[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] e [Music] hello about to get started Qui please Studio we are ready to roll y good morning welcome to this March 3rd 2025 meeting of the Charlotte City Council Transportation Planning and Development Committee let's start with introductions back in that corner oh hi fo Innovation team director hi everybody Sarah Hazel Chief sustainability officer Robin buers office of sustainability Heather bullet office of sustainability Aaron tabber office of sustainability Katherine Mahoney planning Kathy cornette planning staff Monica Holmes enter and planning director Allison Craig assistant city manager Malcolm Graham District Ed dggs committee chair Liz Babson assistant city manager Yolanda Jones planning staff Jessica Bigalow planning ly Alexander sh transportation m city manager's office man Peterson planning and online Victoria watlington Committee Member good morning um Marie Molina Vice chair there you are okay good morning good morning and that's it okay uh we have two topics today and uh community area planning update and a strategic energy Action Plan update I just want to mention before we talk about these these are coming up for votes by us in the relatively near future uh we have talked about them before but it's a progressive update to to get us to a place where we can vote in April or May so uh having said that we'll start off with community area planning and I will hand off to Miss Holmes good morning um we are excited to be here to continue to walk through uh our community area plans and what they mean for the city and how we plan to continue to move them forward so today uh you'll see several presentations so today's part one we'll be back in uh April for part two and uh Kathy and Katherine today will talk through what each of those will look like but just so you know the this is we're two years into the community area planning process we're getting very close to where the drafts of all 14 area plans will be released uh we really want to make sure it's clear how you will use the plans how the community will use the plans and how um they serve to forward the 20140 plan so that's what you'll hear about today is this is kind of part one and part two will be the April presentation uh as we get closer to release we want you all to know kind of how that process will work our team is working very hard on both an online openhouse so you'll be able to see all the information online as well as hard cop copies uh we will be willing to sit down and walk you through each of those as we get closer to that date uh but you'll see a lot more content here and information that will help you to understand what exactly will be in those drafts and again how you will use them so I'm going to turn it over to Kathy cornette uh who leads our longrange planning division to kick us off thank you thank you Monica so as Monica mentioned it's a two-part informational presentation um two-piece is on how Council and the community can use area plans so today's part one focuses on how the pl elements can guide the can guide resoning decisions and part two at a future committee meeting you should have the plans in hand because we know that you're anxiously awaiting that and we'll provide examples of how they can help decision making in other Capital Investments so this slide gives you an idea of where we've been with Council through this process and our plans for review and adoption moving forward so we plan to be in front of you over the coming months um a few times so these plans are really um essentially about creating complete communities and complete communities when we use that term we mean a place that integrates all the Essential Elements you need to go about your daily um to meet your daily needs so to to live work and play Within the environment that you live in and um as a reminder we know you've seen the slide before but this is the second major implementation item from the comprehensive plan that was adopted in 2021 so it's a five-step process to create 14 area plans over two years so in phase one setting the stage we identified each geography's greatest needs in terms of access to housing jobs goods and services and that um the result of that work is available on our website we have a QR code there for your convenience and 14 individual Community reports phase two then focused on creating great places and that really was focusing on tweaks to the policy map that was adopted in 2022 phase three focused on the projects and programs that are needed to help um ensure our to complete our vision and that really was focusing more on our partners and projects and programs um that are planned so the policy Map There's a QR code there for both the adopted policy map and the revised policy map so uh folks can compare those two for phase three the projects and programs planned um projects are available on a web tool that's on our website as well that folks find very helpful um but in that phase we were also taking needed projects from the community so what their um desires were so right now we're really straddling phase four and five were about to release the documents the draft documents and I want to stress that they are draft but we want them to be as complete as they can be uh at the end of this month or later in the month and then we'll formally enter the review and adoption process so I think it's important to mention too that these plans were developed using a systematic process so they were all developed the same way and they all contain the same components and format but each of those components is unique to that particular geography so they apply the comprehensive plan goals at the community level and each area has a community profile that outlines who lives works and plays in the area what growth is expected by 2040 and what each community's greatest needs are to ensure this expected growth benefits everyone so you can see a sample in the bottom right hand corner of what that Community profile looks like in the document so they also establish a consistent set of considerations for all scenarios and decision making So today we're going to focus on a little bit later in the presentation on how they'll be used in the resoning process so this is a sample of um a page focusing on needs and goals that you would find in um the plan so each plan identifies needs and goals that are unique to that particular area and the needs and goals are drawn from both the Equitable growth framework you can see that on the left and the goals and the comprehensive plan and more importantly the extensive Community engagement we did throughout the process so that included over 50 workshops with 700 participants and over 5,000 inter interactions and an example of um how these conversations happen for example in phase two when we were focused on the policy Maps the the workshops included Focus area exercises where we talked directly about the goals and how they played out in specific areas of each community so plans are um implemented in a variety of different ways with many different partners both public and private um and you can see that the different aspects for example um one of them is the resoning process and I'm going to turn it over to Katherine and she's going to focus on um how how how the plans play out in implementation through the resoning process thank you good morning um so uh we wanted to provide a a few examples of how these common considerations within the plans help us consistently evaluate decis decisions both from a staff and Council and public perspective so I want to walk through two examples uh the first is going to be an example that would be consistent with the policy map uh which as a reminder this this map portrays the type of development we'd like to see over time and as Kathy mentioned it was developed uh after the comprehensive plan with guidance from that document and then revised during this current planning effort and while this policy map provides more guidance than our old future land use map there are still inherent limitations in just a single map so these plans provide more guidance and then the other example will be a scenario where the petition is inconsistent with the policy map and so we'll demonstrate how the plans can help us there so in the first scenario uh we're looking at the area uh circled in teal and this is an area that's recommended um for the N1 Place type which is our low density residential place and and it is uh you can see a lot of the area is also recommended for that that yellow Place type uh but it is within close proximity to an area recommended to be a neighborhood center which is shown in the pink and the petitioner is asking for a more intense in1 zoning District on that site uh so the request for an in1 zoning District within an in1 Place type is consistent uh but we know um that additional cons considerations often are um needed and so the plans provide those common considerations for what for when intensification may be appropriate I'm not going to get into the details of what those considerations are but they consistently address things such as adjacency size and access so this is an illustration um it's it's not a promise of what will be built but just a concept of how the area could evolve over time in a way that's in line or in line with our vision so you can see the the corridor which was recommended for the neighborhood center gradually evolves into uh more uh mixed juice buildings and there are elements like plazas and sidewalks and improved intersections that create a safer pedestrian environment and then the area in question uh is redeveloped in a way that provides more housing choices for the area but also provides a transition between the neighborhood center and the established neighborhood behind it so in the next example uh the area in question again is circled in teal and it has the same recommendation for an in one place type in this scenario the petitioner is asking for N2 entitlements which N2 is not aligned or consistent with the N1 designation and so it's inconsistent in this scenario staff will want to walk through a several several uh question questions uh consistently um across all types of petitions the first thing you want to do is really consider what the community's greatest needs and goals are which Kathy pointed out will be included within the plans so in this area uh you can see there are five icons which means this geography uh has five of the 10 comprehensive plan goals as a priority and um you're not meant to be able to distinguish it but the second and third icons represent goal two and three from the comprehensive plan which says there needs to be an increase in housing choices in this area either through the integration of missing M units uh or the preservation of affordable units so keeping the need for uh for more housing choices is an important thing to evaluate in this uh scenario second you'd want to consider if the n two entitlements are compatible with what's recommended for both the immediate site and the surrounding area so again the plans in include a list of considerations that if met would essentially qualify the request as compatible again I don't want to dig into those exact details today uh but they touch on things like size adjacency and access finally uh with inconsistent well with petitions you want to consider what type of improvements are being included we know that Mobility choices open space and quality design are really important parts of a great place and so we want to ensure that future development is contributing towards that so again here's an illustration or just a concept of how the area could change over time you can see a range of building types that might be appropriate uh based on the size of the site it's uh adjac you know what's happening next to it um and then the mobility choices and Open Spaces integrated throughout so these are just two examples of how those consistent considerations within the plans will help us ensure that we are um always evaluating uh decisions in line with our vision for the future thanks Catherine oops sorry sorry so there are a variety of different types of plans this is just one and those all Nest underneath the comprehensive plan so we know that our community continues to grow and change and there's always going to be unforeseen circumstances that happen but having a plan helps us to react to those um in a in a better way we knew where we know where we want to go and and then it helps us adjust um when those unforeseen things happen um and I want to point out to you that the um number four specific plans so community area plans provide a a a certain level of specificity but there's a variety of other tools in our toolbox that we expect that we will use and as far as specific plans go um again those are for very specific situations or um different needs that arise so an example of that would be uh station are plans Corridor plans we we um fully expect that we will continue to do that kind of work as well and finally we look forward to releasing the documents later this month um and returning to this Committee in the coming months for part two of this presentation and we're happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you i' like to welcome mayor protm Anderson to the meeting and invite questions that I'll talk at once you just you know there was nothing left to ask so except I have a couple um when you talk about um in your examples you say that the the policy map calls for an in1 Place type so there's no uh a b CDE e or F there it just says N1 right corre so you have an n1a right now and you want to go to uh an n1c or whatever that would be considered consistent because it's still N1 but it does still call for a rezoning right correct okay um and you mentioned the specific plans I mean are these like overlays in the old days or I don't expect that we would use an overlay because that's that's kind of more of a zoning tool but they are um like transit station area plans we've done those in the past um Corridor plans Corridor of opportunity is an example of that um strategic plans the Strategic Mobility plan is an example of that so there's a variety of different types of plans that we would do I don't know that we would use the zoning overlay tool as part of those right right um because the uh as we've discussed my concern is just I'm a I'm a developer I'm I'm thinking about doing something at a certain location and will I be able to predict with reasonable certainty what my path through the staff and the city council will look like yes uh and and not be sort of puzzling okay does that what does that mean I want to put this building up can I do that or not um so that that's the main thing we we really need to emphasize a kind of userfriendly zoning process and and that's actually the uh for the most part where the rubber meets the road right uh I mean we have these plans but their effect is felt when somebody needs to come to us because they want to do something that isn't already allowed at a given location so uh I'm looking with interest at that we've talked about it and uh we're on a good track I think um we're defining what we want to be the only other concern is that we can't plan against the market so when we do this planning uh you know there may be things that the market wants to do that we ideally wouldn't support but there's a limit to the extent to which you can push against the market and if you try too hard you make yourself uncompetitive you you create all kinds of difficulty for investors and that interferes with our Workforce for development Economic Development and other processes so I assume we're going to achieve that alignment we'll know when we've seen the details but um that was good good update again reminder to everybody you're now talking about having the actual language of this up on a website or available for inspection by us about when uh the end of the month all right so late March weeks yeah we have another presentation coming up yes and then uh the goal uh is to try to get a council decision in May yes all right so again I just emphasize to my colleagues and I I'm going to talk about this a little tonight so I hope one of you at least will be there uh because I want to just keep impressing on people okay I do not want to hear people come back and say hey no one told me um good still nothing all right then we can move on to item two and that is the Strategic energy Action Plan update and I think for that one I will hand off to miss ha thank [Music] you morning good morning word great as we're loading so thank you very much chair and committee uh this is the second part of uh three committee presentations um as a reminder this work uh touches many parts of council's priorities um if you go to the next slide oh I have the I have the capability to do that myself um this C this uh work touches many of council's priorities but in particular it also relates and falls under the 2040 comprehensive plan so just a reminder of that um what we want to do today is reiterate the proposed goals but not spend time on that that was really the main focus of the last meeting we want to spend a little bit more time talking about the range of actions and strategies and highlight a few key areas as well as reiterate our Focus areas which align back to our greenhouse gas emissions inventory that we discussed uh last time we met and then finally we're going to talk a little bit about the connection between the full range of benefits both environmental benefits social benefits Equity benefits and then I'll I'll do a quick note on the financial considerations um we we ended the conversation last month talking a little bit about that so we're going to pause on that for a moment um so again this is our this is our uh previous Council communication and our goal is a proposed cat plus adoption U by the end of April we will be able to publish a draft cat plus document by the end of March it looks like at the same time timeline that um our colleagues are on and uh we will be back next month and our request at that time will be to um vote this out of committee to full Council so with that um I am going to hand it over to Dr Robin buers I'm also joined today by Heather bolock who is our uh our strategic uh infastructure U manager here um in sustainability and so they're going to walk through the rest of the presentation and I'll come back to talk again about the timeline at the end thank you so again just wanted to kind of level set and remind everybody about the goals that we talked about last month um we still have a CommunityWide goal we are adding a milestone in there in 2035 so we have something to measure against um we did add a renewable energy generation goal for the city of Charlotte uh CommunityWide and then we have our Municipal goals in our existing CA 2018 C app it was one kind of goal that covered both buildings and Fleet and now we're splitting them and so with that I want to go over um our engagement objectives and um approach to talk about how this has built all of our strategies and actions as we move forward so here's just a list of our engagement objectives we set this out before we started um to make sure that we were being true our engagement and actually engaging as opposed to just informing and with that on this slide um we've highlighted the numbers of meetings that we've been to um but we also wanted to measure impact and so we know that we've had um over 60 conversations through our public engagement meetings um we've had 40 plus connections through different opportunities like um bober Fest um we've had some online meetings and then we we also have a CF awareness survey um on the list there you'll see we had 353 people um click the survey link and participate but we had over 400 actual open-ended comments that we got to sift through and and add in and this really helped us build in um and be very clear and purposeful about using our engagement and what that looks like for the plan itself so what does that look like um here you'll see the top priorities were sustainable modes of transportation efficient Technologies energy efficient technologies that are new new programs and initiatives and ensuring climate resiliency on the chart on the right that you're looking at this is a a graph that shows the level of concern of those that responded to the survey as well as the perceived frequency of our climate risks and you can see the top two were extreme heat and severe storms I also wanted to add that we got a a lot of different feedback again in those open-ended comments and that really helped us look at our Focus areas and we'll talk about that in just a minute so with that we're going to focus then on how that engagement has shaped the structure of the plan moving [Applause] forward you may remember this this is our five stages to zero carbon energy this graphic is in the 2018 CA um that is currently adopted again just a reminder that those five stages are shifting the energy demand itself reducing the consumption of energy changing the source of energy essentially generating energy on site and then purchasing the remainder offsets this helps us reach that Net Zero goal and so with the feedback that we've gotten from engagement as well as internal reflection and internal meetings um we really wanted to think about our Focus areas and make sure that they were very intentional and aligned with a lot of the new plans um that have been adopted by Council since 2018 one of the things I want to highlight is that Workforce Development we found um it really needed to be tied to the strategies and actions throughout the plan as opposed to being its own Focus area and so what we've done is we've taken the Workforce Development Focus area and we've embedded it into um buildings energy generation transportation and then we have this new area called cross cutting that'll have a lot of other connections with plans and initiatives throughout the city that also will include some Workforce Development as well one other thing I want to highlight um while we talk about climate Justice and equity in the 2014 capap emissions reductions resiliency and Workforce Development we wanted to be more deliberate about the full range of benefits that the actions and strategies in our plans have and make it very clear for folks that are reading the plan so what you'll see throughout um our strategies and actions is we evaluate these four co- benefits um and they'll either be high medium or low and what I want to talk about here is that they can't all be high for every co- benefit and that's good that gives us diversity and that allows us to fill gaps and so what you'll see is that actions that have a highlevel let's say highle emissions reduction potential that is really there to drive progress to reduce emissions and you'll may have um medium or low for any of the others that helps fill in the gaps and help create basically a grid that covers all four of these and with that I'm going to turn it over to Heather to talk about specifics yeah so these are the strategies actions we really want to get your feedback on today so in each of the focus areas buildings energy generation transportation and cross cutting um we have we have strategies and specific actions underneath those strategies and so for buildings you can see here we have three strategies the first to Source 100% of electricity in municipal buildings from zero carbon sources by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050 align with our goal strategy two to transition residential buildings to zeroc carbon and then strategy three to transition nonresidential commercial industrial buildings to Net Zero carbon by 2050 so to kind of uh take a few of these actions and expand on them a little bit we highlight a few of these here which include both actions outlined in the original seap as well as our revised actions and so here you can see um an existing action that we have is to continue to demonstrate leadership by seeking opportunities to innovate towards net zero buildings so we continue to lead the way with beneficial electrification in our own buildings and while demonstrating to the commercial sector what can really be accomplished we also have new actions which include to expand weatherization and efficiency programs for residential buildings so so I know that you probably all know about the Duke high energy use pilot program that we are working on with housing and Neighborhood Services and we really want to expand that program to reach more residents because it's so successful want to do more and then finally uh another new one is to expand and incentivize the voluntary power down the crown benchmarking program and we have some um exciting and innovative ways to do this um we can't quite talk about it yet but we are um excited to really highlight those companies that have come along with us and to really incent more participation there so our next Focus area is energy generation and the strategies here include reaching net zero emissions from Electric electricity Generation by 2050 um and then strive ding towards 600 megaw of distributed renewable energy generation in Charlotte and then strategy six develop a suite of Educational Tools so to talk a little bit more about that uh one of the actions is to continue working with Duke Energy the North Carolina Utilities Commission and other Regional Partners to support and advocate for a timely transition to net zeroc carbon elect electricity generation the way that we did through the green Source Advantage Program in which the city supports the development of an 80 megawatt solar farm in South Davidson County we will continue to do projects like this in the future some of the new actions include to provide and support training and events on alternative technology so you can see in this picture here uh we are training actually our city staff on Firehouse 43 which is net zero carbon ready as well as battery electric buses um we also uh present to the Civic Leadership Academy informing them of of all the seap initiatives but we want to go further we want to um really talk to more community members about these uh sustainable energy generation and then incentivizing residential and commercial solar so we heard you about incentivizing and so um right now you probably have heard about our solarized charmet Campaign which um will launch um later this spring and we're excited about that to really um promote uh rooftop solar on our residential and commercial buildings then on to the focus area of transportation we have three iies under underneath that which include reaching net zero emissions in Municipal light duty Fleet by 2035 and then the entire fleet by 2050 to support reaching a 5050 mode sheare share goal by 2040 per the Strategic Mobility plan and then to also strategy 9 facilitate rapid uptake of zero carbon Mobility options and so a few of the actions that we have highlight here include supporting our existing uh action which is to support the development of a clean fueling plan for Charlotte including different ways of fueling so we have approximately 330 city-owned charging ports across the city with uh both Fleet and Public Access and we want to continue to support that investment in all clean fuels which also Spurs interest in Charlotte um you you know for example Al patronic which is an a charging company decided to locate their headquarters here in Charlotte um and we we hope to support that that kind of interest and then on our new actions uh to support driving collaborative implementation of the S&P and the intersection of sustainability mobility and other critical areas like affordable housing so really working together on all of our great strategic plans across the city and so then we have uh 9.6 to expand efforts to provide car scooter and bike share options CommunityWide so again building on the success of the corridors of opportunities program with the ebike pilot with dream key partners and others sorry so our last area that we have again is that cross cutting that new Focus area and so these have some tangible some not so tangible items in there to help support this work the first one we have is to continue to develop a smart data approach this makes sure that we're matching our metrics with our new updated plan um strategy 11 is to promote waste reduction and diversion throughout Charlotte this is something we heard from the um public as well as our internal engagement that was missing from the 2018 seap strategy 12 is to establish public private Plus plus Partnerships it takes a lot to say really fast um strategy 13 is to coordinate and support the tree canopy action plan this is again making connections across with other departments um strategy 14 is to promote climate resilience through out Charlotte and because we just heard from them I want to highlight here that um 14.1 is um using the same language that um our community area plans are going to be using and so both draft but they will match so that we create a stronger connection there and strategy 15 is to support efforts to optimize water usage and with that I'm going to turn it oh sorry missed this one so all of these are technically new strategies um in this plan however we've been working on a lot of these um in the meantime