2021 meeting of the greensboro city council we will begin tonight's meeting with a moment of silence mrs johnson would you lead us in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god in epistle with liberty and justice for all the city council has opened council meetings to the public with a limited capacity therefore a limited number of residents will be allowed inside the council chambers and will be rotated for specific items of interest following the conclusion of items or topic of discussion residents are asked to leave the chamber to allow room for others to enter the chamber public speakers must continue to register via form on the city's website deadline for submissions is 5 pm the day prior to the meeting the public will be required to wear masks council procedure for the conduct of meeting council will use an electronic voting method each member of council must vote unless there is a direct conflict we do allow for and welcome speakers to address counsel at the public forum meeting council respects the right for the public to speak about matters of concern that can be addressed by counsel each speaker will be allotted three minutes comments that are intended to incite unlawful behavior will be deemed out of order zoom participants are requested to mute their microphones until they are called upon to speak the city of greensboro is committed to promoting an environment that is free of discrimination bias and bullying thus harassment words jokes actions or comments based on an individual's sex sexual orientation race ethnic background age religion physical condition or other legally protected characteristic will not be tolerated in order to be considered written comments must be submitted online through the city's website www.greensborohyphennc.gov zoning matters do allow for a 15-minute presentation both for and against the rezoning there is also a five-minute rebuttal period for each side pro and calm please move to the window side of the room when your item is introduced all zoom participants must remain muted when others have been identified to speak once an item has been completed the meeting host will remove speakers for said item guests are encouraged to watch the remainder of the meeting via the greensboro television network or through the city's website written comments may be submitted on public hearing items up to 24 hours after the public hearing and will be provided to council for consideration the platform for submission of comments must be submitted online through the city's website www.greensborohyphennc.gov we do have a consent agenda for items e1 through e25 which are a grouping of agenda items that are voted on with one single vote to expedite what are believed to be routine and non-controversial items any council member may withdraw an item from the consent agenda due to a conflict of interest or for the purpose of the voting no items removed from the consent agenda for discussion will be placed on the august city council business agenda this meeting does include closed captioning depending on the length of tonight's meeting we will take a short recess around 7 30. i do want to make a comment regarding on the easy way to find these items on the city's website i know that if people have it kind of marked as a favorite place to go to um it may be sending you to where the old agendas are but if you go to the city's website www.greensborohyphennc.gov right up in the top there is a link that says city council meetings and it will bring you to the new escribe agendas along with the archive of the old agendas and for people who want to look at it you've got the option of doing an h dm html or a pdf and for most people looking at it at the html along with the links make it much easier to follow we had a little bit of difficulty with our last meeting when it came to voting we think we've got it worked out we're going to ask people to be patient with us and i think as people get to know the new website and the new links that they will probably like it better than the um old system that we had um miss mrs mayor um do i need to find somewhere on here to press to speak to speak or may ask me i have a question you have a question on procedure no yeah from the procedure okay um in your reading the um monologue you were reading about how to sign up to speak before council is that for everyone or if that they have to sign up in advance is that for just on virtual or is that for people who want to come and speak here because we used to allow people to just come and sign up here and speak right and what um what i've been told is that they would like we would like um to continue to have people sign up online that way um the courier knows what we can expect in the council chambers and if there is a large item we will know how many people to expect and what the speakers are but for the time being um to speak yes um it would be to sign up at five o'clock the meeting before mr city manager we have someone signing people up to speak sorry we have someone signing people up to speak tonight i don't know yeah but we're disenfranchising people by simply saying prior to you getting here you gotta sign up online we got people who are blind we got other people who come here and and you know you're talking about people if mr robert moore was still living who just comes and wants to speak he didn't know about signing up in advance so we used to sign people up when they got here and even so we can still control the amount of the number of people but i think we just disenfranchised the public we are a public entity and to say people now got a pre-sign up i mean i understand the virtual aspect but to say we have to pre-sign up i i don't think we're being very inclusive and in that regard and i think that's a concern so mr city manager you have heard those concerns yes we have someone sign uh people tonight and we'll continue to thank you yeah you're signing up if they come here but if you're telling them they got a pre-sign up you're not saying well come here and i think the city manager just corrected that that's not what he corrected he's they got somebody he or something we'll do both correct that's yeah that's he did not correct that so if i'm at home i gotta if i don't have device particu you know i think the city managers just said that people can sign up to speak as they enter the chamber and then the script will be adjusted for the next meeting yeah thank you thank you mr city manager that that's more inclusive thank you the applicant and residents have requested a 30-day continuance on item number f10 which is a public hearing for an ordinance annexing territory into the corporate limits for the property located at 2006 six wolf trail road 9.985 acres anthony and emma gene farrar and item number 11 which is related a public hearing for original zoning at 206 wolf trail road without further advertising these items will be postponed to the august 17th item of the city council agenda without further advertising i believe we do need a vote on that do we not mr city attorney move to postpone second yes okay um voice vote is fine um mrs hoffman yes yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson i'm a yes mrs busawitz yes mr outland yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes as i am the council representative for that district we are working with the neighbors and the developer to hopefully come to a compromise um so we hope to have that resolved by the next meeting in august thank you and that passes nine to zero um we will now move on to the consent agenda which is which are items e1 through e25 move the agenda second moved by dr wells and seconded by mrs johnson and i believe for the while we are doing um virtual we still have to take a verbal vote or we'll no this is not virtual this is but we're doing the hybrid there is the do we still have to okay it was advertised that way so yeah so we do need to take a verbal as well um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am a yes mrs abuser waiter mr outling yes this is thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero we will now move on to the public hearing portion of our agenda we did receive one written comment from heather smith regarding the pleasant ridge alcorn zoning item for the july 20th 2020 meeting this will be posted to the city's website tomorrow we do have seven speakers signed up to participate in tonight's meeting um item f1 and f2 will be taken together um we do have let's see three speakers in favor none signed up against item f1 is a public hearing for an ordinance annexing territory into the corporate limits for property located at 2701 alcorn road in 1817 pleasant ridge road 46.25 acres lyndon mitchell john pearson iris pearson and item number f2 a public hearing for original zoning 1819 pleasant ridge road and 7201 alcorn road mr kirkman would you like to give us a brief overview uh yes thank you mayor vaughn uh having some technical difficulties sharing your screen so if you'll bear with me here just one minute yes rodney can you enable the sharing please sorry for that the request this evening is for an annexation and original zoning for approximately 46.25 acres located on the west side of pleasant ridge road and south of alcorn road the current zoning is county rs40 residential single family and the request is to go to city cbrm 18 conditional district residential multi-family north of the request is currently zoned county rs-40 residential single-family as well as county rs40 mh residential single family manufactured housing east of the request is zone city r3 residential single family south of the quest it is currently zoned residential single family county rs40 and city r3 also residential single family west request is zone county rs40 single family residential the subject property currently contains a single family dwelling in undeveloped land north east south and west request are single-family dwellings the property is currently designated as residential on the future land use map of gso 2040 comprehensive plan and is designated as urban general on the general excuse me the future built form map of the comprehensive plan i do have some brief video here just to give you a better sense of the site given its size so this is looking at the site on pleasant ridge road the subject property is on your left the two houses in the picture here are actually not part of that request we're moving north on pleasant ridge road at this point [Music] and coming up on the intersection of pleasant ridge road and alcorn road so this is alcorn road here on the north side of the property these are some homes that are located along alcorn road that are north of the subject site and in the image towards the top you can see a nearby school in the picture that's further at pleasant ridge road at this point we are going along seattle line drive which also has single-family residential to the west of the subject site at this point you'll be able to see the area of the site that has a stream running along the western boundary it's a prominent feature of the site and how corn road is located to your north in this image uh this is kind of a drainage area that's located along alcorn road the strange area then flows into the stream that runs along the western property boundary of the site again these are houses along cedar line road which are west of the subject property the subject property will be located to your right in this image this is a view of a school and a residential subdivision that's located further north of the site along pleasant ridge road from this angle the subject site would be located to your right and the top of the screen this is a view of some of the houses along prentice road that is located on the southern boundary of the subject site in the southeast corner pleasant ridge road will be located to your right in this image the applicant has submitted condition with this request that limits uses to a maximum of 290 dwelling units as noted previously this is designated as urban general on the future built form map and the residential on the future land use map of the comprehensive plan staff did conclude that this original zen request does support the comprehensive plans creating great places goal to expand greensboro a citywide network of unique neighborhoods offering residents of all walks of life a variety of quality housing choices and the building community connections goal to maintain stable attractive and healthy places to live and raise families their proposed cd army 18 zone district allows for expanded residential uses that can complement other existing residential uses in this area and staff is recommending approval of the request the annexation and the original zoning were both heard by the planning and zoning commission at their june 21st meeting and the commission unanimously voted to recommend approval of both the annexation and the original zoning at that meeting there were two speakers in favor of the request and two speakers in opposition to the request and i can answer any questions at this time can you i'm sorry can we go back to the screen can you elaborate on the allows expanded residential uses phrase yes so the current zoning is focused only on single-family residential so by allowing the multi-family residential you're going to allow a range of residential uses and i believe the attorney will speak to some of that as well so it will be proposed as a combination of single family and multi-family with that and that's what we mean by the expanded uses you're most welcome thank you we do have uh three speakers in favor mr terrell would you like to start us off currently there is nobody against thank you thank you mike thank you madam mayor tom terrell fox rothschild 230 north elm street representing leoterra development here with leah terrace mr cobb bunker and trying to get owned to the feed tonight but sometimes getting bumped off is eddie mcdowning with davis martin powell and if you have an engineering question if he's not on i will actually try to answer that our presentation is very short this is not something that is coming to the council outside of our policies uh from a policy overview this is growth tier one this is what the city has been planning for it is consistent with our future land use map uh we're all getting accustomed to now the new comprehensive plan lingo this is