[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] n la [Music] a [Music] a [Music] n [Music] welcome to this December 2nd meeting of the Charlotte City Council transportation planning and development committee meeting hope everybody had a wonderful holiday why don't we start with introductions in the corner back there Katherine Mahoney planning Kathy cornette planning staff pick a mic Dave penon planning Alison Craig planning director Monica Holmes Deputy planning director Malcolm Graham Committee Member Ed drgs committee chair Marcus Jones city manager Liz Babson assistant city manager Lana Mayfield council member at large Brent Kagel interm CEO cats Yolanda Jones planning staff ly Alexander sh Transportation BR Al cats Rob and online please good morning Renee Johnson Committee Member good morning Victoria Watson Committee Member and that's everybody good so we have three agenda items today a cat's update unified development ordinance update and community area planning update lots of updates why don't we start with Catz and Mr Kagel yes sir good morning I would like to provide just a monthly update to the committee on cat activities for uh the the November update which is the month of October I'd also like to provide you an update on the final FTA audit uh Catz has received the final audit that is the special maintenance review or SMR audit uh all members of city council as well as the MTC should have received both the draft report and the cat's responses cat's responses should have come out around November 14th uh and you should all have received those via email if you if anyone would like those uh I'm happy to have them sent out again I'll also note that we presented the findings and the summary to the MTC on November 20th um so just as a reminder uh two years ago as I uh started into cats on an interim basis uh it became evident that there were some issues that needed to be addressed at cats uh part of response was two audits conducted by the FTA the first was a financial uh management and oversight audit and the second is the special maintenance review the financial management audit completed earlier this year all findings have been addressed and all corrective actions taken by cats the special maintenance review audit uh again we received and provided responses in November there were eight findings uh to this audit and I'd like to go through these in a summary way with the committee um and and I'm going to group the eight findings because they they tend to group themselves uh from the FTA so findings one and two in the audit really are about the missed maintenance or truck overhauls uh that we had previously identified about two years ago the first finding is simply that cats failed to do the truck overhauls in a timely manner or per the 600,000 mile requirement from the manufacturer Seamans that finding is being corrected we entered into a contract with Seamans last year and they are currently working their way through uh all of the required maintenance and the contract allows us to do continued maintenance to ensure that cats never finds itself in this position again um the second finding is that cats needs or needed to add the OEM specifications from seens to what we call our uh agency maintenance plan that is a maintenance plan that cats maintains and the FTA uh Rec recommended that we take the Seaman OEM specifications for maintenance and add that directly into our maintenance plan that has been completed as well findings three and four related to our bus fleet the third finding said that the road the road calls metric um for cats is routinely not being met so Road calls what is a road call that's when a bus is out in service and it breaks down and needs to be towed back to uh the the maintenance yard for service so it's a road call that is something that we routinely report onto the MTC monthly and it is one of our metrics that we do routinely miss the the reason for that um primarily is due to the Aging Fleet two years ago we identified that cats had um been had gotten behind on its uh bus Replacements so our a our fleet was aging and that was leading to higher Road calls cats immediately put in a very aggressive replacement schedule we ordered 70 buses the 70 buses 35 have been received and the other 35 will be received this year and as those new buses are coming into the fleet and the older buses are being retired out of the fleet we are starting to see the road call metric come closer to our expectations so as we continue to replace the fleet we'll we'll continue to see the road call metric uh come into alignment with our standard that was the third finding the fourth finding so again a little bit of Industry term when the FTA was out doing the inspection they walked through our main bus maintenance facility on South Tron uh the bus maintenance facility has lanes lanes 1 through 20 and that's where the buses are parked um three of those lanes are what we call the quote unquote deadline and that's where vehicles that are either they have either been in an accident and cannot be repaired or they're scheduled for Surplus or they're being held for some kind of Investigation reasons that's where those buses are parked and so the FTA recommended that we better monitor the those Lanes to ensure that when buses are able to be surplused and taken out of the lanes they they were and so Catz has already completed that we've done a full inventory of those lanes and remove the buses from the lanes from the dead lanes that uh could be removed other buses get held there as I mentioned sometimes there are insurance claims or other reasons why those buses are held for a longer period of time but as soon as those buses can be released they will be released and Catz is better managing those uh those buses that part of the fleet findings five and six relate to our facilities and assets and again this really goes back to as as we talked about a couple years ago cats had failed to timely conduct Bridge inspections along the blue line um and and we identified that and we immediately started those Bridge inspections I'm happy to say that the bridge inspections are complete um and all corrective actions have been taken however uh finding five recommends that cats have a plan for completing facility assessments so again this stems back to um the lack of those Bridge inspections one of the things that we did uh two years ago is we brought all of our facility maintenance inhouse and we designated facilities maintenance as its own division in cats we brought in Craig Fox to be our facility manager and Craig has been conducting facility assessments since coming into cats Craig is permanent in cats um and we continue to build up our facilities group uh again so that we have a better understanding of the maintenance needs and what is required for all of our assets and Facilities the second thing we did is we created in our development division our Development Division is really the engineering division they they build things and they monitor the assets so we created in our Development Division division a new function called the um Transit asset manager and the transit asset manager from a centralized standpoint monitors all of the transit assets and works with Craig's team the facilities group and others to ensure that all of the maintenance um is being conducted in a timely manner from a centralized standpoint on cat's assets the sixth finding that they had um is was recommending that cat centralize its Transit asset management technology systems so again cats is De has been up to this point decentralized each division um manages and maintains a list of all of its assets um and so what the FTA saw was with that Transit asset manager they also need a system that comprehensive comprehensively uh captures all of the assets so that they could be managed from a centralized standpoint um Catz is negotiating a contract with a software vendor to purchase an Enterprise asset maintenance system that uh contract negotiation is very near complete and city council will be seeing a contract for their consideration on December 9th to finalize the uh purchase and then ultimately to implement a centralized uh Enterprise asset management system the seventh and eighth findings are really about our reporting and documentation the seventh finding is that um they're needed to be cats needed to engage in better reporting both to cats Executives and to the MTC and City Council on the status of our um of our asset management of the fleet of all of our assets so again we are working to standardize our um key performance indicators and develop a a meaningful report both to myself and my executive team but also to city council and the MTC we expect that uh work to be done no later than uh June of 2025 uh to be able to report in a in a more expanded way on our assets and then the eth finding is about documentation of our own internal audits when I say internal audits I mean audits conducted by cat staff so we routinely do self audits throughout cats our Safety and Security Group does that and the FTA acknowledged that they were doing a good job and doing those audits but what they would like to have seen was better documentation and more formal documentation both of the AUD and of the findings or results of those audits uh our Safety and Security Group has immediately started to do that and all of their correct corrective actions will be complete by uh the end of this month by December of 2024 so a couple things to note on this um I think that a lot of the findings we have here we we understood going in what those were but I also wanted to give you a little bit bit of context from the FTA and from their own words um the FTA did say that cats has a well structured approach to managing and maintaining its bus and Paratransit Fleet it said that um our Fleet appears to be in good shape with clean and M well-maintained Vehicles they also looked they did a random sample of both our Bus and Rail Fleet and on the to to ensure that all preventive maintenance was being done timely on the bus side of the vehicles they sampled 97% of the tested bus fleet met all PM requirements for inspections the other 3% um occurred outside of the specified PM range they were conducted early so again in transit and the FTA um early is not on time as well as late is not on time on time is on time and so four of the inspections are 3% of the inspections that they sampled were conducted early however none were conducted late in their sample on the rail side on the rail vehicle side again they found 94% of the tested Vehicles met all PM requirements the 6% that did not were again the PM maintenance was conducted early not late so no findings of late PM inspections that is my full report on the um SMR uh audit and I will pause there if there are questions or comments so maybe I'll make a comment before we take questions uh uh I want to note that U A couple of years ago a whole bunch of issues came to light about cats uh and at that time uh we went into action the manager uh one important step being to appoint one of our best management resources to oversee uh remedying the problems that we had identified uh we then had a process for uh basically creating a catalog of issues that we were aware of and monitoring our progress and dealing with them we had a special working group uh consisting of members of city council and a couple of MTC members that also reviewed the issues talked to the management Consultants did a site visit um so we've come quite a long way since then uh I believe this FDA report kind of signifies that we've reached a a stable situation I think um so we we asked the FDA to conduct those two studies uh basically as a as a a means of uh satisfying ourselves that uh we were either in a good place or headed towards a good place uh so my own impression is that we are now at a point where we can sort of normalize uh our oversight of cats and our ongoing we have either initiated or completed all the steps that were identified as being necessary in order to address issues gotten back to a state of normal normaly there are a few continuing things like the maintenance that will take a while to complete but they are underway and there's a plan in place for them uh so uh I just want to take this opportunity for one to say uh uh congrat ulations Mr Kagel and Mr manager uh thank you for uh addressing these issues and getting us back on the path to being a first class transit system and I think we're very close to that now uh my own recommendation would be that the working group that we created probably does not need to meet any further I think we've kind of reached the end of that process I'll talk to the other members and make sure that everybody's in agreement about that um but I feel we've now reached a point where uh we have fulfilled the referral that took place uh to the committee and the uh the tasks that the uh working group has set for itself so uh in that sense without any objection I would suggest that we go to a more normal pattern of updates uh and um again barring OB objection from the members of the working group uh basically close out that activity and I think that's my comment I'm uh happy to take questions from the committee Mr chair yes sir so thank you Mr chairman what I'd also like to do is thank you and also thank the uh committee um the first Monday of each uh month I don't think Brent and I um thought it was the greatest thing in the world to come here and get grilled but I think what it has done is help um restore confidence in cats because there's a lot of things that we wanted to do that are bigger than what we're doing today so um I appreciate the feedback that we've gotten from the committee and um I also want to thank members of the team who actually gave up resources for cats and those folks are now permanent members of the cats team and I also want to thank you Brent um for all that you've done thank you great do I have questions Madame Vice chair I'd like to acknowledge uh Miss Molina our vice chair who joined after the introductions morning thank you Mr chairman and and just really quickly I I Echo those sentiments Mr manager um Brent thank you guys for your hard work I think um this is encouraging to listen to and to hear this report um I only have one specific question about some of the information that you delivered uh the Enterprise Asset Management that we're going to take a look at on December the 9th is that a part of a greater Erp system is that I know that we've had talks about us having our own you know um Erp system as the city of Charlotte is that part of a so it is a separate system but as the City Works to implement its new Erp enterprise resource what's the p stand for the the planning system this will integrate in with and talk to um the larger Erp system workday okay so it is a separate system though okay yeah so that that in a past life I I studied a lot with Dan elinx and you know business analysis and so it as soon as you said you know Enterprise asset management system I'm wondering is that something that would you know integrate well with a with an overall Erp system it will integrate well um it it would also be available for other City departments to utilize it if they should choose uh but this is It's a separate system that integrates in with City's work day that's very encouraging I I don't know so from a Erp system perspective this lets all of our departments discuss we don't overlap resources you know so I I wow punctuation point to see you kind of getting out ahead of the curve and already putting you know the cat's Department in a position where there would be you know that type of alignment I think that's outstanding congratulations to you thank you that's all I have Mr Graham yes thank you uh Qui quick question you said the MTC received a copy of the report did you have anyting feedback from them as a group or individually yes sir um so similar to this group there were several questions um again though I think there is a general acknowledgement that um there were no surprises here the eight findings were the the things that we had identified or um LED from the things we had identified and that Catz is taking the actions necessary to implement those those corrective actions so did they meet already and discussed the report yes sir uh on November 20th okay and I guess my second question you you uh and the chairman used the word normal and normaly uh U which is stabilization from my perspective so how do we go from good to great with system and specifically focusing on the bus the buses and I'll ask the mobility question later yeah so I think that um I'm I'm going to characterize it this way when I started in cats I didn't know what I didn't know um and I learned fast um in the first year or or possibly two um there was a lot of firefighting right issues would pop up and they had to be dealt with immediately where I think to answer your question good to great or or or great to even uh better um that's about about strategic planning and thinking about the long-term vision and I do believe that cats um we've turned the corner and we are starting to think about that Vision um both in some of the things that we're already doing we're doing Fair analysis right now we're doing a large scale Fair study to evaluate our fairs and how we charge fairs and are those fairs Equitable um we're also looking at runtime analysis A runtime analysis looks at the bus routes and takes a deep dive to determine if they're being um if they can be run on time quite frankly and some of our routes quite frankly cannot be run on time they're just two larger routes or the city has changed so much that we need to do that runtime analysis the other thing I'll say is uh and everyone's been talking about it and we'll continue talking about it uh through next year is the transit system plan uh and and the transit system plan is more than um Rail lines it's also better bus in fact I've I've said to the MTC and and I'll say to this group and others bus is the backbone of our of all transit systems ours included better bus is very very important serving the rapid transit corridors is important and and the transit system plan has a vision for how to do that but I want us to focus as well on the better bus uh part of that which really is a vision for how do we make make fixed route bus service better for all of our riders for the majority of our Riders 60% of our Riders are bus riders um and better bus looks at how to make uh the transit experience better for them does that include um and I know this is a a big topic that we're not going to solve today are probably even next year but um uh the replacement of buses you kind of talk around that but more importantly getting from point A to point B without coming to Uptown I mean you talk about a long-term Vision have you guys begin and I know we're right in the middle of a quasi um what's the word I want to use because it's not done yet I'm not sure it's going to get done um um um but um so I think our our own vision is really important for sure um but in terms of people being able to get from point A to point B in a in a reasonable amount of time without going to Uptown and that's a bigger Vision we we we talked about Uptown uh bus shelter that kind of quietly went away as well uh and so what's the vision as you begin to talk long term about the system about this the Uptown bus shelter itself uh really I still get calls from constituents uh complaining that if they miss a bus they they're late for work um the direct system so uh as we are now back in a state of normaly I think we we shouldn't say all is well I think we ought to say what's next agreed and and when we think I think I think we're on the same page U so council member Graham one thing that we've talked about as a team is that when we use the the term BS it seems so limited but we're really talking about a whole lot more than a bus system when we talk about the having a better bus so yeah but bus is probably better described as not Rapid Transit whether that be rail or bus Rapid Transit bus day-to-day fixed route service is everything that isn't Rapid Transit I get it um so as we think about where we are uh financially and as far as our plans go better bus looks to do a few things one increase frequencies of buses um when we talk to our Riders reliability and frequency top two things behind that shelters Safety and Security right and so better bus creates uh has a vision for how we have better frequency um across the region how we work to decentralize to some extent our Hub and spoke system that is centered on the CTC the Charlotte Transit Center here Uptown and create Mobility hubs so that you have more of a point-to-point network now because of the road layout in Charlotte we'll always have some need for Hub and spoke activities but we can also look at where uh people want live and where they need to go and start to create better point-to-point connections and then we can um we can also expedite our uh Shel shter replacing shelters adding shelters and the last thing I'll say is we can start to roll out what we call microtransit across the entire County and microtransit helps to solve for the first and last mile issue that really traditional bus service has difficulties with um and that's true across the country and that's where microtransit has started to be very successful for other communities and I think it will be successful for us we are rolling out microtransit the first three zones in February uh in Davidson Cornelius and Huntersville however there are 19 total zones and as we have uh funding available we would like to see microtransit rolled out across the entire County or all of our service area and again lastly and I guess this might be a manager question and don't want to put you on the spot print but just the the leadership of the of the organization you know we've been in inim for a year or two and you've done a an outstanding job there's no doubt about it in terms of picking up the pieces and putting uh putting the train back on the track if I can say that um um but in terms of as we move forward and we go into the new year and we talk about normaly I mean how do we get the some stability within the within the department what your was that Future Vision look like sure so I think um and Bren and I've had this conversation uh stability is extremely important especially what we're trying to get done from a regional perspective um in the short session and long session and so I I believe that a change in leadership right now would not be a good idea agree uh so as we get through this next year what I would ask for just a little bit of Grace and have this discussion maybe a year from now it's opposed to to now but I will say this that based on the good work from cat and the stabilization for lack of a better word uh there are a lot of of folks that are in the industry that think that this is a great organization to be a part of whether it's a part of the city or part of a regional Authority so I would say that um the view of cats not just internally or here in the region but Across the Nation it's it's a good it's a good place to be well that that's was the response I was hoping to hear um I just wanted to make sure um because I believe that we are in in a good spot but now that you know where the bodies are buried and things that need to be fixed that stability at the top is really important uh and I think we have the right man doing the right job at the right time um especially as we go into 2025 uh and not withstanding um the unknown uh in Raleigh and what's going to happen um next year this year's over um as relates to mobility and other topics that we're wrestling with thank you so I I just want to note we have two more important topics and we're already so uh if we can I would like to take the remaining questions and and kind of move along as quickly as we can and Miss map if you don't mind I'm going to take Committee Member Johnson first Miss Johnson okay thank you Mr chair and thank you for the presentation um Brent I would just say that I'm not I'm not in support of um disbanding the audit team um at this point I think council member Graham asked some great questions how do we get from good to great um but we know what gets measured gets done so all of these improvements are are great but they are response to um some action that we needed to take um and some negative findings so I would say that especially while we still have an interim uh executive director and and we're on the the trend moving you know upward I I'd say that we continue the the the scrutiny um because it has led to some great improvements so um I think these are great improvements but you you know a findings is a findings um we we don't know because we're not industry experts I'd like some time to to allow the public to consume this to hear from the public um and see what their thoughts are and really digest these findings before we say okay let's take our foot off the gas we're stable but stable is not our goal you know Excellence should be or or is I believe so I would say that that what we're doing is working and that we should continue to do do what we're doing um for for a while until you know one of the things that Mr Kagel said is you know one route on time is is not realistic you know this city does a city staff and Mr Jones you do a great job in strategizing and leading for the future but we need to manage kind of the cumulative impact of all this growth and and and our our current situation so um I think until we have you know to to say that it's not realistic we need to set some realistic goals we need to take a look at uh the impact of of all of this growth and I'd say we we continue to keep our eye on the ball as as far as cats and um and continue the the the close watch um that we've done I'd also like to hear what the NTC uh thinks about the the report so um I appreciate the information but as far as we had this information presented by cats it's not presented by a third party or or you know we so until we have some some time to to um to resolve all of the um the issues and have stable leadership at the top I I think what we're doing as far as the oversight of cats is what our constituents would expect a a city council to do thank you so Miss Johnson I would just say that uh the working group was kind of a crisis intervention team um there is ongoing oversight of cats by the MTC and by this Council and this committee so my only suggestion was I think we can go to a more normal process of monitoring the planning and the continuing any continuing resolution efforts that sort of extra level of Engagement that was necessary when as Mr Kagel noted things were happening real time and therefore you needed to have kind of a SW L team uh so I've noted your your comment and I will share it with my working group colleagues uh including the MTC members but I would just point out to you we are not suggesting that we're departing um also wanted to mention quickly to Mr Graham's Point uh we are in the process of planning uh a uh a major overhaul of our 2030 plan to align with our goal of putting on the ballot in November a 1-cent sales tax uh that would provide $20 billion of funding plus some federal funding for Mobility all kinds of mobility and included in that is 20% for non-rail Transit meaning buses and all those other forms so that's about $4 billion dollar that we would have to invest and I think to answer your question uh the availability of those funds would give us great scope to respond to what we're hearing from the community in terms of and also helps to address our housing problem because when you have better connectivity in public transportation you have more options for housing and the housing is less expensive Miss Mayfield thank you chairman Driggs and thank you for allowing me to ask a couple of questions Mr Kel thank you for this presentation you gave to committee I have a couple of questions regarding the cast internal audits do we are we not Che tracking crime and the audit so we you mentioned that Safety and Security which we know is important but in May August September November and last week we had shootings a number of those shootings resulted in the death of the individual at our cat stations so what I didn't hear in the presentation and maybe it may be in another presentation or part of the working group what is our actual plan around Safety and Security at our Transit stops yes so our Safety and Security division does uh a couple things one they work directly with cmpd um when it comes to crme Crime um whether it be random shootings or or other types of crimes that can occur uh on the system around the system at the stations all of those kinds of things and so work directly with cmpd as well as our security contractor when I was talking about our internal audits though um when I was speaking about our internal audits they're looking to ensure if a security contractor is supposed to be doing a specific job are they doing those jobs if our own staff for safety reasons are supposed to be setting up a work site in in a specific way are they following the rules um that are required for safety and security purposes and so they're doing a variety of those kinds of audits both of our contractors as well as of our direct staff and then they're working together with our security contractor PSS uh as well as cmpd