and so the First new one we have is 10.2 that's going to be to continue to build out our CF dashboard again to make sure it's updated with this plan um 14.3 is to develop Promotional and awareness campaigns around ecob benefits of planted areas and so this pulls in the pollinator Gardens that our Landscape Management team have been working on as well as tree plantings Urban Meadows which can reduce Urban heat um we also have um 11.2 to reduce waste generation and increase waste diversion from landfills here we have a really good partner with the Innovation barn and the work that they're doing doing is really helping to drive this um forward and then the last one we wanted to highlight is 11.3 which is to implement new technologies um as appropriate to Aid with um education and waste diversion so these are things like having a camera on a refuge truck that can see if there's something in there that shouldn't be in there now I will turn it back to Sarah I'll bring it home um so just to reiterate before um I hit the last piece here is again the focus areas are building off of the success of the initial CF they're adding in components that um have become more prevalent based on our greenhouse gas emissions inventory for example you saw a couple things around waste with our new updated data we did see that um waste is an area where we have greenhouse gas emissions reduction potential uh and we are really listening to uh our colleagues who have been moving forward strategies with with Council as well as the community um but uh at the end of the last meeting um we talked a little bit about financial considerations and so I think this is an important thing to pause on for a second we do have policies in place that um Drive these Targets in a way that acknowledges that they need to be cost effective um and specifically we know that many of our investments have a higher upfront cost but that over time will likely save money and so I'll give you a couple examples of that in the next slide so so really what we're talking about here is the total cost of ownership over the lifetime of our assets that's not always the case and so what we will strive to do as we've done in the past is where these elements have absolute costs um where there's not a neutral or cost savings we strive to uh be very clear about the additional co- benefits um in particular the GSA program is a good example so when we brought that forward the green Source Advantage Program understanding that there was a a cost annual cost to that program once the solar farm comes online we were striving to ensure that it was very clear what that would do to meet the overall objectives of the capap um and where we can even quantify some of um the emissions reductions benefits when it comes to the environment and health um that's not always so easy to do um but we seek to do that so we can be really upfront and clear about the total cost of ownership and the total cost um to our community and then when we're looking at uh some of our community actions we also want to be very clear that this is not simply um the city as a municipality to uh to do this is really about our entire community so there's a role for the private sector there's a role for other government uh agencies to have um to have an opportunity to invest and weigh in in this shared goal that we have U we do have influence we have influence when it comes to incentives we have influence when it comes to the Udo um for example our um charging requirement for EV charging is just one example of many um and so we will continue to look at all those tools understanding that um that we we need to uh ensure that we're being both um very clear uh about the way we communicate those things and also um that we are allowing for the right exemptions where it makes sense so just a couple examples of the fiscal impact of some of our energy saving measures so here's two of uh our buildings that city council has invested in and so you can see see where we look at our year one metrics that um we're realizing savings based on electricity usage we're realizing savings when it comes to carbon um and then when you play that out over the cost of 10 years you get to the place where you're seeing that these assets pay for themselves that doesn't mean those aren't still decisions to make upfront um but it does give I think the community an understanding of um the long-term benefit that can also yield savings um when it comes to uh taxpayer dollars so with that I'll just reiterate we have our final public meeting coming up um this Thursday 5:30 to 8 at the Belmont Center so we're going to be able to share the strategies and actions get some additional feedback um we've gotten great feedback from our technical um advisory committee as well as other folks and so all of this leads us to the uh April end of April adoption date that we're seeking um and we look forward to answering any questions okay A Chorus from the committee any questions they're on tranquilizers this morning um so I have a few okay for one uh I mean this is great work uh I think it's important because not only does it uh create the prospect of a better and cleaner future for us but I think it really identifies us as a place where things are happening I mean in in the pantheon of cities Charlotte is out there with its Udo with its capap and uh I think it burnishes our reputation and that's not uh that's not minor I mean people think about where to go and there are some places that look tired frankly as municipalities and I think we are the opposite so really appreciate what you're doing uh friendly suggestion there's much too much information on these slides hard to read them impossible to take them in in the time frame of presentation so I would recommend a more Consolidated slide format supported by uh documents that people can read at their own speed uh and what you don't want to do is uh have the big picture obscured by the trees so to speak right the forest um I think what a lot of people will want to know is in particular what is the actual impact of this like what's going to be different what requirements will there be how will what act what will they have to do differently because of it uh people are going to be concerned about the cost of uh helping to achieve these goals so uh what requirements I mean incentives are one thing requirements are another so if we use our ordinance then that can imply costs and we hear that government represents 30% of the cost of development one way or another uh so I just want to look at it uh as I suggested before through the lens of the user uh of the of our partners our proposed partners and uh kind of translate it into their mindset uh they don't uh need to know as much or won't want to know as much about our Outreach and and these things that they're going to be you know hey I don't have much time what does this mean MH what about me uh talk to a CEO and you're going to get five minutes right and those are the people that will support our efforts um 600 megawatts what percent of that of the total is that I mentioned we are trying to achieve 600 megawatts of alternative energy uh do we know what that would represent in the total energy generation I think about 6% if not follow up we can follow up with you on that okay that it kind of hard to interpret because we don't know what kind of gigawatts or whatever we're using in the community so how big is that um the uh in general the coordination with business um we we talked about this a little bit in preparation for the meeting but uh I really think having uh a high-profile partnership with businesses and they should be interested in doing that because it also burnishes their reputation to be seen as being sensitive on these things and particularly if we approach them in a spirit of cooperation and don't appear to be threatening them with requirements that are very expensive but uh there are things people can do choices they can make that don't necessarily involve a lot of money and do make a difference here and I think that's the kind of thing that we want to emphasize um benchmarks do we have uh a timeline of the progress we expect to make towards these long-term future goals um it's very easy to put stuff out there like 50 by 50 and then you know uh I'm I'm gone from here and possibly from you know by the time 50 rolls around so um you know let's make ourselves accountable um what I think is good here too is the the capap you know we don't have an environment committee anymore more and one of the reasons is cat pervades everything we do and I think that's reflected in here so it goes into development the Udo it goes into Transportation uh that's a good thing to note that's not really a question or a suggestion but I just uh I appreciate that I guess I'll put it that way and uh you mentioned charging uh to me that's interesting because if you remember during the whole conversation about the 2040 plan and the Udo the issue of charging stations came up and a lot of developers said if I put all those charging stations in and and there aren't the electric cars that need them that's a big cost and so we engaged with them and agreed to put in the necessary infrastructure but not fully implement the charging stations and then with the idea that they would be implemented as the demand became apparent so that's a a real world example I think of how you try to reconcile what we're doing with the Practical like what is the extent of adoption of electric vehicles how many of them are there actually and let's not get too far out in front reminds me of my good friend and former colleague braxon Winston who was trying to eliminate drive-throughs while there were still a lot of cars out there wed to use them you know this stuff has to be brought forward kind of uh in tandem um talked about uh waste we have a partnership with the county on managing Recycling and waste so I think it would be good to have a conversation with the county about you know how we envision that or how we want to move ahead I mean we pay tipping fees and uh the recycling is done on a contract I mean you guys know all this better than I do and I guess my last comment is um uh more financial detail so I appreciate that You' acknowledge the issue uh electricity bills well versus what how much more did we put out upfront in order to realize those savings later on so that you can get uh and I don't expect this thing to fully cash flow uh you know there's a social benefit here but you can kind of quantify the investment you're making and put it up against the benefits you're realizing if you have more detail on what it costs for example to lead certify a building versus not anyway those are a couple of observations of mine uh once again as I mentioned earlier if you look at the timetable here March 25 finalizing the draft public review April 25th the the goal is to have this come to this committee uh for approval and for a referral uh to the full Council so um don't come to that meeting and say no one told me um you need to be ready to uh but uh the thing that uh that I that concerns me when I look at this is it says uh public review of the draft so we don't have it right and we're going to go into the meeting at which this committee is being asked to approve it without having had a meeting at which we were able to talk about it okay uh and I think we have a little bit of flexibility on the schedule so we'll find out I'm not going to invent a controversy that isn't there but I just want to be sure that uh all of my colleagues have a chance uh to see it and uh I mean if if we make this referral in April then your goal would be to have it come up to full Council in May is that right yeah I mean as as early as the very end of April that last meeting um okay I just ask you to consider when do we get to see it how much time do we have to talk about it but having us me meet having seen it in the interim yes and then and then be expected to vote in the same meeting uh that may be aggressive I think we should be able to have a meeting at which we have seen the draft and to can talk about it and then another meeting at which we vote May uh mayor proam thank you uh Mr chair and uh I assure you I will not show up at a meeting and say I haven't seen it because we're saying it today um and thank you for the presentation um of at this stage um staff uh just a couple things one is I think U the chair was right about you have a lot of really good information here but it's um also some of it's very very dense uh and it's it's kind of difficult to keep track of on the slides and so if you could just simplify simplify simplify I think that would certainly help it would help me and and I'm sure would help others uh to really get at like what are the what are the major takeaways of some of these um metrics and uh information that you have on some of these Dent slides I think what I hear a lot in in my community is um people are very interested in recycling and I know that's something um small relative to the scale of what you're trying to do here uh but get a lot of questions around recycling uh the the the recycling program I've been to Neighborhood meetings where um folks have asked questions about that and I've also heard that it's not working so I think if if we could point out or if you could point out you know aspects of this that you know the resident can do what what is the resident how can the resident have an impact on our CA goals um how can they directly affect the outcomes of some of the things that we're doing some in some ways they can and in in many they can't but the the what's in it for me and how can I help how can I be a part of the solution I think that would be great if you could um outline that in in the presentation here in your communication approach to the community and that's all I had thank you so the mayor portm said that there was one thing she agreed with from what I said I hope there was more than one um but yes similar thrust right it's kind of user perspective and and clearer bones if if you have all the detail that's in here in supporting documents then for one anybody can look and and see the thoroughness of the work and and be impressed by the thoroughness of the work they're not going to walk with you through each of these bullets uh and so um if you look at it from a marketing standpoint what are the key takeaways you know what are we really telling people uh we are doing what they can expect um and you know what what it might mean for them in terms of behaviors I mean on recycling I brought up that uh waste thing because Recycling and waste removal are a real topic right a lot of recycling stuff ends up on the landfill and so you know do you need a more targeted program where we're identifying the actually marketable recy recable like aluminum paper or whatever items uh and should we zero in instead of I mean I have at home a whole page of things that you can recycle and we're throwing stuff into the recycle band all the time and I actually went to the recycling facility and interesting if you haven't seen it but this stuff goes by on a conveyor belt and people are snatching the items that they've been told we want to recover because they actually have a resale value and they can be used uh so I think we have more work to do in that area and again I would anticipate cooperating with the county uh because of our partnership with them so thank you mayor protm do we have anybody else sir uh another the question on the two agenda item although I I really appreciate the uh presentations on the community area plan and the Strategic plan um but we had some exciting news last week about the Mobility bill talk about that okay I just I just didn't want to overlook that that's probably one of the most important things we're going to do this year exactly uh so since our last meeting and in fact on Monday I believe it was last week a bill was filed in the general assembly related to our Mobility plan and it is specifically the legislation that would authorize a sales tax referendum so that we could go to the public um possibly later this year and see whether uh the public is prepared to pay a 1-cent sales tax in order to help us achieve uh the very ambitious goals of ourly plan this is a breakthrough it's a big deal because uh we weren't sure whether we would get the sponsorship and how how that would go as you may know we submitted a draft the MTC members almost unanimously with the exception of one town uh agreed on a draft in order to show the general assembly this is what we want to do and um it was almost unanimous among all the members of the MTC except the one uh there were only I think three dissident votes on this an extraordinary display of unanimity and I think Charlotte deserves credit for having made that possible by buying the redline Corridor uh and removing that obstacle that had prevented progress for some time so as it stands right now the bill that we submitted has been split uh we had created a draft document that had in it basically the sales tax and then the creation of an authority and a governance structure for the authority and uh I think that uh on processing that in the general assembly they decided that the sales tax should be a local bill which is pertains just to us and that the authority should be in a public bill Statewide so those are being handled that way the bill that has been filed is the sales tax bill and it has three very strong sponsors in the Senate which is also noteworthy so Vicky Sawyer who chairs the transportation committee there uh Bill rebon who chairs the rules committee and uh as you may know the rules committee is the place where legislation goes to die if it doesn't have support uh it's a very powerful position and and Bill is a great guy veteran uh and then Dave Craven who is a uh an upand comom in the Senate so they sponsored the bill which sent a message I think to everybody that among other things uh you can assume it has the support of the president poem uh and I've spoken in fact to Senator burer a couple of times he has said publicly uh meinberg county is a key driver of uh growth in North Carolina and investment is essential in order to maintain that which I explained to him several times uh so you know he took that on board and and um and speaker Hall has uh also indicated an understanding of the need uh however the house is a somewhat a less certain out Prospect because they have a lot of new members the speaker is new and uh so we need to proceed kind of a step at a time but the fact that this step has happened as opposed to no action is a big deal so uh thank you Mr chair for reminding me but uh that's something I think we want everybody to be aware of yeah anything else yeah I think it's really important that and I'm very excited too for sure that was uh a big step forward and every opportunity we get to educate and inform the public about this Mobility bill I think is really uh important uh having served up there for 10 years uh the devil's always in the details and the bill currently rests in uh the rules committee uh which generally doesn't become active until the end of the session right U which is problematic in terms of a timeing perspective and is also uh tied to the state budget which by law supposed to be um uh completed by June uh never happens that way um I think the last long session wasn't approved until October and so there's there's some hurdles that we we have to clear um um in in terms of um um legislative process um but certainly having the bill finally introduced uh in the rules committee it's it's it's not a a bad place to be although it's it's a slow process there yeah uh the main sponsor of the bill is the chairman of the rules committee so it will will certainly definitely come out but it's going to come out pretty late uh in the session and um having two bills one local Bill the other the authority um um a public bill um is is interesting it too uh and and then um uh lastly um um um I I think we need to make sure that everyone reads the bill I have um because the devils are in the detail uh and Not only was the bill file but what was not in the bill uh and there um uh quilting Burger um that the bill itself may change which we should all be you know making sure that the change is a change that is is acceptable for for the initial uh and consistent with the initial draft so really really excited that we we got a step forward I I supported 110% um but KN we still have work to do and part of that work Mr chairman uh is again educating the public along the way um um who ultimately will have to find a word on this and uh very good points um the changes that could occur are interesting to me because uh there's the issue of whether what is in the bill now gets modified or whether in the course of kind of gaining the necessary support other things kind of of interest to other members uh might get rolled into it it so we'll be watching that um and your point about the uh Effectiveness so the bill that has been filed doesn't actually become effective even if it passes until a budget is adopted uh and that's particularly important to get back to your other point public information so we're going to be a situation where this bill has been filed not clear exactly when it could pass and then you've still got a delay until the budget adoption when it becomes fully effective meanwhile we need to be engaged in public information starting you know soon now and uh let everybody know what kind of benefits will come from the Mobility plan and I've been emphasizing in my conversations with legislators our Readiness to move forward uh we have our complete streets we have the full uh Charlotte uh roads plan um we executed uh on the blue line both phases on budget and on time so I'm just trying to assure people that if we are able to obtain this uh go ahead from the public that the money will be used productively and that you'll start to see improvements uh soon because that's the case we're going to have to make to the voters uh and if the voters don't want to pay the tax then none of this happens so uh we'll probably have to repeat some of that tonight but uh I think in this committee we should be aware of that there's no AC that's needed by us right now um but if you ever have a conversation with anybody that's involved in this just explain why it's important and uh I I've been carefully taking the position that we are hopeful not getting ahead of the legislators on this and not celebrating too much too soon but compared to not having this action happen this is a big deal so I agree lot lot of hurdles all right um that's our agenda and if nobody else uh on the committee has anything further I will entertain a motion to adjourn to move I'll second that and we're all done thank you thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e [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] la [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he d he he [Music] I [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Studio we are ready to roll good good afternoon everyone and welcome to to the Monday March 3rd 2025 meeting of the jobs and Economic Development Council committee meeting my name is Malcolm Graham I serve as committee chairman I want to take this opportunity to welcome each and every one of you here to our meeting today uh let's get started by acknowledging everyone in the room so let's start by the far left and just introduce yourself and then we'll get started y thank you Hi l Fox Innovation team director Jan Gartner guard house hi good morning Kendra bro office of Workforce Development within the city manager office as well as uh Central pay Community College hybrid Ro of tuition pre payment Jordan Duke offic of Workforce devopment Alex Gordon Economic Development Todd Economic Development Robert alen engaged citizen with Pond Peterson planning department H es Bridge Economic Development you4 Economic Development H City Attorney office Sherry Jones the office of Workforce Development Kathy Willis office of Workforce Development s the office of work forcement development Hall office of Workforce Development Fontella M shco Greg sherbeck shco Daniel Frasier office of Workforce Development Allison Craig assistant city manager the Malcolm Graham chairman charari Committee Member Yolanda Jones planning staff Vania Jones Charlotte business inclusion Sanda Brown Economic Development and those who are visiting with us virtually marjerie Molina Committee Member Dante Anderson mayor protm district one want to thank everyone for being here today we have only one agenda item today but a very important one is our Workforce Development update I will turn it over to our assistant city manager to kind of uh for opening remarks and then we'll get right into our report thank you Mr chair um yes so we have one Mighty but important um agenda item today Danielle Fraser with the city manager's office will be giving us an update on Workforce Development um she was here last month and agreed to come back this month and respond to some of the feedback she heard um give a little bit more details um on the Workforce Development plan and we're hoping um to get some good discussion today and ultimately vote this out of committee um so looking forward to hearing um hearing from Danielle and the team and I'll turn it over to you thank you Allison uh thank you chair Graham and to the committee glad to be here once again to talk about Workforce Development and I also have again with us the shermco team to help tag team uh a portion of the presentation so today's agenda uh you can while I am excited to be the only agenda item today um and and I love the support thank you all for for being here I hope but your crew with you right we got to roll deep um I I appreciate it and and hope to give you a little bit of time um back of your day but not until we we have some great discussion and feel comfortable and confident with the plan that we have put before you and the progress that's been made before I jump into it happy birthday council member T barari know uh you can go to the next slide so just a moment to to level set here and showing the connection of the the Workforce Development plan to your Council priority of course that is connected to Workforce and Business Development our purpose here today Alison is TE us up well for that to review the final draft of our Workforce Development plan and in hopes that uh you will consider making a recommendation to full Council for plan adoption acceptance Etc some of the key takeaways today that we want to review um to remind you that this plan was developed with a lot of input from Council members from Workforce Development Partners as well as experts across our community but not just locally but nationally and and internationally um if we do this well we hope that this plan supports increasing economic and upward Mobility for Charlotte residents while also supporting increased access to Skilled talent for our Charlotte Area employers next slide please we have had some previous engagement with you all um we came to you I believe back in October 2024 when we introduce the high level uh key areas of this Workforce plan you will recall back in January at the end uh of January for the annual strategy meeting we had some Workforce experts from across the country come and speak with you all have some great dialogue which also helped to inspire parts of this plan and then on last month we were here sharing the uh draft review of of the full plan um future Council actions here we are today uh as well as I know there will be a council update uh to full Council on the committee discussion today uh chair Graham I may be uh tag teaming that with you this evening uh and in hopes of we this plan will go before full Council for action on March 24th next slide please so the next couple of slides I'm going to hand it over to shco for them to share more great thanks Danielle uh good afternoon pleasure to be here with everyone just a few quick updates from our end as you can see we were here exactly one month ago presenting updates and collecting feedback and we'll talk about some of that Insight we gathered from uh this Council committee as well and then since then over the past four weeks have been having at a minimum weekly updates and checkpoints with this Workforce team in the entire department uh to make sure we are appropriately uh incorporating feedback from Council uh as well as other key aspects of their work uh loud uh but just a few key things we heard last month that want to make sure and remind you we're still top of mind for us as we are working through everything um a few a few points to call out you know this plan really focuses on Industries in demand to make sure we're not only just training individuals but they have real jobs ready to be placed in working soon thereafter uh we know a lot of great works already happening in the corridors and don't want also continues to be a lot of overlap between what's happening in the corridors and connection to this plan so I wanted to call that out um and then same thing with CMS partnership and apprenticeships uh this plan certainly takes to account all the great work the office has done regarding the education to Employment Program um and see some strong overlaps