of the things that we have done but i understand that we as a department and and i think we as a city we certainly have to do something different because what we're doing is simply at this point is not good enough i think it is uh mitigating some of the violence to some degree but it's not nearly enough and we have to figure out what we can do better so i'm certainly open uh to anyone that wants to have a conversation about how we can can address the violent crime in our communities but at the same time i'm not interested in just talking i'm interested in actionable steps that we can take as a community to try to solve this issue i think it impacts a lot of things to include economic development because oftentimes when people are looking to bring a business to our community one of the things that they reach out to us for they want to know what the what the crime rate looks like they'll ask for specific numbers around specific areas and certainly if there's a at least a perception that our community is not safe then that is going to impact violent crime uh it's going to impact violent crime but it's also going to impact economic development and is going to deter people from wanting to invest in our community which creates a larger problem in not being able to bring jobs and resources to our citizens so uh thank you i'm sorry chief i wanted to ask you yes ma'am in looking at where the great greater percentage of violent crime is in the city um i know you probably looked into this and i'm not saying you know by no means saying you have not but um everything that that indicators that we have like brighter lights like cameras and those kinds of things in those areas have this way and see if you think it's it would help deter um i know it happens in many different places and i understand that and i know that we don't want to [Music] just mark a certain area as a bad area um but if you look at that and get back with me and and we'll talk yes ma'am certainly uh miss johnson we'll look at that and what i'll say is this is that uh even though we know that violent crime continues to happen in in certain areas it is happening in pockets all over the city yeah it is and uh and what i would like to do in addition to looking at technology pieces as uh as i mentioned at the last council meeting we do have the license plate readers now we're in the process of implementing that and getting the training for the department but i also want to look at and i'll go back to what i've talked to about before looking about investment in those communities where we're seeing the most violent crime and and i think that's certainly a piece of it but we we do from the technology standpoint we we do have to address what's going on right now until those investments can be made and we start to see those investments make a difference yes chief thanks for coming to talk to us i know that the city council has helped you with quite a few things over the last year that you've asked for um and sometimes some people in the community don't realize those things that that you did ask for and we supplied um don't need you to go through all of that they can look at that on their own but is there anything like right now at this point that we could immediately help you with is there anything that you can think of i know you've always said it takes the community and i know we've done the crime stoppers raising the rewards i know we've assisted you with getting personnel um is there anything like today that we could help you with don't have a specific idea that could help solve crime but what what do you think we could do at this point we have a number of ideas uh staffing is is one thing council did grant additional staff over the next uh over this budget year and the following budget year but as you know trying to find people is difficult we do have some ideas i've talked about this before around alarm response and i know that may seem small but we spend a lot of time answering alarms or burglar alarms mostly that are false it's about a 99 uh false rate and we've actually looked at some communities uh none in north carolina but some in other parts of the country where they have a different system of us responding to alarms so what we figured is that we're spending thousands of hours and i'd have to get that exact number for you but thousands of hours per year responding to false alarms that's time that could be spent actually in areas that are experiencing disproportionate crime so that is one another thing that that we're looking at and we're still working trying to get this bill passed is the accident response by civilians responding to property damage accidents only we spent about 17 000 hours a year responding to property damage accidents and if we could come up with an alternative response such as a civilian response that would free up time so some of those things will be simply around the alarms and uh i do need to present that to the manager uh to make sure that they understand what it is we want to do before it's presented to council but with the alarms it will require a a slight ordinance change and i'd like to be uh certainly more prepared before i present that to council of course and should we pass something like that that will free up officers times to deal with more of the issues they need to be dealing with so absolutely and that's the thing right now because we don't have the people we have to look at time allocation uh and how we can better spend our time and as i talk about that uh just some of the stop gaps that we put in place we actually have our specialized units that are actually answering calls now on a rotational basis so that means that detectives who would normally follow up on cases they're occasionally getting in uniform and going out and answering calls because as the staffing shortage has occurred our response time suffers as you can imagine and people talk about i know you don't know all the 10 codes but if you ever hear 10 100 on the radio it means that there's a priority one call that somebody needs to go to priority one could be a domestic it could be a robbery it could be a shooting and every call every car in the city is tied up and we don't have anyone to send so we're trying to figure out ways to mitigate that until we can increase our staffing great thank you dr wells then mr holston uh just before we went for the fire alarm i could hear the urgency in our chiefs um talk to us it seems as if he wants us to do something immediately now i know we have a staffing problem is it that we cannot find police anywhere to add to the staff we are hiring people we have a class right now of 30. i have about 17 in field training who are slowly starting to get out of field training the thing is this the the lead time to hire somebody is is months on end because of the requirements because of the background checks the academy itself is over six months and in field training is uh about four months so before someone actually answers a call independently they've been in a mode of training for approximately 10 and a half months and received over 1600 hours of training so it's just not a quick process where like for instance if i have someone leave today it's gonna if i could hire somebody to replace them today it's still gonna take me almost 11 months to actually have a another fully functional officer that can take their place so that's a challenge uh unfortunately it's a challenge all across the law enforcement profession right now and we're certainly trying to do what we can to to solve it here in greensboro well the two things that you didn't mention about the blur burglary uh burglar launcher yes i think we need to move as quickly as we can on that uh and i know there are underlying reasons for the unrest we talk about the area where the crime is and folks don't like to say it but it is black on black crime when we start we look at it the majority of these are black on black there's a lot of the situation with with african americans is different there are a lot of things that are missing a lot of things that are needed and there's a lot i think there's a loss of hope when we talk about investing in our community and we talk about the east side or the crescent we really need to address that i mean we need to look at pouring into those communities some of the things that that they need it just needs to be be better there it looks bad some places there's it's just depressing it's depressing and if you had to live with that every day and some of them have been in it since childhood and by the time they get to adulthood they're saying well i'm i'm finished you know it doesn't make any difference what i do it doesn't make any difference and they just you know do these violent things but we we need to keep exploring we can't give up we want to see a change but it does take the whole community and um i'm hoping that we this all of us sitting up here can do something whatever we can do to make things better yes chief james uh as chief of police i consider you to be the the subject matter expert in this in this area and uh especially after this past weekend uh you know we all know that it's a it's a life or death issue but it's also as you mentioned a reputational risk to all the good work that's been done and the foundations that have been laid here in greensboro so you talked about staffing being being the big issue a couple of questions one what is your attrition rate from your existing staff uh it what are the trends there and then what is it going to take for you to both keep and attract the best and the brightest and this is the opportunity and i know that i haven't been here before or not very long so to speak and so i so i had i don't have the benefit of the previous conversations but uh those those dreams that you have if i had this then i could solve this so the attrition rate for the current staff and then what is it going to take what do we need to give you to keep and attract the best and the brightest for your staff the attrition rate for the past couple of years has been about five to six officers per month so let's say if we round it down to five that we lose that could be through somebody deciding to seek another uh career option uh or retirement um so we're losing about 60 officers per year so out of a base of how many out of an authorized strength of 693 i believe now