conversation because I'm assuming do we have those task forces as well or they're all embodied Within These internal or external entities it's a great question councilman civil we do not at this moment have okay task force but who knows what the future may hold but not not at present okay so again just more information to lay the background context for you what you're looking at here are uh the next couple slides will be demographic data um about the current composition of of um the boards um both the folks that are seated and both the applicants so the the the pie charts on the left will represent the demographics of the membership of the current boards and on the right side you'll have the demographics of the applicant pool and so I'll just as I go through this what I will say high level uh is that you you on the whole have a really representative group um in terms of the composition of your boards and commissions um they they do reflect pretty closely the city's demographic data um and I'll also note they the members who are seated their demographics very closely mirror the demographics of those in the applicant pool so uh I'll Breeze through these quickly I know you've got the information in front of you but again this shows uh the gender breakdown between current board members and applicants to boards very closely mirrored very nicely split same thing as you consider the age breakdown of current members of boards and prospective members of boards the applicants uh in a very good spread um from you got 21 or younger on the low end that's a small sliver and then the orange being 61 or over our senior members of our community so and everything else in between there okay so I said i' I'd tell you a little bit more about the specifics of what our community engagement department does to support so this is that moment and so um over the last I'll just say the last probably two to three years um we have as a staff put a real strong emphasis on beefing up our support the staff support that's offered to boards and commissions uh the consistency that we're trying to create among the ways boards and commissions present themselves to you um the way that they are supported behind the scenes and so our our Department of Community engagement has really LED that effort um you can see here kind of a listing of the things and that they they do in that in that um in that space so we we do have internally a SharePoint site that all the the Liaisons uh to the boards that were um laid out in the first slide participate and have access to um share resources share notes they uh the department has created a a manual and a training program for uh new members of boards and commissions uh we also they also provide liaison support and trainings um call out a couple of these the department convenes bu by monthly meetings with all the the boardly aison internally the staff folks that support those boards really it's a great opportunity for them to share notes share experiences uh commiserate if needed um you know just to try to understand how they can all uh do their jobs and perform their roles to the to the highest degree possible um that summer social bullet you see down there there that was something I think we've done this twice now um that was an idea that was generated from that liaison group um from the boards themselves they wanted to have an opportunity to kind of have spaces to come together and connect across boards uh in an inform specifically in an informal way and so our Department of Community engagement and I know that many of you have actually participated and and been to the social which I I know the the folks on the boards appreciate but um that was something that was specifically requested and and again led by Department of Community engagement so one of the other things that was created as we tried to put more structure around boards and commissions was an exit survey uh and so we have tried to capture information from uh individuals who as you can see there who resign aren't seeking appointment or their term has expired we we are trying to capture data about their experience um and so that's a tool that we have been using for a couple of years um just to give you a sense this is um I know it's hard to read there's a a survey that's about thir 16 questions longer so this is just an example of the types of questions that we ask in that survey um first one reads the expect the expectations of my role as a board or commission member were met um second question there overall the board and committee me meeting um were productive and efficient use of my time you can see kind of how we try to tease out what people's experiences are this is just and I will say and imp pick these quotes they're um a smattering of some of the open-ended responses we have received to recent um board departures um I'll say skewed negative we we also get positive responses but this just gives you a flavor of what folks are saying feeling thinking as they are exiting their board service with us so another thing we we have and you all uh are familiar with the are the annual work plans of the boards so those annual work plans are decide designed to do a few things it's um it's a report that contains the body of work that that board or commission or committee is going to be undertaking for the next 12-month period um and by Council resolution 20 plus years ago so uh all of the advisory boards with the exception of the quaza judicial boards are required on an annual basis to present their work plan and get it blessed uh by this body and so that is a really significant thing I think to this question of are they performing roles and and carrying out their duties in a way that's um supportive of you all's goals as a body I think this is really the opportunity for you all to put your mark on um the work that boards and commissions are undertaking by virtue of your approval of power and authority over their annual work plan so these are just a couple of little side notes I did not reference but you have I don't know if it's it's in the back maybe of of the presentation materials in your binder there's a handout again the city clerk's office work really hard to pull this together that shows you a listing of all those boards and commissions how frequently they meet um terms all sorts of just kind of contextual information that may be important for you to see uh and so some of these notes relate to that um in terms of that question how frequently they meet you see some that had a slate of 12 meetings for the calendar year but they only did 10 in some instances that might be because the group took a summer break or they didn't meet for a holiday day when they had originally planned on their calendar to be meeting so that's that's explain some of these notes explains some of the variation that you'll see in the data um obviously some only meet in special circumstances uh what of adjustment being a great example so these notes really are just trying to explain some of the variability that you will see in that document that you've got okay so the last section um is some information we've tried to and I'll caveat this and say it's not perfect but what staff has attempted to do is show you and demonstrate to you how the boards and commissions currently align with um the various key Focus areas in the Strategic plan to demonstrate at least From staff's perspective where there is alignment um and so again I will not read all this to you you've got this in your material but you can see uh and it's again it's not perfect this was our first blush effort so um you could probably disagree with some of the categorizations some of them could easily bleed into others but um again tried to demonstrate what that alignment looks like between the board its purpose and looking at its Mission its work plan and and the area of our strategic plan that it most closely aligns with um so you'll also notice in these that there are highlighted um some boards that are highlighted and others that are not so let me EXP expl what that is uh intended to represent uh for example historic historical resources and museums board and the historic cemeteries historic cemeteries Advisory Board are both colored green dark green that is uh intended to indicate that based on staff's review there is some close uh overlap proximity alignment in terms of the missions of those two groups um and so same thing so again when you see the colors the same that that is staff's way of suggesting to you that these two particular Boards of commissions have some some close alignment in their missions their their outlooks their their functions uh and so that's that is why that is overlaid uh on top of this chart so you saw the first three this is the uh the groups that align with the the last three uh key Focus areas in the Strategic plan uh again I won't recite them you've got them in front of you to see uh and so that is I promise to be brief I hope I make good on that promise uh