and future growth possibilities with uh that particular initiative aligned to this plan as well Greg um and so again I know I've thanked you all a number of times but Council thank you so much for your engagement your support and your feedback along this journey it has has really been instrumental in uh shaping this plan and I also hope that you'll see evidence of that as we start to move forward and and put some action to strategies uh once the plan is approved uh but before we went we jumped right into the plan just wanted to share some things that we feel have have been uh significant since uh my joining team Charlotte in the midst of our Workforce Development planning which of course you know has started uh like almost a year ago with shco um we have done a number of things so we deployed over $4.5 million into the community of arpa Workforce Development funding that you all approved some time ago we established the office of Workforce Development I have shared with you what our office uh overseas and is responsible for which is supporting our 8,500 city employees as well as our external uh resident talent in our community uh Greg just mentioned uh our launched our education to Employment Program which is our partnership with CMS to help employ uh newly graduating high school students into entry level roles within the city um we co-created uh the first Workforce Development Summit in partnership with the CC Workforce Development workg Group Charlotte works the county and in central pedmont this was a uh Summit that happened last May that brought together uh the Workforce Development ecosystem so industry Partners government um Workforce Development Partners education and training programs to discuss the workforce challenges and issues that we have in our community and to discuss Solutions and how we can address those and so this this uh event and and councilwoman Molina I know she's on the line she came and and shared a few words at this event and attended uh some of it and it was a huge success and this will now be an annual thing uh and it will happen again in September so I'll share more information with you uh as details unfold lastly you all know we launched our opportunity hubs um through the corridors to support Workforce Development and small business efforts and we uh Hope to support more resources in our opportunity hubs as again this plan unfolds next slide so today is a final review of our Workforce Development plan uh and as a reminder our vision and our mission our vision is to cultivate a vibrant diverse and skilled Workforce system that enables residents to obtain sustainable employment and businesses to access skilled Talent our mission to Champion Innovative evidence-based Workforce initiatives and solutions that meet the dynamic needs of our talent and our business and our employees so we I'm going to walk you through again um the key Focus areas and strategies and there's more that we've added to this um but before we do I I I feel like when we left here last last month I was encouraged and felt that uh Council was Council committee was really aligned around the key Focus areas the goals uh and the strategies and so I'm going to walk us through these again uh but we're also going to add uh We've added some action steps as we leave here or we as as this plan is again fingers crossed approve what we feel we can accomplish within the next 3 to 6 months to get this plan uh off the ground and so so you'll see our key Focus areas once again we have career pathway access and awareness we have skill development and credential attainment and job placement and career advancement and you will see uh that it's underg guarded by be it being data driven and employer informed and what that means is every single one of these pillars if you will or Focus areas um will be driven by what the data says around the industries what the data says around our talent so that as we are looking at implementation we're honing in on those specific areas that we feel we can make the biggest impact with our resources and then also employer informed mean it's it's validated by our local businesses and our employers of what they're saying that they uh are in need of so there's a lot of business engagement Insight uh and and collaboration sprinkled throughout this plan I think that Mr drg said something last month about where is the employer engagement in this and it's really all throughout in the plan as well as as we see implementation on fold thanks okay so um I'm going to go through this nothing on this slide has changed this was our goal number one um of our our strategies for goal number one and so I'll just walk through these relatively quickly and then jump into what we believe are some great action steps leaving um or that that can begin um within the next 3 to six months to move some of these strategies forward so our strategy 1.1 promote messaging of career Pathways within key Industries 1.2 grow career pathway awareness through career exploration work-based learning opportunities 1.3 expand access to Workforce Development Services by increasing Community career Navigator support across um our corridors and Community again we have our key metrics here this is not an exhaustive list but definitely uh metrics that we are thinking about can measure success when we think about these three strategies next slide so here's what's new um so we had um some action steps that we feel we can move uh really atively quickly um as as this plan unfolds and will be launched and so these action steps are aligned with strategies on the previous slide didn't put all of this on one slide because we didn't uh want to have too many words but so you might have to flip back and forth but um action steps in the first 3 to six months for goal number one is to leverage and promote existing tools and websites that assist with career resources and job navigation for example tools like civvi forms ncworks go wpcw workk uh Etc um action 1.3 is to deploy career Navigators within the corridors of opportunity and Community to increase access to Career Development Services education and training programs and employment opportunities if you look at 1.1 and 1.3 this is is kind of a dual approach here we wanted to make sure that we um are leveraging what existing virtual resources are out there and make those a little bit more prominent and known to community and res while 1.3 is making sure that we have boots on the ground within respective communities and neighborhoods like the corridors to ensure that there is accessible resources and a person and a body there to help them navigate the ecosystem lastly uh 1.3 action is to finalize the mapping of community Workforce Services and training providers uh to make this information and resources available to the community and so this is also the work that shco has been helping us to do in uh mapping the assets around the services around the training providers that we have so that we can have a compiled list if you will to share with Community as well as our Navigators and partners that are assisting uh our our residents in navigating our ecosystem next slide so our next goal is um skill development and credential attainment again this slide has not changed um our strategies around this goal will support skill-based training and Industry recognized credential programs that lead to in demand career paths for unemployed individuals 2.2 so invest in skill growth opportunities for underemployed talent through to targeted IND education and specialized training programs again I think I said this last month this is to ensure that we are focusing on both our unemployed uh Talent as well as our underemployed talent and so we wanted to make sure that we had some strategic approaches around both of those populations uh and 2.3 is to connect more untapped and unders skilled talent to education and training programs again our key metrics and next slide please so some actions around uh this particular goal that we see we can take within the next uh 3 to six months there're quite a few here but a lot of this is is around really validating the data we have access to a lot of Labor Market data that says where the growth industries are where they're going and we just want to make sure that we're validating that that we that's still valid validating that with businesses to ensure that this is what's really going on in our local market um reviewing the Workforce Development ecosystem strengths and our assets that we have in our community around skill development and training programs and again that's a part of what um sherco is is doing and there's a typo there our apologies that should be 2.1 and 2.2 on that second bullet tap Talent or a combination of these but as we're thinking through where is our best next steps when we think about implementation now and down the road we want to hone in on what are those specific Industries we know we have six to seven Industries in demand in our in our region um and we have a lot of talent that that need some support so I think we need to figure out where do we really want to hone in especially sooner than later uh as as our plan unfolds um and then identifying opportunities for Innovative uh programming to Pilot and so as we do all this inventory and this review are there missing pieces in our community where we can be more creative and we can innovate and and pilot a program as well as last one is to outline and release new funding opportunities for new Andor existing Workforce Development programs that have done well uh that we have funded uh previously or that we know are are in our community and so we kind of ordered this in the structure of how it would chronologically go you'll see some of the action items are are not totally aligned in the chronological order of our strategies but we've aligned this in in how we think we can tackle this over the next three to six months next slide please all right so our job placement this is our last uh goal job placement and career advancement so again I'll walk through this nothing has changed on this slide um 3.1 is to expand earn and learn opportunities such as on the job training and registered apprenticeships uh 3.2 is to expand our education to employment ment program again shared that and and to employ high school graduates but then also we want to expand that to um our our newly college graduates uh as well as being a model and being an innovator to bring on other businesses that will um join us in this effort and this movement of making entry-level roles available to um these students and then lastly is work with educational and Community Partners to connect uh job ready talent to employment opportunities next slide please and here's what's new um our actions that uh again we we think we can move forward uh in the short term and that's um 3.1 identify interested employers to support expansion of apprenticeships and on the- job training opportunities uh 3.2 again expand education to employment and three to build industry specific Talent pipeline teams comprised of training providers Workforce and Community Partners to meet uh our employers needs needs as well as filling talent and employers needs and filling uh available job opportunities and what this one is is essentially saying is is how as we as a city can be more of a connector and conduit for um helping talent to access uh jobs and then H having uh helping employers access Talent whether that comes through the funded programs that we will be funding directly whether that is through supporting our mwsb as well as uh the Investments that we make from an economic development standpoint and and making sure that we play a stronger role in connecting business to our ecosystem and vice versa um I'll stay stay right here Greg so this wraps up our our action items for these three goals again these are the things that we think we can move relatively quickly over the next 3 to six months this is not an exhaustive uh list that we have here and as with any plan strategies as well as uh well strategies will be implemented at varying times based on feasibility priority uh and as well as our ecosystem strengths um and so this this plan will consist of as you will see and as it spilt out a combination of uh projects programs and initiatives that we will either Implement directly uh support or fund next slide so as we begin our implementation efforts um in the coming months we're keeping a lot of other things in mind and there's a lot of great um efforts and that are happening right now and a lot of them are here in this room of other um departments or programs or initiatives and so this slide we really just want you to know and I think I've said this before but we look at Workforce Development and if you're looking at it on this visual as kind of a hub and spoke it is threaded throughout all of these different efforts and initiatives and when we think about these plans um and strategies and initiatives whether it's the mobility um and congratulations on the mobility uh bill that was introduced last week it we know that that's going to be if that 1 cent sales tax is passed uh a historical investment into our community and what that will bring for the job need the talent need and the skill uh need that we can help support uh capap I think they presented in the in the meeting prior to this one um they are in the process of revising uh and and updating their plan Workforce Development is threaded throughout their plan and as course CBI housing small business so want you all to know that we're thinking um collaboratively and how all of our efforts do align as we are uh thinking through what implementation of our plan uh looks like and so wanted to just also remind you all that um our office of Workforce Development again in the midst of all of this Workforce Development planning we have ongoing um focus areas that we're supporting again the internal work that we're supporting our our 8,500 city employees through these programs that I've mentioned to you in the past uh we are also doing ongoing monitoring managing and reporting of our performance outcomes on existing programs that we are currently funding uh as well as past programs that we have funded and you will uh will take a little bit of a deeper dive into some of that data that you have in your appendix uh as well as we are we're going to continue uh you know researching Workforce Development best practices to ensure we know what's great out there and and what we could potentially um duplicate or replicate here in in our city or take a portion of um to ensure that we are uh supporting our talent and our businesses in in the best uh way that we can and so I'm going to pause right here well here are our next steps uh certainly to incorporate any thoughts and feedback that you have on any of this uh and Next Step will be again the conversation with tonight um to update full Council on this plan and prep for a potential March 24th decision on the plan and then ultimately that next step will be to move uh the plan forward and begin to execute on the strategies so I'll I'll pause right there um and here any questions Mr fras I want to thank you for for your presentation and and the Sher cor team for for being a part of that and helping us get to where I think is a very significant moment for the committee just for the committee's members knowledge our goal is to uh to actually vote this out the committee today uh to full Council for adoption and so there will be a um I will call for a vote to adopt this that we move it to full Council for their consideration uh I I meant to mention this also want to thank Mr Gardner for being here today for sure many of you saw him at our last council meeting at our public hearing uh and he came and spoke in reference to guard house so I want to thank you for coming I told him to come and U see what we're doing and kick the tires a little bit so thank you as well as all the other partners uh that we work with in the community uh in reference to Workforce Development it's uh obviously our goal and objective is to be a a leader and a trend center for the community and so I want to thank Danielle for for laying out a a strategic plan for us for our consideration and so I will pause in opening up for questions from the committee members those who are visiting with us virtually as well council member Malo mayor proam uh as well as um Mr barari and Mr Drake so the floor is open for questions this is like our first meeting I have a question sure so um thank you um I look at this it's a great program I'm excited about it uh I think you know this has been important for me since before you came here uh and um but I think for for the public facing description of this uh it's a little bit like the conversation we had in my committee this morning there's a lot of inside work that goes into developing a plan and then there is the observable impact or the the way it affects people like do we have requirements that we impose are we imposing requirements on City Contracting related to this plan um so I'm interested in clarifying what we hope to accomplish uh there's reference to metrics but can we establish some sort of framework for saying this is what we set out to do and we did it I can tell you from the appendix here uh this is good stuff uh the numbers are small right the community is 900 and something thousand people so uh what is the potential for scale how big difference do we hope to make uh how many lives do we hope to influence I me we count our affordable units for example and we measure um how many of those we create but uh and I noticed also uh in this appendix there is reference to retention um this is something that we looked at and when I was on the Goodwill board I think communities and schools you know you you uh offer somebody an opportunity or you train them or you do whichever thing we do and then what about 3 six months a year later uh so did the thing you did stick and did it really take hold they got a credential as a Tyler they're still working as a Tyler and and that too is important because uh creating a reliable tiling opportunity is not just a function of teaching people about grout it means that they have to kind of uh mature into a reliable Workforce resource and I don't need to lecture you about this but I I I'm just saying uh there's a lot that goes around that so if you take some of the people that we really want to help people who might have been in the system uh or who face barriers did you really do enough in order to get them started uh or did you get them up to a certain place and then you you checked off okay we finished and and then where are they later on so uh I hope we can uh we can create that kind of uh because at the end of the day a lot of people are they're not going to absorb all of this detail you're going to have to have a 30- second way of saying we did we we implemented our plan and this is what happened or we're going to implement our plan and that's this is what it means for you so uh I would just suggest that um the other question I have of course being a numbers guy is uh Financial so I think we allocated $10 million to Workforce Development was all of that from arpa funds uh it was it was the 9.1 and that's part of what some of these programs are representing we did not we were not able toy all of those funds and so some of those allif go away to other efforts that um were priority at the time but with was that Ara funding or was that uh a budget line item it was it was it was arpa funding the 9.1 million it was what it was arpa so that's my other question then uh we're in our budget process right now and I've wondered the whole time what's our steady state going to be in the area of Workforce Development uh and look forward to getting input from you as we start to talk about our priorities I believe there needs to be kind of like a permanent line item uh for the continuing effort and then we need to think about how much that should be like uh we can sustain our staff efforts and are internal on a certain amount but then do we actually want to seed programs and have a city ability to invest in programs uh I believe we should because uh as I've said so often I think these Investments can pay a much greater return than say our housing subsidies uh and um so I want to make sure we get the maximum benefit from that but it take input from you to understand what the potential is or the need is thank you and uh yeah that's it that's what I I have I think it's uh again very important work we're doing more in this area now than we did in my 10 years here H and I'm very grateful for that thank you Mr mcar yeah thank you I agree with everything uh councilman drgs just said um I just think putting a fine point on it what's missing here for the next step I think think is we call this a plan but it's more like a you know strategic Direction setting um uh document and um I don't think it's having done a lot of this work myself in the past I don't think it's the right ask is necessarily let's break out the super granular details I think that's something you're going to work through in alignment to that but what what we need to be able to play our governance role over this is at at at the highest level something as simple as a heat map kind of report that says here's what we're going to do and while because again like as someone who's gone through this like there's a million different variations in each one of these verticals how you focus on K through2 even within that is different between high school and Below how you focus on early people who have just graduated um high school and are not in the workforce or uh college is other so there's so many granular details my recommendation would be to pick a couple and focus in on those really hard and own those but um but I don't think it probably would help anyone for the entire Council to be in the weeds of that entire plan I do though think you saying here's the 12 or so measurements over the next three years that we're going to be tracking to Year over-ear and that enables us to do two things one give you strategic feedback that says is this needle moving enough scale that that that and all my experience I've learned two things with these kind of programs one is that you have to be industry driven at a level where it's relevant the outcomes are relevant and two it has to be done at a scale that moves the needle otherwise you know there are some people that perhaps really like changing a couple dozens people dozens of people's lives but at the end of the day we're set up to do something bigger than that so I think both of those are important so the first thing it enables us to do is look at it and say does it meet the scale level that we believe and we don't have to go back to you and say okay let's change these 17 things we have to say you go back and reconfigure your deeper level plans that can you know get that and make that occur and when you look at the scale and size of Charlotte uh you know across all of North Carolina there's probably roughly a 100,000 seniors in high school that graduate every year so you you can start to extrapolate what a needle moving area each one of the buckets is just by looking at the macro data and then one will w w will give that the stamp of approval and say yeah okay this seems needle moving and strategic enough and then two it enables us to not have to get something fresh from you as you look look back on your last year and present it to us to say hey this is why we think we did a great job we're measuring towards that report card the whole time and then in in doing so you're pushing your teams and then the other groups around town towards their pieces that make those measurable results occur so I think that would I I would think I'm happy to roll this out of committee today if that's the will of the committee I I would really recommend when this comes to the broader Council you bring with it a dashboard a measurement dashboard for our governance Miss melino how you doing are you have any questions uh thank you Mr chairman I just um I'm listening and I think that's some great input um I did hear Danielle's comment and I was very encouraged um by the exercise last year and some of the stakeholders that were in the room I do real realiz that directionally this is a large undertaking but I am extremely excited like all of you about us um taking initiative with regards to Workforce Development and what it means for our residents um I think it would be pointed and and Danielle I do think that it will make your life easier um to for us to really consider uh some of those additional suggestions so for an example um because it is such a large undertaking right for us to kind of observe maybe some strategic areas that we can focus on um because a lot of the deliverables that we contend with um they're pretty large in scope and so there's hard it's it's really hard to determine whether we've been successful because we really haven't you know oriented all of our uh initiatives around a particular outcome and we have so many different examples uh across committees where that's um that's something that we contend with often so um I think for you that suggestion actually makes your life a lot better in that you know understanding the scope of what we need to deal with you have a unique opportunity now to say based on what the council is asking me for um here is where I think we can best align our resources as far as uh what we'd like to drive for this particular time frame and and drive these particular areas and here are some of the um resources from a city and and partner perspective that we'd like to deploy in order to um affect those outcomes so um like I said I'm encouraged I love the conversation around Workforce Development nothing has changed my life more than the opportunity to work and feed my family and just be able to command my own destiny and I feel like every human being that we can you know um prepare with those tools we give them the same opportunity so um with that that's all I have uh Mr chairman and thank you for allowing me the opportunity thank you ma'am mayor protown welcome thank you Mr chair um I really uh Danielle really good uh work here I'm excited about the the path forward I do Echo some of the comments that Mr Driggs mentioned about the individual resident and the impact for them um but I I think this is a really really important work and it's work uh we were having a conversation I think a couple couple days ago with Mr barari and and Miss Ashira and we were talking about the fact that all of these things all of these major pillars that we're working on it has to work in tandem we can't just focus on one can't just focus on housing can't just focus on transportation we have to focus on all of them including Workforce and I think this is one of the one of the I would say one of the final pieces that I'm I'm happy to see uh materialize and take shape and mature the way that it it it appears to be doing under your leadership so thank you that's all I have Mr chair thank you uh Madame mayor proam um and and lastly I'll make a couple of comments um one again I I think the work is exceptional uh but I think um my colleagues have really kind of um said took all my questions one that I believe that we have to fly the plane at 30,000 ft uh and allow you and staff to get in the weeds and the details of a lot of this right A lot of my questions are weed uh weed questions right which is beyond I think my my responsibility it's your responsibility right to kind of figure it out uh I do believe what gets measured gets done and so I think measurements as Mr bukari has talked about I think it's extremely important um I do believe that it should be uh a an ongoing and recurring budget item that we invest in that we can't do it all ourselves right and so there I got a call from a wide variety of Community Partners that wants to partner with the city in in some shape form or fashion uh in terms to support what we're trying to do when it's here today right and so how do we work with others in the community to achieve um Community goals and objectives so that when we have this um uh Workforce Development Sumit in September uh it could be we I we the community we the city of Charlotte we the guardian house we this Urban lead all of us working collectively together uh trying to um solve a a problem and I think um the mayor Pro tell Mr U Mr Dre is right um I need a job right and so I I get all that um um for sure as a policy maker the man on the street is I need a job where do I go who can help me and so I I I really want to to make sure that we're taking advantage of the opportunities hubs again that's weed work right um that they are working with you um hand and glove in terms of can actually walk off the street uh and knock on somebody's door and say hey I I I want a job how who can help me I don't have a computer I don't know how to get on a computer right but I know I need to feed my family so we're can I go to get help in any part of these cities that we have these quarters of opportunities I think that's it's extremely important um that the opportunity helps can really be a part of of that um and then um yeah working with outside organization I think we're all saying the same things right