with the ones that were added in this this budget year that we're in right now uh when we add the ones next year i think it will put us at 6.99 if i'm not mistaken as if we were fully staffed that's from that's foreign officers only not including our civilian staff so we have to hire and train at least 60 officers a year just to keep pace with the attrition when we talk about what would keep officers certainly pay is is one thing that sticks out a council did vote to increase pay this year so we were appreciative of that pay bump but we also have to make sure that we stay aware of our surrounding competitors because they are certainly trying to recruit our people at various times they're poaching yes um another thing too and uh i don't want to i really would normally have this conversation with the manager's office but you asked a question so uh when you talk about how do you get the best and the brightest and keep those people as we look at some other agencies they give incentives for uh for foreign language the city does give an incentive for foreign language but i would say that in specifically in law enforcement sometimes that monetary bonus is more or it's a permanent addition to their salary and then we give a educational bonus which is a one-time bonus that you get when you're first hired that's 5 000 for a four-year degree 2500 for a two-year degree but that's a one-time bonus many of the other agencies in our area they give a permanent salary increase meaning that that person if you come in with a four-year degree they're going to come in at a higher salary than someone who does not have a degree in that way you're you know able to attract people with higher levels of education and that are possibly bilingual which certainly is a need for us as we're trying to serve the entire community all right one more question yes when i was with uh with private organizations uh very good good organizations excellent training programs but folks were always poaching from us after the training program ended so do we have flipping that around do we have and i hate to even say this i guess but i'm going to say it anyway do we have any type of sign-on bonus for those who've already been trained to join the greensboro police department from other agencies it is there an aggressive uh marketing approach we call it hunger games but but right now we're to 9-1-1 yeah uh we we do not have a sign-on bonus uh we we do get applications occasionally from what we would call a lateral somebody that has worked at another agency that has a minimum of two years experience we do occasionally take laterals but we do not offer a sign-on bonus for that and i know i don't i can't speak specifically around our particular area in the triad but as i look at news across the country people are doing many creative things in all industries including law enforcement to try to get people to come and work for them and that's certainly something uh that could be looked at but it's it's a budget impact and we'd have to look at what that budget impact would would do for the entire city it's a budget impact but also a cost benefit analysis that goes along with it and sometimes it's cheaper and i think you have i think you certainly have a point and uh that's certainly something that uh that could be looked at if it's the will of council i think it needs to be looked at so i know that we've looked at retention bonuses for departments that have had issues retaining employees in the past and when they take the bonus they have to um commit to staying for a certain period of time maybe that is something that we could do is look at retention because certainly um public safety and police is very stressed right now stress by number um and we know that there are other um places trying to recruit our our police officers we have an absolutely great academy we don't require our recruits to sign and stay that once they graduate they will stay with us for a few years i know there's always been a little push back on that but you know i think we ought to take a look at maybe retention what can we do for retention bonuses understanding that there would be an impact i believe at our next meeting we're going to talk about the take-home cars which is um an immediate bonus to some officers you know phasing that in if that goes through you know chief it's almost mid-year and there's a time for mid-year ask and i would encourage you if there's something that um you think that we could supply as um as a city council to to make that ask and you mentioned earlier about community response and that we needed to invest in our communities and um i know with the arp funds and that um application process closes on friday i believe but you know i know i for one have reached out to many of our community groups who are boots on the ground who have been who've been doing the work for a long time and encouraging them to apply for these arp funds so that um we can help them be part of the solution so i hope that um people really took that to heart and we're looking at how we could partner with some of these great minority owned and led businesses that we have in the qualified census tracts that will qualify for some of this arp money or possibly will go through pbc at a later date so again if you've got anything more i would encourage you to reach out and we are still working real hard on that civilian traffic responders and hopefully that it will get through um we'll see madam mayor yes kind of been sitting here for well y'all been talking back and forth chief um quickly um and i was watching the news today sacramento was having the same problem that we're having here particularly this past weekend i didn't like what the news and record put in about this past weekend because i thought it was a disrespect to the community as well as a t because they did have some students involved in some of the fatalities and i think once again the way the information is put out really does have a heavy negative light um sometimes over situations you cannot control you know um what i would wonder um if you look at some of the numbers and the numbers you gave 108 murders the last two years 91 are black um it's very troubling that they are black um and we have to look deep into i think what caused it to get there um i think that's some african the ad-hoc committee on african-american disparities can look into out of the 91 black what is their origin because sometimes we assume it's economic sometimes we assume they come from poverty and sometimes they don't um and so we can look at that and make that determination but out of those how many would you say a local or how many would you say come from out of town into our city to create uh cause these homicides have you looked at those numbers i so i don't have the exact numbers for you i could get that but uh based on what i know a majority of the victims reside here locally and we've also had some individuals in in neighboring communities that come here uh for various reasons sometimes it's just because they know somebody and they get into a dispute and it turns into a gun battle so uh certainly again we want our city to be vibrant but you know greensboro we're the third largest city in the state you know so we're certainly going to have people that are going to come here we want people to come here and enjoy themselves but we also want them to be safe but what i would say is that from that perspective specifically on your question a majority of the victims reside here locally in greensboro and if not right in greensboro in a very nearby community yes ma'am yeah so i think that's something that we could really look at um you know a few months ago i said we should have a community crime task force and shared some concerns and we haven't gotten it up off the ground i think now is the time to do that because you're right it's not just simple policing alone it is going to take the community but we got our universities here they are being impacted and our school system are being impacted and we got to come to the table and find those solutions um whether it's helping with our younger students uh get on a bad path whether it's helping with their families you know and then sometimes people just mad they get angry and their first answer is to shoot somebody and i think he saw that at barbara park um recently um which was kind of an isolated event but say if you will and i think it merits um this discussion um throughout the community to pull in some stakeholders because shootings don't just affect one person they affect us all you know so certainly if we're going to invest in the community we keep talking about it we keep talking about it but we don't do it um and i think that's the other thing community's tired of us talking about it to you i know you're we're trying to help you get your or you know organization going but but as to intentionally investing in those areas um we need to be focused on and i'd really like to know from you too and not tonight but what areas specifically do you see those actual incidents coming out of what is a geographic um area range where we can say let's go into this community let's assess this community let's see is this a lot of low-income housing it's a lot of affordable housing there's a lot of tenants landlords a lot of just you know abandoned homes that maybe we need to look at how can we get you know more people in those how we can rehab some of those to make you know people have a place to stay and a place to live and that helps build vibrant communities as well when people feel a part of something um and so i think i'd like to see if you could identify for me some of those particular areas um at some point if if i can say um i don't i don't like to people sometimes will label a community as a this is a bad area and i don't like to do that because by and large the majority of people that live in those communities are great people and they're just trying to live their life and they want to be safe so are there some additional challenges yeah absolutely and what i would say is this i think there's enough area we we've talked about the crescent before without calling out any particular neighborhood we've talked about what the crescent looks like uh when you map out crime in the community and and i think really i come from a place where we probably can't do it all at one time