to to try to address criminal activity that may be occurring in and around the system or in the community and cats as a part of the community is a part of that so I would like to encourage a consideration for us to utilize AI better cmpd shows up after the fact versus we have a number of cameras around our facilities we there's a way for us to utilize AI to do active monitoring so that we can have assistance prior to the incident or almost immediately as the incident happens also I am happy to hear that we're still having the conversations of better bus versus The Hub and spoke system I mentioned with the manager and our last meeting and I mentioned to you earlier but I want the committee to also take into consideration when we talk about that connectivity so our airport is our second largest job Creator if you live in Steel Creek you have to come all the way uptown just to get back if you live over on the east side in council member Molina's District that's a two and a half each way route we're talking about having an airport that in essence will be running 24/7 so you have employees that need to be there at 3:35 in the morning you have employees that get off late at night it's not necessarily safe for where the distance is we're already tracking that information we know at the airport where employees live where the zip codes are when we're having these considerations we need to really be focused on how are we connecting our writers to the employment that also reduces their cost with having to figure out parking everything else and the consideration and I don't Mr Kel since you've had both hats of airport and now cats looking at what the city of Charlotte has done with creating discounted complete access riding passes whether it's train or it's the half mile or whatever it is talking with our business partners out there for them to also contribute so that's something that I would like for us to think about and the other question going going back to how we're utilizing AI we have a cast app we're also able to track when people are putting in their starting and their ending location and we're seeing what routes are given to them I was just after church yesterday I had a church member mentioned that the routes that they need to take the two buses run at the exact same time so while you're on one trying to get to point B that bus is already gone by the time you get there so then that's a 30 45 minute wait for them to get to the next one we're tracking this information it's just a matter of how we utilizing the information that we're already tracking and being more intentional of capturing the data and utilizing that data to create a better transit system while we're having conversations of expanding to the northern towns we have residents right here within the city depending on where you live that cannot get from point A to point B meaning I'm not even talking about grocery shopping doctor's appointments just to get to and from work without spending five plus hours of that day that they could be spending with family be engaged with their children in school so I just wanted to have the opportunity thank you chairman to put that out there for the committee and for both you and the manager when we're talking about how Charlotte is still a big town and wants to be a big city we're at a precipice we've seen other communities where when they were at this point they either exceled or they didn't we have the opportunity to continue to excel these are some things I would like for us to consider thank you Mr chairman so just a couple of quick comments I wanted to note that the difficulties the cats experienced did not result to in injury to any person did not result uh indicate any Financial impropriety or special costs and did not result in outages of service there were some schedule changes so uh that was a bad chapter for cats uh but I think we've come through it and uh uh again I think the planning process that is just getting underway now for a revamp of the 2030 plan will take into account a lot of the points that have been made here in terms of how do you address the issue of frequency of service uh ridership and the network uh we're looking at uh some innovative solutions the microtransit other things like that um so this committee will continue to discuss those issues over the coming months as the planning process moves ahead and Mr chair can I just say one thing I'm sorry yeah go ahead I I think it should be noted that someone was killed at a cat station last night so safety is a major concern and that's one of that is something one of the reasons that it's not time for us to take our Eye Off the Ball just yet there are still many improvements that are needed thank you right and that work will continue I will note that in the last couple of years we doubled the budget for safety in cats uh and that will continue to be a priority as it is around the city I mean what we're seeing on cats is basically unfortunately the spillover of things that are going on in the city into the cat system and I think there's probably more that we can do to keep that system safe uh I do want to move on now since we have two more and Miss Craig we have less time than we thought we were going to have so I don't know whether you want to just do one of these or if you think you can get them both done we's let's start with the the first one and then we may do a quick verbal update on the second one why don't you do that then why don't you go Dive Right In okay um if you can pull up the presentation so first we're going to start off with a udio update um and in that we're going to talk first about the cleanup text amendment number four I think um the public hearing there were some questions about that again this is just a cleanup like we've done um previously um really trying to provide clarifications making the administration of the ordinance easier um is probably our last cleanup text Amendment we'll move into a maintenance mode after that that many other cities do where you provide regular known updates um um just making the the ordinance easier to administer if you can go to the next slide um so Dave will go over just a brief summary of what is proposed to be changed in that cleanup text Amendment and then the bulk of the presentation we'll spend time talking about some things that we want to uh propose for updating as it relates to um housing so this is really good timing that we're bringing this presentation forward as we um are right on the heels of a recent housing Summit that UNCC Charlotte did I know the chair and vice chair uh participated in that there may have been some others online um and really you know what Dr Chu with UNCC Charlotte talked about was um how important housing Supply is how challenging housing affordability is and so we're thinking about all those things um um and it was kind of exciting because I knew some of the things that were findings that Dr Chu had in that study so we're going to talk about some potential changes to plexus these are posing some questions um some opportunities for different housing types and then um I'm really excited about some new ideas and Partnerships we're really trying to get um creative about affordable housing I've been working really closely with housing and Neighborhood Services on that so with that I will turn it over to Dave great thank you morning everybody uh we can go to the next slide one more after that please great thank you uh so again as as Alison mentioned we do want to talk a little bit about the cleanup text Amendment we just had the hearing for that a few weeks ago at our November zoning meeting uh that was filed back in October we do uh try to address multiple items that the community staff and Industry have uh called out to us as things that need some attention and need some cleanup uh we did have some virtual community engagement back on November 6th November 7th and again we had our public hearing for that on November 18th uh just last month next slide so again why is the text Amendment needed the Udo obviously requires a lot of adjustments and revisions as we continue to uh go through implementation we're a little bit beyond a year going on about a year and a half now uh and so again every time we go through that we learn you know more and more with each you know each day each project we go through uh and so again these these text amendments are really intended to create a better U scenario for user friendly and better functionality uh and so that's why we we go through these cleanups that we have in front of us now next slide so again Community engagement for the text Amendment uh this was classified as either a technical cleanup maintenance or policy-based uh this is more of the technical kind of text Amendment cleanup that we're working through so engagement for that include again that virtual information session uh we posted the on our Udo website publicized through social media uh mailing list and Udo uh blasts went out or excuse me to our Udo website subscribers uh and then of course our public hearing which was uh on the gov Channel and YouTube and then our public engagement sessions uh you know we do kind of tailor the engagement for these uh for the the subject matter that we're working within uh and so again this was just a general uh more cleanup based text Amendment so the engagement that we did was uh was what we just kind of talked through those bullets when we do have those policy ones we do get a little bit more in the weeds with our advisory committee uh and of course talk through some of those items uh here with tpd as well but next slide so just some of the things that we put in this cleanup text Amendment uh we do have some clarifications for definitions and standards uh just added and deleted some different things for definitions uh clarified where setbacks are measured from in our N1 District uh for residential development on Corner Lots we clarified the building orientation uh update ated some procedural and applicability requirements for our neighborhood character overlay and our residential infill overlay districts uh we did adjust some of the allowable building links for schools and places of worship uh and then clarified some connection requirements for attached housing so those were the general cleanup items that were in there uh when we get into the next slide I think this is where we R into a few questions that came up during the public hearing so one of the things that we did include in this text Amendment were some changes uh with some uses that did relate to residential uh and housing options uh so I think oh next slide sorry thought we jumped there we go all right uh so in the Udo infi duplex Triplex and quad dwellings we're not always allowed in some of our districts uh like our to districts uh some of our Activity Center districts our neighborhood center District uh and so there were some uses that that were and we'll go through some examples on the next couple slides uh that we do see value in including so why it was in the cleanup versus more of a policy change these were uses that we felt uh were applicable and and suitable in these districts we are looking at them on smaller infill type of outcomes so we're not talking about large you know 25 acres or 10 acre projects in some of our intense activity centers that we might see a lower intensity housing uh product but we did recognize that there are some small infill opportunities still Within These districts and still uh you know creating some options for some of these smaller scale uh residential products in some of those more intense districts we felt was an appropriate task for us to take on it aligns a little bit with some of the housing uh uh inventory stuff that we talked about over the last couple months where we're trying to increase our uh our supply but it also fit in with a cleanup because again these are uses that we felt uh were applicable were appropriate uh it was more of of an item that felt okay well let's just put these in here as an option and make sure that we have some guard rails on it so again we're not uh you know losing out on the highest and best use outcomes in some of our activity centers but recognizing some of those small infill opportunities that we might have uh and I'll go to the next slide and show you a couple examples of oh excuse me and there was a note on here uh that these changes don't affect anything within the neighborhood one District so we're just talking uh some of our Tod districts and our Activity Center districts so next slide uh one more back sorry okay great so just an example again of why we've included this in the cleanup so you can see the area a little bit there in pink and we have a little bit in blue that's our to NC and our to UC districts respectively uh those are already zoned on the ground that's the zoning that's in place a lot of those uh uses internal to that development off of Greystone Road uh are already duplexes that exist in the to NC District uh and in that todu District so again these are outcomes that we have seen in the past uh and if somebody came in today to let's say redevelop those lots and wanted to put a duplex on on one they wouldn't be able to today they would have to do either a five unit building they might have to do a small multif family building which on a consolidation or conglomeration of those lots uh may work but also a duplex or a triplex in those situations is entirely appropriate uh actually fits in with a neighborhood pattern a little bit better than uh you might see for a small five attached unit building or a small multif family building but if we talked to folks on these Parcels we've had a couple uh folks come in to ask us about doing duplexes here redeveloping a duplex uh a it wasn't an allowed use to begin with they would have to again do either a minimum of five unit building which we felt was a little bit too intense uh but these would all fit in this less than Halfacre lot scenario that we're talking about where this would be in allowed use somebody could come back in and and do a duplex and add a little bit of gentle density with uh you know better context and and better sensitivity to the neighborhood uh so it's again putting as many options on the table as we can to address housing needs to address housing Supply uh in those situations where we felt it would be appropriate again this is why we focused on smaller lot sizes for this outcome U so we didn't see a lot of those larger let's say Tod UC districts where we want to see a high intensity level of uses uh we just focused on those small infill opportunities so and again we'll go to another slide on next one please uh this situation was one where we had NC which is a neighborhood centered uh uh zoning District this is u in an area where you can see it's just off Trade Street that orange parcel that's just off to the right where it says NC to n2b we had a uh petitioner come forward and had the property Zone to NC which was a great zoning District it was aligned with the place type in that area uh they had a small lot you can see that one outlined in Orange they wanted to just build a duplex so they came into us to talk about it realized that NC did not allow that type of use um in that scenario so they had to actually go through the full resoning process to go from NC to n2b we ended up with an inconsistent parcel that didn't match up with the NC Place type in the long term so that was one you know outcome that that we saw not necessarily as a negative but was a change uh and did change kind of the the overall Place type pattern there uh but for us it was more the intended outcome of building a duplex in that scenario uh we felt was appropriate even under that NC District but when we realized that it wasn't an allowed use for this uh parcel that's this was one of the early ones that we started to have this conversation on uh to include these duplex and Triplex uses in our neighborhood centers in our Tod districts again in those small infill lot options uh just to provide another uh potential housing outcome uh that again is context sensitive and makes a little bit more sense so that's where this this residential change that was uh because of some of the questions that we had at the public hearing came about uh these were some real world examples that we learned from uh that we saw some challenges with and we found we felt some reasonable scenarios for a solution uh which is why we POS that in the cleanup just to allow those uh as permitted uses under some prescribed conditions uh in the Udo next slide so again we do have some administrative updates as well uh these are modifications to the newly created alternative compliance review board uh and there were also some expansions of non-conforming uses allowing those to be expanded under specific conditions we did modify some of our ex standards to address larger projects like convention centers public transit stations uh and stadiums uh we did that to align with some design specific issues uh that we've come across working on a couple projects that we've learned from uh and we also aligned our vesting period through throughout the ordinance for consistency so that's the cleanup uh we can jump into the residen refinement unless you want to do question on that clarify our position on that so uh colleagues before I open for questions I just want to say having looked at this uh I am com I think the question that we all had was how big a deal is this I mean there was some consternation at the zoning meeting and it was very hard to look at those pages of amendments and when you see things like under specific conditions such and such can change well that could be a big deal or it might not depending on what the conditions are so I think that's why we all kind of looked at this thing uh I believe in our minds the the biggest question is uh are these really kind of operational and administrative changes or are we getting at the kind of uh the essence is it does it actually kind of start to become a policy thing um and I think in my mind uh the the intent of the changes aligns with our 2040 plan and the Udo as as we proposed it um it's really a question of magnitude like how big a difference will these changes make in terms of the activity that we see are we going to see a lot of things now uh done differently and were these changes that are now being made uh omitted originally on purpose or were were they just uh we didn't think about them like did we intentionally not include those things before and now we've changed our mind or is it just that we hadn't kind of identified these particular situations and decided that consistent with the Udo we needed to have a provision for them yeah I I think the biggest thing that we approached those activity centers with was trying to again get as much intensity out of them as we could and we're thinking of them on a large scale project basis where you've got maybe 5 10 20 acres of a an activity center project where you want multif family and some ground level retail but when we go back and as we continue to learn from you know having a year of of working with the document and the policy Mapp and conjunction with it you start to see some of that spill over of those zoning districts on some smaller scale Parcels that go into you know neighborhood edges and go into some of the fabric of of our existing communities that might have predominantly single family outcomes uh and so allowing the most intense uses may not be the most you know appropriate outcome but we don't want to we don't want to take all of that off the table but we did want to create some opportunities for you know these instances that we talked about in the example I get that Mr pen I'm sorry to interrupt but uh uh did we not think about that before good question I I would have to defer to to L and the team on from the Udo when they went through and put those uses together did we think about those small Tod Lots uh you know it may have been again we were thinking of it on the macro scale and not on these you know micro kind of party nodding behind you so okay yes what he said right yes what he said all right go ahead uh and uh and then again magnitude is there any way we can characterize uh you know through Acres or whatever how big a difference these changes will make in terms of what would have happened before and what will now happen if we adopt these text amendments we we could probably parse that out and take a look at zoning District by lot size if we're looking at you know half acre or less on some of these uh districts where this would be allowed we could try to get uh some you know ballpark figure of how many Lots we have that are zoned you know Tod UC through NC and then our activity centers and see what that outcome is and report back to you guys I I don't want to create a lot of work but I just think it would be easier to accept that these are sort of administrative and operational if we didn't think that there was going to be a huge impact on the outcome of of our zoning process so with that questions from the committee M I think youve asked all my questions so okay good we think alike huh yeah then uh I think this makes me feel had a question thank you again Mr chair just a couple of questions when we're talking about align align housing uses with intended outcomes so council member Metro sent a couple of us a picture and also sent the staff where we had a new build that was built with basically the back of the house facing the main street does any of this language correct that so in the future we don't have those type of situations so we're a little bit Limited in what we can do with that the state doesn't allow us to really dictate you know placement of garage doors design standards on residential units U so we're a little bit U Limited in how much we can dictate an outcome of which way a unit May face if it's oriented towards the street or towards a a side Lot uh so that's something that the state doesn't give us a lot of uh leverage to to incorporate into our ordinances so uh can we guarantee that that won't happen again not likely just given the state of of what the legislation is we work with but uh certainly our preference is to have things Orient towards the street and have you know things kind of activated towards sidewalks and and roads but uh we can't put a guarantee or requirement in our ordinance that that that be the outcome based on our state legislation so that might be something through bgi we can look at also um can we give preference or is there a possibility of through our scoring have preference for ownership to stabilize neighborhoods because what we're also seeing on the ground is a lot of rental development that is happening in established neighborhoods that's also changing the landscape and the interaction in those neighborhoods and we're having a number of neighborhoods that are being built under HOA guidelines that are outside of a lot of our guidelines and that's causing some challenges is that something also that we will have to look at through BG yeah that just we're not able to really get into requiring something them be owned versus rented thank you well I'm I'm not saying required but we could put preference on whatever we put preference on we have things come before us all the time where staff identified that this would make a better fit it is interpretation and understanding of what is our actual goal for the community and I've tried to be very clear that my goal that we the city of Charlotte is an owner occupied not a rental City we're seeing the impacts of communities that have over the years become largely rental communities and the negative impact that that's having on local government certainly yeah I mean we C try to encourage a home ownership wherever we get an opportunity to but U yeah we'll continue to look at some ways that that can either be incentivized or uh you know ways that we can make sure that we can try to incorporate and encourage those outcomes thank you Mr chair worth noting that uh from our trip to Munich that 75% of residential property in Munich is rental property it's an entirely different uh but it's an entirely different mindset uh questions any others so uh colleagues Johnson go ahead yeah say you yes thank you um and thank you Miss Mayfield for bringing that out I actually sent a picture of that house to council member Mitchell um and to the rest of you as well um Allison can you elaborate on that because I sent that that seems like I mean that's common sense management we have to be able to do something about that I I understand State Legislature but this house is literally turned around it looks like a mistake so and the condition for and so is there Alison I know you were going to present to the builders can you elaborate on that at all so could I just say that's a policy conversation that we need to have we're talking right now about the text amendments and whether we think that what is in there is suitable for adoption by the council uh again given our time constraints I would rather just have an agenda item where we dive into those questions in Greater depth and recognize that they are a policy issue but can we just if you don't mind Miss Johnson can we please stay with the uh agenda and uh I'm interested to hear if people have comments about the text amendments so that we can uh decide whether or not to move ahead with them okay thank you and I will we'll follow up I mean I will definitely and and Miss bson if we can make a note we'll follow up to have as an agenda item a bigger discussion on these issues and I think we're going to hear some of it in fact in the second part of this Udo update but for right now uh uh I would like to be able this is an information item on our agenda but I would like to be able to tell the full council tonight that we heard an explanation and without objection that this committee feels that uh these text amendments are appropriate for adoption by the full Council and hearing no objection uh if if it's okay uh we will then and again Miss Johnson I've noted what you said but uh if we can I'd like to then go on to miss Craig and the or whoever is next to to do the remainder Will Keep Us Roll Along next slide next two slides I think yep one more all right great so again we're to talk a little bit about residential refinement we'll try to get through this quickly so we can leave a little bit of time for some the affordable housing stuff and some questions uh we've talked a little bit in the past the tpd meetings about the housing crisis in Charlotte demand outpacing Supply uh our goal to provide some options for gentle density uh based on the the Charlotte future 2040 plan uh need to focus on infill and small scale development options including missing middle options uh again back to try to increase home ownership opportunities as well as inventory uh so that's why we're here talking about this again so next slide we'll go to our change considerations uh appropriately scaled density uh we want to explore ways to encourage stacked quads which are the traditional 2 over two units that we've see in a lot of our existing neighborhoods uh allow housing in more places uh develop more flexibility for housing through Partnerships and conversions uh look at some affordable smallscale Solutions including revising our Adu standards make it easier to develop preferred housing types uh create things like a pre-approved pattern poke for missing middle housing and then continue to increase our affordable housing tools and explore options to FastTrack those affordable housing projects next slide so one of the things we want to talk about uh is creating housing through some of these Partnerships uh one thing that we are excited to continue to discuss with with everybody is allowing residential uses uh under prescribed conditions when accessory to a place of worship or an educational facility uh so this would include all dwelling types uh we haven't put the whole gamut of everything up to a multif family stacked yet in the scenario but it is something we're considering as we kind of talk with uh some more folks that are involved on the project side of these potential outcomes that could be something that could help particularly if it's a more small uh urban-based U lot in let's say a place of worship or a school uh you know that multif family stack may give you another option to choose from uh if we looked at this scenario things would be developed likely under n2a or possibly n2b guidelines uh we would like to require or allow this to not require resoning to allow this in a byright scenario uh where a let's say church has extra land you can see in the in the graphic on the screen uh they have extra land where they could provide housing options uh and provide some additional units uh that would achieve some goals across the board uh we've had one recently I think was approved in either September October uh up in the Rocky River Road area uh this is an example that would be down in potentially in South Charlotte that we've been working with uh we've seen a lot of these we've talked to a lot of folks in the industry that are dealing with these on a almost weekly basis or at least request to explore this type of scenario uh so one obstacle that we did find is that a resoning could be a bit of a challenge or a drawback so we wanted to again look at some options