that I think you're certainly well on the right direction uh we want to be up here but we certainly want to know what's happening down here um one thing I I also put is high impact projects like um the Pearl right that's going to be a longstanding project in this community that's that's going to provide a wealth of opportunity for for workers without a college degree and certificate programs and so so making sure that those high impact projects that the city is involved in like the Pearl or the construction that we're going to do at Bank of America Stadium and those things that you know that are priorities for the city uh that we said we want Workforce Development opportunities that we're measuring and and there is a system in place that guide people towards those opportunities right again weed work um that I I'll leave alone but I think that's my thinking in terms of answering that question of that man or woman on the street that clearly are allowing me and the mayor protim and marjerie and Ed and Bari to kind of do the policy planning work to make sure that that's done uh but at the end of the day I need a job right where where can I go who can help me and uh and whether it's Guardian house or whether it's Urban lead or whether it's the city of Charlotte where can I go to get the type of support I need to support myself and my family and so um I think this is a very good step uh I think if you take the uh the uh comments from the council members I think it'll be even a better presentation uh when it comes for a final vote for Council uh and uh if there's no any comments Mr DRS um Mr chair I I wanted to say I don't see anything in here that I object to and therefore like Mr barari I'm happy to support that we bring It Forward I would like to make a motion that the committee uh approved it recommended to the full council with the recommendation that uh more work on a couple of these points take place right and include that in the committee's uh vote so that we are clear and I I would want to share uh Mr chair with our colleagues that we approved this uh and that we asked for a few other things or recommended a few other things okay I I um there's been a motion made that's been properly second uh any comments on the motion no comments No Hands raised all those in favor say I I all those all those opposed okay unanimous unan another step forward thank you very much appreciate it and all of your comments taken in and and thank you great feedback and we'll incorporate those um we we had a couple of questions that we we wanted to engage you all with I think some of them you even answered um do we still have a couple that were unanswered that we wanted to ask if if chair we can um I know we've got a little bit of time um or do we think we're good to I think we're good I think you've actually answered yeah I think you've actually answer the question we read your mind you you you did you did so um you have an appendix of data that I did share with you all I hope that you all were able to review that happy to answer any questions if you wanted me to walk through any of that with you you all um I I think just some general highle things to mention here these programs in the appendix do uh they are programs that we are that are currently active most of them through that 9.1 well the 4.5 million or so dollars that has been deployed in the community um so some of these outcomes you may see oh this looks low as it relates to retention or others but they are still actively either in training or getting employment or on their way to uh full retention of employment up to a year so I didn't know chair if you wanted me to go through these um and dig in the data or if you were okay but I think just to let you know too dashboard yes heard it loud and clear that is why we have Jordan Duke sitting behind me probably on his computer right now who he's been evaluating how we collect data and then how we report it and ultimately Utopia would be you have an interactive dashboard that you can access at any time to see the impact of your Investments I I Mr D so uh since you mentioned it uh in this appendix you have for example uh Workforce Development funded program arpa charet works and there's an investment of $1.3 million uh the participation is$ 34 with a goal of 170 but uh here is one indication of results that seems to suggest that the actual earnings Improvement was about 5% so when you look at that is that okay as far as you're concerned is that what we hope to accomplish because that seems like a lot of money for that smaller number of people and for that small change in earnings right uh so a couple things to clarify here too again 34 individuals have been enrolled in the program uh of that that average earnings that is being um recognized it is the 13 individuals that have gone into employment uh and those actual individual are through our on the job training program which supports our uh small actually all of the those 13 employers are registered with CBI they are mwsb employers and so it's a training program where we subsidize a portion of the salaries for those new employees that are um working work now full-time employees with those organizations to help them offset some of that that liability while they're in that training period and so that's where that is coming from it's a smaller denominator um 5% I think it depends on where you start and where you end up uh when we look at some of these wages we see that these particular wages are still under what would be um considered livable wages but we when we wrote this grant two years ago in 2018 or 2023 actually the livable wage has increased significantly since what we put into the grant which then was 1820 now it's at 26 and so point point taken Mr dggs we are constantly working with with our providers and with our employers to identify um again Industries and jobs that are livable wage employment so to your question is 5% in this case we would like to see that that higher that that wage number higher absolutely so I one uh I just offered that as an example I think this is the nitty-gritty right here right we're putting in this much money we have this many participants we're seeing these results uh We've got retention numbers so uh in my old Finance job we used to write we look at financial statements and then we write a discussion like Management's discussion so uh it would be helpful if you discussed acknowledging that on its face somebody could Wonder right I'm spending $88,000 or whatever it is per participant and Etc and just uh put some color around this and understand that for many people this is more important than most of that this is critical this is what what really tells us wow it's working or uh or at least it tells us I am taking responsibility for the use of this money right thank you thank you Mr B yeah I would just to piggy back on that say this is a great example of of at a macro level what you'd bring us that would be broken down into what you're directly going to do versus what partner organizations are going to do and what I can tell you is when you look at the the road to higher item you know the goal was 152 36 participated so I probably would have balked at 152 being scalable enough for you know 1.4 million dollar and then 36 actually participate which breaks down to like a cost of 40,000 per person I mean that's a college tuition right so and then 10 ended up being employed and retained over that period so I think this is the lack of accountability this Council has had in our governance model over these kind of things in the past where it was more about awarding the dollar amount and saying that versus the outcome that came through there so there's a lot of similar kind of views as we look um through through the the rest of those but to me that's that's exactly what I want to be able to hold us accountable to and I'm sure the rest of this Council does over this next phase of of the work yep thank you thank you for that and if I if I could respond so and and forgive me that for not adding all of that color so these these if you see where Program start dates they started last May these programs actually run six-month cohorts and so a portion of when this program started just in for example with road to hire there were 11 participants that we supported in funding from the F first core first first core Hort which ended in the summer of last year and so this new cohort has started in September so you're and this grant goes into April of 2026 and so they're they're currently enrolled and they're in the process we're just sharing with you where these numbers are but they're all on track to meet their goals and what they've stated in the contract but happy to to share some more of that statement so you really understand where these programs are in the snapshot of time yeah and I believe we've been funding that program for four or five years now right I mean that so that there's more data historically of all so I don't think this is something we need to go back and Doge the whole thing from the beginning but if somebody's coming for a for a new ask of dollars that has a track record with us I would expect to see all the data and everything that we've done broken down to that level of success and meeting measurements and things like that yes and just a clarification Mr chair so what you're saying is that you are expecting to get to 52170 Etc uh o over the life of these grants and within those amounts that's correct right and it's just it's an ongoing rolling process okay okay um just real quick on the last page for the last three years of that again road to higher in specific because that was the example we were on there's outcomes for that program as well and and again i' I was happy to walk through all of this with you and answer any questions but I also didn't know if you wanted to dig is that solely our funding that has driven that yes so all those results are only from our funding not other funding that has come into the organization correct this was I asked for our sliver and our portion of what we funded over that threeyear period so the the second thing we would want to see on that is obviously and hopefully we're not the only funding mechanism correct for these groups right so I'd want to see then show us all the funding amounts that have come in from different sources CU obviously public private Partnerships is what we want to um uh incentivize and then the numbers aligned to our spend versus others got it and for this particular one I do know that I think the county partnered with the city and in uh funding this program over the last three years as well so but there's other and happy to to share that it's probably not a a separate compartment right I mean the the the nonprofit has its activ and it works out a cost per participant and then it divides that into the amount of money they got from us and that's how they can impute right they they don't operate a standalone program with our money that's different from everything else they're doing correct okay um Mr chairman if I may uh this is uh councilwoman Molina um so there is an additional component to consider here and I think we discussed this at a prior meeting there's some some things that would lend themselves to being qualitative so for an example it's like what I spoke about before because we have all these varying degrees of human beings that need assistance right and so there are like Steps so to speak and I know that there's a quantitative metric in that you know and you guys are alluding to it the amount of people that we let's say uh intend to help and train and then there's this quantitative piece that says we've spent x amount of dollars to get them trained right um but but is that a win or is that not right and then the next thing becomes you know if they get that training then would they get hired because if they don't get hired then have we then been unsuccessful or how do we measure that in other words in my opinion each human being is some what of a of an outcome Baseline and I think council member um uh someone alluded to that I think it was uh I don't remember which one of you guys I'm looking at the screen uh but I remember that you alluded to the fact that there are just a a a very like varying degrees of need right so it I guess success being measured is it only quantitative is is what I'm asking out loud so that we and I'm not giving permission for us to not lean into the financial portion of this but this is understanding that access and outcome they're they're not the same thing and having been and I'm sure many of us have been in varying degrees of need I can I can recall times where training didn't necessarily mean uh employment immediately but it meant a skill set that I owned that maybe added to something that would become employment at some or employment at some point um so I I guess I ask that understanding that there I I don't know how we're going to put all that together and again this is a scope question because we have such a large scope um the person walking in who's saying I need help and they don't have a computer is much different than the human being that's been laid off and they have you know transferable skill sets where maybe just a trade or or a training can put them right back into a living wage situation is is what I'm saying very good point I I concur with that wholeheartedly so again the 30,000 ft level and then the wage right and that's where where it gets really um convoluted is in the wage right because you got to take out so many different aspects of where people are right you got to help people where they are right uh and people are at different place on on the Spectrum so um that's why we got you and your lovely team here right because you guys going to help us figure it out uh and so uh one last request then I'll J the meeting um um Madam manager I would love to have the opportunity to kind of Tour all the six um quarters of opportunities programs um just to kind of see what they're doing and checking in with them and and making sure they're ready to receive the type of um um planning and programming that I think may be coming their way right so just want to do a check in sure absolutely okay uh hearts and souls Al line can I get second we're done thank you thank you thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that h [Music] e [Music] e he he I [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e welcome everyone by well first let me say welcome and I will start with introduction I'm dim ajmera committee chair so let's start with introduction of committee members and then of staff and we'll go around the room Lana mfo Committee Member tari Vice chair any Harris strategy and budget J strategy budget Cherry Smith strategy and budget Mike Davis storm water services Angela Charles director of Charlotte water Sean Coffman deputy director Charlotte water Allen assistant city manager Sean Heath assistant city manager Madame CFO C Steven CER Charlotte business inclusion Thomas power attorney's office Council Charlotte store J Thompson storm water services Water Services Joseph Locker Charlotte water David Zer Charlotte water China Kimbell Charlotte water Carolyn Ross Charlotte water do we have anybody Rachel Rachel Stark smart cities program manager and on the mobility helping the mobility work hi n Peterson planning NAA Matthew Charlotte business inclusion Ashley price Department of General Services Phil rer with General Services Carl Wilson Charlotte water Sheila Anderson General Services Matt hassid City Finance all right thank you all do we have anyone joining us online maray no all right so for today's meeting of the committee we are planning to cover two topics as you see here here on the on the slide we have water and strong water budget outlooks so no wonder we see the whole team here from Charlotte water and strong water and then second it's our continuing topic of our discussion on mwsb participation in capital projects so with that let's hear from Charlotte water Miss Charles thank you uh chairman as mayor Vice chair bakari council member uh Mayfield and and uh other members who may be listening listening in of the committee uh first of all we thank you for your support uh for charid water not not just today but over the years and uh so we're going to give you a budget Outlook of both Enterprise funds uh we're going to begin with a video that is going to outline our accomplishments over this past year then we'll pop over to Mike Davis who will give an update on the storm water fund and then I will end with the water and wastewater fund so if we could have it cued up I heard you had to switch screens [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] w [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] thank you thank you I appreciate that would you approve the budget thank you I appreciate that um we will upload uh that video we're going to share it with our employees tomorrow we wanted you all to see it because we did have a great year we are a great organization we're not a perfect organization but if you go around to other Wastewater uh water and storm water utilities Across the Nation you will get a sense of how great the team is here in Charlotte and so we're just going to reinforce that some if we can flop back thank you oh you guys are ahead of me back to the presentation one water is Water waste water and storm water all working together in a line to serve our community and so there are several things we' like to to highlight I'll just do a couple here Hidden Valley is a great example of water Wastewater and storm water all working together to serve the community and to work on infrastructure structure also this past year we had 38 active storm water projects requiring coordination between water and wastewater and so that's one of the objectives of of working under a one water philosophy in our community one water is spreading through the the water industry like you would not uh believe I was invited to California to speak to some Executives last week about one water and how it works and Charlotte and so this is how we are leveraging uh infrastructure in our communities just so that we can serve better and of course we are still an awardwinning uh utility in terms of exceptional uh service I'll just highlight a couple uh of these of course both F funds have maintained uh their AAA uh status uh storm water has accommodated a 52% uh increase in PL review uh North Carolina Mutual Aid we sent folks uh to Asheville where you all had uh the The Retreat to help get that Community uh water services and essential uh services and we've uh permitted 384 Water and Wastewater infrastructure plans for the region that we serve uh uh CBI business inclusion we know that that is has been a uh topic of note we just wanted to mention that we lead the city in this effort and in fy4 one water um spent 74 million uh dollars accounting for 45% of the overall a city spin uh what we will be doing our next move is to uh we have our folks since we have a a 100 counties now and we have the North Carolina Hub database we actually have our internal CBI folks getting into that database and looking at the codes and and we are going to contact UM different uh companies who provide services maybe in another community that we could possibly uh use here but I am sharing this with you just to let you know that one water understands that this is a strategic uh priority and that we're we're working towards it and we intend to get better and better um just let me make sure that I acknowledge we have mayor who has joined our meeting virtually as well council member Anderson and council member Brown so welcome everyone thank you so much and and hello okay performance snapshot uh just a couple of these we do have many many metrics we we track a a lot in the uh onewater uh organization um uh our main breaks uh and and I've heard well it seems like we're having more breaks well it was cold we had a cold snap but the target is less than 15 per 100 miles and we are at 11.56 that is a safe water Target which means that that's a target for utilities Across the Nation not just something that we developed here and so we are trending in the right way there sewer overflows we are still working um on those that is a target that um we are driving internally we want to be less than 3.2 we're sitting at about 3 uh five right now but we're still hoping that we will uh get there um let me pick a storm water average number of of commercial storm water reviews uh to approve we got 2.5 reviews or less for approval storm water is sitting at 2.37 the whole point here is that we have performance Target targets and goals for our folks who come in every day that we try to meet um to have an efficient uh operation corridors of opportunity this number keeps climbing the first year we had million invested in quars of opportunity now we're up to 568 million that's one water investment and a strategic priority of this Council and community and then we're going to pop over to Mike all right thank you thank you Mike before we go over strong water yes budget uh I just want to see if there are any questions on Charlotte water I do have a couple of questions if well yeah so I just did a one water after Mike I'm going to come up and do water and then we can talk about the p and the other you know I I wanted to go over slide number six no I'm going to wait on past because I know I I did did ask you about that over the weekend so I'm going to give you an opportunity to explain that all righty okay so you have one here so this target the target column that we have is that um is that the industry standards or this is just internal goals or both it depends on the target so like the water main brakes per 100 miles that is partnership for safe water that is a an industrywide standard for utilities that is part part of that of what we call Safe waterer partnership so that one's driven externally okay um the uh sanitary sewer overflows per 100 miles that one is is is driven internally because we want to move those down as close to zero as we can which is hard for a community out size so it really depends on the extra yes yes ma'am so in terms of the sanitary sewer overflows obviously the target is 3.2 we are at 3.5 uh so in this presentation are we going to see any Investments that specifically uh targets that performance measures absolutely so when I when I talk about the capital program you will see and I'll name you know I'll give you a number there where we've got investment into rehab and and replacement now the other thing about that though is there's a part of that we don't control because overflows the the number number one cause for overflows is grease in in the drain so we have you know we have all kinds of stuff entering our Wastewater collection system so that's part of it that we don't control and that's why we do so much in education just trying to have the public help us reduce um reduce those overflows okay so some of it's under our control some of it's not we the reer of all of it and we okay great question thank you okay so um we'll spend the next 15 slides talking about storm water um Miss Mayfield you had noted um we travel heavy and wondering who's doing the work this is a picture of uh the 250 or so folks who do storm water work every day committed to this Mission um I did want to Echo something Miss Charles said a moment ago we can't do any of this work without Council support and we have enjoyed Council support um for many years now that's helped us position uh the utility in a good place so the goal here over these next few slides is really just to hopefully give you a feeling for what's going on um as we think about a budget proposal so we've unpacked that mission you just saw on the last page um probably the easiest way to understand it is to put it into two buckets generally what we're doing in storm water services is thinking about the environment in terms of protecting surface water quality and then thinking about drainage or flood mitigation as we install drainage infrastructure and maintain that infrastructure around the city so everything that follows from here is generally trying to accomplish those two things um I'll spend a few more minutes on this slide um sometimes city council rightfully takes up the question of kind of what's the condition of our infrastructure across different programs and how are we doing as far as um sort of fulfilling what our plan is for that infrastructure and something I think is interesting about storm water is the plan is not something we've come up with the plan is something nature created before people ever lived here and it looks like this it's 18 different Weds made up of creeks that all either drain to the Kataba River or on the other side of that black line to the east drains towards Rocky River so the only thing we're ever doing in terms of infrastructure investment is we're evolving these uh creeks and streams into piped infrastructure under the ground that happens through private development and it happens when we build new streets and then storm water services seeks to try to maintain that public system and so where that's left us today is a network that we maintain that's about 1,400 Mi of system uh that we uh have to take care of and then this Slide the point of it is just to try to impart a little bit of sort of awareness of the importance of a drainage system sort of make it local to home so Charlotte uh receives an average of 43 inches of rain per year and as I've talked to folks what I've learned is they're surprised when they learn that's more than Seattle gets in a year uh for folks who are familiar with part of the country they're known for getting rain kind of year round the difference here in Charlotte is we tend to get most of that in big summer events you the atmosphere is carrying a lot of moisture it unloads it uh often times all at once and so just as a sense of scale if you took one inch of rain across all of charlet that would fill Bank of America stadia 16 times and so you just imagine tipping that over onto our city and the point is that water has to go somewhere so it goes into infrastructure that looks like that and it empties out into streams that look like that um again it's a 1400 M system and our goal is to try to you know keep it functioning properly so we kind of look briefly in the rear view mirror this is a snapshot of just some of the metrics that um hopefully sort of paint the picture that we're being productive um in in terms of running the utility and so a couple that I'll cherry pick um right now or I guess looking back at the last completed year that included two over 275 projects completed um 9,000 plus private development plans reviewed that's a big deal and I'll talk about it again on a later slide but one of the big ways we get drainage infrastructure is through new private development um and then that 3900 number so uh we're we're that number climbs year after year we're almost a 4,000 times per year that residents reach out to us saying they want us to come out and look at something and we do we go and meet them and talk to them about their issues and try to help them when we can and then that Financial efficiency column the point is as we're doing all that in terms of output we're always stay focused on trying to be good stewards of the funding um and so we did just go through a recent um debt refinancing that yielded AAA Bond ratings for Moody and standard and pores all right um and then one other accomplishment I just wanted to highlight and it's actually something you'll see go live April of this year and that is that FEMA is upgrading the city of Charlotte from class three to class two and what they call the community rating system and the the whole point of the community rating system is FEMA wants to recognize communities that are operating storm water programs that have the benefit of mitigating flood risks and so Charlotte has been a participant in this voluntary program for years now and we've steadily moved up in ratings and so what you see in that chart to the left those are all of the participating communities across the country and so we are all the way to the right we're about to join that class 2 designation you can see that's rare company and that when that um when we get there that'll put us in the top 1% of all participating programs and the upshot of this is it saves Insurance holders money every class you move up is a 5% additional discount on flood or federal backed um flood insurance um this slide that what I want to do is kind of give a little bit of context in any given budget Year we're talking about the upcoming year this is a year where I thought it it made sense to put this in the context of things that have come before it and where we're going um storm water services has been around as a utility for a little over 30 years and you can kind of put it on a a timeline where you might sort of think of that first era as being the reactive era um a lot of important groundwork was being laid here it was an era in which the way the utility mostly operated was people told us something was broken we try to go out and help them um but we developed ordinances at that time and set up a lot of the groundwork that would pay off in later years and