so that's all the information that we have to present to you and uh at this point happy to answer questions or just um turn turn the table and turn the floor back over to you to have a discussion about what uh you may want to see in terms of future direction or action from staff related to these groups so I know there's been some times where we've gone in and um re-evaluated the role or the purpose of the board do you have a list of when that has occurred for each board when the last time an evaluation was done to make sure that the the reasoning for its purpose when it was initially set up meet the needs and purposes that we have now I do not have that information off hand council member Branch but that's something that uh we could certainly look into okay all right well my question is a little bit different I know when I started on the council you know one of the things for us was as liaison or Council liaison the expectation would be that we would attend the board's Retreat and attend meetings upon request of the board we were serving um but it wasn't necessarily an expectation that we would be directly and extremely active involve or actively involved in the you know operations and discussions and deliberations of the board uh has anything about that policy changed um in the last couple years as far as you know um mayor protin for not to my knowledge I mean I think that that was sort of a a friendly agreement among uh members of Council in terms of you all deciding about your the parameters that you wanted to set for your engagement with boards I don't know that that was something that was necessarily formalized or driven by staff certainly but um I think that's again just representative of how you all have historically decided you you've wanted to engage mayor go ahead yeah so I was part of the reason we were looking at this because I I started looking at the when I started running like 30 boards and commissions which is I believe a lot more I don't we don't have a time frame of how many existed in the early 2000s but um a lot more than I remember and then all these other categories and watching staff and then when Community engagement that they're supporting 20 of these and then starting to see some of the emails we've gotten into our inbox about people who said they didn't feel like they got the support they were resigning so to I guess my hypothesis might be that with a lot of good intention to wanting to Value the voices of citizens we have grafted did layers and layers of different committees and in some ways it almost dilutes the voice of citizens because if we if we don't even know what they're doing if they don't feel like they're getting support right it you know are we really valuing their time and are we really getting what we need out of those and I can say this as my first role was on the human relations commissions back the very first thing I did with the City of Raleigh um so I just wonder is there a way to look at I appreciate that you showed where they're maybe proximity for example the historical district commission and historical cemeteries is there a really good reason why we need both of those um you know and could the cemeteries you know group over time be merged I was noting they had a few times where they didn't have a quorum that just may be one example of a way to both value people who care about you know historical preservation and staff time and actually have quorums and a function functioning system um so I just put that out there as one possible exploration well and I'll kind of echo the mayor sentiments the other challenge has been for some of these boards I mean some of the boards they're kind of more in demand and people really want to serve on those but then we have other boards where it's really a struggle to get people to serve and they you know Cassidy's probably well aware there may be turnover for months just trying to get applicants or get folks to even acknowledge any interest and actually serving on the boards and maybe so you know combining some of those may help with participation not only in terms of membership but also cor go ahead thank you I will um say that on on my I2 with the first thing I did was a board and I was on the Parks Board and I know that from my experience I don't know that I best understood what our role was and what that communication was like I never saw AR leaon so anything we discussed at the board I didn't know if it was getting to counsel it wasn't um other than what staff did you know if if they had something to do but our overall discussions I didn't understand as a board member how that transitioned and so for me when I got onto Council that was a huge priority for me to make sure that I was present at those boards just so I can highlight anything any discussion that was happening now that's not to say that that's a requirement that everyone needs but I think from us what I have heard from the boards that I serve on is this not understanding what we're looking for and what direction not that they want us to spell everything out of what they need to do because they are functioning group of individuals who can come up with their own plan but when they look at things or initiatives that we do how does their work relate to those initiatives so how are they how are they actually advising counil and that's something that is all the boards I've served on whether it's through liaison or as a resident that's something that we all ask like how is my voice heard so I think that's something that not staff can't really answer I feel like that's a question that as Council we have to say what is our expectation of the board and what do we want to receive from them when they present in front of us um on a yearly basis a lot of the times it's at the end of the meeting and granted thankfully our last few meetings have been really short so I can really pay attention if they were there but as you guys remember you know over the last two years our meetings have gone 5 hours and by the time we get to their their work plans my brain is like oh my God oh my God so I can't even promise that I am giving them the attention that they desperately want and that deserve so I really think this is a great conversation for Council to have as to what do we want to use the boards for and how can we best communicate that to them and I I'll say I I spoke with all of you about this in our individual conversations if you had thoughts you wanted to share and I think a theme is that there's a desire to make sure you have a collective Vision I think you touched on this like setting your making your mark about what is it that these are all doing for you and the community and how can they advise you I think having an answer on that that's sort of universal as much as it can be Universal would be really impactful and can't necessarily be answered fully today but would be a great thing to start talking about go ahead Council memb over yeah when I look at these boards and commissions um and that's why I had mentioned the task force you know it's helpful to know how many are reactive here's an issue debate give us feedback versus those that are proactive this is your air of expertise tell us what we should be thinking about I suspect the latter is the one where there is some confusion those that are reactive and items brought before them a Parks Board react to this plan commission react to this uh so I just would like for us to take a deep look to see is the issue with the reactive boards where they have a specific role here's an item for whatever reason we're asking for your advice V versus those at are proactive uh human relations commission you know give us your thoughts about X Y and Z so I I don't know if we look at it that way where that's where some of the I haven't seen the work plans yet so I'd get a better pulse then a task force for example has a specific task we're doing an analysis of X you know or let's say we're going to do analysis on Urban Tree canopy you know come together to give us your thoughts there's a specific mission built in versus hey here's a subject matter you meet and just tell us what should we thinking about I don't know if those are the boards that struggle with Mission but I'd be interesting to know a little bit more as we take a deeper dive Okay C um I was going to add a few things looking at the chart of all of these advisory boards and commissions you know most of them were created very long time ago um just a few here were created in recent time and it looks like only one of them which is the Planning Commission is statory actually two maybe U design review commission form appearance commission and um Planning Commission so these other boards and commissions um I think were created because there was a need that was identified by the council and so they said let's put a group of volunteers together that can help advise us relating to that topic the two that were formed recently since I have been on the council