and i think that we need to we need to identify our most challenged area right and we need to just focus on that area and i think that if if we as a city as a community can do that and we see some tangible change in improvement and a safer community i think that other people will want to invest and hopefully that idea will spread across multiple communities and it's going to be a a slow process but i think that we have to just identify the most challenged area and try to pour into that area and see what we get and i think it'll be positive and i think it'll be a springboard to to do it in other places in the city but we just got to make sure we got the uh the buy-in from the people that have resources and there are resources in this community and i'm not just talking about city resources there are um and i wouldn't disagree with you it was just really where i was driving to to deal with maybe some of the most challenged areas we we have identified them but at the same time we're not pouring into you know that you know um and i know too um because i talk to people all the time and but we as a city have to start yeah others can join in and invest it but we have to start we have to be more to make that you know initial right um you know investment and and we talk around it a lot but it doesn't happen the way it ought to there's spaces that don't have community centers right now when i go in the east side of greensboro there's still tornado ravaged schools that are closed and it's desolate and it's depressing um and and those areas won't hold that's all they just need a little bit of hope and i think we can help we should be able to help them get there i agree with you sir thank you yes yes ma'am mr outland thank you chief for speaking with us this evening um by my observation especially the course of the past year there's oftentimes been a reflexive crime is elevated violent crime is elevated because of kovitt but i remember a remark you made several months ago which effectively as i recall it was when you're looking at crime and analyzing the state of our community not only do you look at a single year like 2020 where we had the record-shattering number of homicides you look at several years to determine whether or not there's something fundamentally wrong going on that's not just a statistical aberration when you look at obviously greensboro's data for the past five years plus there's something there even when other communities before covet were relatively flat on violent crime greensboro was on an upward trajectory and it continues to go upward my understanding is that your department works very hard to try to answer some of the points raised by councilman hightower in terms of what are some of the trends correlations that may exist so that we can better understand the problem and develop a solution from that do you have any updates that you can share in terms of what the department has done to analyze some of those issues i know that for example we get information about where violent crimes are committed convenience stores entertainment venues but obviously that's a venue of uh where crime has been committed it doesn't tell you if there's a trend that links different crimes and i've seen other communities for example work has been done to identify trends and correlations across crime for example a disproportionate number have been um children who were truant and not attending school or a disproportionate number are associated with gangs such that those communities develop very specific solutions to address the specific crime problems that existed there do you have any updates on kind of the work the department's doing to kind of get more granular and identify the particular nature of what may be driving some of the violent crime here yeah so one of our main strategies has been to to look at like you said multi-year numbers and as you said before the violent crime trend it's been trending up since about 2016. we've been averaging in the high 40s and of course we completely shattered that in 2020. the other part is that we look at the repeat violent offenders uh that are in our community certainly uh you know if they've been incarcerated previously we want to have uh as a community an opportunity for them to come out and be successful but at the same time from a law enforcement standpoint we have to be aware of of who um you know has committed violent crime especially when we're looking at suspects in particular areas so we have focused on primarily again repeat violent offenders we also look at trends from a multi-year standpoint and for instance we may be able to look at a particular area and figure out that for some reason uh in the month of between november 1 and november 30th this community typically sees a spike in crime so that drives where we we actually are so when i talk about the fact that we've gotten over 1500 guns off the street a lot of that is because we're getting the officers to the right places at the right times of course when we have those officers and and i do think again i think it's it has mitigated uh what has happened but again it's just not nearly enough so we do go down as you say to a granular level and we look at things like that and we start looking at individuals that have you know committed violence in the past and and possibly uh are repeat offenders but we uh we have a pretty robust analysis unit uh within the police department and uh they're even able to do as i alluded to uh some predictive analysis about where things are are likely to happen so uh we've done that we certainly uh are looking at additional things that we can do one thing that council did last year is that they allowed us to have a crime analyst just for the knobbing entries which is the ballistic data that tracks the guns and that has been very helpful for us because we are able to oftentimes connect people to the weapons to actual places and actual crimes when we when we locate those weapons and each gun that we have goes through that process and whether it's through you know what certainly would be my hope regular work sessions or otherwise i think it'd be helpful to share that more granular information with council members as well as the community so that first there's a sense of we understand kind of the full nature and increasing intricacies of the problem but also so people can come together and assist where they can so for example you made reference to repeat offenders the city itself has limited ability to change laws or do things with regard to sentencing to offenders but kind of sharing that information creates an opportunity i think for others who do have influence whether we know you know where they have influence or not to kind of step in and do what they can where they can so i welcome kind of more information you might be able to share whether it be regular work sessions or otherwise but getting you know more granular with that great information i know you all are working on so thank you thank you um dr wells i want to circle back to uh what councilman holston said a while ago it seems as if he was we we we increased the budget to retain but it seems like to me he was talking about a bonus to attract and if we could attract because we we talked about three things that we can do we identify the communities that have the problem and then address it by putting funds or investing in those communities finding out what it is they need and then move forward with it so we we need to get more more police and no focus and we don't want to be police police police but everybody's talking about the homicides we're having so we have to do something different from what we have been doing so if we need more police we need to attract them by giving them some more money people to take people who work someplace else like they've taken people from us we need to have something attractive to get them to come to us we need to look at those communities that we um the police can identify that they it's potential hotbed we know where the hotbeds are then we look at those and analyze those communities what is it about it what's the income what does housing look like what are the things that that we can do now we talk about money and we know the taxpayers money but we pay we we sign here and and say um i move and we're moving sometimes millions of dollars and i think about it sometimes i say i move and you and somebody seconds it and we vote and it's sometimes a million dollars going for one thing we have to really be intentional about it we keep talking about we know where the hot spots are we know that east greensboro is in dire need of help and shan's been saying it over and over i've been trying to back her up but if we're going to do something then we need to do it because we're losing lives we're losing our reputation we're going to be known as the crime city not the third third largest city and we don't want that we want the best we want to talk about the tiger center we want to talk about all the amenities we have here all the beautiful gardens and all the recreation and parks we have but we've got to look at the blight we have and there is a little spot on us that we've got to work on and talking about it and he said it we've had conversation and we talk about bring back some more information we we almost know what needs to be done and we just need to do it we've got to be intentional about making these changes and every time somebody is shot i just hate to look at what street it is because i most of the time i know it's in district 2. just about every time it's in district 2. and if it's not instituting it's over there in district 1. so i want us to do something about it and stop talking about it but do something about it and and thank you councilwoman wells and to that point you know we we've we've had a lot of comments tonight a lot of observations uh but as i said before we're in a 9-1-1 it's the hunger games and their lives at risk and it's a reputational risk and so uh madame mayor and fellow council members i'd i'd like to make a motion that we direct our city manager to develop a plan to staff the greensboro police department to full force within 18 to 24 months all right i'd like to make a motion that we ask our city manager to develop a plan for the greensboro police department to staff them fully within 18 to 24 months using whatever means