you kind of hit this change management area era where we're trying to lay the groundwork for where we're going into now notably this is the era when we started working on what you may have heard of is called a 5-year surge you you may know that we had a um a backlog of private property assistance projects that had grown to almost 1,700 projects and the manager CH uh challenged us to get that backlog eliminated in 5 years and that's what we did we got that retired at the end of the last uh the beginning of this fiscal year I mean so really what that lets us do now is focus on where we think we need to be going into the future as a proactive um utility and the way that you get there um is through something called Asset Management which I'll explain on the next slide but before I leave here I did just want to point out just because we're entering this new sort of data driven era doesn't mean we don't still hear from a lot of people at the end of the day we are a high touch organization um and depend on those interactions with the community all right so Asset Management what is it it starts with um sending people and Equipment out into the field to learn what we can about that 1400 M system so that van contains robotic camera equipments that get lower into the system um some assets we send people into to do visual inspections of we do that on a regular rhythm and the reason we want to know that is because we want to kind of start to look into the future and say what's expected now in terms of Maintenance but also what are we going to need to be doing in 2050 60 70 Beyond um because it's a big system we can't fix it all at once and the big takeaway from that chart is we're at a certain point in time over on the left part of the chart where what the system needs for maintenance is nowhere near it's going to need to be when we start getting to 2050 and Beyond the reason for that is the biggest determinant of when infrastructure like this fails is its age and you think about how and when Charlotte developed there was a huge Spike that was sort of an echo in the past um and so on a good day you can get a 100 Years of of life out of an asset um some things will fail faster than that but that's kind of what this Asset Management lets us start to do and it lets us start to figure out how to do preventive maintenance so that we can hopefully repair and replace things before they fail um now I shift to Capital at the end of the day when we get those insights really it just helps us inform where to invest we're a capital heavy program it's about two-thirds of what we spend on I won't read through all that just wanted to give you a flavor of the types of things that again both support drainage uh flood mitigation and drainage infrastructure and also surface water quality Investments what I will highlight is the alignment of those Capital Investments with other Council priorities um in the in the map on the left I'll show you another one in a second but that first map is about corridors of opportunity um so we've been proud to you be partners in that work and make infrastructure Investments that help support the city's larger investment goals and then more recently the Strategic investment areas and so we have resources who participate on interde departmental teams um to try to help support the work that is mobility focused um but what which also needs storm water investments as it goes along all right surface water quality so this slide um I wish I could present 10 slides to you on this one it's all on one but the point is what I would want you to know is that Charlotte has a really a topf flight surface water quality program we are National experts in this space stand by all right I heard you say I'm unmuted can y'all hear me we can it's strange council member Brown do you have a question I'll text her continue okay so again we just want you to know you've got a topshelf surface water quality program the way we get there is through a variety of activities it's not one thing it is sometimes projects it is sometimes um regulation investigation enforcement of illicit discharge activities um it's education it's volunteer engagement things like that um I will pivot now to Land Development regulations I've got two slides on this and what I want to tell you about is what we've had for a long time and what we've just recently installed and what Charlotte has benefited from for a good while are an array of regulations that were tailored towards large format development because that's the way Charlotte was growing big subdivisions big commercial projects and the regulations dealt effectively at large scale and it's across a variety of different things that you see there what was becoming a challenge for us was Charlotte was experiencing a wave of infill development it was happening on a more uh like a more minute scale that was kind of falling between the cracks and some of you have seen this before but it's worth showing again that if you can imagine that this might be just a lower density subdivision somewhere in Charlotte where there are some stream and easements and things like that that over time what can happen is small houses get torn down bigger houses get built or expanded upon and it starts to butt up against other things and that can look like these kinds of challenges it can be things built over easements sink holes that form due to obstructed drainage the way people grade their Lots they might physically damage infrastructure um and these things can accelerate stream velocities and cause erosion Downstream so we were seeing these things we were getting complaints about these things and we had no regulations to deal with them so the Udo kind of came along at the right time for us to start to regulate in that space which we have been um predictably uh we have been more uh busy I would say our Inc our plan reviews have increased by about 50% um but we also staffed for that our metrics around customer service we think are very strong um and I would just also note that we've learned a lot since this was implemented and we think there's some fine tuning that will need to be uh to be made as we try to kind of again protect the balance between what developers are needing in order to keep doing what they do and also protecting the rights um of property owners who are there already all right this is my second to last slide and it's just to say when we think about all of these things in the context of where storm water is going it is notable that at the end of the day what we're dealing with is weather and it's something we can't control so I talked about the 43 in um we would like to better understand what the future may hold in terms of rainfall events and so um Charlotte has had and operated for a long time a very robust network of stream and flood ga uh flood gauges rainfall and stream flood gauges um that we operate in Partnership and in service to us gs's work and also more recently the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration's work they are trying to do a forecast that will be used on a national scale um that will help inform storm water utilities and water water Wastewater utilities what the future may hold from a climate perspective the reason this is significant is because if we start dealing with more intense storms in the future that could have implications for the the size and upkeep of the drainage infrastructure that we're depending upon all right so all that said this my last slide and is just sort of the financing aspects I just kind covered all of what we're doing and why we do it um when we think about how we finance that it starts with this framework um that we've we've used for years now but the you know at the top of the list is you got to support those strategic priorities which I've LED you through um but we also work with uh Partners across the city to make sure we're meeting the best practices in terms of City Finance requirements in order to sustain those AAA ratings part of how we do that is having a steady drum beat of fee increases that we would want to keep moderate um and and L and for us that means probably around 4% or less per year and part of that modeling is it preserve some debt capacity for the future so that other generations of leaders and the community can solve for things that may come along later um and then notably this last part about address onetime revenue or expense impacts with onetime rate adjustments we have had over the last couple years some unforeseen things that represented expenses that had to be baked into the model so this is a sort of a historical look at where we've been over the last few years on fee increases sort of the range that we're targeting for this upcoming budget year which will be ultimately at the manager's discretion as far as what he puts in his recommended budget um at the high end of that range just to kind of give it some sense of scale U that would be about one1 would be exactly $1 for tier three of our rate payers which captures 90% uh 90% of rate payers pay that or less and that is everything I have to tell you about thank you Mr Davies um I I was part of the council when we had first T started talking about the backlog of 15 20 years a billion doll problem I appreciate your and your team's work to address that um and um um I don't have any specific questions but I appreciate your leadership so with that council member Mayfield and if there are any questions online thank you if we can go back to slide 14 I just want to make sure that I'm understanding when we say the storm water services achieves the class two rating from FEMA yes and you say that potentially can be a 5% insurance rate reduction so we had the major incident last year over in Mount Island Lake but that really wasn't weather related it was really zuk energy the challenge is now that whole area has been identified a feema area even though it was one segment that received the impact we've done a lot of development and growth in the area on the backside that never saw any of the water challenges how would we get this type of information out to community so that when they're talking to their mortgage company and the mortgage company is now telling them well you have to get flood insurance because FEMA has a sticker on and that's something you never had to do before how are we getting this information out thank you for the question two quick things um just for level setting so we do operate in partnership with the county through an an interlocal agreement that delineates who does what and what I always tell people right after that is don't worry about overlap there is a clean line and under that agreement what the county takes on is anything that drains more than one square mile and so um I say that because the county actually does deal with um the flood impacts right along the Kataba River because that's draining basically you at least two-thirds of of the county um so they operate the program that tries to do flood plane buyouts first of all and that's been a successful model nationally um so one way that can happen is through the County's work with those Property Owners to offer them if they want to be bought out of those uh properties so they're taken out of that high flood risk Zone altogether but the other thing that happens is we're talking your question is about how do people know about this um opportunity through the CRS program the County right now is in the process of doing that notification they collaborate with us they get our input and they basically are trying to reach out to everyone who is already in their database as where as well as anyone that we think through our data might be at risk of flooding so do we have any cross reference with feo because I am aware that the county has worked in Partnership for bouts the challenge is again communities on the back side of where the actual impact happened that's what I'm seeing on next door for lack of a better word where people are asking questions regarding hey this wasn't actually in our neighborhood so off of M hollyville Road the areas there between Mount Holly Hunter Road from Bell Haven back up to Mount Holly Road they now are getting notifications saying hey you're now listed under a FEMA stamp but they're not actually a part of that so is there and I don't know the answer might be no I was just wondering if there's any collaboration to just how do we make people aware yeah so FEMA does rely on us locally um at the federal level they're not able to sort of know what we know on the ground and so the role we try to play is to help them make those connections so again we are collaborating with the county to try to take what we collectively know to get that information out to people but what what I can do is I can also arm you with some other information if you want to have it and want to share it that would be very helpful and if we jump back or jump forward to 21 where we're looking at the Udo and the ordinance I want to say thank you for that first bullet that allows us to review all new developments cuz that has been a question for a number of years and Miss Charles I kill you on this one and I know it because I'm constantly asking okay how is this new development that is creating impact way I've been here 25 years never had any new problems they built this new thing around the corner now I have sinko in my backyard so I appreciate that part but I am still going to ask a question about these dollars when we go to 23 we say we are now in 100 counties how are we dispersing this because we can look at our tax bills and we have it right here this is that bill that consistently goes up and we can say that for 90% of single family rate payers it's only a dollar that dollar adds up we are already seeing major impacts in communi so more people are moving here regular math we know doesn't work anymore regular math will say if we got more people coming in then those who have been here should see a slight reduction because it's now being spread further that is not exactly how this is working out so help me understand this piece so that when we we go to community and Community is asking with all these new people that's coming into our area would anticipated 100,000 more wanting to come to our beautiful city how do we explain this consistent increases when we are having to distribute to so many others in need and how do we ensure that we are not putting the greatest burden on those who have the most most obstacles you yeah I mean just for context there will be yeah so and this this the reason I'm jumping in is just because this is purely storm water and these answers May apply also to other funds but I mean the way I kind of simplistically think about the numbers on this and any given year we are going to be combating inflation and it runs about 3% historically on average we're a little higher than that lately um the other thing we are dealing with is the um the level of production that we need to keep up with the rate at which the system is tending to fail the infrastructure system um we need to be able to pick up the pace we remember I showed you that chart where it's a little bit low and then it jumps up that is aging infrastructure doing its thing so what we want to do is get value what we can't leave a system where there is flooding that is creating these secondary impacts that's damaging properties because we're not taking care of that infrastructure because that has real impacts to those same people so for us the eye is always on are we getting the most out of of what we get with the dollars and for me a good Baseline is trying to fly that plane steady to about 4% and I acknowledge this is a little bit higher than that as a one time uh for this year we would hope to get that back down but because we're always mindful that you're right a dollar doesn't seem like a lot but it adds up so miss Charles you probably can help break this down more later if not right now but I also trying to figure out we are approving a lot of multif family units right that is a whole different conversation with all of that piping coming out versus that homeowner I mean the reality is we are losing single family we are losing single family on our occupied right we're growing we're growing differently and how does that impact because I would think we we see a reduction over here because you should be paying a higher rate for that multif family and the impact that it is having versus and I don't know if that's necessarily how we do the the the connection fee is different and then the uh system development fee is different because you when you tap on you're buying into an already existing uh system and so those fees there are different now in terms of how we are growing we we are growing denser but the number of connections that Charlotte water is growing by within the city of Charlotte proper is not growing as fast as it used to so in our rate model and that's part of why and I love the way Mike said he kind of likes the a level plane the way our financial model works is that we have moderate smaller increases to support our our financial plan so that we can continually invest into um the utility system and that's Water waste water and storm water and so there isn't necessarily that um where you getting all these people you're saving a lot of money here what I always say is you know the average bill is about 75 bucks a month so we're growing at $75 a month so that's it's not not that that large offset but what happens is is that over the long term we have more people paying into the utility system because we're cost of service okay so when we a dollar on the Water and Wastewater side is more like five bucks okay $563 right and so in there we are what we're trying to do is you know invest in that system keep the financial model viable and be able to serve the way we need to because it is a it is cost of service what it is is going to cost us right to have this uh utility system and it and to deliver we were just talking this week think of the engineering think of the engineering and expertise for 1.2 million people to turn on their tab want to not when we want to but when the consumer desires and so the system has to be designed to support that so it is reinvestment the $1 that Mike is talking about is is really reinvestment yes a part of it is capacity and I hear you I hear you right here in my ear okay because we've talked about it but other part of it is maintaining what we have Mike talked about the asset management philosophy where we've gone from the surge that council member esmera was complimenting him on we've we're going from The Surge to asset management and it it it just takes the continual investment our role as Leaders is to when we come before you you we have scrubbed it we are we are coming forth with the lowest rate that we feel like will support the operation okay it's cost of service you want me to move on cuz Maria's g m Miss Charles I I think that was a very detailed response um we appreciate it I want to be mindful of time yes ma'am we want to dedicate at least 35 minutes to so you want me to to the second topic so do you think 10 minutes would be enough for the next 13 slides I I can yes and I'll just hit the highlights okay and you guys tap me when I'm like two minutes away okay so we've covered the vision keep going to uh the next the whole point here is is that the water and wastewater fund continues to be AAA red FY 24 we invested $57 million do in our community and just a reminder a gallon of water is less than 3 Cent we serve over 1.2 million people this is a new map this shows you where your water goes so when we say Charlotte water is a regional utility you can see how far our reach is into other counties due to the interlocal agreements and sales agreements that we have the Gaston County Piece Will begin this year with the Mount Holly Pump Station uh if you look Southwest that'll be Belmont and then of course you know we we also reaching South Carolina but that gives you a feel for where does the water go the agreements we have and how we're truly a regional system keep moving keep moving accomplishments uh Little Sugar Creek sore improvements you all have seen the Pearl Medical uh campus uh Charlotte water storm water and Atrium were in Partnership to pull that off we're very proud of that next slide Mallet Creek uh this is in council member Johnson's uh District we have a project now going on we're going from 131 million to 16 uh million to serve the university in Northeast Charlotte mecklinburg anticipated completion is in 2026 that's $113 million project helping our I talked about Ashville keep going our renew Brew what I want you to get from this slide is that when we talked about making beer out of recycled water there were many people who laughed okay this is innovation those circles represents represent stores in the state of North Carolina who are now carrying renew Brew once we figure out the distribution of QC water I hope it'll be another Revenue new source to offset the utility okay that's re new Brew research and development we have a hydro hydrocyclone pilot at M mcdal Creek plant a Nevada a nood pet at Sugar Creek what's the bottom line the bottom line is that Innovation is important in the water and wastewater industry and so if we can complete pallets that will uh help us with capacity and reduce cost we have staff that's doing that and I want you all to to know that we just don't come to work every day to do the same thing that we take pride at being out there on the Ed Edge and I'm very proud of our folks uh the sto facility is the largest project in the history of Charlotte water it has national attention also attention from uh the state of North Carolina we are reinforcing Partnerships in the region so let's keep going going being skip Clark Creek elevated storage tank this is on uh Statesville and Sunset Road we're very very proud it's been many many years since Charlotte water has uh completed and elevated a storage tank for resiliency and reinforcement of our distribution system that was completed in FY 24 the people behind water I love water but I love the people better but if you are are love them more if you look at all of the certification and designations that's required to run a water system is nothing short of phenomenal the other thing I want you to get is that we are ISO certified like private companies we have people come in and audit us and look at our processes okay so we are very we're very um continuous Improvement uh driven ship so how do we keep the pipeline going since fy20 we've had 100 participants and our apprenticeship program and 68 of them are still employed in the water and wastewater industry very very proud that even during Co Charlotte water kept the apprenticeship program going and uh we want to see that grow even more and more economic we are the the silent economic driver in our region for every $1 uh spent or no for every 1 million spent 10 plus jobs are created in our community for every 1 million spent 15.2 million and economic growth just in our community if you look in the uh six County region for every 1 million spent 261,000 jobs are created in water dependent Industries and uh for economic output that's 48.5 billion that's one year that's not over time that is one year that's why we are the silent economic driver in the region okay let's talk about the budget here proposed budget is 6446 million 42% dedicated to operating 58% dedicated uh to Capital this is your um the answer to your question council member asmea 33% of of of the capital program is dedicated to rehab and replacement of the existing vacancies Recruitment and Retention we constantly are are working uh on that uh rate pre pressures the financial Financial challenges rate pressures credit rating criteria balancing affordability with capital needs and costs our tariff proposals Metals we use a lot of metal um in Charlotte water you think we are equipment heavy so we we know that there will be increases in the then inflation and construction Dr E explained that you all Retreat the cost of doing business is going up absolutely and then you've got the cost of metals going up there there will be a direct impact on water P this is the bottom line bottom line we have good source Waters we are very very fortunate so we anything that we've detected is well below the limit or we haven't detected at all there are 70 different posos uh substances I'm going to call them substances that we've been testing for we've been monitoring before 20 uh since 2013 so before posos was popular right right Charlotte water was already monitored now what are we doing about it what you have here is a picture that is equipment we are one of the few in the Southeast to be able to do internal P monitor all right so this is our philosophy no matter what the regulations are or how they change we can't hold our head our heads in the sand right we want to know the content and any issues with our water supply so that's why you don't see us um uh at um implementing uh treatment Technologies for p now because our source Waters aren't showing that we have a problem with posos now posos is expensive very high level estimate one technology would be over $100 million another technology would be over $300 million to implement so we have to have a trigger before we say this is something that we need to try to get out of our water system when we don't have it you following me so that's why I'm not coming before you to say we need to increase the capital program for posos we're going to take that money invest it in our system but also Monitor and have the equipment to um you know test and and be able to see what we're getting um from our source Waters okay so this is uh where we are to support uh our financial targets greater than 250 days of cash on hand two times Debt Service 40% payo we are somewhere between 5.75 and 7% that is on the high end that is $563 per month for 79% uh of Charlotte water rate uh rate payers or less so the way that works I have a a chart that'll show it to you because it works different from the storm water storm water is a flat fee water is not water is based on usage next slide I think I can show it so you see what it says um $563 that is for 7 CCF customer that's over 5,000 gallons a month that is a lot of water well if you are a 2 CCF customer that's what I am uh that is a $36 increase per month so it's really based on the amount of water that a person uses that'll be what the increase will be okay um if you okay well that's fine we go to the next one okay affordability if you um look at the bench marking uh with Charlotte water how do we compare to other large utilities we're the 13th largest in the country Charlotte water is is in the lower uh tier here based on the FY 25 rates that we have that's the most recent data you can see we compare very favorably if you look here we did more of a regional analysis and we are uh dead in the middle this is what people are actually paying these are bills from our neighbors and so um the reason why Jacksonville Florida is on here we are between Washington Bourbon and Jacksonville Florida at Charlotte water there is no other utility like us okay so that's why Jacksonville Florida is on there the other thing about the Florida utilities they wholesale a lot that's how they help manage rates okay they wholesale a lot and so we wholesale some and we're getting there all right this is another analysis all right on rate increase OC it's outside City Limits I is inside City Limits utilities are different depending on where they are in Charlotte we have the same rate it doesn't matter we're are Regional utility everybody has the same rate so you can look at I don't want to pick on Raleigh but they're looking at you know a 3.8% but you outside the city limits you got $160 water bill okay you you see what I'm saying so that's how come when you really look at the data you really have to look at it and see what it's telling you what I am submitting to you is is that we are affordable we are affordable okay council member Mayfield I started this chart years ago for you all right and so this is um the Ami chart and basically this is what it says all right the target from EPA and UNCC uh Chapel Hill is that a water waste water bill should be no more than 4 and a half% of a person's household income all right and so what this chart says is that you would have to be 20% Ami in our community and you have to be using over 5,000 gallons of water a month before your water bill or for your water bill to be over 4 and a half% of your income and I think the actual percentage is 4.87 I submit to you that we're a little bit better than that because we don't have FY 26 Ami we have FY 25 Ami okay so that's conservative this is my last slide here I talked about the um Helping Hands Outreach H2O uh Foundation um this is not a new Concepts utilities are size in the nation uh many of them are work in communities where there is a a nonprofit uh for water DC water Washington Suburban Birmingham Water Works Louisville Water Company Miami day Water and Sewer Jaa Jacksonville Florida all have some type of nonprofit We have restrictions in the state of North Carolina I believe these restrictions do not negate us from uh having some type of non nonprofit so that's a picture of our