to allow this to occur by right uh there's still some questions we need to work for work through and solve for which is things like what kind of properties would be eligible are we looking at a size threshold what if it's a a vacant lot that just happens to be owned by uh a place of worship or an educational facility uh we do want to ensure things like Workforce and affordability outcomes in these projects um again Foster some of those ownership opportunities versus rental opportunities uh do we look at parcel size requirements uh and again what we talked about earlier do we allow a multif family stacked or or more of a traditional small apartment on on some of those smaller Urban Lots so still some questions that we need to work through I think those are all solvable there are lots of examples we can pull from um that are are really going through a little bit of a nationwide uh Trend that that other jurisdictions are looking at uh so we have some great things that we can work from uh so we would say this is getting close to being fully baked uh Sol aside from some of those questions we need to solve for uh we do feel like it would be a great opportunity and a partnership I think would be uh a very uh fruitful one for for both all parties that would be involved so that's one opportunity that we're exploring we want to talk a little bit about stacked quads on the next slide uh these again are our traditional forms that you can find in some of our existing neighborhoods Elizabeth Dorth uh a lot of times that building form fits a little bit better in the fabric of our neighborhoods um they do tend to resemble a single family structure a little bit more than a a linear attached unit uh we would create this as a standalone defined use uh so it wouldn't get lumped in with just our traditional quad which could again be a a a horizontally stacked uh quad where you've got four across um we have to determine which N1 districts this may be appropriate in uh do we have to consider a lot size of maybe 60 ft or greater uh after we've done some internal testing with meeting driveway requirements and parking requirements uh you know do we want to look at things limiting these by either zoning districts or do we limit it by lot width so it doesn't matter which district trick you in if you you're in if you have the appropriate lot with you could maybe move forward with this so those are some questions we're still working through uh but feel like this is something that we're getting fairly close to to putting uh in an upcoming text Amendment uh with some of these residential refinements next slide just some examples uh of what some of these stacked quads these are both or actually all three are in the Elizabeth District uh or neighborhood uh you can see some of them have parking in the rear the bottom right there's a driveway in between the two you do have on street parking in this neigh road which does help um so that's something we're looking at as well is that's something that we uh incentivize or or provide as a you know potential outcome uh so that's again things we're trying to work through these obviously work fairly well you can see the picture on the top left it fits pretty well with the the single family next door uh so we feel like this is an option that we'd like to continue to um try to refine it and place in a text Amendment coming up here shortly uh then one more slide I think we've got before we a couple more before we get into affordability duplexes and triplexes that's a bigger um topic that would also be something that would be in a standalone text Amendment uh one of the things we didn't want to clarify is that when no garage is provided uh for these units parking does have to be required to be to the side or the rear so if you don't have that front-facing garage where you're pulling off the street into your driveway that driveway does have to either be to the side or the rear uh that is in a cleanup text Amendment uh earlier this year uh but are there additional refinements that we need to think through uh such as again R All N1 districts appropriate for these uses particularly triplexes uh do we want to look at any consideration to limit those by lot width that way again they'd be allowed in in some districts but it would be based off of lot width versus n1a or n2a um do we limit it to Corner Lots like we used to in our old code where we just dealt with duplexes uh on Corner Lots in our old R District so those are some things that we are continuing to work through uh we have talked to UAC about some of those and we'll continue to use them as a uh feedback loop for getting some information on those but just wanted to give you a quick update on where we are with with those options and then the last item that we've got next slide will refer to um office conversions uh this would allow uh office conversions to convert to residential uses uh by right under prescribed condition uh would be mainly through an Adaptive reuse situation so we've got old bacon Office Buildings that uh folks want to convert to residential we know that's a bit of a challenge uh but we certainly want to at least provide the tools that that somebody could take advantage of uh so in those situations you could potentially do this by right and convert those office uses to residential uses uh one thing that we're considering also is just allowing uh Standalone multif family as a a use itself and so it wouldn't just apply to uh an adap reuse we do have a lot of vacant land in some of our older office parks that folks have looked at U doing multif family projects in and and typically require resoning so that's something else we're we're looking at uh and considering in those office districts so uh affordable housing is next up we pause there uh that was residential refinement I just want to find out whether the committee has questions about that uh I was wondering is all of this toward a policy change I mean is that that would be the outcome and those changes would go through the policy process and not the text Amendment yeah yeah a lot of these items would not be clean up items these would certainly be Standalone text amendments that go through uh you know the full kindy to change yet when we go through that policy side of things okay in that case why don't we zoom into and and Miss Craig we're not going to be able to do justice uh is this a really time sensitive your update on the area planning um actually I have there's a little bit more on this one so I'm just looking ahead it looks to me like we're going to be out of time pretty much right uh we can we can um maybe provide a memo or an update to y'all uh later and then come back in January uh yeah okay I mean I think we we need to be sort of aware I don't know if there you know a couple of sentences if you think about this that you can tell us uh you know in terms of where we stand but we're not going to be able to do the slides and everything right okay uh Mr P actually I'm going to do this section here so so um if you can go to the next slide so um we've been trying to get really creative about affordable housing and provide um more opportunities there um so in partnership with housing and Neighborhood Services we held a workshop I really appreciate the partnership with them with Rebecca and rakisha and Warren um we invited um a number of different people from affordable housing developers market rate nonprofits design professionals really the idea to create tools and incentives that are people actually using so I I know council member drgs she like to talk about the density bonus that we never used and I I want to I want to have a set of tools that are frequently used and so this was a deep dive with a bunch of detail oriented people to get into what we could actually change next slide um so we kind of went did in a quick assessment about what's working the fanlu um has been a great tool we've had $19 million committed since 2019 so that works great for that kind of project but this does not work for menrise and affordable projects because they are not looking to go higher you have to switch your construction type at that at that point and so that is not the height bonus is not a useful tool so some of the things that are useful um the voluntary mixed income density bonus that's new in the Udo um that's a tool that like someone like habitat um is really interested in and they have actually used that a couple times there's something in there that's a horizontal density bonus so you can actually expand your footprint and reduce your open space and exchange for affordability we haven't had anyone use that yet so trying to understand that and then we also have um in there some relief from ordinance requirements like Street requirements u u building sidewalks and we really haven't had a lot of use with that either and so trying to understand why next slide um so some of the recommendations of course so more incentives for Mid ride construction um the bonus doesn't work we frequently hear this and we um and heard it again at the workshop that it's tree save storm water public streets and open space are the most frequently um needed areas of relief for affordable projects we've also heard that our set aside requirements are too high so the number like the percentage if it's 20% 30% Etc that that's really too high um for those tools to be really viable and then of course FasTrack streamline the approval process I think those are all things that you've heard before next slide so um I'm going to throw out a new idea that we've had sort of next slide yeah um that we've had recently um you know the commentary about tree save and that being an area of maybe we could look at some changes so the idea is that we could create a tree mitigation bank that is an option for affordable projects um to meet tree safe so we buy tree save they use that as their tree save requirement which then gives them 15% of their site back for Development I've checked in with some of our affordable housing developers I think there's a lot of excitement about this um we would uh prioritize mitigation Bank purchases in areas that have low canopy which you can see in red up there on the screen those are areas that are very suitable for tree planting because they lack tree canopy now and then we could also complement that by planting the trees on the affordable projects using canopy care funds so really taking care of all those requirements for tree save without creating challenges with our or reducing the amount of tree canopy that we're trying to establish here in Charlotte um next slide and then lastly there was a lot of conversations about that there's a lot of new tools out here um they people are really unaware of them and so making sure that we are getting out there I think Warren is um is rapidly working on a manual and sort of some things that we can do to make sure people know about the tools that we have we need to test the horizontal density bonus look at other you know are there other development costs that might have creative um Solutions like the tree save idea and then continue doing these workshops with um key stakeholders to continue to develop incentives that are truly impactful and truly work and that's it great uh do I have any questions so I did want to mention myself the does the Fe andl go into the trust fund or what happens to the 19 milon the $19 million goes into the Housing Trust Fund right so that's available for other affordable housing things um and what exactly is the process for engaging with the industry I think you know from past conversations I don't think we're going to get effective incentives uh without an ongoing negotiation as opposed to just deciding for ourselves and putting it out there and then seeing that no one actually cares so uh what is our process for engaging with the industry and hearing what is interesting to them so I mean I think there's a lot of different tactics um so making sure like when we do these affordable housing workshops making sure you have people that are actually developing these projects or considering including affordable units in their project in the room to be able to provide feedback I think there's also opportunities to like I went recently to the Home Builders Association got feedback from them I've spoken at other industry groups and talking about the Udo and I certainly get a lot of feedback that way so I think there um there's a lot of intent um about making sure that we're engaging the people that are actually doing the work to get feedback from them um yeah I think I I've mentioned before that uh we need to recognize that to a certain extent it's a zero sum game like you have a cost associated with affordable housing because you're below market and so anything you do is either going to cost us money or it's going to compromise requirements that we have otherwise and I'm in favor of that I think we should be willing to kind of create a set of rules but on the other hand we need to recognize that when we depart from our basic scheme of requirements there's a loss involved there or cost and if there isn't those requirements shouldn't be there in the first place right so uh I I hope we will be transparent in terms of uh what the implications are of relaxing Street requirements or uh the open space and so on uh and uh but this's is an ongoing process so appreciate the work you're doing and if there are no questions about that uh I did wonder if you could just tell us without the slides briefly where you stand with the area planning plan yes absolutely so um just as a reminder area planning is the second major implementation item out of the comprehensive plan we began in the winter of 2023 so it's 14 plans over a 2-year period we remain on time and on budget we're wrapping up phase three and entering into phase four so phase three uh was a series of workshops began in September wrapped up um in the middle of November and we've also closed the web tool which replicated that um same experience online 247 we closed that um day after Thanksgiving so right now we are assembling all of the information that we have been releasing pieces of as we've wrapped up each phase of the process much of it is available on our it the community reports and the revised policy map we're assembling all of that into documents we've heard you loud and clear that you don't want to be hit with all of this information at one time so as part of that we'll be scheduling small group meetings to kind of introduce pieces and answer questions that you might have and also um we have this briefing book which I know you received back in September um before we C sometime around a um presenting to this committee and full Council we'll be updating this information as well which breaks down a lot of the information in a different way that is that is in contained in the plans or will be contained in the plans by District so there's a multip tude of different ways that we're trying to break up the information to feed it to you so it won't seem like a whole bunch of new stuff at one time but I do want to assure you that we have heard also the plans will be highly ual easy to read and easy to understand I know there's 14 of them but they follow a methodology or a template so the format of the information will be consistent throughout too so I hope all of that will be um something that will ease your mind about the information that you'll be receiving well that was excellent um are there any questions uh any chance we could get that tonight in the committee report out will somebody be at that meeting that could just say what you just said sure uh I mean I don't want to spoil your evening if you weren't going to be here but uh um great so Johnson Miss Johnson you're muted thank you I just wanted to follow up to see if the community area plan was uh presented to The District 4 Coalition that was one of my specific requests and he don't don't have that answer now if you can give that to me tonight when the last time I spoke to the Coalition I thought they said they were going to receive a presentation in January but it sounds like the the uh input or the engagement period has closed so can you verify if that information was presented to that group so they did invite us to their January meeting but just because that phase of Engagement has closed does not in any way mean that um folks are not able to comment to continue to comment on the plans they they are able to comment throughout uh review and adoption as well so it it's it's absolutely not too late for us to receive comments um and we are on their January agenda as well we can discuss tonight because I know time is uh we're we're pressed for time but comment is not the same as engagement I hope we learn that from the you so we can talk more in detail tonight okay okay thank you and I think we're going to talk about the uh area planning process at my town hall I hope that's part of our our program there as we update on the Udo um good well it's about that time and uh very nice job uh encapsulating appreciate that do we have any other comments if not I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved and I'll second that and without and yeah we're adjourned that's it thank you everybody [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] n n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] M Economic Development Jeff Brown assist with proper Daniel LaVine properties Mike Wilson North raen Neil Edwards North raen Peterson planning Phil riger General Services Matt hasted City Finance Teresa Smith CFO Marcus Jones city manager Tracy Dodson City manager's office marjerie Molina Committee Member Mal BR committee chairman Ed Driggs Committee Member tari committee Rana mayfel council member at large James Carter Economic Development toand Brown Economic Development and those visiting with us virtually can't hear you yeah Maurice Kumar from the BAC thank you every very much uh so we have a pretty full agenda two items that's going to take I think a lot of conversation and so I want to get right into into the agenda I will recognize uh assistant city manager Tracy doson to introduce the agenda uh council member Mitchell has called he will be joining us 20 minutes after the hour thank you chairman Graham um first on the agenda we have today the alternative funding for arts and culture then we will do a second conversation followed up from earlier in November this is December now on Providence Square and then end with a business advisory committee up date so with that I'm going to kick it to the manager welcome thank you Mr chair uh so it seems like I'm going to be visiting all the committies today so uh hopefully this will be the uh quickest um presentation of the day uh a couple things uh I'll be joined by the team but I would like to kick off this discussion it's dealing with the funding for arts and culture and I guess there's this thing called undefeated when you don't lose a game I guess I've been defeated in this one that I haven't gotten uh any wins with this so let's try to do this a little bit differently than anything else and let's deal with only the referral not the governance structure and not the FY 26 funding opportunities so if we go to the next slide this is simply a referral that uh the mayor sent to this committee that asked that I work directly with the committee thus me being here today to explore opportunities for the use of hospitality funds as a means for creating a sustainable funding source for arts and culture okay so that's simply the question that's before the committee today and before I turn it over to Teresa let's just talk about on the next slide how we got here I think there's a slide in between those there so there's a lot that was going on with the infusion fund and there's a great story there with the city and the private sector came in for the last three years to try to create sustainability in um this ecosystem but again I would like to stick with one topic today and that is whether or not it makes sense to use tourism funds as opposed to what occurred in the FY 25 budget so what do I mean by that $4 million was always baked into the base of the budget and then with a 0.31 cents of the property tax increase that created $7 million more for the arts and culture ecosystem from the city I won't talk about what the private sector is doing I won't talk about what the the county is is doing this is simply whether or not some portion or all of the $7 million could come from the tourism buckets or the hospitality buckets versus the general fund the only question that's being asked today so with that said I'd like to turn it over to the CFO thank you next slide please so we thought we would start with a little bit of a reminder about what the hospit Hospitality taxes are where they're accounted for and how they're used so this is information that you've seen before um the manager always gives me a hard time when I go right to left today on this slide I'm going to do bookends okay so we're gonna we're going to start with convention center and Nascar Hall of Fame and then we'll move to the center and talk about tourism so in the convention center fund this is where you have prep prepared food and beverage tax as well as occupancy tax uh this one is driven by the statute and the use is there Convention Center marketing and promotion of hospitality and tourism amateur sports and stadiums over 60,000 seats so as we look at this one we do not believe this is legally able to be used on arts and culture so bookend that over to the Nascar Hall of Fame Nascar Hall of Fame also funded by an occupancy tax and on this one the uses that are permitted by the state are the Nascar Hall of Fame and the convention center uh Crown Ballroom that uh sort of connects the two so again don't believe this one is eligible legally for arts and culture uses so then we focus in on the center which is the tourism funds uh sometimes referred to as T1 and T2 uh accounted for in your budget as tourism uh starting with T1 this tourism one this is where we have occupancy tax as well as a rental rental car tax uh for that the uses that are permitted by the state are marketing and visitor promotion programs and events that generate Visitors and Convention centers Civic centers auditoriums museums so that is part of the conversation today for arts and culture tourism 2 or T2 the funding sources here are a payo transfer as well as a city and county tax increment Grant on some of the existing cultural facilities so the uses here uh Cultural Arts facilities uh and events that further Cultural Arts so one of the things to point out before we flip to the next side uh our financial advisers have told us that having these occupancy taxes separate and apart to be able to use for these types for these purposes is a good thing uh it helps relieve pressure on the general fund but it's also a good thing that they are separate and apart for these facilities and Matt will talk a little bit more about this as we go into the presentation next slide so one other reminder this is just really about the the priorities for how we look at spending the hospitality funds so of course we're going to start with any statutory requirements that we have that will be first we'll look at any existing debt or agreements that we have in place to ensure that we're not violating anything that already exists we will also look at maintenance and capital repairs uh you all will recall that you did put a Hospitality Revenue policy into place and that that policy does ask that you look at maintenance on facilities so we definitely want to consider maintenance of what we have and then finally we would look at new commitments or special events so with that I'm going to turn it over to Matt thank you Teresa again Matt hassid City treasur in the finance office and next slide please so we're going to dive a little bit now into to tourism 2 in particular so looking at both sort of some of the current and future sort of needs and obligations here so we have debt services so the cultural arts campus that's sort of the Mint Museum the Beckler the night theater that campus we have approximately about $80 million of debt outstanding on that on those facilities um on average is about $7.6 million a year in debt service um one of the current agreements we have is related to the rebuilding of the Carolina Theater the city has already put some money into that facility but we still have some more money that will go into it we won't have debt on it it's just a contribution towards that development um we have maintenance on the cultural arts campus and I think Phil will go into a little bit more detail on this but we do put a significant amount of funding into it but we do have a lot of needs there as well um and then we also have the Bojangles and oven sort of complex that we do some annual maintenance on uh looking in the sort of to the future we definitely need some more um Capital Improvements and repairs to the cultural arts campuses as those start to age um I have ovens and bowjangles and Discovery Place Bas both as future things as these are things that city council has of heard as Horizon I think Tracy probably at the M the annual Retreat will have sort of a bigger presentation on some of the Horizon projects but these are things we sort of know could be coming down the pipeline and do have them as um the as there is denoting that it could be from both tourism one or tourism 2 depending on what types of things the facilities have what types of things are in the Capital Improvements or repairs or expansions because those could be eligible for for both of those buckets dep potentially especially depending on how much the need is and then we'd have ongoing maintenance for for the two facilities that we or the two buckets that we had talked about go to the next slide and this is a little bit more sort of diving into the tourism 2 um sort of on the for arts and culture in particular um so I believe during the last budget cycle um Teresa Smith as a CFO indicated there was a little bit over about $1.5 million that could be going to the arts and culture um on an annual BAS and that is still the case there is still some affordability in there this is always a point in time type consideration so we can always revisit that but did want to sort of look into some of the considerations for what would happen if we were to use some type of annual operating commitment so this would significantly limit future Capital Improvements and major renovations to the cultural arts campus um for example for each $1 million that we would put into an ongoing annual operating subsidy to towards these organizations that would have an impact of approximately 122 to $32 million of debt affordability over a sort of a 1 to 5year period so that sort of each point in time sort of we look at sort of debt affordability so that it really does have a pretty significant impact on how much we could afford um depending on when we were looking to issue any type of debt for Capital repairers or a new project um one thing that I think is also important to consider is that operating support is more difficult to pause or cut back on especially these organizations are having a difficulty during an economic economic slowdown they likely need those funding more during those times than less but these funds are a little bit more volatile because they're based on you know the hospitality and tourism industry that during a recession those revenues could go down a little bit so that could put pressure on either trying to look at the general fund to help support or other places is is a lot harder to to pause those where you could say hey instead of doing this new project in 2026 we're going to wait a year instead of doing an HVAC repair we're going to you know a replacement we maybe repair for a year and then do replacement capital projects have a lot more flexibility to pause where the ongoing operating subsidies are really going to be a commitment that we have to follow through year after year and TR Teresa mentioned this a little bit earlier that our financial advisor really likes how we have sort of the the buckets and conversation was had with both rating agencies and investors they also really like how we have our funds segregated and that we're sort of using hospitality and tourism funds or hospitality and tourism projects and that we don't have any sort of back and forth with either money from the hospitality industry going into the general fund because there are some cities across the country that use hotel motel taxes to supplement their general fund operations and that creates real stress during economic trouble but sort of on the flip side of that is that means that the you know we also don't want the general fund having to you know offset some of these Capital needs and these capital projects in this area area so the rating agencies really like that we have dedicated funds for dedicated projects next slide please and I think I'll pass over to to Phil now for for a little bit as we sort of talked about some of the funding that helps the tourism fund and now a little bit into the project or the facilities sure Phil rer with General Services um your tourism 2 Funds fund the maintenance of your cultural facilities and these are the seven cultural facilities on the screen um this represents about 850,000 Square ft of space and