ideas suggestions wild thoughts that there are because this is after last month after what we've been talking about uh it is time for us to stop talking it's time for us to start putting our money where our mouth is and if that means literally then that means literally so would you take a friendly amendment the chief has a strategic plan that he presented to us in january and maybe what we should do is just ask him for an update on the strategic plan and if he sees changes that need to be made does that staff us fully within 18 to 24 months excuse me i'm sorry does that staff the greensboro police department to full staffing within 18 to 24 months well it talked about staffing levels and um wages because that's what we're talking about how we can attract and retain so um i think if we can ask him for an update on the strategic plan well and i i do appreciate that um if it doesn't get us full staff he doesn't get the chief the subject matter expert the one that has the boots on the ground doesn't give him the full staffing that he needs to protect life and limb to protect uh property to protect reputation to protect the city then uh i would say that i would prefer that the motion be that it'd be 18 to 24 months madam mayor if i might make one yeah well let me you say i don't um i don't think the issue is with the 18 to 24 months i think the state that the chief is equipped to come up with that plan as an addition to the street strategic plan and we certainly can i i'm sorry go go ahead i was just gonna say uh we do address recruiting uh in this strategic plan uh and and i would say that uh based on our estimates it would probably take about two to three years to fully staff the department and that's if we ran full classes back to back continuously over the next three years and that's with the number looking at attrition which is about five per month and we certainly need to at the same time work on how to slow that down as we bring new people into the department so so i guess the cheap change if i could so so does that plan you said two to three years yes i don't know that we have two to three years okay does the plan include the opportunity or or the or the option to have the sign-on bonuses and the other things to attract others because it's going to take what you have plus more to make a difference yeah i certainly um and you're certainly correct and what we've done is just some of the stop gaps that we've done the manager's office with the support of council last year allowed me to offer overtime as well now certainly we can't burn out our staff but because we do have the lap salaries because of the vacancies in the department essentially the money is there and it's budgeted for and as i said in addition uh not something that we really wanted to do but we do have some of our specialized units including detectives that are helping out with call answering i think the the thing with the profession of police work is that the training process is so slow and and it is very uh difficult to find people who are willing to do the work and also qualified and to actually get them through the entire process and so as we look at no we really don't have two to three years but we do have some things in place to try to to try to mitigate those vacancies as as we move forward so i think we can certainly have a deeper conversation about how we can get people uh into the department good people great people even and and how we can help to keep the people that we have to make sure they don't go somewhere else to another department and uh and i think we can certainly come up with something that uh that council can consider and q i only brought that up because i don't know if you were aware of the strategic plan that he brought before us and the wage analysis so it sounds like that it's an update to what his strategic plan was i do know mary kay mrs thurm dr wells and i do know and to mr holston's point and to what the chief has been talking about you know even if we had an influx of millions and millions of dollars tomorrow that would still not solve the recruiting issue correct chief yes it's just a it's a slow process right now with the national rhetoric nobody wants to be a police officer or those that are passionate enough to want to be police officers a lot of the cities are going through the same thing with salaries and then trying to figure out bonuses trying to figure out what they can do to attract uh officers so i was going to say even if we had an influx of money tomorrow i that's why with your strategic plan i want to hear you know how long you think it will take like you said the two to three years i don't think we can put a cut off even though we need it all today i don't think it's fair to you that we say okay it's got to be done within x amount of time because the the ones wanting to apply are the ones applying may not be there we've got to figure out how to attract them so um you know although i i truly believe that we need to move forward definitely with listening to the the chiefs plan uh things like that i find it difficult tonight to say that you know we're going to put a timeline of 18 months when we don't have the personnel to apply for those 18 months and i'd certainly be glad to come back with some ideas of how we think we can speed up that process but of course it is a budget impact and i know that compensation is always an issue across the entire city so but but i can certainly come up with some ideas and and as i mentioned before some of the things that attract people that have college degrees people that are bilingual i really would like to explore that further and again i don't want to diminish the city does have a a program that awards people uh additional compensation that are bilingual i think that some of the agencies i've seen though offer additional bonuses or a permanent uh salary increase for those that are that are bilingual and translate so i could certainly uh return with some ideas that uh the manager with to the manager's office that council could consider um mrs thurm yes thank you chief for being here tonight um and thank you mr halston for your your suggestion for me i am unable to support just a blanket do whatever it takes because i think we need to be more intentional about how we have a plan what the plan is as you've said in your strategic plan and what i'd like to request is that within say 30 days you come back to us with a plan of different options of how we could approach that fully staffed within 24 months and what would that look like so that we can be intentional about it it's very sometimes it's easy to just say we want this and within x number of months but i think we have to look at your recommendations look at all the creative solutions partnering with hr and see what kind of creative programs it would take i i do think we're this is an emergency we need to have the full attention it needs to be you know top priority um but i think we need to give you some time to pull together your best recommendations um for us so that we can take those those on and then move forward with them but i'd love to see a plan say within the next 30 days or so and i'll certainly i'll talk with the manager's office about that um and i just want to say again i mean certainly i think having a police department that's uh fully staffed is part of the solution but as i said before it's a community solution there's some things that uh the police department uh that we are not going to be able to do and uh i think it's just a piece of the puzzle and we've we've got to figure out the other piece as well so i don't want to um again come before you begging for resources um i just wanted to be a holistic solution to try to figure out this crime picture so i guess to wrap that up is i'd like to make a motion that by the second meeting in december council is presented with a plan to increase staffing to full staffing levels with as much detail and as many suggestions as you can provide second so we do have um dr wells mr halston um mrs hightower and mrs hoffman who um i still have comments in the queue okay i just want to um i agree with what um sturm said but i think that we should consider the bonuses for attraction now we we have the strategic plan but we see that we need to do something different from what we've been doing it takes time for people to be trained but it takes time for folks to be trained and you've explained that to us so that's the way it has been what we're looking for is what can we do differently so you know if we can try to attract people to come that already trained that will help us that would be one leg of it the other is to identify those places and then the other thing as far as to invest in those areas that we need to so i might need a little help here is um mrs therm's motion a friendly amendment to mr holston if he accepts it or is a substitute motion and how is that voted if mr hallston accepts it it's a predicament accepted well it's to come back with the plan so um so then i would assume that mr holston in a second by um mrs therm if it is a friendly amendment yes well if if he accepted i'm not exactly sure of the process right now um so i believe there is a motion in a second he mr holston accepted mrs therms so she is the second yes okay so we do still have um dr wells for you through mr holston um mrs hightower and mrs hoffman okay any other comments it'll be how to get up everything's included yes everything's on the table yes okay so any any other comments on well i did i do you have a comment is is it mrs huffman all i wanted to do is to ask the chief um with all the discussion that we've had i i would like for us to for for you your department for hr to be as creative as possible more creative than pr than we have ever been in the city of greensboro to figure out how we can attract number one trained people and i and i'm if they're if they come to us trained we don't have to put them through that 10 um ten months uh that's worth that that signing bonus is justified so let's figure out what that is and and then let's figure out let's go a field and and market our need outside the state of north carolina i mean this is an attractive city to come to and to live in and i i think that if we for creative we can look at attracting people from other states and figure out what what what what we need to do that and if