urban general um uh in that on the future-built format and if you look at the aerial it is very very close to airport property and i think that factoid in itself identifies this as something uh at this in a growth area um as a quick overview of what the site is i think it's important to note that when you see cd rm18 that there is a density cap which makes this essentially 6.27 unit per acre zoning it cannot go above that and i think if i heard your question miss durham as to what would it be it could be anything residential that comes in under that the decision has not been made that the market is shifting uh there's a tremendous demand for townhomes uh among citizens uh that's shifting a little bit it could be a combination of single family uh that decision is will be made uh post rezoning uh it does have very good connectivity with connectivity at three points on a potential fourth uh to a stub and then as i say here likely town homes but there's a big shift now and we just don't know um we're always glad to be here when staff and the zoning commission have put wind in your sails with very positive recommendations um i do want to show a couple of things here that tell a great story first this is not an undeveloped area if you look at the area in front of you most of this is county growth where it's well septic that has been developing since the 40s 50s 60s a lot of ranch homes but there's nothing around this tract that's undeveloped this is an island uh waiting for something to occur now at the zoning commission the big issue seemed to have been storm water and i wanted to focus on this a little bit because storm water is not a land use issue i think if you ask any professional storm water is not storm water is an engineering issue it is a matter that you meet it or you don't it's based in mathematics it's based in physics it's based on calculations of storm water that cross the land during certain size rains and then you have engineers here in the city who look at those calculations and they look at the storm water devices and they tell you do you meet that or not so it's a very objective checks to check the box determination it's not a question of will there be more or less storm water because we have a what is called a pre-post requirement and what is pre-post and this became an issue with zoning commission i don't think it's going to be raised here today but when you require storm water devices those storm water devices have to be sized so that the rain that falls on that site post development equals the rain that flows off that site pre-development now are those uh devices required to meet a 100-year storm no they're not but they are required to meet state law and our state law is consistent with everything required by federal law i heard that that came up in fact last night at the zoning commission that these things are a lot more uh common but when people come in to a hearing like this there are only so many points they can make in stormwater is often one that you will hear i would like though to make it very clear if i if more than as much as i can storm water is not a land use issue the final point is that this was a very good dialogue running dialogue that we had with neighbors out there i joked or commented more than once there must be something in the water they've been drinking because you know we hear so much anger very often when we bring change into a community uh representing growth everybody out there was the nicest uh in their response to us that i have encountered in a long time and we gradually appreciated that they had a lot of questions we hope that we answered all of them uh in a straightforward forthright manner but it was very successful meetings and a series of conversations up to that i'm glad to answer any questions you have of course we hope that you will uh and resign this track mr terrell do you have anybody else who wishes to speak on your behalf no uh mr bunker and mr mcdown you're here as just in case okay any questions for mr terrell or so we have nobody in opposition um so i don't think you want to rebut yourself so i think we can probably close the we could probably close the public hearing um public hearing moved by mr boos waiter seconded by uh dr wells mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes yes i'm a yes mrs abuse waiter yes mr outland yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes second so we um that is for the annexation moved by mrs johnson seconded by mrs thurm but we're going to try to use our new voting system so and now uh mrs thurm that works and now if you would vote hit submit and for the record we still need a verbal vote um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abuzawater yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and this is hightower yes and that passes nine to zero thank you let's see um now we need a motion for item number um f2 which does require um the uh motion of cons consist statement of consistency move the item second by mrs therm second seconded by mrs hoffman oh miss kennedy sorry if you can um michelle do you have that up we do okay and so now the greensboro city council believes that it's action to recommend approval of the original zoning request for the property described as 1819 pleasant ridge road and 7201 alcorn road from county rs40 to city cd rm 18 to be consistent with the adopted gso 2040 comprehensive plan and considers the action taken to be reasonable and in the public interest for the following reasons the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan's future built for map and future land use map the proposed cd rm 18 zoning district as conditioned permits uses which fit the context of surrounding area and limits negative impacts on the surrounding area the request is reasonable due to the size physical conditions and other attributes of the area it will benefit the property owner and surrounding community and approval is in the public interest thank you council please vote and for the record mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abuse waiter yes mr altman yes mrs sperm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero thank you um we will now move on to items um f3 and f4 um public hearing for f3 is a public hearing for an ordinance annexing territory into the corporate limits for property located at 3437 randleman road 1.77 acres gene dulin and item f4 a public hearing for original zoning 3437 randleman road we do have one speaker in favor mr kirkman if you'd like to give us a brief overview yes thank you mayor vaughn again the property is 1.77 acres located on the east side of randleman road and north of wolfstail road the existing zoning is county rs30 residential single family and the request is to zone it to city r3 residential single family north and south of the quest are currently zoned rs 30 residential east of the request is zoned a combination of rs 30 residential and aeg agricultural west requested zone county rs40 residential and city r3 residential single family the property currently contains a single family dwelling north east south and west request are also single family dwellings this property is currently designated as commercial on the future land use map of the comprehensive plan and urban general on the future built for map the proposed original zoning does support the comprehensive plans creating great places gold to expand greensboro citywide network of unique neighborhoods offering residents of all walks of life a variety of quality housing choices in the building community connections goal to maintain stable attractive and healthy places to live and raise families the proposed r3 zoning district does permit similar uses to the surrounding area and staff is recommending approval of the request both the annexation and the original zoning request were heard by the zoning commission at their june 21st meeting and the commission unanimously recommended approval of both items there were three three speakers in favor of the request and none in opposition i can answer any questions thank you we do have one speaker um on zoom um ms gene dulin yes my property is 3437 randleman road and i was just trying to um just trying to hook up to city water that's my only uh request okay are there any questions for mr lynn thank you um if there are no further comments can i have a motion to close the public hearing moved by mrs johnson seconded by dr wells mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abuzawader yes mr outling yes mrs therm yes mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um if we could have a motion for f3 sec moved by um mrs johnson second seconded by mrs hightower and let's see if we can get the voting to work in the meantime we'll um i'm sorry madam mayor if madame pro team johnson could hit the button to submit to move it this item you had to move it because i've had i seconded it okay well she's resetting the um computer mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson i'm a yes this is abusive waiter yes mr outling yes this is therm yes and this is high tower yes that passes nine to zero um item number f4 does require a statement of consistency do i have a motion second moved by mrs abusa waiter and seconded by um mrs hightower mrs abuse waiter would you read that please yes oh i'm sorry to be consistent with the adopted gso 2040 comprehensive plan and considers the action taken to be reasonable and in the public interest for the following reasons the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan's future built form map and future land use map the proposed r3 zoning district permits uses which fit the context context of surrounding area the request is reasonable due to the size physical conditions and other attributes of the area it will benefit the property owner and surrounding community and approval is in the public interest thank you and for the record council please vote um in the meantime mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson i'm a yes mrs abusa waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes this is hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um item number f5 and f6 a public hearing for an ordinance annexing territory into the corporate limits for property located at 4103 rockingham road south 0.613 acres mark and dana southard and item number f6 a public hearing for original zoning 4103 south rockingham road i don't believe we have any speakers on this item so if you want to do a very brief presentation i would be happy to um the subject request is currently zoned county rs20 which is a single family it's requested to go to city r3 residential single family they are asking for annexation to access city water surrounding zoning is similar in terms of single family zoning allowances this is a property to be built with a single family dwelling and can only be done as one single family dwelling based on the acreage it does meet again the comprehensive plans creating great places goal to expand greens for a citywide network of unique neighborhoods offering residents of all walks of life a variety of quality housing choices in the building community connections goal to maintain stable and attractive and healthy places to live and raise families the proposed r3 district permits use as compatible with the other residential uses in the surrounding area and stats recommending approval of the request zoning commission reviewed both the annexation original zoning at their june 21st meeting and unanimously recommended both items there are two people speaking in favor and none in opposition thank you and mr southward has signed on if there are any um questions otherwise um do i have a motion for f5 move the item moved by miss kennedy second by mrs hoffman that was actually me but but that's that's okay we interchangeable no i thought i heard it that way sorry no it's me and we're waiting for that to come up um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes this is abusive waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um do we have move item six um moved by mrs johnson second seconded by ms kennedy greensboro city council believe this its actions the greensboro city council believes that its action to recommend approval of the original zoning request for the property described as 4103 south rockingham road from county rs20 residential single family to city are three residential single family to be consistent with the adopted gso 2040 comprehensive plan and considers the action taken to be reasonable and in the public interest for the following reasons the request is consistent with the comprehensive plans future bill form map and future land use map two the proposed r3 zoning district permits uses which fit the context of surrounding area and three the request is reasonable due to the size physical conditions and other attributes of the area and it will benefit the property owner and surrounding community and approval is in public's best interest thank you so that has been moved in seconded mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am a yes mrs abusa waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um we will now move on to items number f7 um f8 and f9 item number f7 is a public hearing for an ordinance annexing territory into the corporate limits for property located at 1912 and 1912 zz prosper road 15.67 acres cheryl glover brian wentworth and loretta wentworth item number f8 public hearing for original zoning 1912 pros prosper road trosper road i'm sorry an item f9 public hearing for original zoning 1912 zz trust for road we do have one speaker in favor and two opposed mr kirkman yes thank you mayor vaughn the council is being asked to consider three items in this case where we have an annexation and two original zoning requests the total amount of acreage is 15.697 the private property that is petitioned to come into the city is this larger hatched area the 12.027 acres currently zoned county ag agricultural and residential single family rs40 and they are requesting to change that zoning to city cd-rm5 residential multifamily there is a separate piece of property that is a publicly owned piece of property that if the first piece comes into the city under state law the other piece will also come in at that time that property is currently zoned county p-i-w-c-a which is public institutional in the watershed critical area and the