an estimated replacement value of about $560 million so it's a lot of um space and a lot of value we also um these facilities are leased to your cultural uh organizations for a dollar a year uh and they have been since the facilities were built um we also uh fund maintenance for spectrum Bojangles and ovens uh from T2 uh and also T1 both next slide please every three years uh your general services department does a Fidel facilities condition survey and that survey uh evaluates the the basic systems of our facilities and that Sur survey helps us make uh best decisions about how maintenance funds are spent um we do this uh every three years for your cultural facilities and um you'll notice that um age really drives maintenance need and your cultural facilities are showing some age we have uh one facility that's 88 years old um and um an average of 33 but your uh facilities uh at LaVine Avenue of the Arts they've become teenagers and and uh during that period of time from a maintenance perspective not unlike your home you start to move from repairs to Replacements and that's what we're seeing here with your cultural facilities we've got an estimated $90 million of Maintenance expenses projected over the next 10 years um and so um it's just that time uh in these facilities life next slide please so if you look at where we are today you can see in FY 25 uh we're funding uh $4.8 million of Maintenance out of out of T2 um that is up over the last five years from 2.4% so we're pushing money in that direction and we're going to need to continue to do that you can see some of the projects that are that are uh going on this year and some projected for FY 26 currently your funded at 1% of your current replacement value industry standard suggest you should be somewhere between two and 4% and uh and so we're going to have to start moving uh some more money that way in order to continue to make sure these facilities are viable and uh enjoyable to to visit so I'll turn it back up next slide please thank you Phil so we'll take a sort of dive into to tourism one now um so both the current and the future so we do have the statutory requirements for tourism and and marketing promotion and as Teresa mentioned earlier uh The Debt Service obligations we have are the Spectrum Center and The horners Practice Facility um we have some agreements with the TRU Stadium where the you know um nights baseball Uptown we don't have debt on that but we do make an annual commitment to there um as part of the ACC relocating their headquarters here we had a commitment to sort of because that brought so many events to the the Charlotte area um we have maintenance on the Spectrum Center and then some of the special events that we we currently have are you know Charlotte shout the Boom the Charlotte black Film Festival I think the those last two were added as part of this budget cycle um look into the future um addition to the marketing and promotion um we'll have um potentially needs for discovered place in ovens and Bojangles again depending on sort of what is done and how how it's done there both tourism one and tourism 2 could you be utilized a spectrum Center as we are currently undergoing some pretty big Renovations there right now and Capital Improvements some of that debt is still to come online so we're currently doing the construction and that debt will sort of come online and then in into the future there could be something else um we have the agreements with truus and ACC maintenance for spectrum then a couple of the the future events and these are certainly limited to anything just sort of things that we sort of know about being you know Charlotte shout has been an annual um project the P PJ Championship um I believe last time we had the uh Championship here we had sort of pedestrian Bridges and extra traffic control and we saw saw unfortunately some of the things that happened last year at the PGA Championship so there there may be a need to do some traffic control and pedestrian safety um for that and then the truest Championship formerly WS Fargo Championship of qu Hollow has been something that the city has provided some uh traffic control support for as well next slide please so as mentioned earlier on tourism 1's uh funds can be used for arts and culture um we would recommend that tourism 1 be used to fund to Target organizations that would then use those funds to promote Market de develop programs or performances that would result in visitor activities just make sure we have a very clear line on sort of how the money is being used if it were to be um but unfortunately for tourism one uh the fund is not have any affordability for any new long-term commitments uh this really comes down to when um a couple years ago when we did the extension for the Hornets for the first round for the Spectrum Center improvements we really tapped out touris and one pretty extensively uh the fund did get a little bit healthier coming out of the co recession um but then we needed additional affordability for the pacor facility and some additional um enhancements there so just the fund is in solid shape it just doesn't have affordability to do anything big ongoing relationship or commitments one time special events Case by case there's still some affordability there on sort of one offs um but there's nothing that I think can really sustain an ongoing long-term commitment next slide please uh wanted to go back real quick because it was on the the four um sort of funding buckets that Teresa had mentioned and just sort of highlight that the nasara fame fund does currently have a sunset in July 2038 um any extension require State approval in the city to work with hospitality Partners um when the city and Hospitality Partners approach the state to extend the prepared food and beverage tax this was something that was evaluated um but ultimately was not was not there wasn't a pressing need so the prepare food and beverage is really the the need for the city at the time to be able to have us gain enough affordability to engage the negotiations with teer sports for both the Panthers and the Charlotte SC that really became the focus um and there was a little bit of reluctance to sort of touch the NASCAR of Fame tax at the time so everyone just sort of figur that it probably be better to let it go and Trace I don't know if you have anything you would like to add no I mean I think you I think you covered it there looking at an extension of that will just take a lot of strategy um with Partners as well as with the state thank you and next slide so is a quick summary um as mentioned earlier we currently have $1 million programming for ongoing and culture within the general fund um reviewing tourism 1 and two both legally can be used for tin culture um but based on the current programming uh and sort of the needs that feel really laid out for the the cultural arts facilities and there's needs that we don't believe that there is um affordability at this time or that it wouldn't be wise to to use it at this time I'll pause there so that's it to M Mr chair that's our report thank you um for the the report um before I turn over questions from the committee I'll I'll kind of give my perspective and then I'll I'll be quiet and allow the committee to to chime in as well uh there there's an old saying that says just because you can does not mean that you should and I I think this is a perfect example of of that um $1 million um a recurring expense fits nicely in a $4.2 billion budget every year uh and it leaves some heartaches and headaches from those who have to manage every recurring spense going elsewhere um we're going to need the hospitality Alliance support um to get the 2038 NASCAR approved and they were very very helpful in terms of getting the last tax extended uh and they too believe that we should keep it simple uh and utilize um uh the general fund for the um for Arts funding as well as those from the Arts Community believe that we should do it I think as a council we should be financially disciplined that we need to be um aair uh of our financial management strategy and as I said before $1 million and the $4.2 million uh it's not a heavy lift um and this is a recurring expense um I believe that this may be a slippery slope because once you get onto the uh the tent um there may be other councils in future years that want to stretch the um the legal limits of the law for other other events that should not be utilized for this tax so I think we ought to uh keep it simple um we enjoy a AAA Bond rating um that we want to keep cheap and we want to make sure that when you guys go to New York that you do less explaining and about what what we're doing or why we're changing the methods of what we're doing uh and I don't think there's an explanation for us to do it other other than because we can I don't think that hold mustard and I want to protect the city's AAA Bond rating um you know this was a part of discussion where we also um eliminated 60 Mill from the budget as you call and then we had to put it back because of public outcry and so I thought the $60 million was a a bad idea then and and I think the community agreed with us and I'm not sure this is a a good idea as well and lastly you know doing it this way would be using it as a credit card right um and I don't think we should use the art funding as a credit card we should it should be embedded in our general operating budget where it's safe and secure that we know it's there uh and um that's what we should do and then um how we have operated and utilized the tourism tax has tried impr Prov proven and we've been able to do big things on a large scale for a wide variety of usage um because we exercise some discipline and I hope that discipline would carry the day as we move forward so that's my thoughts and I'll turn it over to council member Dr thank you Mr chair um Discovery Place without getting into specifics is it is it correct to assume that there is potentially a big ask looming out there for that so council member jgs what I would say with that is you know preco there was big plans big Vision um I don't know that Vision I don't want to speak for them I don't know the vision is exactly the same um but I do have regular conversations with them as as with Phil and and others about the condition of the facility and the age of the existing facility and the need to have a plan going forward now what is unique about that particular project though is they got a lot of different levers to pull between the land having two blocks and things like that so big ass from hospitality and tourism maybe but there's other levers to pull but we don't have kind of a current Vision right at this moment right I just want to note that uh in my opinion this is an important resource for the city and that we should be prepared to make an investment uh and and that that means that there has to be some capacity a couple of other things to note quickly uh the disparity between the city's revenues from property tax and sales tax and tourism proceeds I mean we saw an extreme example in the last few years of the drop off off in tourism uh so I agree that this would not be a reliable funding source if we did try to fund it that way uh I'm also very sensitive to uh our relationship with the industry um I think the argument that we should consider tourism funds stems from the fact that the tourism industry benefits from our Arts investment and so a case could be made that maybe they can participate in the cost of that investment I think what I would know to that is uh yes the industry does derive some benefit from our investment in arts but we derive enormous benefits from the industry's investment in tourism and so this tax is imposed on members of the industry and is used for these purposes that we've heard about uh so I I don't think the case that they should have to participate in our Arts funding holds water in my opinion uh and the other thing I'll mention is you've described a lot of known post potential uses the way things stand right now our capacity is pretty much fully committed with things that we know about there's no room for anything new and and so once again I I think the burden on the hospitality funds is such uh and for the reasons the chair mentioned that uh our best bet is to use the operating funds on a continuing basis for the Arts and let the industry keep doing what it does thank you Mr DX no more questions really quickly floor is yours uh thank you Mr chairman and just really quickly um so what what was the rationale behind the proposal in other words have you had conversations with members of the tourism industry prior to this idea I have been passing and it's not well received okay put it that way okay and and the rationale comes from there being a need for us to do it is this what in other words um what would be the overall benefit why would we consider this as opposed to what we're currently doing so I'll take a shot at it so the um overall benefit could be taking some of the strain off of the general fund but as Matt mentioned earlier and as some of you have mentioned we saw what happened to the hospitality fund during the pandemic and how we had to recover from that so the concept was um would there be capacity in these funds to help support some of the operations for the um different organizations that are part of the ecosystem okay that makes sense all right that's all I have thank you Mr s yeah I mean I if I recall I believe the the the premise here is it's time to ramp up because we're heading towards a budget season where we're going to be figuring out how and what we're spending on arts and some of that has been onetime money in the past and we have other obligations so under that premise what I'd say is we've had an interesting Journey over the last eight years with us um we knew it was broken for various reasons some macro some micro we went after them we worked on it hard the voters at one point said no uh when they had a referendum we went and put record-breaking amounts of money into it uh from our perspective and you know I I think I I it's debatable how much success we've had on creating something sustainable out of all that so I I think what we have to have prepared for us for a true policy and budget decision coming up is one keeping the lights on in the house and you know what does 2 to 4% of CRV look like in relation to the the affordability and capacity that we have and that's one decision we need to make and sounds to me like we shouldn't be prioritizing any nice to have stuff until we get at least to an average level of taking care of of our house and then secondly you know we need to look at um you know what what's what's changing what's different than just the amount of money we're throwing into something like this on a go forward sustainable basis other than the amount of money what are we achieving what are we doing uh and I think that has to you know we we've just we haven't had success in that yet at a at a macro level so I I think the no-brainer is showing us what a realistic responsible investment in our maintenance towards CRV looks like and then secondarily it's like we're not just we can't keep throwing record breaking amounts of money cuz nobody's even happy people are still upset with all the record-breaking amounts of money and that's because the foundation is still broken so I think that second question also has to be answered and presented to us in some way or or something but at the end of the day I think it's going to be a choice between those two and one of them is a no-brainer okay Mr manager so Mr chair um so this started off as a referral from the mayor and I guess the question is is this coming out of committee with some type of vote to yes you're at my mind so I would like to any questions anyone make want to make a motion I would like to move that we not fund the Arts from Hospitality but continue with the plan uh recognizing M Mr BK's point there may be questions about the investment we're making the current issue is what is the source of the funds we're investing and so I'd like to make a motion that those funds uh uh however we decide should come from the general fund and not Hospitality second okay questions all those in favor of the motion raise your hands all those opposed motion carries great we will um transition now to Providence Square and I'll ask Todd to come up and and join me if you remember for those that were here November 4th committee meeting we introduced this project and we have continued to have discussions around the project and just wanted to bring it back to committee one more time and give you an overall update and then spend a little bit of time on next steps so with that Todd I will turn it over to you thank you uh next slide please all right so Tracy mentioned this is a continuation from the uh conversation we had in the last committee back in November uh the difference today from last time is last time we introduced the concept of a potential public private partnership to you for the Providence Square Redevelopment today we are going to dive in a little bit deeper on the terms and then ultimately ask for a recommendation and a referral to full councel uh for their consideration and approval at a time in the near future as you can see here from the two images on the on the slide you have on the far left shows where the project site is located in South Charlotte about 7 miles south of Center City on the right it shows you where it is uh articulated with the different roads key roads for Providence Road Sardis Lane old Providence Road and you also have the macalpine creek and Greenway to the south of the project we also discussed last time how there are three different coordinated rezonings with Liv properties Northwood Raven and Horizon development today we are going to be focusing on two of those three which is LaVine properties and northw Raven as the Horizon development isn't really subject to the tig or the tig improvements or the tig agreement so while their development is still going forward as planned and as proposed in the resoning for today's conversation we're going to be focusing primarily on the LaVine properties in Northwood Raven as that is part of the tax incit Grant conversation as we mentioned the last time while they are independent rezonings uh we do look at these in a holistic manner because that's something that you know if you see how close they are tied together the benefits that are derived from each of these projects really compound to be something that's more substantial for the community and we need to look at this a little bit more broadly and holistically rather than a project by project uh case next slide please so as you may be aware that this is a unique revitalization of about5 Acres along Providence Road the proposed new mixed income housing The increased walkability the new accessibility to new commercial uses really helps further and drive forward the city's objectives around creating 10-minute communities also creates opportunities for small businesses uh more employment opportunities from the commercial space and also opportunities for daycare facilities in the area that are sorely lacking uh in in the in the Charlotte region next slide please again talk a little bit more about the coordinat res zonings next slide start with LaVine properties this is a basically a Redevelopment and replacement of deteriorated buildings that are existing on the site going to be replacing it with a new mixed use pedestrian oriented Village there are currently 473 units on the site as it is today all of those units are vacant 400 households have been relocated over the last couple of years and all the uh from the dilapidated structures you saw on the first couple slides that the the condition of the facilities really just aren't inhabitable and the those will be replaced with new residential units as part of the Redevelopment as you see in the white and shaded area those are some existing buildings that will remain the small gray Square in the white area is currently programmed to be an indoor wreck use or a large Child Care Facility about 880,000 squ ft of commercial space will also remain in addition to a 19,000 Square ft for an indoor recreation facility the balance of that white uh area is not yet fully programmed but it does provide opportunities for additional multi family development in the future next slide please uh Northwood Raven that part of the development they're looking at building 95 town home units as well as 650 multi market rate multif family units next slide again when we think about public private Partnerships and why we entertain and engage in these types of partnership opportunities we really do need to think about the bigger picture and what's being delivered to the Community it's not just about the road or parking or we we what we might invest in is what is we what are we getting from the community what is that return on that investment and how are we participating to facilitate a facilitate a better development that drives a better place creates more opportunities for for jobs and just a general higher quality of life as you see on this slide there are a number of benefits that are being generated by this project is supports our housing goals with 108 units that would be uh with household income restrictions up for five 15 years 100 of those units will be uh restricted for households earning up to 80% of Ami with eight being reserved for households earning up to 60% of Ami these units are being delivered by the developer they are not seeking Housing Trust Fund dollars nor they seeking litech fundings to support that mwsb inclusion oh sorry the developer they're also looking at a developer contribution of $500,000 towards affordable housing want supporting mwsb inclusion efforts with uh we shared this information with CBI they put this into the system and their approach to calculating the goals and the goals for MBE is 15% with at WSB at 10% supporting uh the project supports sustainability environmental goals uh supports open space and parking initiatives through a 4 and a half acre uh Park land donation monetary contribution to activate the park of million dollar constructing green ray bridge and multi-use paths and other Trail improvements along the way also supporting uh Public Safety with through a partnership with Charlotte fire department and and lastly on this slide is supporting increased mobility and accessibility you know basically as an example of this is facilitating facilitating the connections between Providence Road and Sardis Lane and old Providence and Providence Road next slide as we dive a little bit deeper into the transportation and mitigation uh and transportation Improv ments this is sort of the core of the scope that's tied to the tax increment Grant but again the much bigger picture of this is all the other benefits that are being created out of this partnership opportunity uh the developers worked with SED and NCD NCD and analyzed over 20 different uh intersections they signed off on the improvements to new traffic signals medians turn Lanes pedestrian Crossings overall improved traffic flow in the corridor and increased traffic and pedestrian safety in the area um next slide please we talk about the fire station the partnership while we're still not sure haven't worked through 100% of the terms yet what you see here is the existing location of the fire station which sits on about 74 just under 3/4 of an acre that's outlined in red and outlined in yellow is the proposed site of a new fire station that sits on 1.2 Acres the existing station is just over 4,000 square ft of a building it was built in 1974 for the proposed new station would consist of about 14,000 ft so it's it provides an opportunity for a larger more modern station and a location that provides greater accessibility to the major roads between Sardis Lane and Providence thereby reducing uh response times for the fire department next slide please we like to show in these kinds of presentations this General Uses and sources and how the funding is coming together of the different programs or the benefits that are being uh generated by the project as you see here there's about $70 million worth of activities that are oriented towards the public sector from Park activation to uh pedestrian and Greenway improvements to Workforce and affordable housing to the road infrastructure and access and management improvements and then at the bottom you see where the sources that are going to pay for those uses at the top uh of that the developer would be contributing uh 50 nearly $51 million the city through its portion of the tax income and Grant would be 6.9 million which equates to about 10% of the total cost or the total uh value that you see under the uses and then the city and county together at about 19 million which uh really equates to about just under 28% or just around 28% of the total value there next slide please take a step back on what a tax increment Grant is just for everybody to for a quick reminder grants are made on a reimbursement BAS basis only and it's based on new incremental taxes within a defined increment area basically these are a Performance Tool and so if the developer doesn't perform the taxes are not generated and the payments aren't able to be uh paid or reimbursed to the to the developer a justification for our use of a tax increment Grant really lines around what the public purpose is most of the time they are infrastructure improvements occasionally we get into Gap financing and public asset uh buildings uh traditional Grant terms or 45 or 90% of the incremental taxes these are generally up to 10 years we have gone longer depending on the need and priority particularly lately as costs have risen in the last four or five years we have seen the need to go a little bit longer on these just to make them work financially and the next slide please so for this particular partnership we're looking at the following proposed TIG terms at a high level 45% of incremental taxes would be reimbursed to developer over a period of 15 years it would not to exceed $19 million plus interest if the tax rates and the allocation between the city and county would remain constant as they are today the city's portion of that would be about $6.9 million and the County's portion would be about $12.1 million as always the developer is responsible for any cost overruns that are tied to the infrastructure work or the tax increment Grant agreement the leverage ratio that you see here we have a goal that we set on our P3 deals of 1 to 10 meaning that for every dollar that the public invests into a part a public public private partnership our goal is to receive $10 in private investment what you see here is 1 to 71 so it far exceeds the goal that we have set for our P3 deals with respect to uh public versus private investment into a partnership opportunity then the nwsb utilization again as you see here is the MBE goal is at 15% and the wsbe goal is at 10% for the scope of work that's tied to the tax increment Grant next slide just bring everybody back to kind of a summary of what our return on our investment would be we we always have to look a little bit more beyond what a traditional or financial Roi would be on our investment from a housing affordability again we have 108 units that would be uh targeted with income restrictions for a period of 15 years a 100 of those units would be for households earning up to 80% of the Ami eight units would be reserved for households earning up to 60% of Ami the allocation of one two and three bedroom units would remain the same and be consistent as the market rate housing so it's not like the market rate has a mix of one two and threes and the affordable Workforce is purely just Studios there is the same kind of allocation of bedrooms in there they are not seeking litec or Housing Trust Fund support and there's restriction for up for 15 years for the affordability in addition to the $500,000 contribution to support affordable housing in the area from the development team mwsb goals 15% for MBE 10% for wsbe again we just talked about the leverage ratio of 1 to 71 parks and Greenways developer contributions activating park space of a million dollars donating nearly 4 and a half acres for park space and then construction multi-use paths connecting the mixed use Village and the Macau Pine Creek Greenway among another a number of other uh pedestrian and bike uh improvements that are being completed as part of the project $490 million of private investment this is taxable this is adding to our tax base which leads to just uh about a little over a million dollars in annual net this is an average over 20e period net taxes net new taxes this is a net of the tax income and Grant payment and then a partnership with the fire station to help us deliver a fire station more uh more modern fire station a larger fire station one that provides better quality of service to the residents of Charlotte next slide please so sorry I can go back the next so looking at the schedule uh the county introduced this to their committee on October 15th they are planning for an update during their committee meeting tomorrow afternoon uh we are anticipating a potential board accounting commission decision in sometime in January uh from the city perspective we introduced this uh public private