were the police Advisory Board which I know was formed after much Community debate and discussion and then the Hispanic and immigrant Affairs board which was something that mayor Baldwin um sort of wanted to do when she was elected but what that kind of tells me is there may be a point in time where we need to assess are these needs still there have they changed um I think some of these boards and commissions as the mayor pointed out are serving a lot of the same type of work and so is there a more streamlined approach and you know as far as trying to find some consistency on what they do what they need I disagree a little because I think that the work they've been tasked with varies so much that what each Board needs may not be consistent and I think our opportunity as a council to signal to the boards and commissions about what we need from them or what we expect from them the time for that is when we are reviewing their annual work plan and so if we feel like there needs to be more direction or more specificity I think we should probably spend a little more time reviewing their work plans and giving a lot more feedback because when those are presented to us we almost always just say thank you so much move to approve and then they go on their merry way and so there may be a better way of doing that and so maybe what we need to do is figure out for all these boards and commissions that are not statutory um do we still have the need is there any redundancy and figure out where we want to go from there for me um I the layson currently to just two boards and commissions um the arrangement I've always had with them is the chair will reach out to me if there is something that they need my help with so whether that's something that I need to shake loose from the manager's office or if I need to bring something up at the council table during Council concerns I have typically do not go to their meetings I personally feel like the discussion that they have if a council member is present may be different than if a council member is not present and I want to give them a little bit of space I go if I'm invited I know some boards and commissions none of the ones I Ser leaz on to they really prefer to have a council member there because they want that um constant touch point so I think the expectations are also different but I would like to see us maybe just do an assessment of of where we're at and does the need still exist thank you customer patent yeah I just um a thought that I'm having is like there's a there there's a way to like lump the commission itself under one of these strategic plan um buckets and then there will be some that like don't cleanly fall into one of the buckets I mean uh the mayor's committee on the chart was placed an uh like the edn under the edni Strategic plan bucket but the mayor's committee for persons with disabilities is going to want to chime in on a lot of things they are more um identity focused right there so that we have like these several several sort of identity oriented um commissions and I think those can have a those can have a value right like Gathering people together who have a similar Affinity or a similar set of um constraints that they face when trying to navigate our city um working together to to reduce those barriers can be useful so I feel like there's a there's one option where we try to take the commissions and lump them each underneath I think there's a secondary option that we that might be be worth talking through is where we we sort of flip the script on these work plans so I think a lot of these commissions have moved into more of like an Outreach orientation they bring us their work plan and say can we do this stuff but they are advisory commissions to the council and I would like to get their advice on the things that are important to us so if we sort of templ the work plans to say the council wants your advice on housing transportation Public Safety the things we identified as our top priorities and like every commission gets six bullet points and they get to advise on how like what is the mayor's committee uh opinion on Transportation on housing on public safety and so too then would the Hispanic and immigrant Affairs board provide their opinions on Transportation housing Public Safety and so they're not kind of constantly coming to a say like these are the events we want to plan but actually like here is the advice we give you to guide your policy so I think that is a way we could reorient how we direct their work Branch yeah we just had a conversation here on the chart you don't list the public arts and design board are they under the art Commission because they're listed as number 15 on Council appointment committees but I think that group is under the art commission is that correct okay yeah so the art commission appoints the people to that board okay I just that's what I thought so I just make sure everyone else is aware of that as well so we kind of appoint people to Art commission and then they appoint to the public arts and design boards yes C Jones I do want to add that in the list I think there are two missing um we just added cac's to as the as a board and then I don't see maybe if it's here the African-American Affairs board which was also approved last Council and I understand that it may not be up and running but I don't want to forget those because those are those are added and and if this is part of the conversation where things need to be combined I think that the direction of what is our expectations as Council um whether that's the I currently serve on eight of them and so if the direction is let me go talk to them and then we have work session where we all come back with our information to say this is what our boards want I think that that's a a great way you know but what how do you guys think we should get that information back because I don't want to always direct staff in something that I think we we could do as the liaison I say your hand um since I've been on Council there has been a discussion I I know this is sensitive because the folks who serve on these boards feel a lot of ownership over them but there has been um a discussion for the two examples that the mayor pointed out the um and now I don't remember their names the cemeteries yes the cemeteries and historical resources they have just been from my understanding the memberships of those boards resistant to merging and and I understand that we want to be considered a folks time who are volunteering but these were boards that were created at Council Direction not not anyone who's sitting here so at some point I think we have to say in a very tactful and respectful way that we if we believe that some merging consolidation needs to occur we just need to do it and maybe we talk them through what that will look like maybe it's when terms start expiring but council member Harris and I were sitting over here and just sort of like pairing up boards for example Hispanic and immigrate Affairs board HRC and the African-American Affairs board there's a lot of synergies on their missions there that's three separate boards and as new needs arise if we don't take stock of the boards and commissions we currently have and ones that were created back in the 70s and we just keep adding new ones and new ones we're going to run out of capacity staff capacity volunteer capacity capacity for the city council and so there may be a point in time now or sometime in the future where this Council or a future Council has to figure out are they still serving our needs can we consolidate can we Trim in some ways because that provides future capacity for new boards and commissions that that councils may need because we just can't keep adding infinitely because it's going to get diluted and our resources are going to be strained if I could repeat what I hear you saying just so sort of resmar looking at the list that you have identifying missions of each of them and potential overlaps and opportunities to maybe begin the conversation of of merging those as a council that's sort of what I hear as proposed so yeah and I agree with that that goes back to the my original question to Evan about when's the last time we reviewed the role and the purpose of these boards because I think having that information because based on conversation of talking to residents that have been here even before my 47 years on Earth the human relations commission was started to address a lot of the issues that I think we're now trying to push into the Hispanic immigrations Affairs board as well as the African-American Affairs board um so I think looking at that true purpose of boards and fighting that Synergy there may be a thing where maybe they become true subcommittees of some of these boards they're still there they they they target a certain thing but they may be a subcommittee of a different board um and that can be the same thing for our historic resources it's a historic resources and you have a