request is to change that zoning to city pnr parkland and natural resource areas north of these requests is currently zoned city pnr east request is zoned county ag agricultural and county rs40 residential single family south of request is zoned county rs40 and county curs 12 conditional use residential single family west's request is zone county rs40 residential single family county ag agricultural and city cdr 5 conditional district residential single family 5. the subject properties are currently a combination of a single family dwelling and undeveloped land north of requests are property used as watershed protection areas and which is of course undeveloped east through quest is undeveloped south and west are single-family dwellings and undeveloped land the properties uh the main portion of the property is designated as residential on the future land use map of the comprehensive plan with the publicly owned area in designated as reserve under the future land use map on the feature belt form map the designations are urban general and reserve this is the condition that was submitted by the applicant and advertised as part of this request staff did conclude that these original zone requests support the conference of plans creating great places gold to expand greensboro a citywide network of unique neighborhoods offering residents of all walks of life a variety of quality housing choices as well as a sustainability goal to promote environmental stewardship by taking care of our natural resources and the natural systems that support all living things the proposed cd rm5 and pnr zoning districts allow uses complimentary to other existing uses in the surrounding area and staff is recommending both zoning requests these requests were heard by the zoning commission at their june 21st meeting and were unanimously approved all three items for our recommended approval there were two speakers in favor and there were none speaking against at the meeting staff did become aware that there was an additional person who was opposed but was unable to join the meeting i believe that person is signed up to speak this evening and i can answer any questions and i've just been informed that neither um dawn or james sauls are on the zoom call but we do have david stone who is speaking in favor um mr stone yes i'm here uh madam mayor and uh good evening thank you for your time my name is david stone i'm president of d stone builders we currently have this property under con mr stone do you have there it is we didn't see you go right ahead i'm sorry oh sorry um as mr kirkman alluded to we are requesting an rm5 zoning with the limitation of 35 units which would be less than three per acre the plan is to develop the property into a maintenance free townhome community similar to a number of others we've done across the city the target buyer for these communities is you're 55 and older empty nesters looking to downsize and do yes less uh yard work around the house uh price point we're targeting right now is going to be starting in the high 300s and we have had communications with the neighbors we received city's mailing list sent a letter out to each individual or address on that list on june 9th held a zoom call on june 21st presented our preliminary sketch plan and uh answered any questions that we could with the neighbors that attended there were about a dozen or so in attendance and i'll be happy to answer any questions that anyone on council has thank you thank you are there any questions for mr stone in that case can we close since um madam clerk i just want to confirm there's no one in opposition no ma'am okay can we read a question moved by miss kennedy seconded by miss abuse the waiter um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson i'm a yes mrs abuse waiter yes mr outling yes this is thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um so we need a um motion for the um annexation on number seven f7 who moved f7 second moved by mrs johnson seconded by ms kennedy um let's see if names aren't coming up right but it's all right um while that is processing mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am a yes mrs abusa yes mr outling yes this is therm yes and mrs hightower yes and then we need a motion for f8 which will require a statement of consistency before you do that would you go back to the vote so i i was i just flicked back to it and got ready to vote and it clicked off so that's fine that's fine okay cool go right ahead of me i'm sorry that's all right um motion for f8 consistency um move the item moved by mrs abuse waiter second seconded by ms kennedy uh mr biswaiter if you agree that thank you the greensboro city council believed that its action to recommend approval of the original zoning request for the property described as 1912 trust for road from county ag agricultural and county rs40 residential single family to city cd rm5 conditional district residential multifamily five to be consistent with the adopted gso 2040 comprehensive plan and considers the action to be taken to be reasonable and in the public interest for the following reasons the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan's future built form map and future land use map the proposed cdr m5 zoning district as conditioned permits uses which fit the context of surrounding area and limits negative impacts on the surrounding area the request is reasonable due to the size physical conditions and other attributes of the area it will benefit the property owner and surrounding community and approval is in the public interest okay that's been um moved and seconded um council please vote if that comes up in the meantime mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abuza waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes this is hightower yes thing never came up for the okay so that is the vote it passes nine to zero on f8 f9 also requires a statement of consistency do we have a motion for f9 so moved moved by mrs abuzawader seconded by mrs johnson mrs abuza waiter would you read that for the please described in 1912-cc prosper road from county pi wca public and institutional and watershed critical area overlay district pacific dnr land and natural resource areas to be consistent with the adopted gso 2040 comprehensive plan and considers the actual taking to be reasonable and in the public interest for the following reasons request is consistent with the comprehensive plan's future built foreign future land use now the proposed pnr industry permits uses which fit the context of surrounding heritage the request is due to the size physical conditions and other attributes of the error it will benefit the property owner and surrounding the community okay and that has been moved and seconded mrs hoffman yes yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am a yes mrs abusa waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero uh we continued items number f10 and f11 we will move on to the general business portion of our agenda um g1 is a resolution approving contract 2020-045 in the amount of 624 859.90 with atlantic contracting company i believe this was continued from our last meeting are there any questions yes i have questions mrs hightower yes i do have questions um i can't get off this screen um as i believe you all saw today we got an email today um from something that i asked 30 days ago and never got a response until today um which left a short amount of time to try to understand um the email and the logistics of this contract um my concern with this contract is the question that i asked 30 days ago was why there is combined goals and the answer that i received today you said combined what combined they combine the goals together they combined all the goals for the mwbe into one okay and my question was why so i got an answer today and i think every one of you got an email today the purpose of this program is to ensure that mwbes get working or included and they split the work the goals they do an m goal and they do a wbe goal okay they don't do combined goals and what i read today didn't make sense to me um so i reached out to griffin and strong and asked griffin and strong because the email said is in our plan and they've not seen it in the plan i've not seen it in the plan and if the plan has changed certainly we need to vote for a revised plan and the plan that we have speaks of and as i talked to griffin and strong today they said the whole point of this program is to make sure that when you set goals you set goals and availability of work for black business minority you set goals and availability of work for white women business and so according to the email that i also received on april 9th there was a goal setting committee meeting and in that ghost setting committee meeting according to the minutes of the goal setting committee meeting nbe goals were 24 that meant that there was 24 capacity to do the work and then 13 wbe if we're going to start combining goals then we have absolutely changed the spirit and the law of the program and i don't think we need to approve this contract until we get this straight um yes it has been continued once i understand that nobody wants to continue it again i certainly would like to continue it again but combining goals is not uh what this program is about it is splitting it and so that there is fairness and equity now i understand that it said it was concrete flat work so i spoke to a concrete businessman today a black one who said he never gets work with this company but he's made three bids uh three different bids on the work that they currently have here at the city because there's only two black business concrete guys in this city okay but in the 27 msa area there's more and he says if it wasn't for yates construction which i applaud yes he wouldn't even get concrete work in this city and he's had to go outside the city to get work and that's very unfortunate i understand it's a bidding process and that you um you have to bid and and you know your prices should be right but also when you bid and i asked um griffin strong this i said well what if it's concrete flatwork and she said to me well if they don't bid you don't know what they have the capacity to do so if you automatically eliminate a black company from this by combining a goal you've disenfranchised that business i don't think this is what we said we wanted to do it is certainly not what i feel that we want to do and i think this is passive discrimination by combining bids together combining the goal together then if every time we determine that we don't think somebody will meet that qualification we will never get opportunity and i said that to the black businessman today i said well what do you think about this and he said i'll never get any work like this and i don't think this is what we need to be doing going down the path so i only had a short amount of time to do some research information because i just got this response today um but i would really like to delve a little bit deeper into this because i think there's something here that i think we we can allow to happen um and with the company that is currently has the bid they have created a second company out of their company um who got all 37 of the work the m the wbe i am all for mwbe women real women businesses i'm all about supporting real women businesses um and the prime on this is a wbe so i'm all about supporting that but i'm also about supporting what we said this program was about when griffin and strong did the disparity study and they said in their study it they talked about the benefit of making sure the goals are split mbe and wbe i moved to table this and get some clarity yes ma'am we tabled this last month yeah we did it and i think it came but i second year and i think that um uh that assistant city manager sowell would like to speak to it and i know that miss abusa waiter had some okay questions as well sure and i believe that um miss katan is on the phone if we need her she is and so i would love to explain why the goal setting committee recommended a combined goal it certainly is not the standard practice of setting combined goals and so as we move forward in future um council meetings if you look you customarily see that there's always an end goal and a w goal with this project there were only three main scopes of work for the concrete the curb and gutter repair project there was a scope of work for temporary traffic control that was for five thousand dollars there was a scope of work for concrete curb and ramp which was thirty six thousand dollars and so that you're not going to be able to carve out a m or a w out of forty thousand dollars worth of two scopes of work the um major portion of this project was definitely removing and replacing concrete and that accounted for of the 561 000 that was estimated that accounted for 520 000 of the work and that was even broken down further there were some portions that was four inch sidewalk six inch sidewalk eight inch um side walker driveway those amounts were like thirteen thousand forty five thousand twenty thousand so even breaking it up within the concrete work that had to be done they were very small amounts that are hard for you to assign an m or w to make any type of money so the greatest portion of all of it there was uh four thousand seven hundred square yards of four inch sidewalk that was two hundred and eighty thousand dollars so staff felt like it was more prudent than for us to try to break off a half a percent here uh one percent there to try to figure out how much we could give to a m or w it's more prudent to combine that goal and a lot and we don't know which company is going to get the contract at the time we're setting goals it's just they know that the industry of work they don't assign four inches of sidewalk to this company and then six inches of sidewalk to another company they will select a company and that company will do whether it's four inches or six inches they will do all of the work so staff felt like it was more prudent for us to combine this goal because it was difficult to say how much we could assign to an m because of these small amounts and how much we could assign to a w because of the small amounts and this is a project that the the contractor that was awarded they normally self-perform as well and so that is why staff elected and and the entire