partnership to the committee on in November on the November 4th committee meeting a rezoning there's a zoning committing on 117 and then the resoning decision is anticipated for December 16th the tax increment Grant again have an update during today's committee meeting on 122 and then we're looking at a future Council decision potentially on 129 if so suggested by the committee next slide so we do still have some out uh work to do on some of the outstanding items particularly around the fire station but barring any critical areas of concern that are addressed in the committee today I think we're prepared and we feel like we're in a really great position to continue moving forward and progressing this to full Council for their consideration and approval during the December 9th city council meeting uh the action is a little wordy here but effectively what it says is that the city council we this is the action we'd anticipate on December 9th where we uh they authorize the city manager or is designed to negotiate and execute an infrastructure reimbursement agreement that would be supported through a tax increment Grant between both the city and the county not to exceed $19 million for up to a period of 15 years um with interest um whichever occurs first and then also adopting a resolution for an interlocal agreement between the city and the county that uh really further defines those terms and gets the county uh where they are part of the taxim grant agreement as well uh so with that I will stop and pause for any questions comments from the committee uh thank you very much for the presentation and I will give uh the floor to the district R Mr barari thank you uh thanks staff good work so just a couple comments um I think at a macro level this is this is few and far between between of of a materiality of a deal that we normally get to see I mean Valentine River District the this is a substantial transformational opportunity that's complicated uh has taken a lot of work and a lot of time um but it's one of those things that you just can't kind of you know you have to recognize that you're at a time getting the the challenge to deal with this so I think that's that's both the good and the bad news of this whole thing um when you look at all of that in the complexity there's three rezonings there's two Economic Development bodies going through processes I mean it's it's a whole lot and it's compounded if you're anyone's wondering the you know the timing and why everything seems to be so fast and furious one it's been going on for a long time but two with the Udo and everything that occurred um you know that we're coming up on a deadline by which all these things have to be buttoned up so that's why kind of we're at that 5 yard line running into the end zone right now and um and some of these timelines are not artificial they are they are hard uh that we have to deal with so I I think with the big transformational opportunity this brings um does it bring um additional issues that we're working through with the community right now for the rezoning side of this absolutely and and that's what we're doing but it also brings an opportunity to transform a part of town um that um that desperately needs a jump start of the engine uh and we're able to address a corridor Providence that we have talked about ad nauseum for decades now and there's no you know macro solution coming so this is the first material impact to that Corridor that I've seen in my time serving and that means we need to get it right and and need to to move the ball forward as we look for a a broader uh solution for that entire Corridor and several others so that's kind of just the overall timing and everything the way I view this and I would be proposing that we move this forward to a council vote um the the the reason for that is in the current terms and especially that spreadsheet view everyone solved there I would articulate this as an acceptable deal I think there is one thing that we are still kind of looking one angle I'll just call it which is how do we turn it from an acceptable to good deal to a great deal that's in the in the area of what additional kind of 11th Hour Community benefits can we can we get out of this um we're obviously getting a you know a tax base that didn't exist before we're getting development we're getting enhancements to our transportation system um but I think that there are uh ways and willingness on both sides of all this to explore that uh the fire station placeholder that you see up there is something that's a little complicated it's a little non-traditional um I I am always interested in fire stations but I am not like personally running around like that's what we've got to have so I think there are some things we can solve for whether it's that or other ways to make sure the community benefits can exist and I've been working with the the petitioners with the community and with City staff to kind of just try to identify what is that thing what can we make it be to to make sure it's fair for all parties uh and we end up with a deal that everyone's happy with at the end so um so I would encourage us uh and probably just make the motion for us to bring forth um this to full Council on December 9th with the asterisk knowing that you guys can see a deal and its broad Strokes that is indeed in my opinion acceptable but there's a couple things still working behind the scenes to see where we can finalize and bring that too but time is of the essence so we have to do that um while we are moving forward in the process this a motion on the floor is there a second uh chair I I second the motion but I there was a lot of qualification there so uh the the motion though is to bring this forward to the council and would the council vote as your motion proposes include those qualifications no I I I I think that well all we're voting on here is those words to bring those words forward and I don't think those words change so what what is in the presentation what terms are there um I think there might be some tweaking to that as we go along but like that's why I tried to preface it with everything that wasn't highlighted in yellow across there is pretty well baked and understood and it is an acceptable deal in my opinion so I think all we're going to be doing is trying to move that uh that that bar up between now and then but it does not change what we'd be voting on all right so Mr Drake has it's been making a motion a second Mr Drake still out the floor so um I wanted to acknowledge for one uh Mr Daniel LaVine Daniel Molino and Mike Wilson who are the principles uh I think we should always make a point of expressing our gratitude for your willingness to make those investments in Charlotte there are benefits to the city we appreciate that um a couple of comments on the tig policy uh the take policy as we saw on the slide is intended to fund it's basically a credit transaction where a developer funds public investment and then gets paid back through a break on the taxes uh and therefore the city ultimately Bears the cost of the transaction and therefore the question is where do we draw the line between the ordinary obligation of a developer to pay for the infrastructure needs associated with their investment and the public benefit of some of the investment they're making that goes beyond just the uh the the interests of the investment and I don't know that that's an exact science uh I would say I concur with uh Mr barari that the numbers we're talking about here do sound very reasonable I will note that for example Valentine reimagined we had $42 million of investment uh towards uh uh CIP and Tig so there was CIP in there as well uh and the total project there was a billion and a half so uh and the total infrastructure investment was a little over 100 million so in that case the public investment was over 40% of the uh infrastructure investment and we are talking in this case about I think we saw 28 um I would also mention uh uh so therefore I I am in support of the idea of moving into the full Council uh the fire station Point um my opinion on the fire station is that we should not include that with this uh I think what we should do is uh if appropriate have a separate conversation with the parties about a possible transaction involving those Parcels of land but uh I don't see co-mingling the economics of the fire station deal with the proposal uh in general um I don't see how that's related in particular and therefore uh we can continue to talk about that but uh I would just Express The View that some of what is being proposed about the fire station uh and in particular the idea that the petitioner would build the station and lease it to the city is not an approach that I like I think it circumvents the public approval of bonds that goes into our funding of other CIP projects so I'm not crazy about the fire station as it now stands um but I certainly feel that's not a reason not to move forward uh with the vote thank you thank you Mr DRS floor is yours thank you so much Mr chairman uh and I I Echo the sentiments of of my colleagues I just want to um say that just in listening to some of the points that have been made about this particular project um I think it it goes um I'm sorry it soror no I'm good I just wanted to make no I'm good um all right so uh first of all I did I had a a conversation with Mr LaVine over the weekend to get some additional details ask some questions with reference to this project just to make sure that I had Clarity for thought and consideration with regards to um this particular project and so I just I have a quick question for um for um Tracy about the the the tig proposal uh is is this something is this I guess um is this something outside of we've considered as a standard in other words what what is your take no I don't think it's something out of the ordinary of what we've considered I think that when we go through this these TIG proposals there's a delicate balance and let me start with what the city would see as benefit and what the county would see as benefit okay so you have to navigate that first then you also have to look at um and I think uh Council JS Council barari just said it is what is required by the developer versus what is additional and so there's all of these things that as we go through and we look at them that we're trying to navigate to make sure that what we're putting in is is works with what we're getting out of it um in the in the project as a whole so this is not abnormal by any means um the only thing I would say this is a little bit unusual is just we're kind of working on this kind of expedited timeline um to line up the rezoning and the tig discussion which also is a little bit abnormal but not unheard of we've done this with other projects as as well so you know we may hear that you know we're we're pushing this quickly but it's all an effort to line everything up so that the resoning matches what the commitments are in the tig okay so it's not that abnormal okay and secondly I did hear something that I actually got excited about I I don't frequent Providence Road but when I do it is very congested right and so to have some potential traffic improvements Ong that Corridor right this would be something that the developer would bear as far as cost is concerned can you give me a little bit more well if you go back to slide 10 is it 10 is that the one um that's one of them actually if you go back to SL s is [Music] slide slide eight please yeah so if you look at the map here see all those little squares and circles that are on there those are all the improvements that'll be done and so a lot of those are intersection improvements um they access management improvements they are areas to pedestrian improvements so as you can see here there's over 20 improvements that are shown on this map I didn't want to spend all the time to go through every single one of them because a lot of them are overlapping in terms of what their scope is yeah but also creates opportunities to connect Sardis Road to uh sorry Providence Road to Sardis Lane yep as going through the site and an opportunity to connect old Providence Road to Providence Road so those connections do help alleviate some of the pain that some might experience going and navigating a Providence Road on S Lane so there's there's a lot going on here but to your answer the short answer yes there's a lot of improvements being done to help alleviate some of the pain points that uh users of those facilities experience yeah I I thought that'd be great to highlight because when I was looking at the information over the weekend um that I don't represent that area in particular but like I said when I do frequent especially Providence Road um I I think it'd be great to highlight and I mean I don't want to make this a tedious process right but to say to my colleagues like here are some of those subsequent you know uh traffic improvements that would come from the potential result of this project right that would help some of our residents you know alleviate some pain points so um I found that to be a positive um and I'm trying to make sure that I get all my my ducks in a row from from my mental notes uh but no that that was one that stood out to me um and so in in the presentation will you will you be providing some of that information yeah we can do that yeah I think that would be good um and I I think that's all I mean as far as like I said the tig I wanted to make sure that I expressed that and also I know that this is a jent to we we're speaking briefly about what the involvement of the county would be as a result of this this but there's a park uh that abuts this project that I saw um that has some attached improvements is that if you guys I don't know if you know but is that what their TIG is attached to so the tig is attached to the infrastructure improvements so that's what the tig is paying for so the County's dollars actually go to support the infrastructure improvements as part of this the bigger picture the developers making contributions to support some of those benefits that the county would like to see out of this type of apartment partnership that's something that Tracy mentioned where the the county has what they seem to be as a justification for them to participate in these kinds of Partnerships the city has its own set of what are our requirements to participate in these types of Partnerships they don't always match right but we try to do the best we can and thankful we have a great development team that's been really working well with both the city and the county to get to a point where we actually have a good mix of CD County improvements that go to support the tax income in Grant and legal justifications on what we can can't do with uh that's where it gets into you know a lot of times it's for infrastructure these Road improvements that I just talked about but really it's the much bigger picture of what's coming out of the project so it's not just about these Road improvements of why we're participating it's the much bigger picture of all the different contributions all the different improvements that are coming down that actually benefit the residents of South Charlotte and and larger Charlotte okay that makes sense and and so I I offline we can talk a little bit more about what that means but that just that settles the rest of my questions thank you both thank you Mr chairman thank you ma'am Miss Mayfield thank you Mr chair for the opportunity Todd a couple of questions cuz I'm trying to understand before we talk about moving this to full committee for me some of the overview of the public benefits are some things that are niceties but I don't really I'm trying to understand how they benefit on your end for staff have y'all looked at the projection of our housing needs for 2039 cuz that's what this 15 years is is to 2039 and if we just look at 2011 to 2019 which was only 8 years we saw an upwards of a 200% increase in the cost of housing so the I I appreciate but the idea of one of the selling points being a 15-year affordability level 15 years goes by in a snap in eye any of us that's over a certain age know just how quickly 15 years can go by so if we're not on our end looking at the projections of what the housing needs are going to be by 2039 I have concern and for consistency's sake as Vice chair of Housing and Neighborhood Services we're trying to be very intentional of looking at much longer affordability limits based on the growth that's happening also I think it will be helpful for me and hopefully for my colleagues for staff to bring to us before expecting or warning a vote how many current Ts that we have out there meaning what is the tax impact that we're currently seeing up until this 2039 because again that is a discount on taxes we have seen an increase investment in multif family and business related taxes it would be nice to get an idea of how much we're actually generating since a large a bulk of our funding comes from property taxes if that is Shifting then it will be helpful for Council to know that so that we can prepare for it but having those numbers what current Tigs that we have out there up until this 2039 time what is the financial impact if we're giving a 90% tax break whatever it is that we're not receiving in taxes and what is our anticipated growth and the financial impacts of that we're going to be going into retreat in January we have a budget cycle every year yes we have a triaa bond rating I also will repeat what I said in the earlier meeting we are on a precipice and we are at the place where a number of other cities have excelled and or ran into the challenges we are a big town that wants to be a big city really bad there's some decisions that we are making that could successfully move us forward and some that can cause some challenges and most of my colleagues know I'm not a fan of the language of unintended consequences cuz there's no such thing if we ask the right questions on the front end so it will be helpful for me to have some of these answers like I said I appreciate the 108 units that's not a selling factor for me for the T also when we think about this particular area I've had a number of residents that have reached out in this last two years that have lived over offer Providence for many years that aren't as affluent as others and because that's not a targeted area for the city for investment it's not a corridor of opportunity they have not had access to some of the opportunities that other areas of the community have so if we were to move in this direction for business it will also be helpful to know what are we doing for residents cuz we have a lot of working class and a lot of Elders who are on fixed incomes that live in that area that have not necessarily seen all of the benefits that some have and they don't qualify for even our assistance through our partner with the county because of their zip code so it'll be helpful to get an idea of how is this going to not only benefit the community for this project moving forward but for the residents who' already invested and lived over there again thinking about 2011 to 2019 was only eight short years that was a 200% increase in cost of housing 2039 is only 15 years away that is not a long period of time that would be very helpful for me to have a understanding as we're looking at trying to have a decision and a vote on the night thank you Mr chair thank you Miss Mayfield um I'll make one comment and then we'll pivot unless the vice chair wants to chime in um I I think this is really a transformational project uh that's um based in city building uh and I'm excited about it obviously the devil are in the details before a vote on next week um The District representative and I have talked and I think he's going to uh dig deep over the next week uh to ensure that some of the outstanding concerns that he has and I share some of those with him are addressed I think staff has heard some of the concerns that Mrs Mayfield would like to be addressed prior to our vote on on next week I think we can accomplish that as well and so if there's not any other comments I call for the question um on the motion of the floor which is to uh send this to council for their consideration on the December 9th U meeting agenda all those in favor say I I I I all those opposed that carries 5 Z thank you uh miss dson one last item and this is for information only um is the chair there Madam chairman welcome Welcome to our committee um we have a number of subcommittees that report up to the jobs and economic development committee uh the BAC has been working extremely hard uh and um have a series of recommendations uh that they want to present to us we're taking no action we're doing a lot more listening today um this is good background information for us as we go into our budget season as well as our our Retreat and January so I invited her uh to give a brief presentation to the committee uh based on um information she has shared with me and I attended their last BAC meeting uh Miss Dawson do you have any other comments no I think you CED it the floor is yours he thank you so much uh thank you for the invite and uh as council member gram said the E the BAC consists of 20 members who are nominated and volunteers from the community after focus is on small business and over the last couple of years we've been working uh on alongside staff members and embedded on certain projects um to better understand um some of the city initiatives and where the role of small business can play a part uh today we here to share goals and uh ask for your alignment to those goals so that we can have a stronger connection between the BAC and the jobs and economic development committee uh in 2025 to drive a stronger impact with that I'll ask go you to go to the next slide these are our members uh and you can see that um the first row are the ones who are either mayor appointees or have been appointed by city council members uh the the next row are folks from the uh Charlotte Regional uh business Alliance as well as then folks who are representatives of different chambers of Commerce uh whether it's minorities women uh LGBT um the metrine of minority contractors Association and um the Asian-American and some of the other um smaller uh chambers that we have I'd like to thank Anika Ellis who two years ago this was 10 we were down to 10 members and today we're up to 19 strong um and while each of these folks have got busy day jobs uh they also not only represent the folks who have put them and nominated them for the BAC but they have what we call spheres of influence and the way we Define a sphere of influence is that if you send out an email will somebody open it and actually read through the email and that's where in each of these cases there are folks who are involved in businesses or in Industries and other groups Beyond what's listed on this chart that gives us an opportunity to truly understand what's going on with small business in Charlotte what are some of the needs and as we evaluate different projects what are the areas that perhaps we should be asking questions about as we move forward so with that if you could move to the next slide so why focus on small business and there are really two areas um but I'll first say that when you talk about what is the definition of small business there are multiple definitions out there perhaps the most used is the one by the SBA and that's widely used for Contracting uh so if you want to be considered as a small business for Contracting purposes then actually the definition changes by industry um so it there is no common definition that goes across so we've spent some time uh thinking about the definition that really works for the baac and we've come down to two uh one is in terms of jobs and as you look at this chart and if you think about the businesses the number of employees per establishment on the left you've got the 10 million uh businesses that have fewer than five employees and if you go all the way way to the right there are uh 16 million who have um a thousand or more employees but what's really important is that 66% of the employment comes in that Circle in the center which are firms with between 10 to 499 employees so less than 500 employees and I for me as we went through this we often think about the large corporations as being the a primary source of employment but really it is the small business that actually is one of the largest sources of jobs Across America one of the things we'd like to do is have these numbers for Charlotte there is no real reason as you look at different places to believe that they would be significantly different so the the assumption would still say the same but it would be very useful to know what are the numbers for jobs uh through small businesses in Charlotte so that we can make sure that we're really putting in the focus uh in the right areas the next slide if you could move to the next slide talks about small business owners and I think this is an area where um there are a number of folks in Charlotte who have put an emphasis on this uh with a number of inputs on information as well as access to Capital that have been done in this space and it's still very important with 78% of firms having less than 10 employees what can we do to make sure that there is a good success ratio for these businesses uh because often there are a number of them who fail before the first year so if we could move to the next so our goals that we've been working on in 2024 and will continue through 2025 are to have effective sharing of information with the small business community and some of our members have a specific focus on that and the second is actions to better connect Charlotte small businesses to job Seekers these are broad goals but they're re really relevant for both the segments we talked about earlier for the very small businesses who are looking for employees and perhaps cannot get employees that are right for them at this stage as well as for as we talked about the less than 500 who are looking for uh to employ folks but perhaps may not have people with the right skills whether it's the soft skills whether they're looking for estimators whether they're looking for folks in uh different lines of software Etc but um perhaps don't have the skills and rather than have them look outside Charlotte to bring folks in why not look at creating those jobs for folks within Charlotte our hypo hthis is that while both of these are relevant goals they might require slightly different execution and actions based on whether you are less than 10 employees or whether you are less than 500 M Madam chairman you have eight minutes I don't want you to miss the act so nope I got another don't worry I'll get there for sure let's go to the next one uh so these are the specific goals um within the items because as I said we're a volunteer group so what we're doing uh is looking at things that we think we've got line of sight with some support to achieving and the first is explore centralized online and in-person resource hubs there are a number of hubs and uh platforms that are being constructed across Charlotte um our goal would be to look at stepping back and how can we make sure that there is minimal duplication as well as we Leverage uh We've also looked at as we talked about with our shared um with our spheres of influence establishing a BAC LinkedIn group making sure that sustainable one of our asks is looking at that um a communication resource to do that and then the Udo embedding ourselves and making sure that as some of the stories we're hearing around small businesses applying within the Udo making sure that those small businesses and those stories are coming to the surface and navigating them to the right source for resolution on the actions to better connect small business there's been work done on creating the a journey map for job Seekers and a separate one done with a journey map for small business employers our goal would be to connect those two and really understand the pain points and gain points that could help um really promote better connections between employers and job Seekers for sh and then of course looking at that across the different two different segments that we talked about if we could go to the next page okay so here's the ask which is uh we really are um a resource for the jobs and economic development committee and this is the first formal time that we are actually presenting to you and I again we thank you for the time we'd really like to know that are these areas that we're working on that we've identified are they areas that you would like to explore and invest in in 2025 and because what we're talking about is still very broad we have a request for resources to further frame and quantify these opportunities for Charlotte as well as get a little more meat on the bone for the actions and the potential impact so we're asking for time with the jobs need economic development committee and staff a quarterly meeting would be ideal as we move things forward a budget for analytic resources whether that's somebody who is uh within the staff a resource that gets allocated or if it's somebody that we could um bring on uh for a small amount probably less than $5,000 to look at some of the analytics uh which is richly available and then a communication resource to support the BAC