that requires uh moving allowances or whatever but i would i would like for us to be truly creative in terms of how we can get to where we need to be in the next 24 months 18 24 months whatever you feel that it can be so that's that's all i wanted to add to the conversation okay thank you so i think this has been an important right well yeah i'll just let ms hoffman go because she hadn't said anything um you know chief i know you need the help um and right now the world we live in jesus is not sitting around with a whole bunch of people waiting to sign up to be police officers now let's let's let's be real you know yeah right that's true that's we have to look at it and sometimes it's not even money that drives it's just folk don't want to be in that particular space so you have to work with what you have and try to get done and we told him he said he had a strategic plan i don't i i'm sure he's going to come up with something innovative to get more people on board um because he knows he's the one faced with the shortage and the issue so i think we're getting down in the weeds here number one okay um i i i have some concerns i have some concerns about you just grabbing folk off the streets and throwing them in a position because they were a police officer they were a police officer back here in another state and we don't know the background they don't go through your training your 10 weeks they might have went to blet school but how they acclimated in your department so i think we don't need to get so carried away here that we say oh just bring info because then we're gonna wind up getting some body that is not going to be reflective of the type of policing we want to see done in this community and then you're working twice as hard to get that person where they need to be and i think if you've got a strategic plan we've already supported that giving you the money to face the salaries and you come back and you present that to us that you maybe we need a signing bonus everybody doing signing bonus arby's mcdonald's everybody so it is a whole different world around that anyway um but i think that we still need to be conscientious about how we're staffing the department well let me say i mean we we're always going to be very thoughtful about whoever we hire um the thing about laterals is that they've actually policed somewhere before and sometimes that's it's better than trying to recruit somebody that hasn't been in law enforcement because if they've policed somewhere before that means they're going to have a file that we're going to ask them to sign a waiver and get access to and we can look at their history of policing and if they don't fit our community we certainly will hold the vacancy until we find somebody that does so uh but we want to uh attract as mr holston said the best and the brightest and we need to figure out how to make greensboro the most attractive place in this area at least to be a police officer and but we certainly are not going to cut any corners in who we hire because as you alluded to they're going to be more trouble than they're worth i'd rather hold the vacancy than hire somebody that's not a good fit for the community so we do have a motion on the floor by mr holston seconded by mrs thurm mrs hoffman mr holston yes dr wells yes mrs johnson aimee yes mrs abuzawader yes mr um outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to one um i'm nine to zero i'm sorry um we you know i did ask for a take-home car policy at our next meeting and i would still like to go forward with that because we know that that is an issue that has been mentioned for uh retention so i don't want to put that off until we get the um staffing and wage analysis the other thing that i would ask for is i would like an update on the cure violence program we've had it in program we've had it for two years we've spent over a million dollars on it if it's working and i'm hoping that it is then it should be expanded um if it needs some other assistance from council whether you know they don't have the supplies they need i think it's important but i think it's important for us to get a really good report out on what's happened in the last two years madam mayor we will get you the evaluation from uncg which they're wrapping up and a verbal um from trey who has been working with us um i think that the contract comes up in december and you know if it needs to be enhanced or spread i think we have to um talk about that at the time or um you know if it needs some if having some challenges we've got to figure out how to make the program work well i absolutely agree um with you but i think this is an investment in the community we keep talking about investing in community so we certainly can't step away from it maybe we need to give it more tools that it needs if you know certain things aren't falling into place it is a different model than the cure violence model because it should be under public health and so it's actually being structured differently um and so in some instances there may be some mechanisms that may not quite be falling into place the way that we think they should and so they may need some additional tools well that's what i said if they need additional help we need to so we need to make sure we invest in that you know we just invest here but we still got to do community investment in this time yes okay um chief thank you very much we appreciate it this was really good and um we'll have follow up on that i really really hate to do this but i've had some requests that we take a short break um i know that we had a break for the fire drill but unfortunately people weren't able to take care of things they needed to take care of so if we could have a 10 minute break i am not a you know we had 40 um 44 speakers i'm not sure who is left in person or who is on the zoom gary if you could try to get us a handle on who's in here that would be helpful so that we can move forward in the most efficient way possible okay 10 minutes you you you you you you you you discussion that we had to have especially in light of the events of this past weekend so again i do want to thank you we are going to move the um the hyatt speak street speakers i know that there are some children and we appreciate that they have group speakers according to topic in alejandro alcantara and that will be followed by francine munoz and there's a uh um a total of three minutes a person my name is alejandro you know come on good evening my name is alejandro alcantara and i'm one of the residents of the trailer park known as jameson mobile home park my address is 2510 hyatt street greensboro 27403 mistress i've lived in the lindley park neighborhood since 2004 with my wife nancy and my three children my youngest son was born and grew up in that neighborhood for 14 years we rented a small duplex around the corner from where the mobile home park is and five years ago when we saw that one of the trailers was for sale my wife and i saw the possibility of being homeowners and we decided to buy it from we thought that this would be our home forever in that neighborhood we enjoy a quiet life safety in the streets good public transportation just around the corner from our home and especially above everything else good schools living in this area is really important to me and to my family and for the 20 families that are also that would also potentially be affected by this unjust forcing out of our homes first of all living in this zone all of us have good access to public transportation this is very important for me and for my wife nancy who uses the bus every day to go to work and come back high school um if you could go ahead and translate that please and are you counting the interpretation yes we are um we can give you a little bit longer but yes it's a total of it's not customary to count the interpretation okay everything additionally everything is close to our home second of all i really want my son pedro to be able to stay in at grimsley high school one school a school that is known for its academic excellence on a national level if you wanna that was the rest of oh that was the total he has more of a statement but yeah it will um due to the translation um could you put another two minutes on the clock and american he's been going to lindley park neighborhood school since kindergarten and he has lifelong classmates at all of the schools and he doesn't want to leave them aside from that he's an athlete on the football team at the school third of all these are not good times to be forcing people out of their homes among the neighbors we have been actually trying to find comparable options to our neighborhood and the truth is that they are not options the other mobile home parks are very far from the city don't have public transportation and won't accept some of our trailers especially some of the very old ones foreign lastly in this neighborhood we are families for example my next-door neighbor is my oldest daughter our other neighbors are sisters who each have their own families but among us we take care of our neighborhood and we take care of our each other's children we are not going to be able to find that somewhere else we the um united neighbors of the mobile of the hyatt street mobile home park are here to say that we don't want to leave our neighborhood and that we would like the city's support um with american rescue plan funds to be able to keep the hyatt street mobile home park as a refuge for people looking for affordable housing thank you our next speaker is francine munoz gonzalez followed by alvia ruiz joyce stark okay um my name is francine munoz gonzalez and i live on would you mind taking your mask down a little bit so we can hear you thank you okay um my name is francine munoz gonzalez and i live on 2522 b hyatt street and i've been living in the mobile home park for my whole life which is 17 years um moving during this point of my life isn't what i expected and receiving a letter from the owner of the property call me by surprise because there was no prior warning there was also no clues that would make us guess that we would have to move anytime soon i have already made plans for my senior year which is to attend football games by participating in the marching band leading the cross country and track team because i'm captain and doing my applications for college and i'm glad