goal setting committee agreed to it that it be a combined goal it is certainly not a practice that we do for every project so i completely agree with you councilwoman hightower and and it is a part of our plan i'll send out a copy of the plan and indicate to you all where that is a part of the plan that says that we can combine goals but it is it is definitely our uh goal to always assign an mbe or wbe goal but in this this project right here it was hard to to break out what could be mbe and what could be wbe because they all the small amounts made up the larger total so that's why staff felt it was more prudent thank you i i understand much better now well i may understand and i think mary kay is next but i don't accept that excuse this is mbe and wpe and if it's only wbe then give them 14 but you know just to simply combine that and i'm reading what uh someone sent me who was actually part of that and and and and when the gold coordinator committee reviewed it as well um and same by by combining the goal and adding to wbe that is a possibility that the 24 percent of our bid for the mwb will be over for the contract will be overlooked i mean we can't overlook that and even though you mentioned small amounts of work we have broken out small amounts of concrete somebody paid a sidewalk over in a neighborhood and it they only went from one corner of a block to another it wasn't a lot but it was work and an mbe got a chance to do that this is disenfranchising those people that are in this process and i think that we're overturning a lot of stuff that is not recommended and when we have an expert that we paid money to and they don't even agree with this we're not listening to the people who have the legal knowledge and do disparity studies across this state atlanta and other states uh georgia as well so i mean we have experts here and if that was something you should have given it to the city attorney he has contracted with ronald with uh griffin and strong for them to review that i spoke to their person today they've never seen this in the plan and so to me we are making decisions that i think step outside of the plan and if you set something that's in a plan and it's not in a plan i found today and it needs to be approved and i would never prove anything like that myself personally i don't know about rest accounts so um miss abusewater and then mr outling thank you madam mayor and thank you assistant city manager so well for explaining that so well um i i do want to say that um you know i think sometimes we need to listen to those who have the expertise and the fact that the goal setting committee approved this and was in support of this that means a lot to me i do want to say that sometimes when we delve so deep and maybe some information should have been given out very early on but we have a company here who has been here for years we have a one woman-led company who she actually does the work for this company um it's not where it's just someone in name uh this there have been articles about uh miss katan that you know she has been out in the community she does a lot of the engineering work she does a lot of all of the contracting work just about so i don't want us to lose sight of the fact that because this was done in this manner and it was approved unanimously by the goal setting committee i want us to make sure that we are not driving away good small businesses that are here i am really worried about that and i'll tell you why i'll tell you why um a company such as this could be wooed away by another city in a heartbeat they have 50 more than 50 employees all the work is done here and the city of greensboro would lose out because this company to my recollection has either has never had a complaint about it they do good work and they do good work and employ people in the city of greensboro so i personally appreciate that this is done this way and i also want to say that yes there are minority subcontractors out there but i'm going to tell you something personal we're trying to get two buildings done uh with some contracting work on the outside glass work we made a vow my husband and i we were only going to use minority contractors well we've been on the phone for three months the minority contractors that we got hold of them some of you you well know they are booked out a year now is every contractor note is every concrete contractor not that i'm aware of but i just want to keep that in mind because i am so thankful that they are busy but i do believe it's going to create an issue when staff has done something like this and the goal setting committee in order to try to explain why the goals were combined i really think we should listen because i don't want to lose another company out of the city of greensboro so um i am fully in support of this and i truly believe that we need to sharon i believe we need to be careful i'll say that right along with you but i also believe when everyone has approved this that we should listen to that especially the goal setting committee so thank you staff and thank you to the goal setting committee i think we wish to move forward with this we especially as you all know as chair of the mpo we're trying to move forward all these projects and get these sidewalks done and get these uh curbs and gutters done and everything that needs to be done in the city of greensboro we've already delayed a month on this i prefer we not delay another thank you um mr outling then then dr wells yeah i i agree thanks miss oil for that clear explanation you know both early as well as through your email as i understand that you explained that the goals were combined because there are limited subcontracting opportunities councilman hightower stated that it was her understanding that's not a part of the plan but your understanding is that it is so i think at least the city staff's response to that point is clear you also explain kind of the reasoning of the goal-setting committee in determining that there are limited subcontracting opportunities is there a discussion in the plan that actually defines or explains what constitutes a limited subcontracting opportunity or does staff kind of feel its way through and make a determination without having a standard that's in the plan right that is not spelled out in the plan so a lot of the discussion that happens at goal setting committee is based on experiences that staff has had in the field and on previous projects that's where that comes from and it sounds like from both at least my interpretation of councilman hightower statements as well as yours that the definition and what does constitute a limited subcontract contracting opportunity is really important because it sounds like my inference is that it could be used to kind of evade the purpose of the plan is that right that is true so what i will tell you is there there are some projects where we have 15 different line items of different scopes of work so that you know that it lends itself to a lot of subcontracting opportunities when you have three scopes of work and two of those scopes are 5020 that to the staff that constitutes limited subcontracting opportunities okay it is so it's it's it's not it's very important it's not in the plan is there kind of an articulated or explained criteria that staff or the goal setting committee uses to determine whether there are limited self-contracting opportunities so some subcontracting opportunities yes limited no so there is no definition for limited subcontracting opportunities that's based on the experience okay and that that's helpful i mean your explanation to me sounds very reasonable and makes a lot of sense it seems like the conclusion that staff made and the goal setting committee made was really reasonable where i am very empathetic and where i have paused is that this is a very important issue there's not a definition for what constitutes limited subject contracting opportunities in the mwbe plan there's not a clear benchmark that staff uses and can articulate to us now in terms of what constitutes limited subcontracting opportunities and the information to that and very important question that was posed ms hightower stated a while ago just was received today and you know it sounds like she asked a lot of great questions of griffin and strong but quite frankly on a very important issue that could subvert the purpose of a plan i think having a few hours to do that at the day of a meeting not having the opportunity to discuss with colleagues in advance i understand why there would be a need for additional time to discuss that and consider that um is there a sense of time sensitivity around approving this item tonight because i'm also empathetic and understand councilman obama's waders points about this contractor who's prospectively going to get this contract as a good contractor jobs in greensboro we continued it once is there a sense of the degree to which it's time sensitive staff will always defer to what council advises and so even if something is time sensitive if you would like for us to defer we will certainly do that sure i appreciate that and five members of council will decide whatever five decide but from a staff perspective is there any information or facts that would help us understand whether or not it's time sensitive um i think is jason geary still here from engineering and inspection okay there he is so jason can you thank you american council uh there there's not really a time sensitive issue with this one because it's just could you please give your name i apologize it's uh jason geary i'm the city engineer and uh to answer your question there's not really a time sensitive issue because it's really just replacing uh sidewalk this and disrepair that kind of thing the main issue is and this of course is purely for the contractor i mean he has other work lined up so you know he's got other projects with the city and elsewhere so that would have to factor into his schedule but of course that's just for for his benefit okay um and then lastly i mean you know going to the last point or last uh series of questions i think it's important that we get this information sooner you know even in terms of the entire agenda that was provided on friday which is less than two business days for council persons and for the public to review things there were additions in terms of names and entities to the agenda mere hours before the meeting so um you know i think the sooner we can get those things the greater ability is to avoid situations like this on what it sounds like are categorically really important questions that go to a priority item of the council so thank you thank you dr wells i want to ask three questions i guess first one was this on our agenda last time yes so if you recall this was on the agenda last time and it was pulled um for clarification we now we didn't get a specific ant uh question so i apologize that we should have reached out and asked what was the question so my apologies that we didn't do that but it was on last month's agenda and it was put on this agenda because it was um asked to be discussed for clarification all right so you didn't know what the question was incorrect incorrect please dr wells so you if you did not know what the reason for the pulling last month you didn't know what you were trying to find the answer to now councilwoman hightower says she got the answer today so what what was it what were you looking for sharon i the the question that she asked so if she if nobody knew the answer what the question was how do you send me an answer my question was come on now my question was why were the goals combined i asked that 30 days ago today i get an answer so if nobody knew what the question was then you don't know how to answer that's simple so i asked the question straight out and i just got that answer today in an email i just don't but i just didn't i didn't remember the discussion well i i remember the question because i always know what i write you put my question yeah all right so we got pulled the last time now the question my question is if we delay it uh is it are we voting for this particular contractor hoping that we can get another contractor that can find more mwbes now is that is that the reason if we would not accepted that that we would have to go to another contractor who would try to find nwbe that's not a good question but that is the question because if there are not any mwbes to fulfill i want to bids or whatever then that would that's that's what i want to know true because the participation is 37.13 it's just a combined um mwbe total are we going to get any higher percentage because see my thing is and i would get in trouble with my community about this but a lot of times there's nobody to even do it the things that we want done they don't have and that was another one of them on here tonight we didn't have anybody that had a company that could uh separate the mulch you know so some some company is not out there to get it so i'm just wondering if you delay it and another contractor comes and try to get tries to get some mwbe in our area are they going to be able to find anybody because if they can't find them it's no need for us to keep waiting on it because our sidewalks need to be repaired so are you finished i have one other question well you'll have to sign up to speak awesome um dr wells are you through um so i i do think it's important that we're not talking about no mwbe participation here we're talking about a a bidder who has achieved 37.13 which is one of the largest that we have so it wasn't split between w's and m's but they did get the mwbe participation so whether it's all w's or all m's it's still 37 percent which is more than we've gotten on a lot of contracts so um mwbe offices documents submitted indicates that atlantic contracting company is the selected vendor and has met the established mwbe goals now while to staff this may not be time sensitive but to this bitter it probably is and we have had to re-bid contracts because we've taken too long to actually give the bid out and one in case um is the westridge battleground that was bid three times and once it was it had to be re-bid because we waited too long and the contractor got other work so it may not be time sensitive to engineering um it probably is time sensitive to those neighborhoods and i'm sure it's time sensitive to the