LinkedIn page because that's where we'd really like to start reaching out to starting with us fears of influence but creating that bridge and that connection to small businesses in Charlotte um and starting the conversation so that as projects come up we are in a position to uh um really get information Beyond what's available to us today and with that I'll start Madame chairman I want to thank you for your your presentation and also want to thank you for uh inviting me to sit with you uh I guess two weeks ago at your committee meeting um please tell your committee members um that we have received your report uh this morning uh I would ask Miss doson to uh take the ACT and and kind of massage it internally and uh and give me some feedback based on um uh what's before us uh and then at our next uh committee meeting or even informally uh I'll have conversation uh with u members of the committee in terms of making sure there that we have the proper alignment Miss doson yeah no I just wanted to add um appreciate this information and the feedback to the committee but we also are about to finalize a small business strategic plan um and so this is a piece of something bigger that we intend on talking to you all about um in the first couple of months of the year as we then go in into what we know is going to be a difficult budget year in addition to that but how all the pieces can fit together so that we make sure that the the resources that we have are delivering the biggest bang for the buck so these are great recommendations we'll figure out how things work into the larger strategic plan as well as our budget looking into next year I I concour it you I think there's a lot of um parallel runways that we can merge um to make sure that they get um the support that they need that's um consistent with what we're currently doing uh internally Mr Dr and we got like three minutes and Mr understood uh so so I I think the goals look good to me uh the only thing I would say is I assume that uh actions to better connect Charlotte small Biz to job Seekers is aligned with Miss Fraser's effort and our uh Workforce Development activity yeah yeah there's a lot of synergy we just need to connect the dot yeah okay Mr Mitchell yeah uh thank you Mr that was only Madam chair great presentation another thing I was going to raise uh we hear a lot of small business talking about Workforce Development and have you all had a deeper dive and how does that look or strategy but I agree with the chair it could be a parallel activity for all of us as we talking about uh providing Synergy between what you're all doing and and what we trying to accomplish as Council so thank you Mr mcari and then I'll give you the last word and then we'll Jour mrar yeah I just Echo great work I spent 20 years ago many years on the BAC is one of uh my favorite experiences so I know what you guys do and we all greatly appreciate it here just a couple quick comments one um we have had at some point some pretty decent data on Charlotte small businesses I I used it it's been a couple years but I I don't know that that needs to be a complete start over and I think that might lead you to find that um I think 500 and under might be a bit large especially for Charlotte our companies with 5 00 people or 400 people have very different challenges and needs that those that are in the 50s and up to a 100 range so I think you might want to consider bringing that down a bit to have a focus that's actually achievable for some outcomes and then being on that committee for many years i' just say um we as council members can't even you know individually get staff to do over a certain amount of work for us we have to have that alignment so uh no no offense given or taken just saying um uh so um I I I think we just need to be cautious these boards and I having served on yours for many years it that group that Network and I like the way you framed it these spheres of influence it was also about rolling up our sleeves and taking responsibilities on and I believe if you can do that and formulate good pilots and proofs of concept that then could be funded or rolled into bigger initiatives that might be a more sustainable way uh so you have more of that control rather than trying to toss things over the fence at um very limited staff resources thank you m SC Miss Melena your last words thank you so much Mr chairman and actually I won't belay to point he said some of what I wanted to say you know the word invest is on there right so that needs to be a strategic specific um ask that needs to have some more you know information surrounding it before we you know take it on as a committee but a great job um I like some of the suggestions uh as a small business owner in Charlotte I know you know some of these pain points personally so it it matters and lastly I'll also say I see Nate Hogan on here and Nate Hogan actually leads The Alliance Foundation he is a masterful resource so in addition to the resources that we have from the city of Charlotte within that committee there's already an outstanding resource from the private sector with you know representing what the private sector has and some of those Investments that could work in alignment with some of these suggestions so that's all I'll add but thank you so much m Mr chairman and I'm done thank you and and a lot of the acts is already embedded and many of the work that's currently being done or will be done and so I just wanted to make sure that we acknowledge the work that they've done doesn't make any sense to have an advisory committee if you don't listen to them as well right and so I think that's that's appropriate thank you for your presentation can I get a motion to adjourn so move yeah let's go home let's go byebye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] n n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n n [Music] [Music] I'm [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e [Music] [Music] a n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] in this position and welcome to the December 2nd budget governance and intergovernmental Relations Committee meeting we'll start with introductions on the wall please Danes SM CFO Matt H Finance strategy budget R Harris strategy and budget man Peterson plan and around the table please Marcus Jones city manager Sean Heath assistant city manager good afternoon Tiana Brown Charlotte City Council District 3 Dar barari serving as Vice chair James Mitchell Committee Member M and council member Mayfield Is On The Way Cherry Smith strategy and budget CH strategy and budget is anyone online excellent so we've got three topics today an overview of the upcoming annual strategy meeting by the manager himself uh the annual audit report and then finally uh the Final Touch point for goes to full Council for adoption the legislative agendas everyone will have the traditional 30 seconds of commentary time and uh with that welcome uh we we have in front of you today is a uh Council annual strategy uh session I want to call it an update but it's really an opportunity to have a conversation with the members of the committee I believe that last year we did this in the January time frame so we wanted to make sure that we um got to you earlier so that we could give you a little bit of the the thinking around where we are as well as get your input and what I've learned from a um a number of these is uh not to bake the cake before we have a chance to talk with you um we believe we have some good ingredients and what do I mean by that so staff I believe they contacted um all the council members to get a feel of some of the topics that the council members would like to uh discuss during the annual strategy meeting I think what's also important some of the Lessons Learned is that uh we don't want to inundate you with presentations we want to give you an opportunity to uh Talk Amongst yourselves uh but maybe What's um I say twofold what's extremely important to us with these annual strategy meetings is that it gives us an opportunity to talk with you about um your priorities and once we understand your priorities it becomes a lot easier for us to budgets it becomes a lot easier for us to try to implement those uh priorities so with that said I just have one slide and it's a a piece of what we learned from you uh one of the things each year is trying to uh pick a select a place and uh we had this thought process with everything that's happening in Western North Carolina would there be an opportunity for us to uh show some solidarity solidarity with uh our neighbors to the west and U make this investment make this investment in Asheville um not only from you know a financial standpoint but have an opportunity to uh talk with them and see what's are what are some opportunities for us to continue to have this collaboration I have been in contact with uh the city manager Deborah Campbell and she's been very appreciative of all of the support that's come from uh Charlotte so I think that's a it's a great opportunity for us to have the uh location there also what came out over and over again was uh Mobility our mwsb and small business strategy as well as Workforce Development um two others uh areas that came out was uh really building the budget from the ground up having a opportunity to have a deeper dive in the budget during this annual strategy meeting as well as you know what we would be able to do with to uh reaffirm what the Strategic priorities will be uh for at least the next year and then lastly um a part of the thinking has um revolved and evolved from last year we thought that the mobility discussion with having subject matter experts from around the country coming in to give us guidance really really worked well some of those individuals uh work with the city now and some of those are advising us so we thought about an approach for the mwsb and the Workforce Development to also bring in some experts from around the country to um provide you know panel discussions things of that nature and then lastly the thought process around Mobility is we do have the bonds that have passed we do have of more money allocated to Transportation than we've had in the past and we do have those Strategic investment areas and many times the council have said well there's $55 million but what does that mean and we've used terms like bundling we Ed terms like project delivery faster more comprehensive and uh Mr chair hopefully uh this concept of what technologies also that could be helpful in trying to uh pilot test and Implement some of these um programs so with that said just some ingredience bringing it in the kitchen not necessarily baking the cake but trying to get some feedback from you in this early stage so that we can get to work questions or feedback for the manager Mrs Mayfield and Mr uh Mitchell thank you Vice chair thank you Mr manager for this update and I definitely agree which I shared previous L I think it's a good idea for us to support our neighbor in Asheville with everything they're going through I have a question regarding some of the speakers I want to make sure that we're bringing in individuals from other cities or that have worked with other Council manager form of governments sometimes we have speakers in and they have some great ideas or recommendations or they have some really great projects that they were able to lead but they are not under the form of government that we have and and keeping in mind what is happening in the state of North Carolina including as of today the fact that you have some members looking to recall all the elections so when we're thinking about how we're attempting to move forward it would be helpful again having individuals that are from other Council manager forms of government and really will be helpful having forms of government where the majority party is not necessarily reflective of the majority of the local party representation with some suggestions on and ideas on how we move forward with identifying some opportunities as we continue to grow I am happy to hear that some of the things some of the topics I don't know if the mayor's identified a committee yet I didn't hear you mention that okay that we have the okay we have a committee that's going to be working on the topics so we're thinking about the mobility how are we connecting people from point A to point B I mentioned in the tap meeting earlier today we have the technology we have invested a lot in technology we have ai and other sources the question is are we using that technology to help direct us so looking specifically at cats we have the map if we know vehicle a is going this route we should be looking at vehicle b c d and e where do they when do they connect and if we have vehicles that are leaving on the exact same time schedule then we know that that's clearly a disconnect as far as you coming as you going or coming afterwards how are we actually connecting all of it to make sure that we are creating a system that's actually usable to give people the opportunity to not spend two plus hours on the road to get from point A to point B as well as looking at I believe it will be helpful for our committee to also know that what was share earlier when we're looking at the connectivity and how we're moving forward with those Investments having a clear plan of what is our 30 plus year plan when we've seen a lot of changes just in the last 8 to 10 years in the city how are we preparing for the growth as well as the potential short Falls financially so that we're setting ourselves up for success thank you Vice chair thank you Mitchell thank you Vice chair um city manager thank you uh just a couple of questions off the top what's the date of the retreat 27th through 29th 27th through the 29th thank you Sean okay chairman TW up and then uh on the other topics I think it feels fits uh good with the FY 26 budget is I think it would be good if we can kind of do uh be proactive when you think of the new Administration that is coming in and and if there's any impact on our federal dollars that we have some kind of conversation identify those areas that that could be we could see a reduction and I think that would help us as we talking about priorities and a budget assessment okay okay thank youbody Shar that's all m brown do you have anything I've got a lot of stuff excellent you're up move on I come back okay then uh I'll go I guess very quickly uh I applaud the Asheville uh touch point I think one of the things I've learned is um Asheville while deeply impacted has also received um a large portion of the visibility into the issue and there are a lot of even smaller areas in the surrounding area that are still impacted if there is an opportunity the logistics might be too much for this but there's an opportunity for us to take a trip out into a couple of the smaller areas that really get uh none of that visibility but are really struggling right now um I think it would just be important for us to see as we help but it's also you know considering our surroundings relevant to our own decision making because we're reg uh when our constituents would see us going to do the one time of year where we really kind of get into the weeds uh I think that would be really important and um it is the one time of year where of brainstorm and pull out a whiteboard and do stuff like that so the inputs that we're getting in the series of of meetings might be relevant for us to then decide what we might do with them there that makes a lot of sense if I understand what you're saying stry now that I've been strategy now that I've been in for a year um I also very excited about Asheville did not like that place that we was in I thought it was hunted by some people or something very very very lonely up there um so I'm glad that we chose to go to Asheville I definitely would like to see more Hands-On and input from us as a council meaning not have the agenda ready for us when we get there but more of an input for us and what we think um the layout should be as a whole for what um our schedule will be for the upcoming year I would like just to hear um from us so much uh we had a great um bit of knowledge that came um information that came from people and staff but I think since we are the policy makers that our ideas should be it should be centered around our ideas and I I I think we should find a way to try to do that if we need to to uh send some information beforehand before we arrived so that we could share what our agenda would look like or how it needs to be especially since going um and being there last year in Winston sa was my first time it was overwhelming it was a lot but there was not a lot of input from Council there was a lot of information that came to council but there was not a lot of information that Council put in we were giving the information given the topics we discuss the agenda and we input it as we went along I think that the flow should be that we carry um the bulk of it and then maybe people can add in that's my opinion you miss uh Mayfield do you have another one thank you Vice chair Mr manager I agree with my colleagues and I think you and I had the conversation but just so that we have transparency in it I think it would be great to set the stage at the very beginning as far as our roles the responsibility of this board utilizing the language of the school of government and under the rules for which we apply I also have shared that even though it's not referred to committee I would love for committee to look at language regarding our Clos session meetings and how we move forward as a body and understanding truly the importance of closed session meetings and the potential impact as well as unfortunately I was not able to make it last Monday but I had one of the questions regarding some funding that I believe was approved by Council we know we need some additional resources out of our fire training facility and we know like you you know for a year I've been working on one thing which was uh new forklift and then learn later on in the game that that's like a $100,000 Fork forklift that we need and one that we almost was able to get just the battery alone for that was over $10,000 so with looking at our funding we also need to think about are we funding our departments correctly mainly I'm looking at both fire and police police gets a good VOC of funding but when we look at our training facility we still have individuals that are going to Gastonia college for training when we could have a world class facility here as we continue to grow and making sure that we have the financial commitments on the front end at least know what those numbers are as we're going into the 26 budget cycle that was all my additional thank you and last word from Miss Brown thank you so much I was a little distracted I do apologize for that um so please respectfully I was trying to get something taken care of on my computer but I wanted to go back um with the overview of the strategy in the meeting um I wanted I said what I I said and and I meant um the words that came from me but I just want us to put emphasis on the board we govern uh we're responsible for everything that goes on and I know staff work really hard and city manager um you work really hard but when it comes down to the bulk of the fingers when things are not going right it is on the council it's city council did this city council did that um so I would like for us to be handson in planning um what we should present and how we're going to communicate um it to staff yes thank you thank you for helping me communicated to staff and that way we cannot say we didn't know or we didn't have anything to do with that I would like to see um the policy makers be a priority that's what I'm trying to say maybe my words are not coming out the way they need to I'm exhausted I'm tired but I would like to see the policy makers at the table in the beginning set in the tone for how the year will flow and if we could do that then I think uh we will start off on a good foot in a good note and that will set the tone for the rest of our our year so thank you thank you absolutely yes Mr Jones final words yes so I thank you this is very helpful I did leave out one piece the um facilitator from last year will be contacting each one of you for a 30 minute uh discussion and I think some of the things Council Brown that you just mentioned will start to come out in those discussions and would be a part of a session and what I'm hearing you'd like that to be very early and the process in terms of the annual strategy meeting yes sir well we're in December now so it's not really that early we're what we're about about 60 days out or because it's the end of January correct or no I meant early in the 3-day conversation oh early in the three-day conversation yes and so are we going with the same consultant that we had last year yes and who decided that um we don't have the consultant under contract um and if that's something that the council would like to Pivot away from the consultant we can talk about that also no I'm not I I don't have a problem one way or the other I just wanted to know the process yeah so typically we get a facilitator um and IT staff that pulls in the facilitator and we thought that um last year's facilitator some of the feedback did it went well so we just thought it would be good to have the uh consistency with last year's facilitator I don't have a problem with that I just wanted to know the process or if there was somebody else looking to come in or how we went about sure selecting the person but she was very thorough she did a great job I don't don't have a problem with that of course it's not my decision by myself but I don't have a problem with the way she conducted and facilitated okay great thank you for that update we will move on to item number two the fy2 24 annual audit report just information and discussion only no vote is necessary and I'll hand it over to CF Teresa Smith thank you committee uh I appreciate the opportunity to be with you today um again I have with me Betty Manos who is our chief accountant uh I also have Daniel gogerty who is a director with cherry beckard and Dan is going to take the bulk of the presentation but before we get started I just wanted to say a couple of words that you know one of our strategic priorities is around well-managed government and maintaining the AAA credit rating and one of the ways that we do that is timely preparation of our financial statements and then having those statements audited uh Betty and her team in financial reporting they're responsible for preparing accurate complete and fairly presented financial statements and accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and Dan at his team at uh and his team at Cherry Becker they're responsible for auditing those statements North Carolina General statutes require that we have an annual external audit and then the local government commission requires that the results of that audit are presented timely to the board and so that's why we are here today and with that I'm going to turn it over to Dan okay well thank you again for having me here this year again and it's always a good thing to be able to talk with someone in front of front of those in governance about the audit results so that you can hear from our mouth what this 200 plus page document really means to you all um going and you can go straight to the next slide here we have um just our client service team I always like to just recognize our team members as well as part of this audit process myself as the audit director uh April Adams was the second reviewer Richard Hart is the senior manager has been on this for the last three years I believe and then Jason McDaniel uh started at as an associate and he's moved up into the senior role on this engagement um and then Rachel comes was a new addition to this engagement team from the previous year so as uh Teresa mentioned we perform our audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing principles uh we also perform our audit in accordance with government auditing standards uh that's all in which to provide an opinion reasonable assurance that the financial statements are fairly stated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles we also provide an audit regulated to your federal and state Awards and so we look at those on rotational basis based on the standard requirements and then for all for all this for the single audits of the federal uh State and the your financial statements we have issued unmodified opinions which are also known as clean opinions is the highest level opinion we can give under our auditing standards this slide is a long way of just saying that we do provide an opinion on compliance and we do provide an opinion on your financial statements we do look at internal controls but we do not provide an opinion on the effectiveness of any internal controls as part of our audit this slide just defines for you reminds you uh what we talk about when we do have findings uh when we have a finding we usually have a control deficiency related to the finding and that could be one the highest level we can have is a material weakness being one that a material misstatement has uh occurred and went undetected as a result of normal procedures or could go undetected um based on the controls in place and then a significant deficiency really being defined as lesser than a material weakness but still important for us to make make you aware of we did have one material weakness here to report and this is related to financial reporting of Grants now this grant is is not like most grants that you have this is the uh FEMA grant that you receive where FEMA what they do is they provide you with authorization for money but uh they prove all the cost as you submit them and then give you your Grant award and since you don't have a grant award you can't record a receivable or Revenue until that Grant award comes even though they've already kind of giv you that pre-authorization and so the Nuance of this grant that this should not have been recorded um until they give you the official award document I will say it's 5.5 million out of I think 20 billion of assets that you have as a city it's small in terms of that but it's it's large enough in terms of our opinion unit be being the grants that we're testing specifically and so we are just making you aware of this and this was something that was uh identified management has already updated their processes to uh not have this occur again go to the next slide here this uh corrected misstatement so any journal entries that we propose it has to do with the FEMA that we did this journal entry to restate the financial statements to remove the receivable um so again that just relates to the previous slide we talked about uncorrected adjustments so at time for time we will come up with uh adjustments that we uh deem to be at a level that we need to propose to management but they're at a level that also we can um pass on and not restate or not U make an adjustment for uh one of which your debt service fund being a smaller fund has a smaller materiality threshold so we had an amount here for a crude interest on interest receivable that was doubled up in the previous year that we found in the current year and then the last one has to do with a public uh facility parking facility in which the the the city took ownership a couple years ago um but the payments were being made by the parking vendor to the county still and not to the city that was caught by the city this year and posted correctly in in this year but should have been reported in previous years the next five or seven slides are a lot of pre-printed information we have to uh make make you aware of every single year so I'll go over this fairly quickly but please stop me if uh if I'm going too quickly uh note one is where your significant accounting policies lie how you account for different transactions um and then gby 100 was the only new gby that was implemented this year and the basis of this one is basically just what is an error and what is a change in accounting principle that's not an error and just defining that better related parties we do look at related parties for anything that we've considered to be material um we noted no issues with any related parties that were not already made aware To Us by management and noted no issues with any arms Lane transactions uh if we find anything that we consider to be significant or unusual significant being by by timing nature size or kind of outside the normal course of business as a city we need to make you aware of that we noted nothing uh of that definition estimates are a big part of how the financial statements are developed um a lot of your large numbers on the financial statements as it relates to your pension or other post-employment benefits liabilities for the future are based on actuary results your depreciation for Capital assets is based on estimated useful life of those assets um we noted no issues with Management's use of estimates and they were consistently appli with the previous year and were were applied correctly uh this and this goes on about significant estimates we looked at the key uh matters related to those estimates and made underlying assumptions that were used financial statement disclosures are C clear neutral and consistent non a test so a test being