um first board meeting you Rec you may recognize some of the faces I will have to pull out of it and other members of of Charlotte water will but the whole objective is is that we're trying to streamline it if you have a barrier to paying your water Wastewater storm water bill we want to have have a place one place in our community where people can go this is a lesson for Co in Co we had churches we had different nonprofits we had people going to DSS not streamlined okay we're trying to streamline it here and so This Is Helping Hands Outreach and I think that's it and I hope I'm not too did I do it Marie okay all right thank you for your time can I end with employees of Charlotte water this shirt I have on was their design it is women's History Month I have on all of my pens I would not be women's history in our community if it was not for the people of Charlotte water so I want to say thank you to them because they are the reason why we're such a great organization thank you Miss Charles thank you so much uh I appreciate your team's work in staying ahead and continuing to provide our city residents Safe Water award-winning water which I'm very proud of um I know in Brunswick County which I had sent you an article about and other counties Across the Nation have implemented P Water treatment system is that because of the source of their water where they found P absolutely they had industrial uh companies right to Dish charge Upstream greens B same thing had conb meals um cake fear right wilington Genex that's what it is and so they're having to remove that right from their Source Waters we're very very fortunate our source Waters come up right above Lake James which is in morgon okay and the water flows down from there you know through the Kataba River here we're super we're fortunate um that we are not dealing with what folks down east are dealing with in terms of p and across Across the Nation but it does have to do with your Source Waters what is coming into that utility the cleaner it is the more economically we can deliver our product the dirtier it is the more it cost us to deliver yes that makes sense and so in terms of the P regulations that were implemented under the Biden Administration we are still way ahead in terms of Meeting those standards even though there were some roll backs there there are are some in pipeline We are continuing to uh be excelling in all those standards absolutely and when the standards um came out we already met them because we had no detects or detects below and that's for seven sub 7 days 70 different compounds there are thousands uh different compounds and I've got Dr Kimbell in here somewhere behind me Dr Campbell that's Dr Campbell okay she's over the lab she can talk all the technical stuff but it's in the environment got it's in the environment but in terms of what Water Systems have to do in terms of monitoring and delivering we we don't have an issue now but we are monitoring because maybe there'll be one of those up te thousands that we get a hit on we want to be prepared and have then then whoever is directed that time will be coming forth with this will be the solution go cuz that'll be years down the road I appreciate uh your leadership and thank you thank you all right well next we have our mwsb participation in capital projects is no one gonna ask about Mike Davis's beard are you training for a reality show of some kind so so uh would do you been presenting or Mr CER who is present okay okay Steve okay um so thank you for General services and our CBI team working with us to develop this plan um so let's go ahead Mr CER all right uh well uh good afternoon Madam chair committee me members uh and staff uh we're going to make this a I think a fairly uh uh quick presentation it's a lot of review there are a couple uh new things that we've added that we wanted to bring attention to but I will as I say let the games begin uh the key discussion points that I want to raise up right at the beginning of this are things that we heard in the last committee meeting on uh February 3rd uh those four things were expanding Outreach strategy and the specific request was that the committee requested that CBI share an expanded Outreach strategy for engaging mws e uh CBI will provide a modified Outreach strategy to the uh committee uh we're moving in a good direction there and so you'll be able to see that second one creating additional work processes uh specifically committee suggested development of a goal setting committee and waiver committee and so where legally permissible CBI will develop recommendations for each requested work task and provide uh to bgi our committee uh third strengthening accountability for good faith efforts uh the specific request there was the emphasis for the need for more transparency in tracking contracts that failed to meet mwsb participation goals despite being deemed compliant under good faith effort policies and so uh our Action Moving Forward would would be as authorized by law CBI to include tracking and anal is of projects that fall short of goals as well as strengthen the definition the words of good faith efforts and then the fourth area uh was continuous monitoring and strategy adjustments uh the request there was emphasize need for the uh quarterly reports and reviews of the data rather than the annual performance report our action there is that CBI will Implement ongoing monitoring and present cour L updates on goal achievement and areas for improvement I'm going go this slide because I think this should have came before the other uh in introducing our work uh it again it's a lot of review of what's occurred since this uh uh exercise was introduced to the committee by the mayor uh we started out last May uh we developed uh joint work by CBI as well as general services the bgi committee has been updated throughout the process and then last month uh we finalize the process uh by giving you a a deeper dive in terms of what uh this process would look like uh obviously this culminated with the drafting of the city of Charlotte nwsb CIP Master utilization plan uh that's for two 2025 and the purpose of today's uh presentation is should just give you some summary on the key components of the plan and reinforce the committee's understanding for review and and approval some of the objectives uh which are more detailed in the uh document that I spoke of is early engagement and that's the identify scalable Scopes and optimize procurement delivery methods improve datadriven goal setting and forecasting strengthen trust and transparent collaboration and then the next one is project development where we would uh we're legally put permissible unbundle large projects into smaller mwsb friendly contracts create opportunities for subcontractors to assume prime prime contractor roles and expand contractor capacity building initiatives uh relative to Target Outreach we want to prioritize direct engagement with our mwsb and Prime contractors Implement mwsb Focus solicitation strategies and then increase training and network opportunities where needed and then the big one here is removing barriers we want to strengthen Business Development support and that would come through uh support with Shorty bonding licensing and technical assistance increase wsbe awareness through the procurement process and partner with uh financial institutions for lowcost loans and the city's uh quick pay options so got a lot here and I'll I'll move through it rather quickly as as it relates to measures and accountability uh we we want to make sure that contract performance metrics are served and that's tracking the percentage of contra contracts meeting mwsp participation goals uh the total amount of mwsp contractual Spin and that's basically tracking our spin uh mwsb growth and engagement so these are a set of uh kpis that are important to the committee as well as uh to the city and that's a number of newly certified mwsb uh those receiving technical assistance and training uh those receiving Prime contracts and highlight the growth in capacity and ability to lead major projects the next one would be uh the mwbe utilization that's where we track a percentage of our participation on CIP projects that measures the proportion of total project spending to certified firms the number of events these measures the number of events that our certified firms uh participating in for capacity building purposes workshops and mentorship opportunities uh then the number of mwsb receiving technical assistance or training we want to implement a system uh whereby we document and analyze contracts that failed to meet our mwsb and then again going back to good faith efforts and uh tracking uh where legally permissible Implement a tracking system to document and analyze the contracts that fail to meet mwsb goals despite claiming good faith efforts and ensuring transparency and accountability and evaluation process and then new businesses certified that's of course tracking the number of the number of business successfully becoming certified as mwsb within a given fiscal year and then all of this is uh really about removing barriers and tracking overall mwsp participation in the contractor development programs so uh the question begs what are our next steps uh of course you know we're you know presenting this information to you as a matter of followup on the work that we've done over the last several months uh of course uh for the chair to be able to report this out tonight uh and then March through December that's where we really are going to dig deep and we're going to implement all the actions that have been reflected in this master utilization plan and then report back to uh Council uh at years in on the performance against the measures in the plan uh I will say uh in conclusion that you know we put in a lot of work it's been a major collaborative effort uh not only with uh leaders ship from the city manager's office but with you with uh leadership uh from uh General services and the course CBI uh this has been I think uh what is the definition of teamwork and so we are plan to do more we plan to report and give you an update on how this is going and uh we going to turn it over to you questions thank you Mr Cocker I appreciate uh all the work that has gone into this is it's um soly this um we have come a long way from where we were and I appreciate you tackling each and every question that was asked by the Committee Member um with that I will turn it over to committee members if there are any questions there's no one online except do we do we have any questions online no ma' no do you have any questions no so it looks like um we don't have any questions do I have a motion to adopt this plan M to approv and do second is it just three of us yes well we have council member Brown online okay so we don't have anyone online so okay I I'm I'm going to oppose this for a variety of reasons because I won't waste everyone's time with but I don't want to do it for the sake of doing it and slowing it down here if you're going to move it forward to a larger group and other people that would have been here would have done it so how do you how would you like me to proceed Madam chair I think Mr VI CH would help um I understand you're not going to overall support this plan so I think there will be an opportunity at the council meeting this is just to move this forward then I'll support that but with the asteris that don't support it holistically all right so all in FA I'm sorry I mean I rather just do it one time yeah you can do it at the Das if you wish to do so so it looks like well I'm also in support all in favor please raise your hand uh noting that council member bukari will be voting no at the D he never proves anything related to business inclusion um that would be the same thing [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] e [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] l [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he he he e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] patience welcome welcome Studio we're ready to go live let know ready to go live welcome to the housing safety and Community committee meeting for March um I am your chair Victoria watlington I am joined by my awesome committee members and vice chair here who I will allow to introduce themselves starting with our vice chair okay Lana Mayfield Vice chair and back then way okay council member Brown Committee Member council member a Committee Member thank you ladies and we are joined by our wonderful staff around the room as well as a host of guests Sean Heath assistant city manager Rebecca Hefner housing and Neighborhood Services Jerry housing enbl Hood Services Anor schinus city attorney's office Janine Simmons hous Neighborhood Services Herold Thompson housing and Neighborhood Services G wicam housing and Neighborhood Services thank you so much well today we have um a topic of extreme interest to us around the city which is the minimum housing code uh we've been doing some work on this referral for some time and so we're looking forward to seeing an update um and as a part of the update it just so happened um and I'm grateful for the Indulgence of my committee members and uh staff I thought it would be pertinent to um allow my committee members to hear what I just heard U particularly because we have a couple of former District three members here and exactly right I was like well why not here's now is the time and so I know it's near and dear to your hearts as well especially with council member Brown um having been born right there and or grown up right there in Southside uh homes and so one of the projects that has been long plaguing us if you will is Brook Hill Village and that project we know had a ton of minimum housing code violations um but gratefully today I had an opportunity to go to Brook Hill and learn about an update of what's going on over there with a lot of the work that is happening and so I thought it timely to um allow the project team to come in and give us a quick update on what's happening in Brook Hill in light of some of the other work we're doing with minimum housing code because they are really demonstrating what's possible as we think about how to turn things around in the city so with that I will uh turn it over briefly to Antoine dard to talk us through some of the things that are going on thank you Dr watlington good afternoon staff uh and also council members my name is Antoine dard with court advisors uh I represent the Griffin brother family office uh for the the brook Hill project and this is Mike Griffin uh who represents the Griffin brother family office uh first and foremost I just have to say thank you to this Council uh and especially Sean Heath uh it was roughly almost two years ago um that um this Council voted for the $3.5 million that was also matched by the county uh to continue the project at Brook Hill so but for that effort of Shan and council members uh we were not sit sitting here in front of you today so just want to say thank you very much and so what we also articulated to councilwoman Brown and Dr watlington uh was our efforts to our long-term Zone um preferences and our sort our goals but also how can we program and activate the community in a short-term fashion and so I'm also going to give Mike the opportunity to speak uh because it's his vision his dollars from the family office that has been invested in Brook Hill in addition to the city and the county on what that may look like so sure thank you thank you for your time and I also want to recognize council member Brown for coming out and hearing this story not so many weeks ago a couple weeks ago um can't thank City and the county enough to allow us to be a part of this it was 3 years ago and two days that we took over Brook Hill at that time there were 350 units about 100 families so was 250 units that were emptied and had a lot of chronic issues so now I'm proud to say that we have 89 fully renovated units the rest of units have been um have been demoed and now we are on the cusp of looking to redevelop the property and we're super excited about that so even more excited we're we're hoping on by March March 31st to donate the 9.25 Acres which is approximately 25% of the property to the Harvest Center a wonderful charity that really focus on the situational homeless challenges in our community and they're moving their headquarters there they're building a $7 million worth of facilities and hope to be in there by the end of December and of course the airport's growing so the airport will take their land over now so it's kind of a win-win relationship situation so we're super excited to have that done and then we're really excited that hopefully in 2025 we'll have the ability to do what I would call popup Community benefits farmers markets um games as far as you know just fun things to do food court uh food truck collectives do a lot of things there during this um 2025 that are temporary but at the same time just start creating some Community enrichment around Brook Hill um could not be happy with the partnership we have with har Center they've been managing Brook Hill really for the whole first three years they've done a wonderful job and really looking forward to bringing their clients to the property too so I guess in summary we're at this wonderful opportunity we now have renovated units very stabilized Community our Legacy families there's approximately 70 there um Harvest Center's already done a wonderful job enriching and working with that the community there and when they bring their clients in in January it's going to be really 89 fully renovated fully occupied units and they'll be planning to build at least 12 more so there'll be more in the future so any questions or that was kind of the update and just to add to that briefly we've been working with staff on how do we create an overlay uh for the resoning and planning for Brookhill Village uh so that's our long-term goal but as a short-term goal it's how do we create a temporary use until we're able to get it resed um and so again we're working with staff uh in that in that um effort if you will uh to get that accomplished because in our early Leasing and talking with partners and potential retail clients to come and actually develop with us in Brook Hill uh there is a perception of Brook Hill um that is unjust and so how do we create some short-term to m point popups and things that we can do to kind of change the programming activity within Brook Hill that ultimately changes the perception so you know there is a long-term goal but there's also a short-term goal that we can also use as a fix the change of perception and get a starting goal I think we all be proud of yeah thank you for thank you for the update I'll just go down the line and see if anybody had any questions or comments or anything that they wanted to goad thank y'all so much I really appreciate you coming in again it's good to see you again representation from the Griffin Brothers I had my questions already y'all know who I am no nothing change um because we're in a different room I was very pleased with the information that I heard I want to make sure that you know that the culture stays and we keep the heart and soul over there and um the unjust part is definitely true so I appreciate you bringing in some of the crafty things that you're trying to do um thinking outside of the box so that people understand that they love no matter what ZIP code you're born in and so I appreciate the fact that you hear me when I say that even though they're born in a zip code doesn't mean that they have to mentally stay there so I appreciate the project uh the way that it is growing and U you know I got to represent for other the people cuz the west side is the best side always be all right thank you Council Brown how you here to my team I I'll have questions maybe later on uh when staff does their presentation but at this point I'm good thank you for coming awesome thank y'all so much we appreciate it hi council member [Applause] Graham so again just a quick update on something uh quick update on the project uh of what can be possible when we talk about minimum housing code so we look forward to hearing more from them uh in the future but with that I'll turn it over to U director hner yeah all right so today is installment three of three dare I say um I watched the committee meetings um today and a lot of things got uh you know settled and moved on to council so um uh next slide please so we're here to talk about the minimum housing code referral um but also to provide staff's recommendations um we'll we we will um get give you the opportunity to discuss because again this is a a u one on topic meeting once again um and then you'll have an option to decide if you want more information or if this will go forward to City Council next slide please as a reminder the mayor's referral on minimum housing code came out in uh late November and you first heard about this on January 6th and again on February 3rd and depending on our discussion today and your um decisions today we um can discuss again in the April housing safety and Community Committee or send it forward to City Council in the April May time frame next slide as a reminder uh mean we've been we've been deep in this for a couple of months um but the essential policy question here is what is needed to strengthen the city's ability to ensure safe housing in particular for uh hotel motel lodging establishments and multif family apartment communities next slide just as a visual here the things that we have walked through together over the last couple of meetings in January we talked about um the referral overview we talked a lot about the minimum housing code itself what it includes what are the enforcement tools that are available what are the pros and cons of those enforcement tools uh we looked at the data on uh housing code cases that especially ones that had been open for um a long time uh in February we talked about best practices and benchmarks from other NC cities we did a deep dive into the case studies around tangle apartments and The Lamplighter motel we talked a little bit about the work we had been doing around Community engagement um and then today we're going to talk through uh some additional insights and feedback that we received from the community as part of that engagement and then share um staff's recommendations and then turn it over to you all next slide please this is a slide that you saw in the February committee meeting it was a set of initial stakeholder insights at that time um and and uh and we kept it in word for word because the uh additional stakeholder insights that we received um were were also in alignment with this and and then we have some some even even more detail um on the next couple of slides but this was information that we gathered when we first started talking to our Advocate partners and our um industry Partners many of whom are in the room today so we had several conversations with the team at action NC and one Mech and the redress movement and greater Charlotte Apartment Association we had a community input meeting um where additional folks were invited and then we had a resident meeting planned and unfortunately it was the night that it snowed um so we um canceled the resid meeting but many thanks to our partners at action NC they're here somewhere I think um directly behind me um uh Jessica Marino and Robert Dawkins and the team at action NC who were able to collect resident testimonials so that you can hear directly from residents who are impacted by displacement uh we knew that was really important to you and we didn't want to let the snow uh stand in the way of making sure that you got that feedback so again um I won't go through each of these but I would kind of emphasize um five six and seven here because Jerry's going to talk to you more about things that are related to 1 through four but we really found um that we have a lot of Partners and a lot of Partners doing good work but there are opportunities to strengthen that ecosystem of Partnerships and services uh the issues cannot be solved with code enforcement alone um but we have a lot of opportunities to address issues more proactively and more holistically in addition to Stronger code enforcement which we have a recommendation about for you today and then I'll just emphasize on number seven because you have already made significant investments in affordable housing and anti-displacement strategy it creates capacity for stronger code enforcement action without necessarily needing new resources so we'll talk to you at the end of this presentation about how we plan to activate on um the recommendations should you approve them and with that I'm going to hand it over to Jerry so as Rebecca mentioned we met with several different groups to uh talk about strengthening code enforcement throughout this process um some of the themes out of those meetings were from our Advocate Partners the first one was require air conditioning equipment provide resources for mold testing edit the ordinance language around placet requirements for inim pair rental subsidies with relocation support and various other process recommendations that came out of those meetings with our Advocate partners with the industry Partners um they want to strengthen enforcement for non-compliant owners without penalizing owners that are acting in good faith uh ensure occupants are respons excuse me ensure occupant responsibilities are met and require resident notification of Maintenance needs to the property management or owner and mitigate any cost impact of additional requirements as those may show up in the utility and rent with our ecosystem Partners significant safety and health impacts the residents financial burden of displacement and relocation including higher rents and a strain of mass displacement versus working with households and relocation as problems arise next slide now these are some our residential excuse me our resident testimonials that Rebecca mentioned obviously we couldn't have the meeting because of the snow but these are some of the issues that they brought up in their in their testimonials uh the first one is poor conditions um understaffed or Bap and then some of the resources that they advise they would need going forward temporary relocation doing repairs emergency funding help securing jobs and housing credit repair and eviction Deb [Applause] next now these General updates are already in process or completed um we need to continue to strengthen our Partnerships develop mechanism for feedback update our parameters for enhanced multif family inspections one of those enhancements we would like to do is to decrease the percentage from 15 to 10% of properties that'll give us a better opportunity to get on to properties before they cause any problems or anything data and internal process fixes and then to establish a better process for early identification of challenges with income restricted properties so these are staff recommendations the first one is to move forward with the INR process in injunctive relief um we don't feel there's a need for any ordinance changes at this time we feel like we can use and leverage the tools that we already have in our tool belt um strengthen our Partnerships within the ecosystem and then also future State policy issues I know I mentioned at one of our previous meetings about us having conversations with other larger cities within North Carolina and we all have some of the same similar situations so we feel like this is a a conversation that me need to be held at the state level that way we can strength the code enforcement not only in Charlotte but throughout the state um to hold non-compliant owners accountable next SL so as I said we would like to move forward and Advance the process to complete the inim repairs um one of the first things we need to do is uh procure for services including project management General Contracting repair work and tenant relocation Services we re bring those in repair orders forward for city council action currently in in section 1137 we have the ability to do remedial action for inantly dangerous conditions related to Heating and Plumbing so that's another thing that's already in our tool belt that we can utilize and then lastly on this slide city attorney's office will take an enhanced role in The Code Enforcement process um by providing representation in environmental court and notification of pendent actions in injunctive relief determination and action so from this our recommended action is to direct staff to advance the new processes for the inim repair and injunctive relief next slide so this is a slide that we we've shown you previously um how we want to bring it back to kind of level set to show how it works and also to highlight again some of the challenges that we may encounter so I won't go through all those bullets as we went through those before but we wanted to include this in the PowerPoint today just so like I said we can level set to talk about how it works again but also recognize the challenges that may be presented in regards to M testing currently the ordinance addresses conditions that create mold such as leaks ventilation and sanitary conditions