to see that i'm uh finalist for the quest bridge scholarship in the national college match and i'm also trying to achieve my ib diploma which was an overwhelming process that i was preparing for since the day i decided to take this path what i was not prepared for this year was the stress of having to keep up with my extracurricular activities academics and having to help my family search for a place to live when we are not prepared with what's going on now i've had to spend more times helping my parents find an adequate place to live for the worst case scenarios with our current financial situation and because my parents are of older age we cannot afford a 30-year mortgage with their age i know that they're going to reach the age of retirement leaving me with the question will i as the oldest and a first generation college student have to financially support my family while also attending college at the same time with many thoughts rushing through my head with a similar question and added stress i've noticed my mental well-being being unstable i feel as if my whole world has turned upside down because my home and family and community is being torn apart without us having to stay in it i know those who are around me and feel safe because of the relationships i have built with them throughout the years i don't want the place i call home to be ripped away from me because it is the one thing that makes me want to achieve greater things and i know what is expected of me i ask that those who are here to hear our situation not only helped me but other children as well to keep the one thing that is stable in our life which is our homes and as city councilman and councilwoman i ask that you help us stay in our homes because it is ours and we don't want to move when we already have a community you can do this by publicly supporting not only me and my studies as an ib diploma candidate but for all the families in the mobile home park thank you thank you elvia ruiz i'm sorry did you um bill eckerd um jill moore that's a hard act to follow hello my name is jill moore my address is for foxfire court greensboro 27410 thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i'm here to support to offer my support to the residents of the hyatt street mobile home community i am the english language learners teacher at lindley elementary this is my eighth year teaching there prior to that i was an esl teacher for six years at the doris henderson newcomer school our county school for first year immigrant and refugee students in my everyday life and in my classroom i try to model kindness empathy and compassion toward others even though the idea of speaking here tonight made me nervous and emotional i was compelled to speak up because of the personal relationships i have with the children who are directly being impacted by the impending eviction of the hyatt street residents of the 47 esl students i teach at lindley seven of them live in the hyatt street homes this is valeria she's five years old raphael seven david six there's also elisa five floor seven evelette and donna 10. i know for them and their families this is a stressful and difficult time we've all faced struggles and hardships during this pandemic but the additional crisis these families are facing being forced out of the close-knit community they have relied on during both good and bad times saddens me and breaks my heart for my students as we all know what goes on in a student's home life directly impacts their learning and not knowing if they'll have a place to live in a few months has definitely had an impact on all of the children who reside in this community i love and care for my students and i want them to be able to stay lindley with the teachers and fellow students they know and care about i want the hyatt street mobile home community to stay as a viable option of affordable housing for their families i urge owl's roost partners to consider what buying this land out from under these residents will do to these children their families our school and the diverse lindley park neighborhood in which this mobile home community exists i implore you the city council to revisit our city's goal of providing affordable housing for all of our residents use your influence to affect change in this case and issue a public statement in support of the hyatt street residents finally i ask that you be prepared to support the hyatt street residents in applying for funds earmarked for affordable housing should the developer reconsider his plan to develop this land and force these families to move i appreciate your time and your thoughtful compassionate consideration of this matter thank you thank you the next speaker is kate davier good evening my name is kate davilard guthrie i live at 2407 camden road right on the edge of lindley park in sunset hills i also bring greetings from bill eckhart who couldn't be here tonight who's a neighbor of mine and julie peoples who also couldn't be here who is a pastoral colleague of mine i am here tonight as a member of the lindley parent teacher association so as i'm speaking i encourage you to imagine about a little over a hundred parents up here with me and with that representing um about 200 to 300 more students up here as well we have issued a statement in support of our neighbors on hyatt street we need them to be a part of our school community we live where we live because we want a school like lindley elementary we want the same things as our hyatt neighbors and i wish i could have my son here who's a kindergartner this year we've lived there for 15 years and finally get the benefit of a great school down the street and when i explained to him that some of his classmates might have to move because they don't own the land where their homes are he said what and then when i explained the good news is they want to buy that land so they can stay he said well that makes a lot of sense so i urge you tonight today ironically or not ironically on the first day of native american indian heritage month where um we think about our long history of seeing land as profit over people i urge you to like the lindley pta like the lindley neighborhood association which has also issued a statement to please issue a statement acknowledging that our hyatt street neighbors are the ideal neighbors for that particular piece of land and also urge you to consider as you think of the american rescue plan and the in the application that is coming forth there are funds earmarked for affordable housing and everybody up there would say we know affordable housing is a crisis in our city i couldn't a strongly middle class person and many of my neighbors couldn't afford to live in our neighborhood today if we had to buy today it's a crisis so we thank you i know there might be times where it feel like you can say your hands are tired tied but you have influence we thank you for working for us and for representing every single neighbor in our community thank you thank you [Applause] cecile crawford hello my name is cecily crawford and i reside at 502 high street greensboro north carolina i'm a member of guilford for all and an east greensboro resident i found out about the hyatt displacement in august when guilford for all began to support the efforts by the tenants and ciambra nc i felt angry that yet again when affordable housing is so difficult to obtain more families were being displaced from their homes as a single mother who struggled for years to find affordable housing for myself and two daughters i know that it's bleak out there to be living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net than trying to come up with a deposit moving costs and higher rent it is disastrous to your bottom line and it seems you never can catch up you can't sleep you're terrified that you and your family will be homeless the shame that goes with being poor and struggling to keep a home can be debilitating and traumatic especially for the children and most of the time the very people that you would go to for help are facing the same situations this isn't right greensboro families should be allowed to set roots and build communities greensboro has an affordable housing issue and new developments should support not displace existing neighborhoods mobile home parks have been a source of affordable housing since the 1970s and there is a movement to allow residents to buy the land of their trailer parks elected officials have voiced concern and plans for affordable housing and here is a 20-plus year affordable housing community i understand that you do not have the authority to tell jerry wass and al's roost partners to stand aside but i ask you to stand in solidarity with these residents in asking mr wass and ours owls roost partners to remove themselves from the equation and allow hyatt residents the opportunity to buy the land they have lived on for decades i it would be a wonderful thing for the city council to openly support the hyatt residents by issuing a statement in support of the current residents as ideal buyers for the land i asked the city council will they then support an application from the hyatt street residents to use the american rescue plan funds earmarked for affordable housing to be used along with a mortgage loan and other private and public funds to help with the purchase i appreciate you allowing us the time to speak with you on this issue i look forward to seeing your support and asking mr watson owls roos partners to stand aside and consider what is beneficial to this community and affordable housing overall when you receive their arp application thank you thank you franco jolla [Music] good evening madam mayor honorable city council members as well as the respected members of this chamber my name is frank ajalo i'm a resident of district 5 currently residing in the 27407 zip code i'm also the founder and executive director of dallas upright services of north carolina which is a non-profit organization that serves immigrants and refugees in the greensboro area i'm standing here today in solidarity with immigrant families and advocates speaking on behalf of residents currently residing in the jamison homes mobile park on higher street in the 27403 zip code the residents of the highest street mobile homes in ict are tax paying residents who have worked extremely hard to maintain their homes and pay