subcommittee out that board that may focus on cemeteries and one on museums and then they come back or however so I think us having the information on the purpose and role of the boards will help us fine-tune what changes and adjustments we need to bring them into the the future both maybe historic purpose or original purpose and current if there's a difference I don't go ahead yeah um I just want to kind of add you know um I see a lot of natural potential synergies of different boards and commissions um but also to council member Jones's point I want to make sure that we come to any decisions um with as much information as we can from the board and commission members themselves about what they see their role is you know synergies that they might see um I do think we all need um the work plans of every board and commission probably at our fingertips to have this discussion I know my boards and commissions well that I've served as leas on to so bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission Arts commission um um you know I also serve on the hillsb street uh MSD but you know when it comes to other groups that I haven't had that relationship too I I have much less knowledge and so I'm not as comfortable saying or dictating you know oh well they should partner with this other group when maybe that's not going to work um and I think we also have to recognize we're asking for a lot of leadership from our board members to be able to perhaps work together and to come together and you you know to combine forces so just to be aware that that will be a learning curve and it will challenge a lot of folks work plans just CU you know they only have so much time to offer thank you mayor so and again just trying to get to councelor Jones's specifics and building off uh Council Harrison I would think we start with the 20 Council appointments only and then you can add and and Council Jones the cic's were on the additional entities but the compassion and persons with disabilities the the mayor's committee on compassion is not even constituted right now and my suggestion would be I think this was an initiative of Mayor McFarland and um with all due respect I am all for compassion but I'm not sure I want to reconstitute that so that you know but if we can get the charters and the work plans for these 20 and that's a lot of work in and of itself and then maybe just communicate to them that we're going through this exercise so they don't get Word of Mouth that somehow something's going to happen without their input we can then come back with a plan for how to as we look at these uh maybe how to proceed that enough Direction definitely I think because what I hear a lot from the boards that I serve on is really just how is their voice being utilized and I think we as a council need to Define what does advice from these boards if it's always going to be Parks Board Bo that's great but if I serve on substance use and they want and we're having a big downtown discussion you know that's what happened last last year we had the downtown um safety we had the the security guards there were and once I went to substance use they were like why weren't we part of that discussion and I was like that's a fair point I don't know so those are the kinds of things that I think as the lia as our responsibility as council is to say are we highlighting the issues where we think that these boards could have a say could have a discuss point that we can include them in thank and I I don't want to sound insensitive but again I think it's important for us to remember that these boards and commissions were created by City councils to serve a specific purpose and so when we're looking at how to consolidate how do we use them I personally don't feel like we should be going to the current appointed members of these boards and being like what do you think about merger and consolidation what do you think about how you're like that may be helpful information to have but the ownership of is the city council these were established by the city council they're appointed by the city council the work plan is approved by the city council and so if we feel like that there's that there needs to be more direction we have to give it we have to give it in the work plan and it may be helpful to hear from people who are currently serving about you know what where areas you think you could be helpful in but like they can't operate outside their work plan and so we have to I think we have to do a better job when we're reviewing these work plans of giving better feedback back or being more prescriptive if we want a different outcome um but I do think that the decision of whether to merge boards create new boards discontinue boards that's got to come from us and we can certainly do it with some feedback but my experience was in the past we tried to merge two they didn't want to do it we said well we'll back off like if that they were created by Council they are appointed by Council whether they continue to serve in that capacity should be a council decision well it sounds like at least at this point regardless of the outcome everyone wants some of the same next information right everyone wants to see Charter purpose work plans for all the Committees and boards that you can then use it to have the next conversation what whatever that might look like um as a result so I think that's does that sound like an okay next step so besides that information is there anything else that feels like needs to be discussed today if a next step is going to be receiving the purpose and the work plans of all of those boards and commissions to continue their conversation on that uh one thing that had came up in the development of the agenda was consideration for like benchmarking against peer communities how many boards do they have term links Etc yeah and excuse me we did pull some information together on that we have it this is what I will caution about in my own review uh is that the contexts of different communities are very unique and so it's hard it's all it's an apples to Orange comparison it's a data point certainly we would provide it to you I just don't know how much value you can derive just purely looking at the numbers relative to other communities because as you peel back the layers of the onion you see boards that exist somewhere else that we you all would probably feel like don't serve any value here because the context is very different so that we can certainly give you those numbers but um that just be the the note of caution at all for you just um as you do that analysis on that and Ela I don't know how to capture my comment but as we do this audit so to speak it would be helpful for me to know which ones are reactionary they're responding to something specific uh the Parks Board is looking at plans that are being developed that they have something to react to versus those that are saying uh kind of what can we advise the council and share them about what is the trend out there or what we're hearing so the proactive versus reactive I don't know if we can phrase it a different way but that would be very helpful because I would assume that's built into their mission the environmental Advisory Board uh is every issue related to environment sent to them for advice or do they kind of develop their own program about how they could be good stewards of the environment I don't know I don't know their work plan but I want to know those that are reacting to something specific so there's a pipeline of information going to them versus those that are saying hey we have this Mission like historic cemeteries I don't know what's being sent from city council to that group to deliberate however they meet so to me it'd be helpful to know which one are reacting to specific pipeline issues coming their way design commission Arts commission Planning Commission vers bicycle pedestrian versus those that are just hey what do you want to talk about what's our work plan not being disrespectful but it's helpful to me to know what is the purpose of their mission initially to react or to advise yeah and it seems like that's something that at least when they provide the material to you there can be an initial assessment of that for you from staff and I just want to add that I think just within the last since 2020 I mean we've added five boards so we as a council over these Last 5 Years have not instituted that directive either you know so we this is our time to go okay we put all this here and yes we we need that information now but in The Last 5 Years in putting these boards together we have not had that conversation it's been let's do it as a as a reaction on my in my opinion you know we've done it as a reaction and now we have to follow through and say all right here's the reason why we want it here's why we want to keep it or not and it's just the accountability of of making those decisions so I'm I'm looking forward to you know the next steps thank you yeah it sounds