and there are no established guidelines that regulate identify mold when they become a health issue um eckberg County and the CDC both recommend immediate remediation but do not recommend air testing what we would like to do is to to continue to address the conditions that create mold and to continue our referral for relocation when a resident provides documentation of any health impacts so recommended action for this slide no ordinance changes but provide funding for a legal assistance pilot for mold testing require air conditioning equipment um the city we're all for requiring air air conditioned equipment but currently the ordinance requires that when cooling facilities are provided they shall be operable and maintain but this does not require air conditioned equipment so that's something that we are in favor of now but we want it to align with our strategic energy action plan we need to quantify the potential scope and impact that it's going to have on a single family residence because those are going to be most impact impacted impair any weatherization upgrades with AC installation we feel those two go hand in hand you shouldn't do one without the other and identify funding and partnership support So for this one I recommend an action there no ordinance changes but we do feel we need further evaluation of the air conditioning requirement just so we can really understand what the potential impacts would be for residents going forward all right so um we we'll touch on touch on these again but um the the next two pieces of this are recommendations around the partnership ecosystem and then future State policy issues and so you'll see that there are a lot of Rec a lot of recommendations um on on this slide about opportunities to leverage our current efforts and our current funding to enhance the partnership ecosystem so we we heard you loud and clear we heard our partners loud and clear um our our Advocate partners and our residents who are asking for stronger code inforcement uh and and even our industry Partners who uh are in in agreement ment that we should be leveraging the tools that are already in our toolbox and so in in um in as complement to Stronger code enforcement we recommend some U strengthening in the partnership e ecosystem so the first item as Jerry mentioned is to fund a legal assistance pilot for mold testing so one of the um proposals that you all received from one Mech and and um and action Andy and the redress movement was around um mold testing and as Jerry shared since there are no standards or regulations that the city can measure against um we don't recommend that the city or code enforcement actually conduct that air testing but uh a a pilot um a little bit of funding for a legal assistance partner would help us better understand when air testing is um is valuable um and then and if and if that has any impact on getting um better outcomes for our residents uh so we recommend um moving that forward as a pilot um a couple of a couple things on here um that that are really related to our internal processes but I think are worth raising uh just to share some of the conversation that we've had with Partners uh we've we have an opportunity to conduct tenant screening essentially for um for their um gen General needs and need for support or resources this can be done um at at the time of the initial intake with 311 or even at the first inspection with a code inspector so this would be a very short number of questions that our staff can ask that then go into a system and automatically submit residents for resource and referral to our partners um so you may have heard us talking in the past about a new tool called civvy form that the city's getting ready to launch um that partly was this idea was partly born out of the staying and place pilot while we were looking at how do we better serve our residents more holistically um at any moment when we're interacting with them so it may be that they're calling about code enforcement but it's an opportunity to learn if they have other needs whether they're Workforce Development needs job placement um or child care and automatically refer residents to our partners who are who are supporting that again just another uh opportunity to more holistically U um support our residents at any given interaction we also think there's a great opportunity to um update our when you rent handbook um in partnership with Community Relations Committee but also to do an education and awareness campaign to share with uh our residents how to report when to report what will happen um when they talk to a code inspector uh and um and also to work with our partners to help residents um uh have have a trusted intermediary when needed um because there is and we've heard from our residents directly a a real fear of retaliation uh when they report um incidents to code enforcement so so sometimes we hear about conditions but we don't actually have an opportunity to inspect the unit because of that fear so part of this campaign would be working with our partners who are trusted by the community um to help connect those dots uh We've also been asked to post a list of locations and owners with frequent violations this one's easy because we already put this this information out on the open data portal and so all all we need to do here is make some updates to the format um to help um to help it be better able to um understand and and digest um the next item on the here is supporting um neighborhood organizations within apartment communities so we've talked about this in a number of settings we've talked about it um when we've when we've mentioned um our efforts around neighbors building neighborhoods like we're doing out at Little Rock um and in fact we have um we have a a group of residents here today from Archdale seniors who are who are an amazing example of this because um they are uh they are a very active and organized and engaged um Council within um an apartment community and they have recently applied for a neighborhood matching Grant with the city and so what what this will enable us to do is build those stronger relationships with residents help them achieve their goals and connect them to City resources Beyond code enforcement the next part of the partnership ecosystem again we've heard you loud and clear is connecting affordable housing prioritization and unit set asides to the relocation process so within your affordable housing funding policy that was adopted last September uh you um included housing prioritization and a requirement for set aside units um you already you already do this within your Noah um but the housing funding policy expanded that to the entire um body of investment from the Housing Trust Fund and so what we're what we're um proposing here is just to get better connected and better coordinated we already have a partner uh who is um managing um the set asdes and in the future as that expands um we we will be able to connect residents who need to relocate because of Code Enforcement um to units that have already been funded um by your Investments the next piece is is um uh related which is working with our partners to share inspection and enforcement information so one of the things uh I don't think we called out specific but we talked with our codee inp inspectors the the team of Staff who are on the ground in um in apartments and homes doing housing inspections every day uh and one of the things and that came out of that conversation a lot of a lot of the data and process fixes that Jerry referenced came out of that conversation sometimes staff um know exactly what needs to be done right so it was a good opportunity to hear from them but we know and this was certainly the case at Tanglewood our partners um with housing collaborative and in livan and roof above were placing uh residents at Tanglewood because they are a um uh a property provider in that system and uh who who take um accept vouchers and and other rental subsidies and so we have an opportunity you they they do they do inspections at the front end and periodically we're out there doing inspections so we um we see this as a huge opportunity um as as one of as one of our inspector says we we have to hit them in the pocketbook or they're never going to change so um uh and I'll say yes yes I've heard that also in this room um so I think that's that's a great opportunity uh for us um and something that we can advance just as part of the partnership ecosystem and then the last one on here is really about developing new financing tools for multif family rehab loans uh we this is something that we have never really gotten quite right um and um there are a lot of reasons why our you know market rate U provide or our Noah providers essentially um would not want to uh accept funding from the city but we do know that we need a whole range of tools not just enforcement but incentives so we have a little bit more work to do to get this one right um so essentially our our recommendation here is that we leverage current efforts and funding to enhance the partnership ecosystem so next slide please I want to just talk a little bit about what um those current efforts and fundings look like so we we do have sufficient resources in place currently uh to advance the the the um primary recommendation uh of this referral which is to move forward with the inim repair process and support the partnership ecosystem so the uh through through your annual budget each year city council allocates um funding for um code enforcement and for inrm that has historically been used for inrm demolition um and and our proposal is to use those same funds for INR repair now now one of the uh impacts that we may see is uh having to prioritize some of our code enforcement staff resources so with with doing this with our existing capacity what we may see and again this is May depending on um you what the what the level of effort is required in inrm repair but there may be times when we have to shift our internal capacity to housing code enforcement um which means we would adjust our response to lower impact nuisance violations uh so we we talked about this briefly in one of your other discussions on this topic where we had already shared that we had been um changing some of our um proactive enforcement of loow impact nuisance violations in particular um curbside violations um so we we are still responding to those but we are out proactively enforcing that so those are the kind of examples of where at different times we may need to shift some of our capacity more towards the housing code enforcement in terms of the costs of relocation uh that may be required as part of the inrm uh process uh we propose to leverage your current displacement event funding and Partnerships to really enhance the code related relocation assistance and that displacement event funding um it's almost as though we did this backwards right where we got a whole partnership set up funding um for Mass displacement events before we sorted out code enforcement and relocation so we're we're proposing to correct for that um by using some of that same funding and those same Partnerships to better support uh uh residents who need to be relocated as part of this process and uh that funding I will just reference is one-time Federal funding that came through er2 and is uh expect must be expended by September of 2026 so it is certainly funding that we can use right now uh to to enhance this process um but it has a an expiration date um one thing that I will note is that in this approach of leveraging current efforts and funding it does not provide for any additional rental subsidies and so you may have seen in the proposals that were provided to you from our Advocate Partners or as Jerry referenced on an earlier slide one of the things that has come up time and again uh with with our Advocate Partners as well as the residents is that uh they they are asking that rental subsidies be paired with the relocation assistance because the reason that many residents are in um uh what would be substandard housing in the first place is that it often has a lower rent and while we can provide relocation services to assist them with moving expenses and um uh uh uh down down payment what's the word rental deposits um we we do not have uh enough rental subsidies in the community to actually provide that at at that time and so uh even when we're able to relocate residents sometimes they are then unable to afford the rent in a new location um with with an approach of leveraging our current funding we wouldn't be adding any R Rental subsidies so this would still be a challenge um at times the city's primary funding source is your affordable housing Bond and as we've discussed um those funds cannot be used for um rental subsidies so it would require new funding um in order to to um pair rental subsidies with relocation our proposal in as a staff recommendation is to do a better job of connecting the relocation process to all of the current efforts um so that that would include uh the new rental subsidies that you are creating when you uh when you approve um Noah rental subsidies um it includes the Upstream rental assistance work that's going on in partnership with the county and United Way under the a home for all umbrella um the you all did U put some funding into that U pilot which is going on right now um and then again the housing prioritization and unit set as sides um that I referenced earlier under your affordable housing funding policy next slide so the the last piece here is future State policy issues as Jerry referenced I'm sorry to interrupt you can you just go back when you said that uh we can you clarify yeah can you clarify what we approved just yes a an an upstream rental assistance pilot it was was $500,000 of er2 I believe okay thank you can I can I mention one more thing yeah please so since the the last conversations we've had on a home forall two committee conversations and one with full Council from that point forward we have not programmed any additional funding for a home for all because we made the commitment that we would come back for additional conversation this was this was two years ago with with ra2 good so so Upstream rental uh you're talking about the rental subsidy we had said as part uh so this this goes all the way back to the pandemic so during so during the pandemic when um when rental assistance was being provided under erra um then um that that was called the ramp program and that program wound down and then with er2 funding um one of the recommendations that came out of that um that work was that we had an opportunity as a community to um to engage earlier with residents um before they were um served with a summary ejectment notice for eviction um and and so um that that work is being Advanced um with that er2 funding and again this is probably two years ago at this point but I can get that in detail out to you so as Jerry referenced we have a uh an opportunity with other NC cities um and with the NC League of municipalities in the future to to think about what are the opportunities to strengthen and clarify enforcement Authority so as part of this process Anna um spoke with the attorney's offices in cities across the state Jerry's and his team spoke with um uh code enforcement uh staff throughout in cities throughout the state and everyone I'm sorry I wasn't here during the co quite obviously right but why was it the the the delay in the the funding is there a reason why it's just now coming out no this is funding that was committed several years ago have they used it or you just talking about it to explain it or it's going forward that's what I'm it it's going forward and it the the reason I referenced it is that it is an opport it's something that the city has invested in that is an opportunity for know when um when residents when we engage with residents um who to think about the slide about the um partnership ecosystem and we talked about do we have an opportunity to do resource and referral earlier in the process so one of the things that they could be referred to are resources around um uh rental assistance so that that is a way to connect residents to the available resources before they um receive an eviction notice okay all right I'm a little confused but I I can speak with the committee members I know if if I'm confused other folks got to be confused but I'm I'm going to ask if I don't understand sure so so I'm just trying to get a little bit of clarification on it so people that are watching I got a couple of messages trying to understand where it's coming from and how is it allocated and moving forward sure so and and we can we can certainly provide um an update on that information to you okay but it was already approved prior to me getting here in Co I wasn't here it had to be before all right so there's still some money left over in right that's what I was asking yeah and 500 it's so it's the funding um it's the that was the initial allocation so the funds are gone there's no more funding in to be allocated out of there that so um so there there are there is funds in there that have been allocated to your mass displacement event protocol and response um and H so those are not exhausted um but they are earmarked for that work okay all right so I just want to understand okay thanks yeah so so what we're proposing is that some of those funds that are still uh existing can be better leveraged to provide location support and services um to households one at a time rather than waiting until there's a mass displacement event and and trying to to move everyone at the same time so that's the reference there to those funds thank you yep okay all right so um so now so so that's looking backwards so let's look forwards now to Future State policy issues um there are a couple of items in particular um that the attorney's office um in in Charlotte and across the state as well as um recommendations from our Advocate Partners uh that where where um State policy could uh help create more opportunity for local enforcement Authority the first one and we talked extensively about this hearing committee is a recommendation to declare minimum housing code violation civil penalties and aut atic lean on the property so as we discussed civil penalties can acre and then uh the city has to go through a collection process and often those funds are not collected in particular if an owner sells a property and then those civil penalties follow the owner instead of staying attached to the property as a lean and so this is a change that would be required under State policy because right now um the Civil penalties um are not um you're not able to lean them against a property the other pieces here are really some items around um clarifying um the city's Authority so clarifying the city's possessory interest in the property which would give cities a little bit more cover um than than we have currently and then some recommended changes to the receivership statute and uh so the recommendation here is that uh our our city attorney's office would partner with North Carolina League of municipalities and the other NC cities as well as the range of stakeholders that would be involved um to further these conversations and bring back to you um a recommendation at a future time and really future time um if you if you talk to Dana in this setting future time is the next long session of the State Legislature um so this really is a future um looking item however uh we thought it was important to raise it today because we want to acknowledge that there are some real limitations um to local Authority that we think can be um enhanced and strengthened in the future next slide so just to summarize the recommendations that staff has brought forward today the first one is we we um strongly agree that there's an opport Unity for um stronger enforcement using the inrm repair tools and injunctive relief tools that are already in your ordinance uh so so our recommendation is that you direct us to advance and begin that work we are not recommending any ordinance revisions at this time although we recommend to advance a pilot for mold testing and some further evaluation of the air conditioning requirement uh in in particular as that aligns with your other priorities um like the Strategic energy action plan uh that that you have been discussing then then we recommend leveraging current funding and efforts to enhance the partnership ecosystem and directing the city attorney's office to continue evaluation of future State policy issues next slide and so here we are at next steps um I'm sure there will will be a lot of um uh discussion under this first bullet under the committee discussion piece um but that is the next step committee discussion and then um action either today or in the future that would lead to a council discussion and at that point we can activate council's policy Direction um the two pieces there are um procurement for inim services and partnership contracts and then bringing inrm repair orders forward um for Council action uh we will of course Advance the additional evaluation that is needed uh and um Monitor and evaluate outcomes and provide any updates to Council on progress as needed going forward and with that I will hand it um back to you chair watlington thank you ma'am and I'll hand it right on over to Vice chair Mayfield thank you madam chair so I'll start here at the end and work our way back if we can go back to to slide 17 while we're doing that thank you for all the work that you all have done I am glad to see some of the language but um Anna I have a couple of questions that I think you can help me better understand so even when we look at this future State policy issues we know the number one bullet is our biggest one of our biggest challenges is that we have privately held multif family units out there and those are I'm not concerned at concerned with I knowah we have authority there it is these private entities that causing a lot of challenges so I'm trying to find understand regarding the city's legal stance of us having the Ability Beyond just a lean so if I don't pay my taxes North Carolina um general assembly is going to put a automatic flag so whenever I do file my taxes they going to make sure they get their money first so when we're spending thousands of dollars and we add up whenever we have a mass displacement event I understand that we need to go to Raleigh for legislative Authority for us to have any stronger ability but I really want to know one I think we can go before the long session cuz I've already spoken to at least one of our Representatives that is uh of not of the same party as myself who sees this as a clear no-brainer with protecting tax dollars but is there are you not seeing a legal way for us to be able to hold them accountable for whatever that relocation fee is sooner than just putting a lean on the property so I mean it's a great question and it and it's a at best it's a gray area but you you started out the example with if you haven't paid your taxes well that becomes an automatic lean on your property that's clear you don't pay your taxes that's a lean and and frequently our leans get paid back because the county actually forecloses on a tax lean and so we then whatever the the leftover proceeds are will go towards paying our demolition leans and then whatever remainder goes to the owner but um there's nothing in the enabling legislation that talks about anything other than the actual correction of the violations so it doesn't speak to what happens to the resident if the resident is you know relocated temporarily or any of that so for us to pursue those there's very little legal um foundation for pursuing that I mean there's no reason that you couldn't send a bill but if the property owner or property manager were to not pay it there's no no guarantee that we would have very strong recourse in the court system to get that back if the legislature were to make it clearer to both local government and to property owners that that is a potential outcome then that would obviously make our position much stronger so what I think will be helpful for us is staff is already tracking this so if staff were to basically pull the data together of the events where we've had to step in and outline all of those costs it will be helpful from our legal department for you to provide some language so that we can try to get this to bgi committee so that we can have a proposal of some specific recommended language that directly targets the impact because these are tax dollars that we are using to offset costs that were created by a private business we can't have it both ways where we say the public market is going to survive but then government has to come in and subsidize this transition and that public entity gets to just walk away so if we can actually show the data of how this is impacting and be able to get some language of a specific recommendation that we can take to Raleigh we may have an opportunity there's a upcoming North Carolina State League dinner that's coming up where the conversations can start well and and I I think Rebecca alluded to this earlier the larger cities in North Carolina are all struggling with this issue so it it's not just Charlotte that would like to see but I would like to see Charlotte be one of the ones that come up with language CU we are the leader in a lot of conversations and we have been for Generations so here's just another time for us to be the leader in it versus waiting to see what County may be able to do but I want to have that out there to know that this is a very real conversation that we're attempting to have and we will do what we need to do on our end to let the mayor know to get it referred to the correct committee but having the data is going to help us move the conversation along because this isn't a Republican or Democrat conversation this is a tax dollar conversation and we need to figure out a way to be compensated by this bad business so it will be helpful for the legal department to provide us some specific language so that we can use can we go back one more 16 so we were having a conversation regarding what was approved during the pandemic with a home for all how much funny is actually available if we're talking about potentially using this Upstream rental assistance what's how much do we have left in that right too so so there's there's funding that's still available in the contract with crisis assistance Ministry who is our displacement event partner and and there is funding that is provided each year through a relocation contract with Community Link and so that's annual funding that's allocated through cdbg dollars um and so what what we're proposing is that at least cdbg Community Development block thank you for keeping me straight council member Brown so Community Development block grant funding which is one of our funding allocations from the Department of Housing and Urban Development but do we know how much is left exactly the dollar amount that's left I don't have a specific dollar amount but I can provide that so it will be helpful if we're going to say that potentially these this will be the line item that it comes from cuz I know for me I would not want something to come back and then there be an event and we say well well we're going to need to tap some of this from trust funds no if we say we have funded in cdbg it would be helpful to know what that is cuz if we have 200,000 then that's what we have if we got 75,000 left in now then that's all we have I want us to be as transparent as we possibly can regarding what is available so that there's not expectations we just went to the community and thankfully the community came out overwhelmingly and supported our trust fund ask of 100 million where they've also already spent 90 million of it so we want to make sure that when we're having this conversation there's a realistic in theory as far as all the ass let me clarify all the people that have been banking their project off of our 100 million a good bit of it is already allocated in NE so I want to make sure that we're talking Council has not made those allocations yeah we got another email today there I copied you all like so when we're looking at that I want to make sure that we have a real idea especially when we know with the beginning of our budget conversations we're looking at some potential budget shortfalls ourself the county is looking at some potential budget shortfalls so I want us to be realistic about what we can do which is why I'm really pushing on us getting the language we need because this bad business owner needs to be held accountable financially for the impact that's happening on residents because at the end of the day these are tax dollars that are having to be utilized to go in and bail out this business and this slum Lord so it would be helpful we don't have to have it right now but it would be helpful to know what those dollars are so that we're having a real conversation and and we've done that analysis we wouldn't bring a recommendation forward to you without having done it so we can provide it to you that will be helpful so when we talk about again the relocation and displacement we still have the onetime federal funding out there which is great