to the vendor because they have to figure out where their work is where they've scheduled things and what their commitments are and their subcontractor they have a subcontractor on this to help them even though they normally self-perform and they have to make sure that that subcontractor stays available so i think it's important that we move ahead and vote on that this this evening um the next speaker signed up to speak is michelle kennedy no i just want to say kim i understood what you were outlining to us and that as a combined goal it met the overall goal if those two were put together i think what i hear sharon talking about is an issue of subjectivity right like if you if you combine those two and we're talking about limited availability of subcontractors but we don't have any clear protocols around how we determine that there's limited availability it leaves it up to a lot of subjectivity for somebody to say well i don't think there's a lot of them and i've been doing this work for a long time which i understand is is is important to know what what folks are saying but it doesn't give us clear parameters around it so to me whether we vote on this item tonight or we table this item the bigger issue so that we don't come back to this for me is a really clear parameter around under what circumstances do we allow combining goals and what is the protocol you have to meet to say we're combining goals and so that to me saves us a lot of these conversations moving down the road and sharing asking the question you answering all of those things so for me whatever the decision is tonight whether we vote on this we table this the biggest portion of this for me is walking out of tonight we're going back whether that's to griffin and strong or whether that's internally making a decision about what our protocols are going to be so there's never a question about under what circumstances we combine goals and what the driver is that allows that to happen that to me solves the future problem i understand it doesn't satisfy what sharon's bringing up tonight but that seems a really critical piece for us to address quickly um so that's that's all i wanted to add thank you mr outling you know in connection with our mwe dbe program i think most people know we can't require that contracts go to women or minority businesses we simply can't do it in large part what the program is designed to do is create rules that help ensure fairness and opportunity for people to compete for work from the city in terms of the goals they're just that sometimes goals are met sometimes goals are exceeded sometimes they fall short that doesn't mean that we as a city have done anything that is incorrect or fails to meet our mwbe plan my concern here is what are the actual structures and what's a part of the plan and on a topic that everyone acknowledges very important it could undermine the very purpose of the plan there's a lack of clarity in that and so you know to me that's a really significant thing i mean even if it's a hundred percent the processes have to be strong because that's the very purpose why we have an mwbe program and so i'm glad that the applicant exceeds the goals um but it's important that the actual structure and the plan be right otherwise you know there's not terribly much that the city is doing with the plan thank you mrs hightower so i'm going to disagree again with everybody um certainly you all want to say well we've exceeded 37 now we've put 37 on one bucket this program is designed to have separate buckets period and that's mbe buckets and wbe buckets this right here doesn't have anything to do with with the company that is that we're talking about the company's got three two other jobs so they've got a total of three jobs so they they gonna be working and i i have a problem when you say you're gonna combine goals because we don't have anybody over here that doesn't meet what we think is the scope of work that we think they should be doing and when so i think we step outside of the parameter of what this program was designed to be about why pay a company to do a disparity study and research all the data all the numbers and come up with 12 recommendations and then turn around and we do the exact opposite those people on goal setting are nice people they don't have that type of expertise and knowledge they should be following the plan and if we got down to where we determine that type of work is on the job and we don't have the availability then we didn't meet the 24 percent goal for mwmbe but we met the 13 goal for wbe and i think see now we are creating passive discrimination within the body of the plan and i think that's going to be the ultimate detriment of what is going to happen because the next time you come across a job and you say oh i don't think we have enough people we got a 27 county msa area we go all the way to wake county so if you determine you don't have anybody you say well okay we'll just throw it all in one bucket so at the end of five years when we get ready to do another disparity study guess what the numbers are gonna say they're gonna say that in the mbe bucket we did 10 but in the wbe duck bucket we did 87 okay that's still unfair and what has occurred here tonight is unfair i the company is fine i like the person that has the company i respect them that has this has nothing to do with that so crossing the line into that was wrong but what people do and say what they want to say that's fine i'm talking about the process and the process in this instance is incorrect and it's wrong and i don't agree with it and i think it's when it starts now you said this precedent is only going to get worse because you're going to just use it as an easy answer for well we didn't find anybody so so you just ignored griffin and strong five legal civil rights attorneys who've done disparity studies for years you've just totally ignored what they've said we should be doing is there anybody else to speak yes um goldie and tammy it looks like to me so we could settle it just just separate them put the 13 somewhere and the other somewhere in the document and that would settle it because we did you you did combined the combined but what she's talking about is separated and this this to me isn't um almost like an isolated incident that they had to work with now if we put such standards on them so that the committee can't make any adjustments the council can't make any adjustments and we just stick to it now some things are lawful but not expedient now in order for us to get the work done and what she explained to us it was a tidbit here and a tidbit there and to keep it from looking bad i guess y'all just stuck it together but what sharon wants is take the little bit and say it's for women say the little bit that is taken for the other and then maybe at the end just say we did we did not meet the separate goals but combined we met the goals and that's what we're going for is when the goal is met and i understand what you're saying sharon i really do and that we that should be our desired goal but sometimes you just can't reach it in that same manner so let's do what we can to move forward we need the sidewalks fixed thank you dr wells um mrs thurman i'd like to clarify because i i feel like i'm hearing two different things here what i understood from your email what i understood from your expects explanation tonight is that the entire scope of 200 and some odd thousand dollars broke out into three chunks two of those chunks were very small one took up the bulk of that contract when you went to percentages of each of those line items it was kind of weird like a you know a half a percent or whatever but what i heard councilwoman hightower saying is that you all made a decision that there weren't any vendors there to fulfill that and i just want to clarify was it a decision about we don't have the vendors to clarify to fulfill those goals had we set them or was it a decision about just the way the job broke down into line items right it was the second answer of what you said so it wasn't about how many contractors or vendors we had available it was how you would break up the work in order to set the goals so the four inches of sidewalk the six inches of sidewalk the eight inches of sidewalk they would have had to identify and set goals on the four inches to six inches to eight inches and that's just not a feasible way to set the goals because they were smaller segments of work i think that's an important clarification important distinction in the conversation here today is what are we really talking about and i don't hear the fact that um the committee the goal setting committee decided that we didn't have the right number of people or decided that we'd or made a decision about who could bid and who couldn't it's the feasibility of how the system works and how the percentages of these line items broke down i agree agree with councilwoman hightower i think that's something for us to work on to define that more clearly but i don't see a problem with this and i'd be in favor of voting on this tonight so um what i would like to say is when we have a question for griffin and strong it really i think needs to be in writing um and you know i preferably i think it should come from somebody on staff whether it's kim soil or the city attorney so that we're all on the same question and getting the same answer and there's been another um issue with griffin and strong a question that came up just within the last month or so maybe it's time to have them back in another work session as we move on um to talk about things just like this but i think it's very important that the the same questions are being asked and the same answer is being gotten by everybody so what i would suggest in the future if there's a question for griffin and strong that it really is in writing so we know what the question was and what the exact answer is because you know a lot can be left to interpretation or even on griffin and strong's part so i would prefer that those questions either come through the city attorney or come through the the assistant city manager so that we're all on the same page and understand what it is but i would encourage that we probably get another work session so we can work through things like this well man i know i'm not on the thing but that's what i was going to say i would like a work session on this and then i will withdraw my um motion if we can agree to have that okay and i would like to have this person not on zone because i think the last time they came here on zoom they were under the wrong impressions of why they were here and so therefore they kind of got put in but i sent that email to them so they have that email that i got today and again it had that so for clarity sake that isn't right okay but we can't get stuff 30 minutes before something this in depth that i know i asked for 30 days ago and today understood understood miss abuse waiter did you have something very close i just wanted to say i really want to encourage my colleagues to not delay this again you know having been in small business um no i know i just wanted to clarify you know having been in small business uh you know it's it's not a huge company but it is a valued company and they have to plan as well so when we delay for companies whether it's on a consent gender agenda or or wherever it is on the agenda i want us to be mindful of that because our local companies are really everyone's been through a pandemic everyone's catching up everyone's trying to do the best they can so i just want to encourage everyone to uh consider that when we have companies come before us and when there are questions so i appreciate that thank you um mrs hoffman you know just one comment i think in terms of my visualizing this work i think sometimes we have to look at the work and it seems to me that it's just not efficient to chop up you know uh laying cement or pouring cement for sidewalks to chop that up into small segments and i think that's kind of what we're dealing with here in this situation so you know that that you know maybe what we're talking about perhaps is certainly applicable here but might not be in general for lots of other kinds of work thank you um mrs johnson um withdrew her motion to postpone based on the based on the agreement that we're going to have a work session and this will be the key topic thank you um ms abu's waiter has a motion it needs a second seconded by mrs hoffman um let's see if we can um so we do have a motion in a second while this is going uh mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson imes mrs abuzawader yes mr outling no mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower no um i believe that passed eight to one eight two two eight to two sorry mr outlink did you vote no eight two um seven to two seven two two sorry sorry um move on to the next item item uh g2 is a resolution authorizing contract award in the amount of 189 thousand fifty four dollars and 25 cents to hills machinery company llc for the rental of equipment at white street landfill no it hasn't been moved dr wells out second and this is so it is moved by dr wells and seconded by mrs johnson what am i supposed to do yeah you got it click it right there i didn't want to move it i want to second it um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson mrs abuzawader yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yeah and that passes nine to zero um item number g3 resolution contract award in the amount of 178 197 and 24 cents to hills machinery company llc for the rental of equipment at the white street landfill move the item second okay that's moved and seconded by dr wells we need the screen in the meantime ms hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am a yes mrs abuza waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um item number g4 is a resolution approving contract change order in the amount of nine hundred thousand dollars for contract 2017-5246 with eco flow for household hazardous waste disposal right now second um was that moved by mrs huffman and seconded by ms thurman yes okay um mrs hoffman yes miss kennedy yes um dr wells yes mrs johnson yes um imes mrs abuso yes mr outling yes uh mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um we are going to read um g five six seven eight and nine together proceedings introducing