like um this might be a good opportunity in the next six months to employ almost everything on your list of things you want to do with your time together so anything else you need in terms of no just want to thank you appreciate it I appreciate the direction I think we'll be uh well positioned to bring back something that uh could prompt some action in the not too distant future I won't put a Time on it but but I think we we've heard clearly the consensus around what you'd like for next steps thank you for all the work until Miss Mosley we hope she feels better I'm sure she's listening is so so will there be a special commission to review the commiss I move that's council's call um okay so we are going to be shifting into our last agenda formal agenda item um and we're going to start with a video that's sort of a year interview video um this is how to sort of wrap up the retreat um so I will turn it over to your it team to get the video [Music] started it's going to be some [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right team acorns no acorn Avengers ACN Avengers teap purplee I'm also going to have the team captain from Raleigh rainbow please take your [Laughter] oh ready all right everyone welcome to's not on hello hello hello hello such a competitive group here as you can tell we are towards the the end of our Retreat this is our F fourth year doing something like this I don't know how we're going to do it again um but I want to formally introduce your host for this afternoon for the official annual Raleigh Family Feud [Music] good afternoon and welcome to Raleigh Feud where we get a chance to learn about the things that make this community special and we learn to figure out what it is that our partners and stakeholders hold near and dear I am your host stavina Harvey and let's cut through the Chase and let's get right to it we have over here team us over here huh that's that's us what team what's the name of your T oh okay [Music] okay the acorn Avers the acorn Avengers let's give it out for the acorn [Applause] Avengers and over here we have Team Raleigh rainbows all right these two teams will compete against each other for a coveted prize in the early rounds the first team to reach 200 points will get a chance to play for Fast Money you know the drill buzz in when you've got the answer don't call out any answers until you are called on and good luck give me Mayor protim Fort give me mayor Janet cow for our first question let's get it let's go round one Michelle let you in place technical difficulties but we're going to make this thing work we surveyed roughly 1,400 people that are Raleigh residents we asked them how do they get their information about city government the top four answers are on the board let's go how do you get information for the for for city government all right mayor Pro mayor Pro Tim fort City website she said the city website survey said that number one okay that is the number one answer while they try to figure it out in the back do you want to play or pass all right it's the number one answer for 35 points you're going to get it in a few minutes so let's keep it going all right council member silver you call in you call in the number for the [Laughter] city I will not sorry about that Council memb Sil what happened to this generation probably they don't know how to communicate um all right council member Harrison social media social media dang social media was there we go social media was number three for 28 points council member Patton traditional media I need for you to expand on that like the news wrl okay she said wrl ding local television 30 2 was the number two answer coming back to Mayor protim we have one answer left on the board say CAC she said CAC all right council member Silva the pressure is on you have two strikes the first of which was yours so the pressure is own newspaper uh newspaper so they have three strikes over here to the acorn Avengers you've got five seconds to steal that's wrong wrong show wrong [Music] show she's said church we win yeah so y'all get the points team um rain Raleigh rainbows over here gets the point next time look at the screen they gave you the answer it's Word of [Laughter] [Applause] Mouth All Right Michelle Mallet is keeping the score or so she says so if you'll pass the buzzer down to the next contender the next question we asked my screen ain't up okay question two we asked 1100 people and the top seven answers are on the board what Transportation or Transit items should receive the most emphasis over the next two years all right council member melt Lambert mton B bikes bikes bikes he said bikes ding ding ding bicycle did you show the whole answer bike Lanes yes that's what I'm talking about all right he says bicycle Lanes that's number six over here to you council member silver bus rapid transit he said bus bus bus Rapid Transit bus Rapid Transit we're gonna give it to them judges there are number bus Rapid Transit routes bus access Go righ Bus access all right so you all have control of the board what are you going to do play or pass play all right Council Minister Harrison said that real quick she going to play right all right sidewalks sidewalks sidewalks oh oh Ste stepa Harvey said let's roll with it all right sidewalks availability of sidewalks that is your number three answer all right council member Patton traffic calming traffic calming ding ding ding ding ding that is your number one answer traffic flow and congestion all right coming back over here to Mayor Pro Tim the [Music] what okay thank you we we can talk about that a little bit ler May Pro him may I Pro him Fort all right council member silver going back to buses bus shelters he want to take okay not today right okay all right Harrison trains she said trains all right we have two strikes on the oh I'm sorry the Raleigh rainbows y'all have struck out okay the acorn Avengers there's lots on the [Music] board okay well we're going with roads she said roads what about the roads there you go ding ding ding ding ding number two was Street Maintenance or Street conditions that's widening that kind of Falls in there so won yes aorn Avengers got that [Applause] round all right number four was the a the availability of Downtown parking can't believe you missed that one Lambert Melton trying to get rid of it and number seven was walkability all right moving on to the next contester Pastor buzzer is Jones against Harrison that's a head-to-head match know we surveyed a th residents and they stated cheater cheater oh she don't okay well what's the answer stop being a rebel housing affordability what we didn't she I'm so confused I'm paying attention to you okay okay so um we're going to let it slide this time we GNA let it slide this time but you got to wait till we answer the question we surveyed a thousand residents and they stated that the most significant issues Raleigh will face over the next five years she said affordable housing boom the number one answer patent uh infrastructure growth more specific uh uh Transportation infrastructure like Road Road she said Transportation infrastructure bam number three all right Mayor protim Fort grow develop growth in development boom number two council member silver I'm not p no uh property taxes M property taxes oh at least I'm consistent what did he say at least I'm consistent all right Harrison thank you Public Safety Public Safety boom all righty we have one answer left on the board you have one strike here uh Patton can you bring it home or what um environmental resiliency tree canopy environmental resiliency tree canopy ding ding ding ding ding Environmental Protection and climate change bam all righty okay um the acorn Avengers you need to step your game up Christina Christina was really trying to follow the rules that time that time yeah don't show the question yet to my tech crew back there all right the fourth question we got a head to head oh Lord branch and patton this could be brutal we asked 400 residents what are the five largest city departments by employee count I think I'm going give it to Brent police police oh Lord police bam number one answer all right mayor Cowell I would say uh Parks parks number four solid waste Solid Waste Services fire fire ding ding ding ding ding Fire's number three Raleigh water Raleigh water yeah hey D D D it's up there they having some they having some issues back there all right mayor can you bring it home uh Transportation she said Transportation boom clean sleet for the acorn Avengers awesome sauce our five largest departments are the police Raleigh water Raleigh fire parts and transportation and you notice we're talking about full-time employees because when you add on the part-time parts and W goes to number one the second seat just gets the we get it wrong council member over but I'm new no no no shots fired let the record show that calil member silver used to be the Raleigh planning director shots fired okay let's bring it back let's