cuz that is again at the end of the day what budget line item is whatever Financial ass that we have where is it coming from we still have some funding that has to be allocated by 2026 how much do we have left we need to have a clear understanding with what we're looking at for this for INR demolition y'all already know I want to make sure that we are being take what you mean you mean what you say as accountable as we can with tax dollars but we also do not want to keep setting up this precedent that you get to be a bad business owner and then govern local government is going to come in and bail you out and you get to walk away with a check or you get the way walk you get a chance to walk away Scot free and we're trying to figure out how to identify new housing because what I don't want which unfortunately has had happened in the past is we move individuals from a horrible situation to another horrible situation versus moving you into a better situation to me that ties back to our Workforce which we had already talked about during the summer connecting you to our Workforce Development what I didn't see in any of these slides is that specific bullet point to say in here okay along with going back going to 15 to strengthen the partnership and ecosystem either in 15 or slide 16 to leverage current efforts and funding having that Workforce Development component in because as you said one of the challenges is that people are still in a position where what they can afford is34 $500 a month that is not the reality of rent today so can we help you get connected to better employment opportunities so that you have choices somewhere in here that will be helpful clearly outline and one of these bullets I think it falls in the strength and we'll say leverage current efforts and funding I don't care which one of them is that bullet needs to be in there cuz I am glad to see that we got the list post the list of locations of owners of frequent violations cuz that's going to help cuz once we move people we don't want new people moving in because they don't know connect the affordable housing prioritization and units set asides thank you because that's something we've been talking about for a while we need these Partners out here to help us get these people connected so thank you for all the work that y'all doing I think we have the opportunity to be more courageous if no other time this is the time in 20125 with everything that's going on around us for us to step up and be a lot more C courageous in our language and in our expectations if you want to do business because it is a privilege to do business in the city of Charlotte it is not an expectation for you to just do whatever it is a privilege but we have a responsibility to take care of our residents who are currently here and those who will eventually be coming thank you madam chair and as as a reminder also which we skipped over I think in this presentation um kind of quickly is that when we do activate on inrm repair then those activities um are put on the property as a lean and so that is Ian the the premise of inrm repair is that that action that action um then ensures that the um that there is a financial um component for the owner even if they sell at that point then those proceeds or you the lean gets paid to the city at the point of sale um so so while it's not solving for all of the issues it does solve for the issue that civil penalties can acre um and then the owner can walk away but when we activate INR repair then we're able to put a lean on that property and then if the owner does walk away at that point the funding does at least come back to the city and the residents have lived in a more um in a safer and more habitable unit um during that time last pce Madam chair I promise I need us to have a very clear understanding if it is one of our partners that's then applying submitting a Noah application for that same unit that kind of defeats the purpose because we're getting paid to turn around and still pay to help you rehab this development so I need us to be very clear that there needs to be a clear line of account Financial accountability for us to recoup our funds because if we find one of our partners to then go in and buy this slum building that they let get to this point then we are then looking at a Housing Trust fund request to do the rehab so that is a cycle that is set up long before any of us in this room but we have the opportunity to break it thank you counc man thank you um Madam chairwoman so thank you Rebecca Jerry action andc and other partners I know Ted has been sending a lot of emails um I appreciate the collaboration here to bring us this recommendations forward to ensure that our residents have a safe place to live um I appreciate what we are doing is to use inam repair to address uh safe housing standards where we will at least recoup our investment even if the owner decides to sell that property uh I think that ensures that we are using our taxpayers dollars wisely uh as well as providing safe housing to our residents uh I look forward to seeing that being implemented um in terms of um I know council member Mayfield ask questions about you know would there be any additional funding source um I I agree with her I think we do need some clarification on the source of this funding whether it's cdbg or the funds that we had approved for uh addressing Mass displacement in the past to crisis um I was under the impression that Housing Trust Fund dollars because there is local government commission that have very strict rules around how we leverage our bond dollars I think it can only go towards uh preserving housing or uh building more housing I I don't think we can use any of those housing trust funds to towards rental subsidies is that correct that's correct yeah okay so I don't think that question even comes I I think it's just uh we just need clarification as to what would be the funding source and you know not be the general fund uh I think that that would be useful as part of our it's very timely as part of our budget discussion um and in terms of the future State policy um council member Mayfield brought this up I think this could go in our future legislative agenda and as a chair of the budget governance and intergovernmental Relations Committee uh council member Mayfield was uh alluding uh that we we need to put this on our next uh legislative agenda so that we are planning ahead uh for for 2026 and Beyond that's all I have thank you madam chair absolutely council member Brown thank you so much Madam chair and so thank you um to my colleagues on the committee what you said I definitely Echo it I love being a part of this committee as I've learned to you know the committee and develop and learn what we do how we do it and how effective we become as a team I want to thank everybody from being in the room I know it's a lot of information and we definitely appreciate AR you coming out we really do care about you and when your voice comes into the room we want you to know that we hear you and we understanding that you're the reason why we serve and do what we do so with that being said one of uh our constituents wanted to know what we doing about you know when we take the money the funds we allocate we replace them we relocate we try to help them how do we help them stay there we already I wanted to tell her though they were not in the room though we talked about Workforce development lining them up with jobs careers employment to make sure that they can stay there and that's affordable for them so I wanted people that's you know listen that we are working on the full agenda for that and then also they were concerned about crisis when you call crisis they said that they don't have the funds and so what I wanted to uh maybe put out there is Crisis uh depleting of the funds or is there a process of maybe that number of that person that help has always already funded through and maybe the funds are not available because of that but I wanted to get some clarification there so that um the people watching saying that they've called crisis and they always tell them they don't have any funds and so how do you go about is there funds for the light bill the water bill is it for rent is it allocated in different sections where it can't cross over so that's all I have but thank you so much to that so I can speak to it generally um which is that the the city of Charlotte is just one of many funders of Crisis assistance Ministry and so crisis um uh estimates over the course of the year how many people or how many households they would be willing to help excuse me able to help with the funds available and so I don't know all of the details we can provide some follow-up information um but if households have already been um been uh served by crisis um or uh or if if they don't have additional funds at the time that um that the request is made um there there are many situations where they wouldn't be able to help with a rent rent payment um but the city's funding at least um does allocate between rental assistance and utility assistance and so even when a rental assistance isn't available there may be some utility assistance that is available all right thank you that's a great explanation of you know where the funds go and how they allocated just for the folks that are listening in because if it's for utilities we would not be able to use it for the rent and so we can probably get a more solid answer for that just reaching directly out to them and I don't I don't mind doing that or you know getting with you to see how that's done but thank you so much for putting that in perspective for us Rebecca I really appreciate all your hard work you do an amazing job and I don't want that to fall on their ears okay thank you council member Brown and we can reach out to Carol Hardon and she can give us some information yeah for sure because that's a great question I got it right here so I'll definitely send it out perfect um council member edir you had a follow-up question yes I I just wanted to clarify something so I know one of the recommendations is to provide funding for legal assistance pilot for mold testing so can you just tell me what what does that mean like are we funding attorneys are we funding uh organization how so yes so so I'll tell you generally um and then and then talk specifically about that so any anything in the partnership ecosystem that would require funding um we would follow our um you know City procurement process um and so it would be to put out a um a solicitation for someone to provide this service so for example um we did this recently with the eviction loan debt program so I think you we referenced um this as as one of the things that residents were looking for we put out an RFB we have a partner who can then come in and help provide this service so this would be a much smaller um dollar amount but we would still um procure for the service you with um with that same process and the idea is that the funding could then go to an organization and that organization would propose how to use that funding for mold testing so when when a resident is seeks legal aid uh and has uh um been exposed to mold and believes that there's been a health impact then this funding would be available to actually conduct the mold testing so the mold testing can cost $1,000 or more so through through through a typical engagement with legal assistance there wouldn't be any funding available for that so this pilot would would create um a small funding pool that would enable our partner to uh to essentially identify uh when when is when is the air testing needed uh how how would that support the case that they're making with the resident uh and then actually conduct the testing themselves that way that way the city is not conducting the air testing and the city is um not taking any kind of stand about the standards and the evaluation of that test since there aren't really any regulations that um that that we can um point to or guidelines we can point to to you to identify you know what type of mold or how much it is um that's really out out of our expertise go ahead so just to follow up on that um so the way I hear this so let's say uh tenant called Legal Aid and said hey I need legal assistance because there is more so somehow this funds will be used to do that test uh and help legal aid with the test and then but we will take no position in terms of the enforcement of mold but I guess there are County standards that uh are there regulations no regulations around the county uh I mean in or or the state no so so then how would that help uh the case it would it would help the case in the in a situation where um if if there were um Health impacts and and and or potential legal I guess this the punitive damages yes so it it wouldn't it wouldn't uh have any bearing on the code enforcement case got it the Civil side so on on on the legal aid side um for the resident um and so yeah thank thank you sometimes we um talk about this every single day and and um when we finally get to committee I um maybe left out a few details so yes indeed the the the recommendation here is that on the code enforcement side uh we would continue to enforce conditions that create mold and um but not not take any additional action um related to mold um in terms of adding it to the ordinance um but we already provide uh relocation assistance when there is a health situation and we already site for um conditions that create mold including leaks and poor ventilation uh and and we already require remediation of those things as part of the code enforcement ordinance um so I I guess the RFP would determine who would be that partner who will help us get this dollars out to Legal Aid um whoever is working on that case and it would help us design what that looks like um when um we would we would solicit for a partner to actually um not just ad uh administer the dollars but really help us understand when is that needed um and how would how would that partner determine how to uh distribute the funds thank okay follow up on this right now according to the county the triggers for mod is if you're a senior if you're Elder over a certain age or if you're small children those are the only two triggers for there to even be a mode remediation so one I'm trying to understand really the value in funding a legal assistance pilot for mode testing unless we're going to have very different rules in who gets access and not going to say well we're going to use the county rules of it being an elder or you have small children cuz we can have people that are anywhere from8 to 54 that this might be the situation but also what specific dollar line item is this coming out of for this pilot to pay for this RFP this would come so this would be uh a small amount of funding um that would come out of our existing funding for inrm so the current inrm funding budget line item is which one it's funding so INR funding comes out of pgo okay so currently INR comes out of pigo of which we still got to get an idea of how much do we have left in pigo cuz pigo also funds quite a few other things but I think the INR funding for pigo I do know that one offand okay has a current balance of three about $3 million okay and that funding um you it it it when you when we bring single family demolitions forward to you that's the funding line item that that it comes out of and um that's it does seem like that's a um a relatively good chunk of money but it would also need to fund uh non-residential building code demolitions and so when we have those they are substantially more expensive Ami of right so with as far as when it comes to mold so those the requirements is you have to be at 30% of the Ami as well as if you have a small child they have to show signs of asthma issues cuz I know the standard was elders and small children so again with thinking about funding a legal assistance pilot for M testing it will make a lot more sense if we're going to actually clarify and expand who has access to that cuz I remember the first time they they did the inspection but once I think within a year of them being in the house the young wife was found out they were going to be having their first child they did a test unfortunately the home had mold there was nothing available to help them cuz this was a young couple in their early 30s who were getting ready to start a family in this brand new home and there was no protections for them so if we're going to use the County's records of having to be at 30% of the Ami and your child's already showing signs of asthma that's a problem I'm sorry so for that particular one the idea of funding for M testing but not really having the ability to go in and help or to have limitations or who will be able to trigger that I have a concern with um just as a just as a quick pause I know council member asme has something to say um we have 10 minutes left and we do have on here action if committee desires so I just want to make sure I look that up that if there is something that we want to move forward with um it is on the agenda council member you had something did you have something yeah so so I wanted to follow up on council member mayfel's point I I think she does raise a good point as to how this will apply I think it's a New Concept from most of us so having some sort of detail around that would be helpful but in the meantime I don't want us to take the funding away from rental subsidy because we already have limited funding um till we get this figure out who gets what who gets the priority obviously it's over subscribed just like every other program uh so I'd be comfortable with moving forward in terms of inam repair as well as um just the partnership that we talked about um but let let's get just more details on I I think there seems to be consensus on that sure yeah okay um just just to follow up on that a couple of things um just to tie it together I would be open to what council member asir just mentioned um because I am thinking about um what is the action at the end after the testing comes out and if there's really no code that says this is what it needs to be what do we do with that um so I just want us to tie that testing to an outcome a little bit more um so I'd be on board to get some more information about that and rework as needed and then other the other question I had is under this require air conditioning equipment where it says currently the ordinance requires that when cooling facilities are provided they should be safely operable and maintained but it's not require air conditioning silly question is the same true for heating no heating is mandatory that's what I was wanting to make sure because I know we got the LEAP program and whatnot they have to have it and then on the need to quantify potential scope and impact and engage single family stakeholders I'm curious as to why um this is not done before we recommended action so it it is done before what what we're saying is we're not recommending an action right now because we haven't completed that St okay just right now so so the the recommendation that we have is that you essentially say to us do some further evaluation what what I would say is the first step is for you to say yes this seems reasonable or not right so if you say yes it seems reasonable then will go and do the further evaluation but because right now we don't have any any way well we we're we're try to to we try to move these things quickly through committee but we can't get everything done in 60 days so this is one of the things what what I would say we couldn't get done in 60 days um and we we we need a little bit more time first on on um first to quantify what's the scope and scale we do not currently know how many units don't have any cooling equipment at all secondly is to engage single family stakeholders because in this process we primarily focused on multif family stakeholders and we know that requiring air conditioning will have a significant and maybe even more of an impact in our single family space um and right now the code uh requires that you know it applies to everything so we we believe we need to do more engagement with those single family stakeholders and then also to be able to provide a recommendation about what does that even mean or look like does it is it um that that you would require cooling equipment in one room or cooling equipment that will cool the entire space um and then in our conversations with our um uh Partners in sustainability they um they were they were very intrigued by the recommendation because it aligns with the concerns around Urban heat impacts and the basis for the Strategic energy action plan um but they were they were um very adamant that as part of any recommendation if that move forward that we would think about uh weatherization prior to cooling so for example we already do this with the partnership that you have with Duke Energy uh um on their um high energy uh high energy users pilot where Duke Energy has put in funding for weatherization and the city pairs rehab funding um for the health and safety you know minor repairs and um things like that so if if if we were to advance a recommendation we would also want to provide you with with some recommendations around who who might the partners be in that space where are there some other funding um opportunities similar to the funding that we're using currently with Duke Energy uh so essentially we're we're saying today would just like to test with you is requiring air conditioning something that you would like to consider if so we need to do a little bit more work and it's not quick work but um but we can certainly um bring it back to you um in the months ahead gotcha okay yeah I'd be I mean I'm willing to entertain it um definitely some of the things that you mentioned are things that are important to me what is the minimum sear requirement to your point is it just you throw a mini split in a room and you're good or does it have to be zoned what are these things right um and then how does that impact the grid and are we talking about electrification Journey as well and if so what does that mean for home Energy Management Systems etc etc so super intrigued I think we could do a lot with this um not just in requiring air conditioning but how does it support like you said the ca goals and some of the other things that we're doing with some of our other partners so essentially we're saying we don't want to slow down down any work we're doing to advance INR and injunctive relief um so we're we're asking for further evaluation okay all right well that makes sense to me then it just means further evaluation not necessarily conclusion that we're not doing order changes all right um we've got five minutes CC member asme are you prepared to make a motion or you just have another comment I I can make a motion I want to do thank you madam chairwoman so you know as as we are seeing uh very with we are seeing the impact of climate change um we are seeing very high degree weathers and that can really have impact on our residents Health uh healths I mean heat Strokes so I think it's important for us to look at that uh because it is it plays an important part in providing a safe housing for our residents uh but I also see the other side where we need to look at it more carefully what does that mean to our existing um Noah stock which is naturally occurring affordable housing right does this mean that does um are we going to see increase in rent because now all of a sudden housing provider is being asked to install air conditioning right uh I think we need to look at the overall impact on our residents before we say let's go ahead uh while considering the health impact and as someone who has championed C app I'm certainly in favor of it uh because we need to advance our goals but I also want to make sure while trying to advance our CF goals we are not reducing our affordable housing stock I think it goes hand in hand we got to be very very uh thoughtful about this so I think having just some sort of data would help how many units would be impacted by this uh would there be an increase in rent and um and to miss uh Council to chairwoman watton's point um you know would many split do it because obviously that's more cost effective than putting the whole I guess HVAC uh unit right HVAC system uh so I think we need to just look at this more carefully study it and assess and impact overall uh but that's all I have uh and I'm ready to make the motion so for clarification Madam chair we have multiple recommendations in here so is the motion going to be individually cuz I do not support we have conflicting language yeah I'm not I'm not doing this okay cuz we have conflicting language between these recommended actions those right there they conflict uh just I have uh just from everyone's um yeah everyone's comments I'm going to make a motion that I think everyone will get behind which is to procure in services and other partnership contracts to proceed with INR repair uh and INR repair orders for forward for Council action that would be my motion okay so that I have a clarifying question you have specific recommendations in here leverage current efforts is there a second motion for discussion I can't second it without clarification on these final next steps all right all second conversation thank you madam chair so you have in here next steps the procurement for INR Services of the partnership contracts I am not supporting the recommended action of leveraging current efforts and funding to enhance for the mode testing for legal assistance we have on here recommended action no ordinance change provide funding for legal assistance pilot for mold testing recommend the action Direct staff to advance new processes for IM and repair injective relief that I support but we say two different ways leverage the current efforts and funding to enhance partnership ecosystem which the very first bullet is to fund a legal assistance pilot for mold testing can you go to slide 18 please I have I have a proposal that would potentially clarify this if the concern is specifically around the for mold testing one of the one of the options could be to leverage current funding and efforts to enhance the partnership ecosystem with the exception of the pilot per mold testing and you could direct us to either bring back more information to you about that or to not Advance it at all so Madam chair I would like to do an amendment to the motion to what Rebecca just said but my motion my motion didn't include any included no my motion only included procurement for inam services that's on the last slide number 19 and it doesn't include anything in terms of this it's just in Ram repair I don't want to hold that process you know down because we need to proceed forward with that one so did you read the whole sentence and other partnership contract yeah I I didn't include that in my motion I only included inam repair services for for Council of action yeah so and one one other point of clarification so the um the recommendation is specifically around new processes for inrm repair and injunctive relief and so um you it's it's at your discretion um but the but the the slide that we shared includes both of both of those items okay so I will make a motion where it's very clear that we procure for inrm services and we asked staff to bring inrm repair orders forward for Council action it does not include advancing pilot for mole testing and would you be okay with that yes okay second it's already seconded um so so for for my own clarification then it is not including any of the actions under the partnership ecosystem or injunctive relief just a second hold on [Applause] um so new processes for INR repair which we advance can you clarify what exactly in in injunctive relief yes so injunctive relief is take is the um uh would be directing the city attorney's office to um file for injunctive relief in court um Anna do you want to share a little bit about that process we we had talked about it previously but didn't focus on it as much today I mean you already have that ability within the ordinance so it's I think the rec recommendation is simply to engage our office on a more selected basis for pursuing injunctive reliefs as an alternative remedy to inrm repair and that's just seeking a court order that would direct the property owner to make the repairs with potential ramifications for that property owner if they don't comply and and I want to I want to make sure that that the committee understands that you already have the inrm and the injunctive ability with in the ordinance so this is just a recommendation approval of a recommendation from staff that we utilize those yes because we haven't utilized it in the past so this is just I I get it okay all right so do you want me to make motion again no it's okay we we've got it on here I'll go ahead if there's no further discussion uh all in favor please you got something no I got the clarification going down so we good all in favor raise your hand all right it is UN it is unanimous um are there any other motions that need to be made or related to this item I know we just took this one no I think they got the message all right well thank you ladies uh as always second second oh my God unanimous [Music]