bonds orders authorizing housing bonds parks and recreation bonds firefighting facility bonds law enforcement facility bonds transportation bonds designating the finance director to file a sworn statement of debt and statement of total estimated interest with the city clerk appointing womble bond wambo bond dixon llp as bond council and calling a public hearing for the bond orders i do want to say we have the public hearing for august 2nd which is a monday and that's not normally when we would have a council meeting due to national night out how time sensitive is the public hearing because i want to make sure that it's on a day that people are aware that council's meeting we can move to the subsequent meeting necessary if that is the um if council agrees i would rather have it on a regularly scheduled meeting so we'll change that okay um we do have two speakers um catherine holcomb on the housing bond and hester petty on the law enforcement and miss petty is joining us by zoom but miss holcomb if you would go ahead and you have three minutes i'm katharine holcomb i live at 1911 rosecrest drive represented by mr outling as a constituent i urge you to vote to ask the voters to invest a substantial amount of money in affordable housing through the three thirty million dollar referendum last fall you agreed to a ten-year strategic housing plan for helping homeowners aspiring homeowners and homeless this is very important because too many people in greensboro are struggling to pay rent and mortgage along with their other needs and now housing is in such short supply making it harder to move this affects children's schooling performance the spread of covet and the mental health of families and there thirdly there's talk in my book club at least of the inequity of where affordable housing has been placed in the past through the american rescue plan federal and state politicians are discussing the use of funds for housing and greensboro needs to be ready with a very good plan to accept and use funding in the best ways i'm embarrassed to say that living here for 72 years it's only in my retirement years that i've tried to be the good citizen that i was taught to be in fourth grade it is so hard to stay informed and to show up for meetings when you're working raising a family and all that but the upside of coded is that i've had time to be more tuned in to read and learn from housing experts like dr sills at uncg and experts all over the country about how they solve housing problems there are great ideas out there and i have some ideas myself in one in greensboro i know of one church who bought a house nearby and provide housing for people in need why don't what in my church thinking of that why aren't we addressing that in neighborhoods in charlotte housing first is the motto of the charlotte mecklenburg council and they built more place as a permanent affordable housing complex with 120 apartments and services raleigh is about to duplicate that i don't know these ideas perhaps you do as people working for us but therefore i would love for i would love in my city to see more citizens participating in government in in being a citizen knowing that uh needs of poor people in housing affect me as a non-poor person in my settled housing if i served on council i would want citizens ideas and feedback if more folks understood i think they would want to talk about our best healthy community and i would love for you to please my second thing is to please sponsor discussions in neighborhoods and churches with the bond referendum and and that is um our intention because we know that's what we have to do in order to make it successful i do want to say that the city of greensboro has been doing housing first and rapid re-housing for a couple of years a lot of our money this last year was redirected to emergency shelter and so we did have that missed opportunity costs the last 18 months or so and i know that mrs therm and miss kennedy went down to charlotte and visited moore place and we are looking at a permanent supportive housing situation right now so everything that you said is spot on and we hope that you will advocate for these bonds with us i don't know michelle tammy if you want to add anything to that yeah sorry i hit the button on my phone i went off um again hold on one second i don't know what is happening this is what happens when you have 13 year olds who use your phones all right jingle bells there we go sorry about that um yeah i was going to say we did go down to moore place and i actually just got back from colorado doing the same thing so um looking at all of the options that are available to us for supportive housing options and what's possible here and we're well aware of what's been established in charlotte and asheville and in other locations across the country and housing first has been the model for our community for a long time so it is one of those things that we we actually are not not far behind on we're actually kind of leading the game as it relates to those types of issues and looking forward to have conversations with the community about how this bond can further support those actions for people who are struggling with affordable housing concerns thank you um and then um mr petty i believe is on zoom miss petty yeah good evening um hester petty uh 3402 canterbury street here in greensboro uh first i'd like to thank ms hightower for publicly clarifying the in-person sign-up procedure for city council meetings because sometimes uh the information doesn't filter down to uh to us regular folks um very quickly um this is gonna be kind of short tonight so uh uh i'm opposed to the resolution authorizing six million dollars in law enforcement facilities bonds uh surprise surprise i don't know the specifics of what will be done with this bond money but i do know that the two federal lawsuits against greensboro police officers have already cost taxpayers over a million dollars in fees for private lawyers and both cases are far from being done so you've tabled an independent investigation into the greensboro uh police department twice now and you if you intend to do nothing to make the greensboro police officers accountable to the people the people shouldn't have to pay for improving police facilities police misconduct is costing taxpayers millions of dollars perhaps we should let the gpd hold a bake sale if they need to have their facilities fixed up please drop this from the bond issues thank you thank you so um we do have a variety of motions um g5 i need a motion to adopt uh it is the um 30 million for the housing bond second moved by um ms kennedy seconded by ms therm um council please vote mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes mrs dr wells yes mrs johnson yes imes mrs abuzawader yes mr outling yes um ms therm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero item number okay item number g6 um is the parks and recreation bond in the amount of 70 million it's almost moving so that is that is moved by mrs johnson seconded by mrs hightower while we're bringing that up to vote um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson absolutely i am a yes mrs abuzawader yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um item number g7 is uh the firefighter bonds in the amount of 14 million um i'm sorry the item moved by miss uh ms kennedy seconded by mrs johnson um while we're waiting for the vote mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abuzawader yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um item g8 uh which is the law enforcement bonds in the end of the item six million dollars um moved by mrs hoffman seconded by uh dr wells um mrs hoffman yes miss kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm es mrs abuza waiter yes mr outling yes um mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower no i don't think this is the appropriate time and that passes eight to one um [Music] and our last bond is for transportation in the amount of fifteen million dollars move the item second um moved by miss therm seconded by ms abusa waiter mrs hoffman yes miss kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am yes mrs avuzader yes mr outland yes um miss thurm yes and mrs uh mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero okay um the city council designates the interim finance director to make and file with the city clerk the sworn statement of debt and the city of the city and the statement of total estimated interest on the bonds authorized by the foregoing bond orders i need a mail motion to fix the date and time of a public hearing for that second meeting in august which would be august 17th mayor august what the 17th august 17th movie item um in the city council chambers in the mmob located at 300 west washington street and to direct the city clerk to publish said orders once the um in the news and record no later than the sixth day before the said date and that was moved by ms kennedy seconded by mrs thurm um and uh mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes this is johnson i'm a yes mrs abu's waiter yes mr outline yes this is thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero we have one more um i need a motion to appoint womble bond dixon llp to serve as bond council second to the city council in connection with the authorization of the foregoing proposed bonds of the city i'm sorry who moved that i did moved by mrs hoffman seconded by ms kennedy um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abusa yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower i don't see that item on here for wumble carlisle it's on seven it's on number seven in red it is um yeah they are our bond council there's nothing here on mine but it's not been acting right all night anyway so is that who has been the bond council in the past mr davis they have is that who you working with mr city attorney all right thank you yes and mrs hightower did you vote yes yes okay and that passes nine to zero um item number ten is a resolution to approve the memorandum of agreement moa between the state of north carolina local governments on prostate proceeds relating to the settlement of the op opioid litigation and that matter was swapped i i think we need to um i don't know was that that was removed from the agenda earlier which is an ordinance unless i have the wrong wrong g10 it's g10 it's g10 okay hold on a second it has to do with the settlement of the opioids yeah i'm sorry it's wrong or not all right so g10 the electronic version is correct okay well i'm looking at the no um item number g10 is a resolution to amend the 60-month 500 000 economic development loan and 250 000 urban development investment grant for sns capital llc to revitalize a long-term vacant big box shell originally granted by council on june 16 2020. mayor i asked to be recused from this item one of my law partners at the brooks pierce law firm represents sns in an unrelated but ongoing matter sns capital was an entity named uh added to the agenda uh hours before the meeting so my apologies for my tardiness and sharing that recusal request but it was added to the agenda the councilwoman hightowers point on a different item hours before the meeting thank you um do we have a motion on g10 so move the item so moved by mrs hightower seconded by dr wells um let me hold on one moment if we can the voting screen would come up in the meantime who seconded i seconded it um ms kennedy yes dr wells yes where's someone mrs johnson i am a yes mrs abuza waiter yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower i did realize that we did not vote to excuse um mr outling so if we could do that by do we have to revoke the item if we he he didn't vote and i think you can just okay so if um do we have a motion in a second for the record to recuse mr outlander yeah i didn't verbally vote so the vote wasn't complete so that way the recusal before the vote was complete probably works you know we're having a little trouble trying to get used to this new voting system and for it to catch up with with what we're doing do you want us to revoke that no no what i was explaining was that you know essentially since the vote wasn't complete uh councilman uh allen hadn't voted uh i see and then you all voted to excuse him so his non-voting doesn't become so that passes eight to zero with one recusal um okay so i i do want to speak real quick to this item um mr allen you're right um this um and i had told them when we brought this back that we wanted to go to next month we could um they just but it's only an extension nothing else changed and it was an extension so i certainly um do understand your concern so um i was okay with you know making sure that everybody had an opportunity um it's just for an item that because of covet they kind of really weren't able to do any development on this site and some other logistics had to be cleared up around this particular area um and so they have committed to doing that so i think this will be a good um you know place for food desert and for the community um they've been waiting so long so hopefully they can get this done uh in less time than is proposed so i just want to make i wanted to make that aware of everyone so well and they were initially delayed because they had to do um a phase in environmental studies environmental impact study and then they had to abate the environmental impacts and then they were hit with covid so it was a number of reasons on this extension um and that does pass eight to zero um yes item g11 is an ordinance amendment for the enactment of an ordinance tiles entitled section 17-8 civil liability for illegal disposal i think would move the item second um so that is moved by ms thurm seconded by dr wells before we vote though i think you know it's something that um that sharon tammy and goldie were working on and that maybe it would be good just for a brief explanation but we can go ahead and take the vote um mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson what is it this is oh i got it yes they just wanted a pretty good name didn't really matter i am a yes mrs abuser um mr outling yes ms therm yes and mrs hightower yes um that passes um nine to zero if we could just have a very brief explanation well while they're trying to decide if they want to talk to it i will say we this all started because uh goldie and i and tammy also