bring it back question number five as an employer the City of Raleigh significantly invest in its employees through compensation and a diverse benefits package we surveyed 400 employees and asked them which benefit means the most to them all right over here on the acorn aven Avengers mayor Cowell I would say they're cash compensation she said cash like salary their paycheck but we're talking about benefits let me clarify not compensation the benefit piece retirement she said retirement ding ding ding ding ding it's number two all right mayor prend for it there's one up above it I'm GNA say vacation she said vacation this paid leave too bad it's not number one all right mayor C do you want to play or pass want to play they're going to play or pass they're going to play all right Lambert Melton what is the most important benefits to employees health insurance health insurance boom bam number one number one and we're still one of the few organizations that provide health insurance at 100% free for employees yay said that to me but I had already so he cheating he he said cuz I was plan director up cuz he cheating over there okay Christina Jones maternity leave we will put that in the paid leave category let's give her another chance oh okay sorry post that's very nice of you um um D Insurance Dental ding ding ding ding ding all right council member Branch SP dependent care for spouse and children okay that's your first strike first bring it y'all better be talking over here rainbow okay okay I would so I'll go with with um training and development training and development that's a good one but it didn't make the 400 list okay two stripes council member Lambert Melton it's all on you I have to answer no but I mean what am I life or disability insurance and you get a double X cuz you can't talk you can't talk y individual answers right now no only when you try okay you have three strikes up here to the uh righ [Music] rainbows they're talking oh they can they trying to steal about she said comp time that's a good one too but boom bam comp time's not up there number three was slyy slyy I know they broke it out okay so did we win broke it out they broke it out could could we get a a score what is the score total right now okay all right no pressure by one all right come on Ry rainbow we only got two questions left so this will determine who plays for the fast money all right all right me versus Mitch we surveyed 25 people in the hallway top five answers on the board as you know the question we asked as you know Janet Cowell is our current mayor Name a former mayor in the top it came from over here that's right top five answers are council member silver Charles maker he finally answered one Charles [Applause] maker Charles Meer you can't tell over there oh we can't help Nancy McFarland Nancy McFarland ding ding ding ding ding number two all right we got Nancy McFarland and charge maker so you want to play or pass play wait there's three more though can they name three yeah no we don't want to give them a chance we're going to play we're going to play okay all right look we were running we're playing they playing we were running around the halls trying to get the answers we couldn't ask it uh too many more people all right council member Jones Maryann Baldwin Maryann Baldwin bam number one Paul cobal all right hold on hold on hold on C BR Paul Cobell all right the acorn Avengers over here going at it we only have one left on the board Tom Fetzer Tom Fetzer okay yeah Lightner Lightner he said Clarence Lightner [Applause] all right this will determine who goes on for fast money no we already won we were up to there's only one question left it's over this is for this is for all or nothing all or nothing we're doubling down she said this is Ling basketball All or Nothing the city believes in equity so We Believe In fairness so it is even okay all right Pastor buzzer on speed round there's another question we got one more question don't cheat Jame don't cheat we won it they is even if they get it they can't beat us well let's just go through the benefit of the question let's just go through double down we're we're betting everything make the questions put them together all right question number seven we surveyed 500 folks the top four an on the board and the question is the City of Raleigh consistently appears on multiple best of the best lists please complete this sentence Raleigh is the best place to play council member Harrison said play all right council member Jones live she said live ding ding ding ding ding that's the number one answer are y'all going to play or pass okay they going to play you tried girl you you beat them first you did good you did good you did good work for business say what now work business okay hey number three ding ding ding start a business raise a family all right the mayor said raise a family ding ding ding ding ding there's one answer left on retire no strike lamber Mel said retire boom bam [Applause] nice so so to the Raleigh rainbows we love you with all I demand a recount take it to court 60,000 votes v, votes oh Lord so as your consolation give we're so glad y'all came out today you all will get two tickets a season pass tickets to the shows at the Coastal Federal Credit Union concert series for 2025 let's give it up for the Raleigh rainbow don't leave don't leave all right now we need two people for Fast Money can't do it two two people who we going to try to see if they can bring a home you got to get point we need 150 points for you to get the fast money and become the champion do I need to leave the room oh yeah who's gonna go next you got to get out okie dokie go get him mayor approach him you regulate if someone could go make sure that council member uh branch is safe in the hallway that would be okay as I call out these questions May or you only give me what you think is the number one answer hopefully so that you can accumulate 150 points and you all will get the fast money purse number one as we all know Public Safety is important to the overall health of a community when asked which departments make up Public Safety job family what do you think City staffers said well I mean the police Okay police question two the city is made up of 21 departments and four offices what are the names of the offices 21 departments and four offices uh just one of the offices okay yes strategy and Innovation okay strategy and Innovation the city has many parks we ask PR PRC our staff members to name the top four performing or highly visible parks in the system and what are they dicks Park dicks Park she's a little biased in that and last question we surveyed 1,400 residents and they stated that the three issues that should be at the top of community conversations over the next 2 to three years are housing okay boom boom bam y'all got the answers all righty so let's go back and check she said when we know Public Safety is comprised of three departments which one did she named she said police police was the number one answer 48 points number two the city is made of of 21 departments and four offices she said strategy and Innovation 20 points clap to 15 righty gets the answer too the city has many parts and Par staff members said the highest performing and utilized Parts in the system she said dicks 28 points and then lastly we surveyed residents and they stated that the three issues that should be at the top of most Community conversations over the next two to three years she said affordable housing bam the number one answer so how many points you can stay you can stay Michelle how many points is that oh Lord I got to tell him how many he needs we got to put a no he doesn't 146 he she got 146 we need four points we need four points come on Cory you can do it come on [Music] [Applause] Cory Four Points oh we only need four points we only need four points mayor cow will brought it home and all we need you to do is clean up that's why I had to go first four points okay and she's a newcomer to the game did I get to see the previous answers no you do not that's all right let's roll as we all know Public Safety is important to the overall health of a community when we ask what departments make up the public safety job family what did most people say repeat the question please bro broh Public Safety is important to the health of the community oh fire police uh one answer please yeah we going to tell him you can't say that ECC one answer communication I ECC emergency Communication Center okay emergency Communication Center all right number two what Transportation or Transit I that's not the question the city is made up of 21 departments and four offices what are the names of one of the offices office of community engagement okay of community engagement all right don't say that don't say that the city has many parks we ask PRC our staff to name the top four performing or highly visible parks in our Park system if you don't say this di dicks has already been said time coming out