their bills despite the difficult times we now live in these residents are hardworking caring and responsible members of society who deserves the opportunity to continue living in a safe environment they call home with their families we as community advocates desire to protect and assist them but there are questions surrounding the rights based on north carolina general statute 42-14.3 in addition to that there are questions in regards to the direct years and their rise to make decisions on the property there is also the concern of the homes being sold only months before telling the residents they had to move as an initial plot to leave the residents depleted with nowhere else to turn to as most of you know safe accessible and affordable housing in greensboro is a huge concern for many families to the point where lives have been lost in the past due to our lack of their of this safe affordable housing but more so it is extremely difficult for immigrants and refugees to find a safe place to leave and raise our children covered 19 has further worsened these problems making things more difficult and dangerous for families all over many of the highest streets residents have lived in their homes for over 20 years now and we're surprised that their landlords would displace them from their homes so suddenly there are they are therefore asking this for the city support as well as the council support so that they can maintain their homes the residents from the highest street mobile homes residents association to persuade the developer who wants to buy the land to step aside so they can have the opportunity to buy back the park and run it cooperatively i think that's an honorable thing to do don't you they're not asking for a handout but rather hand up so they can continue living on that land and pay property taxes as well as all necessary bills accordingly we are respectfully asking that's you madam mayor and the entire council please consider saving these families please make it your duty to ensure that they stay there it is your duty as leaders to make sure that these families maintain their homes and stay in a safe place thank you very much thank you the next speaker is esther and esther if you could please tell us your last name good evening my name is esther jopie and i live on 107 south mender hall street here in greensboro like the previous speaker cecilia crawford's i heard about the attempt to display hired residents through guilford for all organizations i was shocked how family could be displaced from their houses during arranging pandemic and giving the lake of affordable housing in this city i stood with the family on august 24 in downtown greensboro as they brought their rent to the manager and asked to speak to the owner likewise on september 1st i stood with them as they deliver a gift basket to the developer and ask for a dialogue i continue supporting them by raising awareness in the community above their situation many langley park neighbor faith leader educator and local organization has supported them as well for over 20 years higher street trailer has provided affordable housing and a strong community for almost 20 families that include more than 20 children who are attending the same gcs school as my children through my advocacy work and after getting to know these residents it is clear to me that they are very well rooted in this community have a strong support of the neighbor and they do not want to be displaced rather they want to buy the land and stay and i believe that elected officials have a responsibility to play a leadership role and support their constituents so i'm here tonight to ask you to please make a powerful public statement that the hired residents are the ideal buyer for the land and strongly consider the application to use american rescue clean act money to help fund the process of the land i thank you for your time and i appreciate your work thank you thank you our next speaker is terrell dungey good evening city council my name is terrell dungey i'm an organizer with american friends service committee and a resident of greensboro here today in support of the neighbors of hyatt street mobile homes i'm not going to mince words currently there are 20 families at risk of displacement at this mobile home due to the land their homes sit upon being sold right from under them many of these families own their their homes yet can't afford the cost to move their trailers and some of their homes can't survive a move at all our city already has a shortage of affordable housing so it's it would be devastating to let more be taken away from these families and the people of greensboro and for just student apartments i'm here today to tell jerry wass of al roos partners that these families deserve to stay in their homes and deserve the right to buy their land their money is just as green as jerry's and it would mean so much more to the community if they were able to stay greensboro's 2040 plan states that the city wants to support projects that both strengthen and add value to the community and that their and that new services and housing should augment not displace through through displaced existing neighborhoods allowing the cell to go through goes against the city's own goals elected officials have a responsibility to play leadership roles when community members are dealing with a crisis a crisis that has deep implications and connections to many of the issues our whole community is facing we need we know you do not have direct authority to tell jerry wass and al-ru's partners to stand aside but i am here today to ask of city council to use their platform to support this hyatt street mobile home by issuing a statement that current residents are the ideal buyers of the land and also show your support by looking at how funding awarded from the american rescue plan act along with a mortgage loan and other public private funds can be used to help the purchase to purchase this land so when jerry walsh stands aside the city is ready to help with the next steps needed so we can keep these families together if we ever want to see a greensboro that works for all of us and not just the wealthy few it's time for city council to stop putting profit over people and make investments in our community we don't want to see another family on the streets thank you and i can't wait to hear what you'll decide to do thank you our next speaker is just st louis i apologize for that i'm hard of hearing my name is just st louis um i'm uh i'm here in support of the high street neighbors i believe that i live in district 3 i live on seminole drive and i believe that we all want a city that works for all of us not just a wealthy few right and if i had kids my kids would be going to lindley park elementary much like the children in the highest street homes neighborhood they would play they would make friends they would be in community together and it would seem like a shame that we would lose one of the most core core pieces of affordable housing for many people have lived and loved and can continue to do so but we have a choice right now right you have a choice whether the city side but the wealthy few who want it to be a playground for just for them or we can be a city that actually works for all working families for immigrants for refugees for queer and trans families for black and brown families we can have a city that works for really well for all of us and you'll have a choice here the city council side with working people in this moment y'all can deliver a public statement to our hyatt street neighbors right you can consider their application for the use the american rescue plans and govern to really protect working people's families that's the choice you'll have right here right now that is a tool you have at your disposal so the question is which side are you on will you stand with working families protect affordable housing or would you let this city be a playground for a wealthy few who do not have the best interest of all of our communities at heart so i implore you please put out a statement please consider to use the american rescue plan funds support these families and make sure they can stay and live in this community for a long time because i hope to have kids and i want my kids to be able to play with family members who live in the highest street mobile home park in the future thank you thank you now those are all the speakers i had signed up to speak directly to the um hyatt street mobile home park there are a number of speakers who have signed up to speak for affordable housing for immigrant communities so i want to go ahead and call on them as well and i don't know if they're outside but hayden falk benjamin james samuel silverstein and maimona mangula i'm sorry if i mispronounced that thank you hey i'll give you a second to catch your breath and give us your name oh maybe we can all do a deep breath okay hi my name is hayden folk i live at 17556 founders hall 5-800 west friendly avenue i'm here as a concerned constituent to talk about affordable housing as it has been established today it is a crisis i moved to greensboro four years ago when i started attending guilford college when moving here i was excited to learn that greensboro as a whole welcomes a large number of refugees and i felt grateful to be part of a city that shared my values still feel as if i found a home in greensboro a place i plan to stay invest and work in through my work with bonner the guilford community service network i've gotten to meet immigrants from many different backgrounds with my four years of work at the cnnc after-school tutoring and mentoring site i've gotten to witness children grow learn and thrive i remember the first day i came to the tutoring site i worked with a little boy from nepal he had adhd so bad he couldn't sit still so we went outside and played in the leaves together he loved telling tall tales and told me about the crocodile him and his dad caught last night several other young kids from various countries came and joined and we all built leaf forts and then promptly destroyed them this apartment community used to be a safe space for children for resettlement a community that shared languages and cultures [Music] it's starting to change immigrant and refugee families are getting pushed out by rising rent prices landlords are refusing to