have dumping issues in our um districts where we are probably um i mean poor field operation people get a call from us daily um we took a tour of some sites i think a few months ago with the mayor that was some of the top dumping spots and what we really kind of come to a conclusion is this this is really not our residents doing this this is some outside dumping coming into the city um but it's a health and safety hazard as well and so what we had currently on the books didn't adequately address it so we work with our legal and i will say that in the new ordinance there are civil penalties not criminal penalties um but there are civil penalties and hopefully they will get people's attention and they will stop using our streets uh as places to just dump uh whatever it is they don't want uh or if somebody pays them to clean out a house and they just ride down the street and see some fields they just throw it out don't have to go to the landfill and keep the money in their pocket hopefully this will change combined with the cameras we're gonna get as well i think we hopefully will see some changes so that's why we all work together to get this ordinance done thank you and i think you've described it pretty well yourself there my name is cynthia blue i'm interim director of neighborhood development and we worked with the field operations department the police department and the legal department on the production of this ordinance amendment what this does is imposes a civil penalty for the act of illegal disposal otherwise commonly referred to as dumping on either public or private property the field operations department will provide the cameras and install the cameras on sites that focus on either the public property or upon request on private property if they are able to capture photo evidence that includes a license tag number of the car of the persons who are doing the disposal they will forward that to the code enforcement department in neighborhood development and code enforcement will take action to locate the owner of that car and to issue the civil penalty appeals of those civil penalties will go to the minimum housing standards commission to be heard the initial penalty is 500 for the first offense and one thousand dollars for subsequent offenses and it's meant to be a restorative for the programmatic costs by the city to carry out these enforcements thank you and um thank you all for working on that i think it's going to make a big difference to um to our neighborhoods so um just for the record i'm going to move this in advance so somebody else secondly and then i think we need to thank uh the attorneys who worked so hard these attorneys to craft the right um legal legal charges so that it would be acceptable thank you mr baker tony baker city attorney's office happy to do it thank you okay as i said i'm moving this in advance ordinance to amend war memorial coliseum complex fund in the amount of 10 million dollars for appropriation of shuttered venue operator grant second um i do want to say um that kudos to the coliseum staff and to our finance staff i know that the paperwork on this was very onerous but to get 10 million dollars for the coliseum complex will really help us in the this coming budget mr city manager mr assistant city manager maybe you can tell us how this will let us vote on it first but um because we want to make sure we do it properly um but yeah how that will fit in i know that we can't be retroactive but you know how we'll fit in in this year's budget and um so uh mrs hoffman yes ms kennedy yes yes i'm sorry we never got anyone to second that mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abusa waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero um mr davis maybe you can um explain how this will work into the this coming budget sure thank you mayor and let me also just add my thanks in particular to two folks at the coliseum uh mr kurt palmer the business office manager and uh mr michael rupp who is a business analyst for the coliseum they were the primary staff work who did the work on this and and stayed with the process through the entire application and evaluation it was about a six-month process we first learned about the even the opportunity of the shuttered grant um funding in january of 2021 and they began uh working on the on the website you know trying to get on at various times when it would crash and they wouldn't they would not give up uh finally got the application in april and we got the good news earlier this week so and let me say tanger was not um eligible for shuttered venue because you actually had to have opened and had revenue um so this was for the coliseum complex minus tanger since it closed three days before it opened right yes and we did press that issue but no we were told if you've never been open then you've never been shuttered so right which is really unfortunate and let me not interrupt you even further but um you can see that tanger is just rolling out announcement after announcement um plays comedians children's shows concerts the price is right so you know i think in september of like the 30 days it's busy 28 days so just imagine if um if that had had the opportunity to open uh rhianna giddens just announced today and it's wonderful to bring her home and to be able to hear her perform in the state of the art um sound system probably what will be rated the best sound system in the country so um mr davis back to you sure so uh actually we have quite a bit of flexibility within the coliseum uh expenditure is going all the way back to march of 2020 are eligible so we'll be using these funds we'll initially set them up in a grant fund we'll draw them down as necessary we'll use them initially for the current year uh in any deficit that we might want to cover for fiscal year 2122 but we can also go all the way back to march of 2020 to cover eligible expenses so this will go a long way to if you can think back to that presentation matt gave you many months ago about what kind of deficits over and above what we would typically see we were facing this will go a long ways towards combating that thank you thank you um so um we only have one more item and then boards and commissions and comments so i think we should just power through um item number g13 is general employee step plan implementation um consideration it seems move the item yeah so um it is moved by um mrs johnson seconded by miss kennedy um comment um miss abuse waiter i'm trying to think of yeah i don't see where the um [Music] speakers were to request to speak um i need to um how do we where is the request to speak she had opened the vote already madam mayor so if you guys can vote then she can open the activate to speak well the um you know what what the speakers may change somebody's vote so we have it now if you were okay miss abuse waiter thank you madam mayor and i'll be brief i know we want to power on through but uh i will not be voting for the step plan i want to make it very plain that human resources sent the survey out to the 1100 employees who were to be affected by the step plan out of those 1100 i think around 600 some odd were returned out of those that were returned 56 percent did not want the step plan they preferred to keep the merit plan 22 percent did wanted the step plan and 22 said it didn't really matter to them either way so even if you add those two together that's 44 but 56 percent of those who returned the surveys wanted to keep the merit pay increase i find it very difficult to when we sit up here and we want to say that we want to hear from the stakeholders staff does everything in their power to get the stakeholders to the table and then we are not going with what the majority of the employees want i think we're going to find that perhaps in a couple of years this could come back to haunt us in some ways and i would also like to mention that you know we are right in the middle of a city manager search and of course you know how much i appreciate you mr wilson but we are in the middle of a search getting ready to launch that and a new city manager may have a whole different outlook on all this or i know he that the city manager is our employee and they will do what we vote on in the majority but at this time i i am not for the step plan i know most everyone else is and that's fine but i wanted to state why so thank you madam mayor thank you mrs thurm thank you um i certainly appreciate councilwoman abbas waiter's rationale because based on how the employees voted however i do think the step plan is a complex issue i think perhaps um while we had good participation in the survey i'm not sure that people necessarily understood exactly what's involved in the step plan in some instances some instances they did some they may not have as i expressed earlier i am willing to support this step plan for this first year we know i've asked and been assured that should it not work out that we can roll it back of course we're not going to decrease people's pay but we could cancel moving it forward i am not and i want to go on record now that i am not in favor of going to the next group of employees i think at this level of employee the step plan makes sense um not sure that i'm in favor of of going for the next set of levels further higher up so i will support this at this time i'm willing to take a chance on it the employees have asked for this for quite some time since before i was on council um and so i think for this year at these levels that it i will support it and we'll move forward from there so that's my rationale for supporting at this time thank you mrs hoffman you know i i've been quite clear as we've discussed this in the past i have never in my entire career i've been in favor of a step plan i think people should be rewarded and compensated for outstanding performance i think a step plan just really just is kind of a slip away slope to mediocrity and so i'm not in favor of this plan um ms kennedy yeah i just want to emphasize some of the reasons that i am completely in support of this plan it's been a kind of a standard for our first responders for some time and if you ask any any for example union across this country they will tell you it's one of the safest things you can do to create equity for frontline workers the surveys you're talking about 1100 surveys and we got about 600 of them back and that fails to take into consideration a lot of the folks who work for the city of greensboro that don't exactly check their computers on a daily basis or who wouldn't have accessed the survey in the first place to have given a response and i think to tammy's point before i was on this council one of the first things that people brought to me as i ran for council was the importance of this and equity for our city employees and they i think we all agree should be our first priority whether we believe in a step plan or not but i've heard enough city workers front line workers the people out in the streets doing the things that keep the city moving every day who said that they're looking for equity they're looking for stability they're looking for ways that they get rewarded for doing their job and it's not a subjective and and favoritism based system and this is exactly that for me so i'm thrilled to be supporting a step plan tonight i concur with that thank you um mr outling uh thank you so we've been talking about this actually for a number of years so to a degree it feels like groundhog day um i i i regrettably won't be supporting this item i will however say i really understand and respect the views of others on council that disagree you know whether it's stakeholders or interest groups whether it's city employee compensation or you know dealing with zoning matters where interest groups get really involved i think it's important to recognize that we should be informed by input from everyone in our community including stakeholders but obviously council members have to make the tough decisions on on this one it's it's it's not as tough for me personally you know in the same vein as stated by councilwoman hoffman i think it's really important to create a standard that promotes excellence and one of the ways you do that is by having a merit-based system where you can and where it makes sense obviously as our wonderful staff has advised us compensation isn't the only thing that determines satisfaction but where employees get paid the same notwithstanding their lack of performance and that is viewed by employees who do excel and do go the extra mile you know take that call at the close of business on a friday to make sure someone's trash can gets put away rather than waiting until monday i think that they can have a real adverse incentive by not having merit be a component of their compensation i think it also encourages those excellent employees for whom it is a motivating factor or it is significant that they be recognized in that way i think it encourages them to uh take their their skills like lebron did to miami they can take their skills to high point durham or elsewhere and be employed and recognized there um you know one council member both at this meeting and a prior meeting i think raised an excellent point in noting that for public safety employees you know they're on step plan compensation comparable to what many council members would like to do today in terms of my reasoning and why i feel like it's appropriate for public safety employees but not appropriate for other employees as i stated previously where employee performance can be really measured in really objective ways i think that merit makes a whole lot of sense so by way of example my father is a bus driver for charlotte area transit his performance can be measured in really objective ways if he hits his metrics being on time on his roots either does or he doesn't he's either good at doing that or he's not and he's compensated accordingly i will also lastly ask i think was an excellent point raised by miss hoffman very rarely do you see step compensation outside of government work and i think that's for good reason um and i think it's a little bit for those who are understanding the decisions it can be hard to swallow and hard to understand why in their jobs it's so important that they perform well as a basis for their compensation but for essentially those who they provide money to support their salaries