shav last question we surveyed over a th residents and the top three issues that we should be focused on on as a community over the next two to three years traffic traffic all right all right let's see what we [Applause] got we only need four points as you know Public Safety is important to the overall health of a community the mayor said police council member Branch said ECC boom 12 you got it so they won so let's just for good Juju let's go through the rest of them the city is made up of 21 departments and four offices the mayor said strategy and Innovation you said Community engagement that changed to a department on January 1 oh I'm sorry the other answer was sustainability number one special events number two and internal audit number four um the city has many parks we asked Park staff members to name the top four performing um you said Chavis Chavis was the number one answer dicks was second Pullin was third followed up real closely according to the director milbrook exchange that makes sense and the last one was we surveyed over a thousand residents and they stated the top three issues that we should be talking about as a leadership team over the next two to three years the mayor said affordable housing you said traffic Transportation boom is number three and in the middle was managing growth let's give it up for the acorn Avengers so our Acorn Avengers over here not only wins the pair of season tickets and parking to Coastal Federal Credit Union for the whole concert series they also win another entertainment package um they get tickets to North Carolina State game tickets to Carolina hurricane games and most importantly bragging rights so let's give it up for the acorn [Applause] Avengers so and so now I'm going to take this ridiculous mustache off and get into the formal comments before we conclude cuz council member silver say he's going to be here till four he don't care thank I play I Am hot as fire thank you I appreciate you so typically or I started this um y'all know Ruffin was a little bit too uptight he would have never done anything like this and most times I'm uptight too but we started trying to wrap up the retreat each year with some type of them some type of fun we've done the year the first year was Olivia Pope right I rolled in on the tailes in of everything that happened in 2020 and I was the Olivia Pope without the scandal of course and I had the jacket so it just kind of worked right the second year it was the Wild Kingdom and some of you all are too young to even know what that is but for those of us that grew up watching lions and tigers and bears run all over the place that that was the year we experienced wild coyotes zebra cobra snake the black bear at Rex Hospital feral cats all the things we did that that year and then the third year was flight 2023 remember we took us on a flight we were out at um State Property out off of Edwards Mill Road and then last year it was the Raleigh we had the Raleigh award show where we acknowledged employees um for the great work that was done in their departments throughout the year and this year it's the Raleigh Family Feud so this was the first time we engaged Council I will say it was amazing so to the audience let's give our Council a round of [Applause] applause and so as we get ready to conclude and you all have the opportunity to wrap up and council member Harrison not to call her out gets out of here um as we jump into 2025 I am reminded of the amazing work that our team performed last year you can see many of the efforts on the accomplishment page as it scrolled before I came into the room additionally we continued our commitment to housing affordability housing choice and homelessness prevention through our bringing neighbors home program it has been exciting to see the progress on the new city hall Tower it is on schedule and right now on budget and hopefully it stays that way we will soon be able to collaborate in that space more efficiently and we will be able to welcome the public into the community's house because truly that's what city hall is while we weren't physically impacted with the most recent hurricanes I am extremely proud and impressed of the level of support that our employees provided to our friends in the western part of the state we made steady investments in our employees through additional leave days Merit increases additional service recognition and we budgeted resources to fund a comprehensive classification and compensation System review to ensure that we remain competitive in the labor market we solidified our commitment to fiscal stewardship by maintaining our AAA Bond rating which ensures our ability to manage Financial transactions efficiently and borrow at the best rates we work to increase our respect for the environment through policy and action we receive multiple grants totaling millions of dollars across many departments Transportation sustainability housing police fire strategy and Innovation just to name a few we worked with our partners to ensure that quality of life amenities were enhanced protected or preserved including the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts the Raleigh Museum Carolina Hurricanes at the Lenovo Center top green and RCC the Raleigh Convention Center we elev elevated our engagement game through hundreds of touch points with many in the community on a myriad of topics yet there is still work to do to ensure that everyone feels heard seen and included we decrease Citywide and departmental vacancy rates this is probably one of the things that I'm most proud of the team I pushed I challenged and they Rose to the challenged and delivered as of this morning the city ride vacancy rate is 11 .5 give yourselves a round of applause [Applause] department and of that RPD currently has 85 members in their respective recruit classes and after this summer hopefully it is the chief's wish the plan that we have designed by the summer with the second recruit class in 2025 that vacancy rate which is right now sitting at 52 will be zero that is unheard of [Applause] and in addition to that with what we've got going on in the fire department if you take the promotional opportunities mixed with the promotional opportunities in RPD at the middle point of this year the city's vacancy rate will be 7.3 that is amazing it is pre-pandemic levels and it still shows that we are an employer of choice and people want to work for us so again let's give yourselves a round of applause we still continue to get hundreds of applications for both police and fire recruit classes which lead me to believe that there really isn't a recruitment issue in public safety on most days as I said yes yesterday it was stated that we had about a 100 vacancies we verified we have 52 in RPD and again in July of this year that should be zero we maintain a 98 to 100 % clearance rate of the homicides committed in Raleigh consistently throughout the year there is not another urban city in this country that has such an amazing rate of clearance as the Raleigh Police Department let's give them a round of [Applause] applause we built or supported the building of 13633 units through Gap financing home repair programs home buyer assistant Partnerships land Acquisitions and policies and regulations yet there's a great deal of work to do to Chisel away at the housing crisis that we are currently in we enhanced our technology game as a force multiplier to enhance Public Safety efforts this is paid dividends because it has allowed us to zero in on areas where we might not be able to place officers and although we did all of that amazing work there is still work to be done to stay on the best of the best list and in order to influence or increase the production of affordable units understanding that market rate production impacts affordable unit production continue our investments in public safety to ensure that we have the city where people want to live work play learn retire and invest in those are the things that we hold near and dear to our motivation every single day lastly I will close with this you will notice that I started each statement with we I am thankful and grateful for each of you in this room I am blessed to do this rewarding work alongside some of the most amazing public servants that I've had the opportunity to work with in my 31 years 31 and a half years of Public Service you all are people who love this organization who love this city and want the best for everybody that comes into our doors and thank you for pushing us and motivating us and yeah we're on the top of the top list but guess what you got to work hard to stay there so we're not going to rest on our Laurels because we are the best with Bragg and rights right now if you notice Charlotte wasn't even in the picture um that's kind of a thing you know Charlotte and Raley always go back and forth right now we're winning the during game and I'll be able to tell that Demarcus in his face next month um you tell a little