audit service so any non- audit service that we provide uh we have to provide to uh fill out the data collection form which is the form filled out to complete your federal Awards process it's how we communicate to the federal government what we tested and what issues we found if any um I I didn't mention it earlier but I I will mention it now that we did not have any s audit findings so we we audit a number of the programs around the city um but but we did not have any single audit findings this year at all uh next couple things here just no difficulties were encountered as part of our audit we had no disagreements with management um there were no consultations inside our audit team inside our firm uh there we had a manager representation letter that's signed by management each year um we have that signed by the date of the audit report there were no consultations by manager with the shop for an opinion uh elsewhere from another accounting or audit firm uh no other findings or issues um no fraud or illegal Acts were reported to us or found as part of our audit there was no going concern um noted for the city to have to overcome these are just other the the basis of your uh annual comprehensive financial report really is your financial statements and notes in which we providing an opinion on those the management discussion analysis um and the required supplement information that is kind of uh between the two uh our information we look at to make sure they're consistent but we do not provide any opinion on that um we also have other supplementary information like your budget to actual schedules in the back we do tie it out to the front statements but we do not provide any opinion on those schedules either and then the introductory SK schedule and the statistical section which is in the front and back of the of the comprehensive report um we do uh read that information but again do not provide any Assurance on that information the gasby has been particularly busy over the last couple months uh 100 101 has been out for a little bit and that will be applicable next year along with 102 but 102 103 and 104 have been issued in the last 6 months um one 103 would probably have the most significant impact on on your financial statements um this is going to be 2026 but I say that saying you know I don't think it's going to have that big of an impact I don't think most of these standards are going to have that big of an impact um but that one there is that the budget will go with the back RSI schedules they will not be part of your front schedules where we appy on it anymore um and then some other just cosmetic changes to how the the management discussion analysis is presented and um when there's uh amendments to the budget those need to be explained in the notes as well going forward one other thing the local government commission uh at the state level has us look at is is they fill out a form with with your financial data and come up with some financial performance indicators um none of the indicators uh were indicators of concern so we don't need to present each one of those for you but biggest thing here is that you had no indicators you submitted your audit within five months of the fiscal year end your fund balance for general fund is positive uh your budgeted uh taxes came your actual tax collected came in above what was budgeted um you have a effective pre- audit process to make sure that you're spending money that you have and not uh spending it before you have the money available um no late Debt Service payments no debt Covenant issues uh no statutory violations with uh General stat North Carolina General statutes um and the one finding we did have you do need to report to the local government commission which uh we'll have a letter for you here to sign um regarding the corrective action plan that you were part of of that conversation so I'll I'll hand it off here if anyone in council members have any questions for me I'm happy to answer okay questions or comments from the committee so I do m brown thank you so much can we go back to slide four please I think this was the it's the internal control communication in the corrected and uncorrected misstatements all right thank you so much so if we go down to the material weaknesses I want to understand a better understand the city had recorded aable of 5,564 related to the grant award had not been formally issued related to an award from the Federal Emergency Management agency what exactly does that mean so basically what happens is when you receive a grant award usually you receive it in advance and say they give you an award and say you have $10 million to spend you then provide them with reimbursement of what you've spent on that reward and they app and they approve those reimbursements in this case they did not in FEMA and this is how FEMA works for everyone across the United States is they will say we're thinking about giving you $5 million you then have to show them all the backup support checks cut everything that you've paid for that you believe is allowable they have to look through that in a detailed review and then they will approve it and then give you the grant award um and so since you don't have a grant award you can't have a receivable even though you've incurred the those expenditures um what ends up happening happening is you end up with a deficit fund balance because you have expenditures but no Revenue right but that's but that's okay because that's the way this process works and you guys understand that that is going to take time for them to administratively go through approve all those expenditures and then give you the grant award okay no problem so I just want to understood that so it's called material weaknesses for for that reason so it's material weakness because the the dollar value is material to the financial statements on that particular fund we give we give an opinion on you as the city as a whole but we also give an opinion on you um individual fund level and there's a fund that has a smaller materiality and therefore that's why the 5 million um Rose to a material weakness if this had been recorded in your general fund for instance it probably would not be considered a material weakness because the general funds material is greater than that great explanation and thanks for explaining thank you didn't understand it and didn't want to act like I did no didn't want to move forward so I'm clear now question please no that's the only one I had a check mark on other questions what is uh without getting too much into the weeds the current status of that 5.5 million is it planned to be drawn down with credible expenses is it where are we at in the cycle of now that this is obviously a financial statement correction but what's the Tactical implication so we are still working with Fe right now um the last communication we had with them was several months ago but we are still sort of on top of that it has been a very long back and forth conversation as as Dan mentioned of us submitting all the documentation and FEMA ask questions and then we go through Cycles back and forth but it it is still an open item with FEMA right now and does this net us out in any more unbalanced way in any angle of the caffer any aspects that we report out than the last time we saw it or anything like that so what you will see at as Dan mentioned um you will run a deficit fund balance so you will see in this fund that there is a deficit fund balance until we receive that money so our our our belief is that that money will ultimately flow into the cofs it's just not yet okay yes ma'am no you just okay took it where I needed it to go so thank you all right with that great work box checked again this year thank you thank you so much thank you and we'll move on to our third and final agenda item Federal and State Legislative agendas we had a briefing and some comments around the Das in our last business meeting and now this is the last stop of the committee before we bring it back for vote so we have to vote on this today to bring in advance whatever we discuss to full Council on December 9th and with that will'll hand it to Dana Fenton thank you Mr chairman and committee members uh for the record on Dana Fenton the city's intergovernmental relations manager and pleased to be here today to uh uh we have had a couple of U suggestions from last week's action review and by the way I thought last week's presentation overall went very well great questions and just like the last two meetings of the of the of this Committee in October and November and the two issues that were brought up one was by Council M Johnson about needing some clarity in the federal talented Workforce Development slide concerning immigration policy and Regulatory changes and council member watlington had one on uh consider adding language to the state public safety position uh regarding beer and wine establishments and their density throughout uh the area next slide please uh just to talk about next steps real quick uh the charts there the bottom half with the yellow we're at the in the lower right hand corner right now December 2nd uh meeting and then next Monday of course would be the council consideration Then followed by the work that we always do in the in the new year uh with advocacy before the Congress and the uh North Carolina General Assembly next slide please on that first item on the talent and Workforce Development uh uh what council member uh Johnson brought up the phrase immigration policy and Regulatory changes seemed very very flexible uh and um and we came back with some language uh to replace that with the 2019 Charlotte compact on immigration and as many of you all remember I think Miss Mayfield uh Mr Mitchell Mr maryi uh you were all on the council at the time in May of 2019 when this was adopted unanimously by the council I believe and uh and so we thought that would just be a good way to to clarify exactly what we need so would you like us as you go Point by point of changes to have any dialogue or would you like to wait till the end certainly if you want to you want to we only have two slides to okay so why don't why don't we just pause there so it's fresh on everyone's mind I think that um remembering the conversation and Miss Johnson's points um solves the issu she raised yet leaves in the general uh uh context by which we started that agenda item so does anyone disagree or would everyone once we vote all the way at the end sounds like there's no comments on that so please move forward okay thank you and the second one uh that next slide please next one that council member watlington brought up this was an issue she initially raised four years ago in 2020 uh this had to do with um uh crime that was in around beer and wine establishments and um looking at the laws concerning how these establishments can be licensed and how far apart they could be and things like that so she brought this up in the in the context of the arcade gaming regulations and protections for those communities that are impacted by those establishments um and what we have are really two very different uh two different issues there the arcade gaming regulations we had some really good discussion about this the last two months and uh what we found was that just and also learning too from from our Consultants uh with uh our state lobbying firm uh on the arcade gaming regulations we currently have the local authority to determine the separation requirements and all the other Planning and Zoning issues there will be legislation this coming session in the general assembly to address that whole issue of arcade gains whether they ought to be legalized in regulated that the state can then collect tax revenues from it and as part of that they would also be taking up the Planning and Zoning part of it so there's a possibility there that the if there is a legislation that passes there's a possibility that there could be some Authority that shifts from the local governments to the state and we want want to be at the table to uh essentially be able to uh protect our interest when it comes to the Planning and Zoning issues especially the density because we have we have a lot of those establishments here that are that are uh that are are causing some issues on the other hand uh and also Al let me get back to the arcade gaming regulations real quick the individual the legislature who wants to take bring this forward next year and be the champion for it is a member of the House leadership so he has some uh this individual has some influence and uh certainly would be in a good position to uh to try to get something moving there was legislation filed in 21 and 23 it went through one committee perhaps each year but it did not go further than that just time wasn't ready apparently for that so process it is it does take time for these for these some of these big issues uh when you get to the is that council member walkington raised uh beer and wine establishments um those are licensed by the state of North Carolina I believe it's the alcoholic beverage commission that does that and um and so th those are we really don't have a way to to to do the things with the beer and wine establishments that we do with arcade games and um and I can understand why that is an issue what with the beer and wine establishments at the same time right now that is simply it's been part it's been a state regulatory regimen for years and years there are a lot of entrenched interest that want to see it stay that way and that is an issue we were to get changes to that that would take it would take multiple sessions and I think for that reason before going forward on something like that you really need to have unanimity with the city council before doing that and uh and and accordingly what we would recommend is that uh is that is that it not be included in the upcoming legislative agenda and uh that perhaps this be brought up as a discussion for next month's strategy session that's that'll be held that Mr Jones was talking about earlier yes so I'll just uh recap real quick on the arcade front if nothing changes we still have the ability to en force and do things to a known problem area and if something does change it will create more control around what can happen and we still have the level of zoning and police ordinance oversight so box checked on that one I would agree with you personally on that when you get into the beer and wine State ABC legislation that stuff is very big and complex I like the fact that it's specific more of our legislative agenda item should be like that that but I also agree this is a big one that is probably very complex and would make I mean it it can't be something we just kind of throw out there we have to really delve into it in a strategy session so it would be my belief we'll go around the committee to see if anyone wants to do anything differently uh but to follow staff's recommendation here and then maybe as a as a follow-up propose uh to the manager to include some aspect of this into our broader um uh January Retreat session but with that I'll let you guys all comment if you'd like to or yes ma'am so Vice chair beari also if I'm hearing correctly this for this particular item we are asking for Action so I would like to do submit a motion for us to accept the presentation as written with the recommendation that is stated for the 2025 State Legislative agenda on both sides on both sides second okay we have a motion and a second any other comments vce I only think I would add uh Allison Craig did an excellent job sending us some feedback about the rcade and the local strength for our ordinance I think it' be helpful maybe we share that with all City Council Members we have this discussion quite frankly I totally forgot about uh some of the policies we have in place as related to Arcade I I think one thing it came up CU we realized there was a lot of activity at our arcave and we want to we want to be sure how much local strength that we have we can make some adjustments so uh D Daniel thank you for telling Allison to send it out but I think that's a good reading for all of us I think u i I agree with you Mr Mitchell that was a very well done memo and she she did a lot of work uh her she and her shaff did a lot of work with other departments to help get that uh assembled compiled Miss Brown thank you Vice chair parari I just want to say um I definitely agree with my colleagues and they second on the motion there's a third there but for you Mr Venton I want to say thank you for hanging around because this work is extensive it's hard and it takes a dedicated person that's very knowledgeable and like to see very concerning who going to come in behind you because you do such a good job and I just wanted to state that for the record cuz I don't know if I'll be here after you either but I appreciate all the work that you're doing and that you brought as I've been around you with this information you come in from Raleigh and meeting and standing in for us and making sure we know what the agenda looks like so I just wanted to commend you for that thank you Mr Brown I appreciate that agreed and I will say that before I call the vote here this feels like good work by staff offline to make sure that everyone's comments were heard real thought was put into it and we can uh promote out of this committee something that contemplates all of that yet puts us on a track of uh of hopefully a reasonable outcome here uh to make stuff happen so with that as long as there's no other comments or questions I will call the question all those in favor all those opposed unanimous good job that marks the end of the budget government and Inter governance and interg mental relations so move all in favor I done way to go very good very good how you do it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n e [Music] n [Music] n [Music] n [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] n [Music] n [Music] n a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] a oh [Music] [Music] [Music] n n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e [Music] [Music] [Music] a ah [Music] n [Music] n [Music] n [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] a [Music] h [Music] n [Music] a [Music] [Music] n a [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] m for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] can you all hear me yes good afternoon welcome to the housing safety and Community Committee I'm your chair Victoria watlington I am joined by my committee members and staff we'll start off our agenda with introductions and then we'll jump into our single agenda item which is our 2024 committee year in review we've done a good bit of work um over this year and so we want to take a moment to reflect and think about uh where we'd like to go as we um start to set our sights on our retreat in 2025 so with that I'll turn it over to my vice chair for to introduce yourself oh Lana Mayfield committee Vice chair T brown Committee Member Sean Heath City manager's office Rebecca Hefner housing and Neighborhood Services Jenine Simmons housing and Neighborhood Services Herold Thompson housing and Neighborhood Services Gail wicom housing and Neighborhood Services and online committee members Renee Johnson Committee Member and if we don't have any other guests online I will turn it right on over to ACM Heath to kick us off I'll jump in the back here there isn't anybody over here I can turn it over to so I suppose I will uh kick off the presentation so uh your um chair and vice chair decided that um they would like to do some reflection today on the really great work that you all have done as a committee um over this past year so 2024 has been a busy and eventful year for all of you um you actually worked through next slide please you worked through and closed out five substantial policy referrals this year I'm going to really high level walk you through uh what some of the outcomes of those policy referrals were uh and and as we go through there'll be a few updates on where some of these things stand so kicking off in January you all closed out your uh review of city code of ordinances this was the mayor's referral around safety concerns in uptown and the surrounding areas and based on the recommendations of the committee city council approved amendments to rec criminalize six ordinances to address safety concerns in uptown uh those went into effect March 1 but as you all usually do uh you did not look at this issue in isolation you really thought through this in a more holistic lens uh and in addition to the amended ordinances um as a committee you also recommended a series of non- enforcement strategies that would improve quality of life for the unhoused residents in uptown uh so coming out of out of those recommendations uh the uh the we the city invested in a new Street Outreach team Uptown um led by hearts for the invisible uh we uh allocated additional rental subsidies and supportive services that would go specifically to Residents um of the unhoused population in uptown uh you we talked through the addition of Portable Restrooms in the Uptown area uh and worked to to make those work and to identify our more permanent solution is ongoing uh and and then of course our continued collaboration with mackenberg county in their work to serve unhoused residents in uptown and across the county uh so that was just January um but uh the um uh but you you were able to make a lot of a lot of recommendations that staff and and our partners have made a lot of progress on over the course of the year next up was the Performance Management framework so as you're talking today about what you want to talk about in this coming strategy session uh as a reminder you're all worked worked through uh prioritizing goals and objectives at your strategy session in January of this year and coming out of that uh the um HSC committee as well as all of the Committees actually uh reviewed performance measures that were associated with those policy goals and objectives and that resulted that work resulted in the launch in August of the city's strategic progress tracker so when you when you're reviewing that tracker you're able to see the work that you did reflected in there under the the measures around great neighborhoods and S safe communities and well-managed government and then of course through your work on the uh Council as a whole you know all all of that body of work then next up was the youth crime referral U this was a this was a um particularly um mey referral in the sense that it touched on a lot of different uh partners and body of research and data and you also heard from directly from youth who were engaged in the process to make recommendations in combination with this referral and the FY 2025 budget uh it resulted in an investment of $4.5 million in Investments that would support meaningful reductions in juvenile crime uh so as a committee again you recognize the importance of a holistic approach that this is not just about the uh the activities but the root causes and the foundation of issues that our our youth face in Charlotte and um you really talked through prioritizing things like mental health and Economic Opportunity for youth so through that uh you all um three recommendations to council uh made an investment of $2 and A5 million in the ktie blessing Center um that's that will be located in the central Alamar Corridor uh and when completed will be the largest pediatric Behavioral Health Center in North Carolina that that that work um is uh under uh getting underway and then again in uh another two million dollar to um invest in three priorities one was community- based Partnerships in uh in uh programs that have an Evidence base and to support the reduction of juvenile crime second was the expanding the inclusion of at risk and Justice involved youth in uh the city's Workforce and uh uh employment programming and the third was scaling up youth mentoring and diversion pilot programs in cmpd and then you tackled affordable housing funding policy so this referral which completed in September and then went to council for approval resulted in recommendations for investment goals across affordable housing categories to really maximize the impact of the housing uh bond in Investments so uh the um committee uh and a working group over the summer uh crafted um three policy goals around residential stability neighborhood affordability and economic Mobility uh and uh the uh policy and investment goal recommendations were adopted by Council in September and then the bond of course passed in November so uh we are working on activating that new housing funding policy right now there is a new RFP written that addresses your um goals and priorities it has already been posted uh and those submissions are due back in uh January 24th and then we will bring to you all uh the first round of recommendations for Housing Trust Fund investment based on those priorities and lastly uh last month you heard from from The Nest commission which actually closed out a long-standing referral around anti-displacement and uh you received their final report and their final recommendations and uh um that work will continue to be Advanced um in particular as we work through in the coming year our transformational Mobility plan and how we how we support residents staying in place and and uh having affordable housing opportunities as we activate that body of work so those are your um referral completions from this year and uh um but it's not all you did so next slide please uh in addition your feedback and discussion uh shaped a number of ongoing initiatives uh of course um council member Mayfield kicked off at the beginning of the year the faith in housing uh initiative and then also heard an update on that uh in um oh it's all running together later this fall uh we also we also heard from in livan and uh you got an update on Choice neighborhoods uh and the work that's being done in North End in particular around the Redevelopment of the dillah U courts housing site you talked um you heard from United Way and debated vigorously about a home for all uh and and um many of the components of that work already exist in your housing programs and policies uh you talked about the Charlotte meinberg School's teacher Village which of course was a um investment that Council made through the FY 2025 budget um a million dollars to support the development of um the first uh pilot project of a teacher Village uh you talked about the um after Action Report from the South Park buyer uh to to work with the fire chief and their staff about uh um how how that uh incident was handled and what are some opportunities going forward uh and of course you heard from the uh leading on opportunity uh staff talking about the changing opportunity uh report and the um improvements that Charlotte has made in our economic Mobility rankings and some of the factors that have contributed to that Improvement and and will do so going forward so that rounds out the review of 2024 uh I'm going to hand it over to um uh Sean for uh the next slides talk a little bit about what's ahead uh and then uh hand it back to you all for comments and questions thank you Rebecca so this is the final slide and it's really just intended to be a conversation starter uh it's quite a year right and thank you Rebecca it was a great great summary of all that was accomplished by the committee and by the department I won't read the committee charge this is just up here for reference and we know chair and vice chair through conversations that we've had that you have a desire to hit the ground running in calendar year 2025 and the thinking was you could use a bit of time today in committee so you're Gathering your thoughts and you're having a chance to have a conversation really in advance of your annual strategy retreat at the end of January so you can go into that session with hopefully kind of a calized view from the committee perspective for some of the things you want to focus on some of the things you'd recommend that could potentially turn into referrals for example so there are a few things that I think we would enter the year already knowing are on the docket so to speak so first of course just before Thanksgiving the mayor released a referral related to enforcement Authority for minimum housing code violations and that was driven in part sorry oh uh if you think about uh displacement events that have occurred in the city of Charlotte uh when those happen there's clearly there's a need to do certain things now do certain things immediately which we are doing and we're on it um of equal importance is how do we think about around the band and you know are there things that we could do to leverage our existing Authority differently and or have new Authority tools placed in the toolbox and that's the sort of thing that the referral calls for staff to support you the committee in an evaluation of so uh that was just before Thanksgiving we're we're not here today to really discuss that in any detail at all but we'll be working closely with the city attorney's office this month in order to to be ready to start that conversation in a meaningful way at your January committee meeting moving on to Public Safety of course that falls under the committee charge here you know the city manager introduced his approach to having a