in the form of taxes and fees that they not have that same employment structure so again i appreciate all the views on it i respectfully disagree from where i think the majority is going thank you mrs hightower thank you um i am going to be supporting the step plan like a couple other have mentioned um i've been talking about this step plan with employees for at least seven years and before um and so sometimes i realize that why it looks like they may have been in the majority that didn't want the step plan sometimes that minority voice is not heard and so i talked to some employees who said you know i wouldn't mind the step plan but i didn't put it down because i didn't want to hear what others were gonna say there's a lot of subtle retaliation going on around this merit program and i think that if we implement the step plan there's going to be some equity and fairness that we haven't seen and that employees have not experienced in quite a while and i think sometimes you just simply have to do the right thing and in this instance this is the right thing to do for the right reason to raise the morale of the employees who don't feel like they've been heard for many years even when we talk about amounts of pay and who gets raises and who doesn't get raises we've created an imbalance of inequity and a morale problem and i think the step plan can begin to change some of that so i'm supporting it sometimes even though their voice may not have seemed loud on paper it may be louder than we think it is so i think tonight is the right thing to do let's do the right thing for change for the right reason thank you so we do have a motioned motion and a second um to enact the step plan i believe the motion was um well we'll wait for the vote screen to come up um mrs hoffman no miss kennedy yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am a no mrs abusa waiter no mr outling no mrs therm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes five to four um well now let's do our boards and commission appointments um mrs hoffman um i don't have anyone but don't forget um miss kennedy not tonight dr wells yes i'd like to um place in the data bank and appoint latoya solomon so which is this for zoning yes and which district is she two two so we'll have three people from district two yeah remember i told you but so you do have so i i asked the i asked the city clerk to conf to confirm um well we have this is this is another thing now what we've done but we need it we can somebody that has the vacancy who hasn't happened to go to three or five well um one three or five one three or five okay and and rosa just recently we do have two we do have two vacancies last night they um you know they they had two vacancies i don't know if they did the meeting before they had somebody who showed up at the meeting late um we really have to get um that zoning commission um we need it to be at a full complement um so doctor i was going by your directions yeah but i would like to say i mean um you made a mistake i made a mistake okay so it's one three or five all right so the person that but go ahead and put her in the data bank and maybe we can find another one for her she wants to serve on on one of the commissions on boards yeah and i just thought her qualifications just really would make her a good person for this with her um with her resume and her experiences yeah so i i made an error it was it's one three or five okay then will i place in the in the data bank thank you i would like suggestions from district 1 3 and 5 to appoint to the zoning committee and we really have to do it at our next meeting um would you get those to me before the next meeting yeah and i will too because we need a black female on there too we need someone up there right which is what dr wells right which is what she had yeah so because we don't have correct so i'll have someone i have someone open my next meeting i've got them looking okay um dr wells anything else um mrs johnson no um so i do go ahead i want to thank um the uh we're just doing um just boards and commissions right now so um steve friedland has um resigned from gc jack and um the executive committee has suggested adam marshall in his place um adam is an attorney um do we have a any comments or who is he and what is he saying i think adam would be an it's an excellent choice there he served with distinction on the human relations commission and chaired it and six years on the zoning commission and chaired that as well um he's you know a young professional in the city i think he's an excellent choice what's his expertise and you need a second second and what is his expertise in i'm sorry adam marshall he's an attorney i understand that but he's replaced him he's an attorney for freedom his attorney as well so i i believe it's it's uh land use h.o.a type matters i think yeah so that's that doesn't align with jc jack i mean not for me i suspect he would competently serve but i don't believe that's his expertise yeah and i believe that that was put through the executive committee um we do have a did they second all in favor say aye aye i opposed that passage okay and they approved it yes okay well that's fine then i'll approve you can change my vote that's fine if that's what they want that's fine eight and a half to a half correct yeah that'll work yeah um this is a waiter no boards and commissions mr outling none this evening but i would like to publicly acknowledge and thank uh professor friedland you know he has a terrific expertise in criminal law made a lot of contributions to that body they've uh produced a lot of terrific recommendations so um just want to express appreciation for him using his special expertise with that body thank you uh mrs thurm i don't have any boards and commissions but i too thank steve for serving um he's made a difference in our community he has um mrs hightower i don't have anything um comments this is hightower the only comment i do have is i'm gonna go back to the discussion we had tonight on the contracting i'd like to have a list of dlt contracts that have goals set on them because i'd like to see exactly how where they landed i also want us to um look at our goal setting parameters um because there aren't any and i think on the goal setting committee um it is problematic because generally there are three and four people from one department voting on the contract so that is another issue so if you have someone for me and i and you have and they have a contract they won't put through well there's three or four people there from that one department voting on that um and so i'd like to see the composition of the goal setting committee and i'd also like griffin and strong to review that composition and tell us exactly how that should be administered because and then i'd like to have the minutes from the last goal-setting committee that spoke about uh approving that contract that d.o.t contract because what i got was the minutes and they did not do that so i have those minutes from august 9th so i'd like to have the minutes from uh the approval uh of a goal setting that approved that unanimously and are they on video are they recorded they are recorded okay and so you can go back and watch the meeting together i'm not sure are you talking was this august 2020 or august the project that was it that we looked at tonight is when you said that it was a unanimous so that project what what meeting was that because the information that i received today from august 9th i'll go back to my email um did not relay that's when it gave me the 24 and the 13th we can give you we can get you a copy of the minutes and we have cleaned it up where only one department one person from each department gets to vote so that's been corrected for about seven or eight months now okay because i have not heard that because that was an issue and so what changes are being implemented because apparently there are things being done that nobody knows about so i'd like to know what changes have been implemented if there has been a restructure of that goal setting committee and what that looks like as well is that all mrs hightower yeah that's yeah but i do want a list of those dlt contracts because i want to see the mwbes and i'm just very concerned that we're going to wind up having goals and combining goals and um one other question when we set goals don't we set goals based on capacity um we set goals based on the number of firms that have been identified as ready willing and able to do certain scopes of work okay so we just don't set goals willy-nilly like come up with 10 so when we set goals we set it based on capacity and availability to work so availability is something very very different we don't know what their availability just like we don't know you know the construction industry is absolutely crazy right now so we know that there are these firms out there but we don't know what their availability is but when you when you set the goal you set the goal according to the names of the companies you go by the companies that are able to do the work have the capacity and you get they generally are available depending on the time when the goal do we check when the contract comes out we're going to go through this and i just i want to make sure that because i have talked to some of these these black small businessmen and they have told me specifically so i'm not talking in a vacuum well i want to know do we do we pre-check availability before we go out to bid we do not what not we do not we just set the goals based on the information that griffin and strong gave us of who's ready willing and available and then when we put it out people can beat or they cannot be it we solicit all those we solicit all of them yes what what what did what was the word available what what was that what did that word mean um dr wells just wanted wanted to thank the uh racial equity institute that set the name of the um for sponsoring uh movie night last friday night they did it at appealer center and also in in high point at one of their recreation centers and the community people came out with their chairs and they offered food and uh drinks for everybody so it was it was a nice night and i thank them for doing that for the community and they'll be doing it week after next too so listen and watch for announcements when the next movie night will be coming for they saw the movie 13th thank you mr outling nothing further this evening thank you mrs hoffman uh mrs thurm nothing for me thank you mrs abuse later very quickly um national folk festival is still looking for volunteers i know that i and some other uh council members have volunteered in the past i'm planning to do bucket brigade again it was a lot of fun so um please go online and sign up it is september 10th 11th and 12th had the privilege of stopping by camp spark that is the initiative by the greensboro fire department to uh show young ladies all about firefighting and i'm telling you some of these young ladies would put well definitely me to shame but they they were really interested they were doing um just about everything a firefighter does and they were very interested in the possibility of pursuing that as a career several of them so that was very good and also to those who celebrate uh this is aida which is celebrated during the holy pilgrimage to mecca and there are many in our community celebrating today so um just want to keep them in mind and that's all i have madame thank you mrs johnson saturday i i attended miss marion logan's 100th birthday and represented all of you gave her your card she was thrilled and it was a lovely occasion and just want to again say congratulations to her she's been a fantastic human being in this community for many years and um i went to school with her daughter one of her daughters um miss aleya thank you ms kennedy nothing tonight thank you you just real quick um we are going to have a meeting at barbour park a town hall meeting from three to five on monday i believe to talk about the greensboro safety plan in regards to establishments that sell or you consume on-site alcohol staff and i have been working on what is a good plan moving forward so that will be at barber park monday three to five i also had the pleasure this morning of going to cohn to cut three ribbons on three mobile medical centers and it's really important that they are going to to go out into individual neighborhoods and do everything from mammographies to diagnostics to you know whatever it is you can do on site and i think those are really important i did want to pull up something really quick that we got today from cohn and it really talks about the importance of um of us getting vaccinated i can't pull it up right now but i believe there are roughly about 23 people in the hospital a few weeks ago there were no people in the hospital the people in the hospital now the one thing they all have in common is that they're all unvaccinated um and that they are trending younger they are 50 years old and younger so i would encourage everyone in order for us to keep this forward momentum that we have and you know in order to get our kids back to school we need to make sure that um you know youth 12 and above that they can get vaccinated that teachers are getting vaccinated so um i think it's really really important that we don't lose the momentum that we have this delta variant is strong we don't know a lot about it just like the covid19 things change but um you know we we need to take this seriously and i hope that you'll encourage people to get vaccines you can go on the ncdhs website you can actually put in what type of vaccine you want and in what zip code and it will direct you or and help make an appointment so if you want pfizer moderna or if you just want the one shot j and j i would encourage people to to do that and i want to thank cohn for those mobile units there has been one in um hayes taylor for the last couple of weeks on wednesdays i believe um doing checkups and so um you know look around because they were really great to have out in the community and they're through uh they're all throughout guilford county um and i think that's all i have mr city manager no mr city attorney i have nothing um motion to adjourn move return moved by ms kennedy seconded by dr wells uh by affirmation absolutely yes all right anyone want to stay all right we're adjourned