little aggressive with that um again I am blessed to do this work with each of you and it is not about me it is about we and I love each of you all and thank you all for being fully engaged the management team sat here for two days not everybody participated but you were here and fully engaged in your own respective ways so hats off to you so I really need to sit down because I'm about to melt away with all these clothes I have on to keep my husband's suit from falling off of me I'm like layered up and I am hot so again thank you thank you um feel like I'm getting some feedback yes the answer is yes I almost made it to the the end of The Retreat without any feedback on my mic couldn't end without it um so uh we are about to wrap up and I think the Testament to you all that you were able to get through some really important conversations give some really good direction to staff um that you're going to I think see in the next couple months to help you keep making some decisions and still um give yourselves an early exit I think that um I know you could stay until four if you'd like to but um I we are we are really about to wrap up and so I think um um what I would just love to hear from each of you um is something that surprised you from today um or yesterday um about uh one of an interaction you had with one of your colleagues I think I was I've been really impressed with the dynamic of the of you all today at the table and and the progress that you made on some discussions and um would hope you all are as well so I'd be curious to hear um just a little Reflection from each of you on something that may have surprised you not to put anyone specifically on the spot if you feel ready to speak go ahead um I wouldn't say it's really a surprise um I felt it was always there but it I think it was just glad to see us working talking you know being dis disagreeing but not being disagreeable um because the ultimate goal is how can we better improve the community what can we do to help the people that want the help and need the help and I think you know we still have some heavy lifts to make and a lot of work to do but I think you know it's good to come let our hair down a little bit laugh and joke cuz I'll be honest with you that's something that's been missing from this Council as a whole uh for a number of years um you know I'll probably say about at least six years um of the years I've been on Council and it's good to just see us laughing and ready to work together thank you Mayor proem Fort and I have been here for 5 years and so um I guess we have not brought enough fun to tell it's not you to cuz you're here and you're having fun oh no I just teasing um no I agree uh I like that um we're able to have conversations in there obvious areas of disagreement but we could disagree agreeably and that leads to better results it's really hard putting yourself out there um on any topic the Retreats are always opportunities to Deep dive on topics and so um you know there are certain pressures from the community and constituents and how words may be construed and um I think everyone was very transparent and honest in their feelings and I think it's going to get us to a better outcome um so I'm glad everyone felt um free in the space to share and I think a lot of that was the facilitation too so thank you yeah this is not uh your first time facilitating our Retreat and both times I think you've done a really nice job of leading us through some um challenging conversations to get to outcome so thank you for that um I think um like one thing I've I appreciated in the conversation is that like there's no right answer to many of these challenges we Face there's only like options and tradeoffs and I think I saw a lot of like acknowledgement of that and appreciate that as being a way of orienting our our work the the words diversity Equity inclusion are always lumped together as EDI which I always am troubled with because it becomes an ideology but I want to pull out the word diversity which means the value of different perspectives not white black not uh straight gay it's about the value of them perspectives what I appreciate about this conversation today is we heard those different perspectives and that conversation can only produce better outcomes we all come in with our own perspective and I'm open to learning to hearing those other perspectives and this Council and the city can only benefit from having that open conversation to hear those different perspectives so hopefully we can collectively get to the right decision that's for the best for the city the best for our residents and the best uh for our businesses thank you will say steveen was definitely a surprise uh I appreciate the I appreciate the Gusto with which you're taking on the the role um and then I would say for me it was nice to get to see so many uh department heads like the you know folks that are uh We've we've interacted a lot with the assistant city managers which is which is great but to get to see right all the folks on the panels um you know emila and others uh that we haven't gotten to see so again not really a surprise but just an appreciation of all the work that's happening at at multiple layers all p pulling together uh to make the city run absolutely Harrison yeah I just want to thank um our department heads our acms um for making sure we had such a wonderful event that was planned but also taking care of all the regular things that are absolutely essential to the city um throughout the week um it was a challenging time um from a public safety standpoint in my district and I just have such huge respect and thanks for Raleigh Police Department to your team Rico and everything that happened this week the way that folks put themselves out there and a selflessness and a courage that you know it just speaks volume to what this community is and I'm really deeply appreciative thank you well first and foremost I'm surprised that the acorn Avengers beat us I still want my recap out yeah I'm not I'm sure I'm not sure that was a solid win but you know we're going you know just playing um but but one thing I do appreciate is a little bit different is that we're having this um retreat in this particular space um we did just pass a park Spa um was pretty substantial um but given the community an opportunity to see one of our Parks that's or spaces that's you know historically underutilized and not necessarily uh having a lot of resources so to be here people kind of see what it's like um and then can kind of track the renovations that are going to actually happen out here to see what it's going to be like in the future I think is very important um I would Echo the sentiments of some of the um some of my other you know colleagues it was great to be in a space where we could have you know difficult and challenging conversations but it was not um contentious as it has been in the past which I think was really really great um and then even being able to have like side conversations I think CC member Jones and I talked a lot kind of offline about different things and so it was a great opportunity for us to you know just kind of you know hear some different perspectives from each other about some different issues and so it was great to have that time uh with her so I think it's good thank you ditto I love sitting next to you um I would like to say that what I appreciated the most was in our conversations that I really felt we were uplifting Community Voices that we've heard and it was less about us and our opinions of it but how we're reflecting and amplifying voices of the community and so I really hope that those watching really feel empowered and um excited that you have a council who's here to serve and we want to make sure that you're that the concerns you feel and the the happy stuff that you guys we have a residency that loves our city and we want to make sure that we amplify all that so I've really appreciated your work staff's work this has been my favorite Retreat so far so thank you guys so much for all of the work your staff did a great job well with that some closing remarks I know um I think emila mentioned that there's um an investment being made from the housing Bond nearby I don't know if there's anything yet to see but it's since there's some time we didn't have a tour this retreat but um it's not 4:00 yet well we're not we're not collectively doing it I'm you're going to be here by yourself they're still they're still working on the foundation the rest of us are leaving yeah they're still working on the foundation but just to kind of P yeah okay since you said being in this in this location there's also that investment going on which might be notable um and I just encourage you all to continue um when you're having these conversations explaining your reasoning and your intent behind your comments um because I think that is the way that you find agreement on things so with that we are adjourned thank you [Applause] [Music]