bit of dosage related to Public Safety built into the business meetings either through the city manager's report or through an action review conversation I think he laid that out last week so I won't I won't cover that same ground here uh but obviously that will be an opportunity to have multiple touch points on Public Safety related topics before your annual strategy Retreat where of course as you're setting and affirming priorities there'll be an opportunity for you to underscore things related to Public Safety that you have a strong desire to focus on in 2025 number three here on the list I think you know reflecting on some of the comments that Rebecca made 2024 You could argue was a very transformational year certainly for the city of Charlotte right I mean now you've doubled the bond once again here we go from 50 to 100 million but as committee has discussed previously it's not about doing two times the same things we've done before but it's about reimagining how this money is put to work in the community which was really what you did through your through the policy referral and and the framing around what what value looks like for you as you think about how to put that 100 million to work so there will certainly be times during the year where we will have an opportunity to bring in conversations you'll recall a piece of that $100 million doll is in fact devoted to Innovation was something that you were interested in uh so so that's the sort of thing where where we could have a conversation at the committee level for sure and then last just stating the obvious certainly you and your peers are going to have an opportunity to to put a whole bunch of things on the table at your annual strategy meeting in January so this is not intended to be an inclusive list of anything just really a convers starter chair watlington for you and and your colleagues to uh start coming around some ideas that could that could really be shaped further at the retreat in January thank you so much wow I think looking at it all at the end of the year all I can think is my goodness y'all are amazing I mean really and truly there's been a lot of work done um and sometimes when you're in the day-to-day of it you don't necessarily realize so kudos to you all and thank you so much for the work that you've done and supporting us and to the committee thank you ladies for locking in and um I'm appreciative that we all have a heart for this type of work and I think it shows um with the passion that we bring to it um with that I just had a couple of questions that I wanted to ask before I open up the floor and they're small and I don't need the answer right now I'm just curious on the um the uh Youth Employment Program having opened it up to Youth that were at risk and Justice involved I'd just be curious to how many were able to participate so again don't need it right now but that one I think is impactful um And Timely so would love to hear about it really now I look at it that's my only question so I will open it up to the floor for comments on the work done to date and then specifically as was mentioned what's on what's on your hearts as we go into next year Vice chair thank you madam chair team I want to Echo my colleague with a huge thank thank you you all have done an amazing job you heard the concerns you heard the many questions and I think what we rode out especially going back to the summer when we did the over the summer work with myself Dr Wallington and council member DS we were able to come up with some what I hope to be very transformative decisions moving forward I want to also no you mentioned the community tracker well you mentioned the tracker what I want to know is how does the community access the tracker so if we can get that out to council the link to it as well as on our Instagram and all of our social media pages and push that out to let people know that it's out there CU I think now that we have recommended and it's been supported by for Council some changes of how we're moving forward with this additional 50 million that it would be a even greater opportunity to keep the community engaged and I think also it will be helpful in beginning of the year if we can get a update on the responses from Community since we did create a survey and hopefully we got some really good responses from the survey based off of here the recommendations that we have as your elected body for how we should invest those funds I think it would be very helpful for us to hear from the community to see if we're aligned and if we're not set up space for us to have real conversations before we start receiving a lot of applications in and before we know it the money's gone making sure we're staying accountable to each other as well as to the community most importantly I also want to note that I had the opportunity to attend both of the earlier committee meetings and in tap there was a update from Mr Kel regarding cats I think that's a conversation where our committee also needs to get a report out so as we're talking about housing we have seen including unfortunately last night another young life that was taken at our rail station where we're putting a lot of emphasis around housing being developed and built alone a to what are the safety measures I am finally caught up enough to be be a part of the conversation even though my colleagues been there for a long time how are we using our AI we are tracking all these numbers how are we using these numbers to actually track so the example I gave earlier with cats is we know the bus routes but if we have route bus a coming and we know everywhere it's going how are we connecting so by the time you get the bus B you're actually able to have a connection versus bus a and bus B being on the same time period perod so therefore when bus a arrives you missed bus B we also know where individuals are catching the bus cuz we're tracking it through cats when they go into the system when we look at also the conversation that we started earlier in the year regarding Workforce and Workforce being more engaged with our committee when we're looking at employment at the airport if you live on East in East Charlotte that's two and 2 and a half plus hours one way well guess what if you live in Steel Creek which is literally around the corner from the airport it's that same 2 and 1/2 hours because of the current system so when we're talking about opportunities not only for our young people to get employment a lot of those young people are going to be on public transportation so how are we working with cats and how are we working with the airport because that is a major job opportunity out there we're soon going to be a 24-hour airport where you have employees that need to be there at 3:00 3:30 in the morning morning that's getting out overnight do we have the transportation where they can safely get from point A to point B versus 5 hours in transit that's time away from family not being able to be engaged I think we have the opportunity to start looking at how these PES connect because it's not just about access to housing it is that Workforce who's getting access to jobs what Transportation options are out there for them to get from point A to point B and how will we making Investments that's going to move that conversation forward and you already know my one piece which I share with you all the time Rebecca and Sean and Dr watlington we also need to make sure that we are being Equitable when projects whether they're no projects are coming up and looking at our policy language so we have a partner that is doing amazing work in the community on that same note that partner because of their relationships was able to go out and have corporate community help create a $ 53 million fund to get them on their way in four short years they now own 10 buildings those 10 buildings we also help to fund through rehab well what does that look like when we talk about representation of the community and smaller developers that don't have a 53 million million dollar fund to go to for when it's time for them to submit their proposal and looking at we also made a major investment through economic development through mwsb where we have a outside organization that helps with bonding that's something that if one of the challenges is bonding access for housing then we also need to have that group present to our committee and give us an idea on exactly how are you connecting with these small businesses because we know small businesses is where the bulk of employment comes from so I think those are opportunities that we have moving into 20125 with changing the conversation changing the narrative to be more holistic and looking at how our decisions really impact the the totality as the city continues to to grow and for again for full transparency I there was a proposal on economic development around a t it goes for for they have a 15-year affordability level in there I appreciate the fact that developers have offered to do that but to me that's not a selling point on the T 15 years is a short period of time if we just look at 2011 to 2019 that short eight years we saw over 200% increase in the cost of living in the city so if we're going to be looking at projects that are coming in if our language says the minimum is 20 years then we need to have as a council a broader conversation with planning around whether or not that should be increased and that minimum not be 20 years because 20 years goes by like this and if the impact if we're tracking the numbers and we're anticipating another 5 million people moving here over the next decade are these 15 20 year projects for the millions that we're putting in is that helping to achieve the goal and what we learned when for those of us who had the opportunity to visit the spaces in Munich when we look at Co-op is that something that could work in Charlotte or are there pieces of the co-op model that we can adapt to help with projects and developments as we're moving forward to address the need doc council member Brown and I had the chance to attend the vigil last week for our unhoused community we have lost 57 people since November of 2023 and now nov November 2024 one of the conversations that I had with a gentleman who's a veteran is there are different resources that are needed specifically for African-American veteran males than for others so we have individuals who wear house and the average lifespan of someone who has been chronically unhoused it's only to the age of 50 so we have people who are being placed in homes but they're having different challenges and they don't have someone that looks like them that also had the military experience as them because racism is real and racism in the military is also a thing and when you're in a space uh housing space and you don't have that support in the space I don't know if that's our role or a stronger partnership with the county to identify some specific pieces because I don't want us doing everything right you know that but we have an opportunity to have some different conversations to make sure that what we're codifying through language especially since Dr watlington really highlighted it over the summer when we track the numbers as far as what is our goal and are we exceeding that goal are we meeting that thank you for the amazing work that you have done and I'm always going to ask you to do more thank you madam chair thank you Vice chair we've got council member Brown followed by council member Johnson thank you thank you so much B sh you did good and Madam chair thank you Dr weron yeah great work from the beginning of the year to um the end of the year just going back and looking at the review more comments than anything thank you so much for your hard work Rebecca you've been amazing Sean you've been amazing and just all of the work that you pour into sometimes you come to the committee and we're like no we don't we don't want that and you say okay well how can we make it better and if you've actually did that and so I know it's hard work doing what you do but you do it and you do it well and so I definitely want to say thank you I'm a person that like to see um the results but I also like to give uh the credit to the people that help us get those results so to our chair thank you so much you're amazing you did hard work this year even with some push back for me on the ordinance um because I'm strong in what I believe in but we got it together um with some language that uh the community could understand that we're not trying to criminalize anybody want see anybody go to jail but we have got to move forward with safety and making sure that people are safe in our community and so cludo to you for that Vice chair with you working beside her hand in hand because I know Johnson and I are really strong about you know some of the language but I just like to say very exciting learning um being on this committee for the first year a lot a lot of work I mean a lot of work as you can see we're in review a lot of work a lot of hard work a lot of digging research going back checking the facts fact checking to make sure things are on point and that our language is understandable to our constituents in the community but I do um would definitely like to see um some data on the city code of ordinance and um the youth crime those are my two biggies um on our review if we could get some information and some data so that I could share back to people that have been asking that you know that's a big thing with the people's budget how has it been impacted did it work um what's the data what's the number of rest how many people did it affect so if we can just have that that that would it don't have to be immediately it could even be going into 2025 cuz we're going into holiday season who wants to work hard when Santa Claus is coming around nobody right so but we have done a great job on this team and our leadership and our committee has been phenomenal so I just wanted to say that for the record along with staff working alongside of them to make things happen and to get results and as Dr won said on the dayto day you're working so hard you don't get to see all of the fruits of your labor but then when you come again together in the and you ask to see a review it's all laid out so thank you so much and that's all I have I yield to my committee thank you council member Brown council member Johnson for the uh your leadership you and and Madame Vice chair I think this is such an important agenda um item you know so and it's my pet we go into meetings and we're just there's so much information and it's not even realistic where Council can't be engaged and ask questions counc Johnson I apologize for interrupting we missed the first part of what you said do you mind just running it back for us from the top you just wanted to hear it again thank you for do a wonderful job no honestly it was me I couldn't hear you I'm so sorry I do we do want this you're so funny thank thank you for the agenda item thank you for the the highlighting of our work but thank you for a realistic time man uh well managed agenda so thank you for that I um I'm also so proud to be a part of this committee um I think the work that we do is so impactful and this is why I ran you know you all know my passion is is affordable housing and so the work that we're doing working towards that is so important so thank you I do have a question for um for Sean for Mr Heath I wanted to ask about home for all um can we get an update on that I know it came before Council or before the committee and then needed to come back before the committee so do we have an update on that yeah I'd be happy to provide some perspective today so the work of a home for all continues you know the United Way has been spearheading this effort for quite some time and uh they have never pressed pause on the work but where we've left off in terms of the city's participation is I you know I think back to a couple conversations that were had at the committee level and then one conversation with full counsel um you know and and I was on point for this so so I'm accountable um I think the challenge was what I was presenting what staff was presenting to you was asking committee and Council to you know endorse a overall Plan before each component piece was ripe enough where we could really articulate here's exactly what it is and who the partners will be and how how our money will be used it just there were just a lot of questions so where we've left off in our most recent conversations with the United Way is hey we still see Great Value from a staff perspective in the work that's being done we see a lot of alignment between the objectives of a home for all and Council strategic priorities but so far as incremental funding from the city of Charlotte let's wait until each component piece is ready for Prime Time whether it be Upstream emergency rental assistance or the possibility of a city county collaboration around an emergency shelter focused on the unhoused population particularly individuals with severe and persistent mental illness um those are just two examples and they may have great Merit but um we don't want to bring it to you before it's ready for discussion so we are um we are open for business I think from a staff perspective as it relates to the component pieces of a home for all and when they're ready to roll we will um I believe kind of treat them how we've treated everything else historically which is nothing would be put on a council agenda for a vote without an opportunity for an action review conversation so that's what we would do when each of them are ready chair watlington um we've talked about this a bit is there anything that you heard me say that feels okay is there any city funding that's gone toward that project so if um if we just focus on fiscal year 2024 and 2025 let's sorry redo if we just focus on fiscal year 2025 there were a number of slides that were shared at committee and full council with with dollar amounts on there uh the punchline here is city council through the financial partners program provided $130,000 of support to the United Way once again through the financial partner program which was and the county has done something similar themselves to support the United ways administration of this overall effort but as it relates to emergency rental assistance system navigation emergency shelter those are some other component pieces that were put in front of you as possible fiscal year 2025 investment opportunities uh Rebecca and I have been working together to ensure that we that we preserve funding capacity to do those sorts of things because we don't want this to be a game of musical chairs where hey a great idea came forward but oh by the way we've spent the money so we're we're ensuring that we're preserving funding capacity but nothing above that fin nothing except for that Financial Partners item which you already approved will be spent absent a conversation and then a vote with Council and so how much do how much money do we have allotted toward that well there isn't I wouldn't go as far as to say there's you know there's not a formal a home forall earmark in the budget per se um so let me just use one specific example so in the $100 million in the council policy work that you did in order to identify investment categories there is $9 million that set us side for a range of things including uh possible emergency shelter capacity permanent Supportive Housing those sorts of things so I just use that as one example where there's funding available um but there are no commitments that have been made there no promises that have been made you know we will review requests for that funding as they come in okay thank you sure thank you alrighty um one thing I would like to add to the list um Community as I think about housing safety and Community we've touched on housing for sure we've touched on safety for sure one of the things that as I think about community that I think has come up in council at least I know here recently is this idea of communication and how do we um how do we make sure that we're updating our methods for Maximum Impact in a changing world right um people receive information differently um the the framing of it the the channel that we use whether it's Tik Tock or a flyer it it varies by Target market right and so I do think that we've got some work to do to to update how we're reaching people um who we're reaching where we're reaching them uh to create more of a a pool system where people can go in and get the information when they want it but it's accessible enough and that what we're doing at the city is a part of the fabric of How We Do Life here in the city of char right uh we want residents to be engaged and informed and not just people who have the time and capacity to watch a full meeting right how do we and some of these things I'm sure we may be doing how do we integrate I know we were talking about doing things like a QR code at bus stops or at shoot even in in uh workplaces or barber shops so people can just scan and see what's going on how do we make the work that we're doing relevant to the people who are impacted by it uh so that they want to know what's going on um yeah so that's one that I'd love for us to dig into next year I like that let's make politics sexy guys use technology let's use the technology we got awesome well um I think that's it as far as committee comments I'd love right right I'd love to hear Reflections from staff if you got them um how we yeah what do you else think he's like I'm glad you asked I'll tread lightly here right you know no I mean I think there is one thing that has come up like informally in conversation because Rebecca and Sarah Hazel have already started down you know interesting conversations related to the intersection point between sustainability and because a lot of times when we talk about households that are cost burdened we naturally focus on the rent but you also have energy costs right so um that was one thing that I've heard that PE my interest but I'm not a policy maker so I'll just leave it at that well I will tell you this you definitely just put something in the room that at least yes that it's going to get some support from at least a couple of us um I love that idea home electrification is huge right now and we know that there's dollars in uh from federal that's available we know that behind the meter yep behind the meter in front of the meter there's a ton of work going on companies are innovating trying to figure out how to fill that space um and how do we do it in a way that enables people to to have what has become a basic need at an affordable uh price point and also Drive our sustainability goals so I'm very much looking forward to that conversation I love that because it also ties into to what we saw what we saw solar panels not only on multif family units that were being built so that automatically made me think back to the summer when you would talk about Innovation and how we look at Innovation mov M forward but we even saw solar panels on individual Apartments like out on their balcony area so you had individual units that were utilizing in Germany and utilizing the solar panels and just the way that they of course they is built off of home ownership in large part but even with their public transportation their biking they have the double and triple stack for bike racks so when we're looking at not just EV stations that are potentially being installed at multif unit y know I have my own opinions I'm like who the hell can afford a electric vehicle but either way that's the thing looking at how we do the bike stations versus what we do here where you just have this little thing where you can put like three four maybe five bicycles in looking at that stacking model and how that can work and they had it in the garages so when you went in the garage there was space for vehicle as well for cyclist to go in and they had their own section where they would part their bicycles and there was a safety measure and even going back to that Co-op you can rent out and sign out bicycle they were doing car sharing so what would the Innovation look like if we had a developer that came that not only had the space for bicycles but if they partner and had a car sharing program which was starting to see a little more of so thank you for putting that out you all have great ideas here's the opportunity for you to tell us so that we can absorb it yeah I mean I really think that integration not just of Housing and sustainability but housing sustainability Mobility those the shared Mobility access points and then what was so interesting about the site that we toured in Munich was is that it was cooperative housing nested within a Cooperative neighborhood so there are a lot of opportunities um as as we look at you know Council you have pushed us um to really think more about the integration of the services that we provide and the programs that we provide and I think it's uh to me that innovation in housing is not related specifically to housing but how do we integrate how do we bring in um Workforce and you really activate on some of these models that we've put out there Team Force housing and Cooperative housing uh and all of the integrated components and so uh we we we think there are a lot of great opportunities coming coming in 2025 I will say I I have to put in the room with like a little time to try to get the 100 million doll Bond activated [Laughter] so we we we need to get some of these things moving um but we're really excited about the conversations that you've had and the ideas that you've been sharing um over the last couple of months sorry I like that we're listening I'm I'm wouldn't it be wonderful if we could use some of that yes like I think about that Innovation part of it and like what if folks are coming to talk about hey we want to put housing on the ground that is first of its kind sustainability etc etc um we want to do induction stoves we want to do electric heaters we want to do some energy storage whatever it is you know what I mean that would be really cool to be able to to use our dollars towards that to help bring some of those costs down in nontraditional ways and I would also add from ear meeting earlier today which we were here about in full committee report out planning had a update on Udo and they had in there the space to open up when we look at Faith and housing right now you have to do a resoning when you want to build housing on institutional land re updating that language to remove that and then everything that can go up under that umbrella of N1 N2 including if it's a community center or community space like we have one Church miles and hour I went out and they're looking at housing and a soccer field so something to engage the children and give them more opportunities so they're having the conversation I think it will also be helpful at some point in 25 for planning to also come to our committee so that while we're looking at policy language for housing we're making sure that it aligns with what they're considering and being nimal enough to make the adjustments versus this is what we planned 25 years ago so this is the direction we're going let's see how quickly we can pivot to address and create that real space for those innovative ideas and recognizing some of our smaller developers are not coming with a $58 million fund so what does that look like here's the thing I need us to consider we have Partners out there that have been doing amazing work on the ground I don't know if we've ever had a conversation with them like even if it was not necessarily a well yeah a round table so Christopher Dennis has done a lot I don't think we've ever actually had Christopher Dennis as one of the speakers or one of the presenters or even in a small group discussion to say how did you do this BTY for road is our next area of real we can get it right or not and that's like one of our last historically black area that we have when we look at Workforce and we look at making Investments over there Economic Development wise we also need to be having that conversation with housing and what investments do we need to be making in order to make sure that it's successful I feel like our committee should be a part of every other committee's conversation because what good is transportation if you not if you don't have housing whether it's multif family or for sale or you built a duplex a quad a Triplex you live in one and you're Renning out the others environmental sustainability all the Committees at some point should run through us for uh to make sure that we are in alignment if not even on the same page to make sure we're in alignment with what we are creating that it will be something that is a transformational switch and shift in our thinking that will have generational impacts that will go we will be planting that tree that we are not going to sit under for the shade but it will make a tremendous difference over the next two decades thank you ma'am and then lastly just wanted to see if there's anybody else in the room um I mean I see other people in the room comments y'all good you sure all right Danielle good all right well with that then I'll entertain a motion to close move to close all righty I we'll see y second we'll see y'all next year all right unanimous happy New Year [Music] everyone e e for