renew leases and fines for things like cooking outside or leaving shoes outside the little boy i played with from the leaves four years ago moved to the midwest greensboro no longer a refuge unfortunately what's happening is a second round of forced migration families being resettled here do not have the housing support they need such as fixed rent prices and wind up being displaced all over again i am scared that this is exactly what will happen to the group of afghan refugees we are currently welcoming [Music] so can we convince you the need for tangible housing policy changes i want to remind council members of a few facts fact as found by princeton's eviction labs greensboro has the seventh highest rate of eviction in the country fact if working 40 hours a week for minimum wage one would be able to pay the average rent for a one bedroom apartment in greensboro of 809 with exactly 61 left over to live off of for the month fact despite the city's claims to bring a refuge five immigrant children were killed in a fire at the since condemned summit cone apartments in 2018. [Music] as demonstrated by everyone that's spoken here today affordable housing is a crisis in greensboro and the immigrant refugee community is particularly affected i want to know thank you for letting me speak here today and eagerly awaiting tangible action to prevent gentrification and protect vulnerable communities thank you hey good evening my name is ben james i reside in district 2 and my address is 418 greenbrier road i think thankfully we've had a lot of folks come in today who have spoken about economic inequality and it's a good thing you're not unique in that after the pandemic most cities like you've mentioned sacramento are struggling with this in terms of policing and so forth what i would like to mention is an equation and justin i heard you talking earlier about correlation what that does for us we've had a lot of housing injustice but that comes off the back of an equation that housing has gone up and food prices have gone up from inflation so these are broad-based macroeconomic indicators and i've worked with the city of greensboro before in that time a lot of what we did was based in theory and we listened but we weren't moved into action so what i'm proposing through this when we see wage stagnation which some city staff members i believe are going to talk about and policing issues and housing issues all come to play we have economic factors that that should be solved you could do something like arp but it has to be broad-based inclusive progress greensboro has undoubtedly been progressing through the past 10 years or so at an accelerated rate but there are things that come off of that so what i'm what i'm asking is for some action item which would be large a large amount of monetary policy coming in at the beginning which we've been doing i've been reading about the 750 000 that's gone to ghc the housing coalition and that's been helpful and a lot of people have gotten away from homelessness but now what i'm saying is that there needs to be a little more as we come out of the pandemic that to taper off and then some public policy to come in because that will take longer the monetary policy piece will be quick but once we get into our public policy here that is what will start to take longer 18 to 24 months when missed when mr holston was talking about crime with with police chief james i'm saying gosh that takes a long time but this monetary policy can come in for groups like hyatt to work quickly to ease that tension but that's not forever and that's why if we're thinking about subsidies mrs wells and saying we need to subsidize this group that's a short-term solution and we've seen that in greensboro because communities have suffered since 1933 when these homeownership loans have come in the work has been done what i'm saying is that there are action items and even working for the city i know that we like to say we like to stay in our we're going to do this and and it doesn't get done so what i'm asking and what i want you to hear is that there's a disparate impact on those at the lower end of the spectrum and we're looking for broad and inclusive progress as opposed to just progress okay thank you samuel silverstein hello my name is samuel silverstein i live at 2205 newgarden road apartment 3707 i first want to extend my appreciation to you for hearing my comments and all of those who have spoken tonight as a student teacher in guilford county schools applying for licensure i'm on a path to joining you in a career of service for our wonderful city i have come as a concerned community member in solidarity with others advocating for protections for immigrant families housing i hope that my comments here serve to strengthen and deepen the conversation over the last three years as an americorps member serving refugee community needs i have seen many families pushed out of their apartments due to lease non-renewals and rising rent prices when assisting displaced families to apply for new housing i have witnessed and helped folks navigate many subsequent challenges which i believe amount to systemic discrimination against immigrants here are two such challenges which exemplify a greater system one most companies require 50 to 75 for one application and require every adult member of a household to submit applications separately companies will then approve multiple applications simultaneously uh leading to a race to submit a deposit though on paper this practice of simultaneous approval for all qualifying applicants appears to uphold non-discrimination by treating all applicants equally it is actually highly discriminatory in the way it is applied how can an applicant learning english and technology compete with the speed of an american-born person who has used computers and email for decades the inability to act fast enough due to these differences in knowledge bar families from access to housing two when applying for government subsidized housing one family was rejected because the mother did not have her birth certificate which she was unable to retrieve when soldiers were coming to kill everybody in her hometown when we appealed the rejection and spoke with the person in the company office she was then required to provide a notarized letter certifying her birth without my help this family would have been facing homelessness unable to solve this trivial problem which only applies to immigrants fleeing danger while our city continues the heroic effort an important effort to provide refuge to our worldly neighbors we need protection for renters there are too many people suffering in the current housing system we welcome refugees and then we displace them again what good is this welcome how can we believe in it if it is a welcome to a systemically arranged cycle of poverty we need rights and resources for renters thank you thank you there was another person signed up to speak on affordable housing for immigrant communities mel mona no that person's not here um i would like to ask michelle kennedy to come up and just speak very briefly i know that all of us are very concerned about this and we know how important it is to keep communities of interest together you know as we talk later on about redistricting one of the things that we are focused on is keeping communities of interest together and clearly this is a community of interest and we saw at cohn summit for those of us who were involved in that horrific tragedy that people would have continued to live there as long as they could stay together living under bad circumstances so i know that many of us have met with the hyatt community and we have spoken with our neighborhood development office on what the alternatives are and i just want to turn it over to michelle before we continue with our speakers from the floor thank you madam mayor i just wanted to touch base on a couple points but i think it's important for us to say i live in lynley park so very familiar with what's happening as it relates to this from a neighborhood standpoint one of the issues that's present in this particular scenario that causes it to be particularly difficult is this property went under contract in december 2020. so there's a signed offer to purchase that was executed in december 2020. there have been issues along the way for example the property owner or the executor of the estate didn't provide proper notice to residents of that plan to sell of the time they needed to move there was an extension granted to allow the 180 days required by north carolina general general statute 43.14 currently as it stands the offer to purchase is set to close in january 2021 and that was extended to allow for that 180 day period as applicable under north carolina state law so as as neighborhood development has gotten this information it came down from city council it came from the human relations commission uh michelle you said closed january 2021 january 22 22 i'm sorry 2022 scheduled to close january 2022 there have been offers made to extend the closing date i understand in a scenario like this without a conversation i'm going to turn so i can see y'all too without a conversation around a doorway being open for purchase that doesn't change the scenario at all so where we stand today is you've got an offer to purchase waiting for a close as i've had conversations with the legal representation from the developer there is no intention to back away from this contract i believe several members of council have had similar conversations so at present there is not a doorway for this purchase to take place even if funds were available and all the resources in the world were available for the purchase of this property and i know that's not what anybody sitting behind me wants to hear what i can say from a neighborhood development perspective is the human relations department made referrals to legal aid and to neighborhood development to talk to folks about relocation it is my understanding that this community wants to stay where they are and i totally understand and respect that unfortunately given the circumstances surrounding the contract that's in place right now that's not a viable option what i have taken a look at for us as a city in terms of what's possible we've had i've had conversations with several folks around issues like land trust we've talked about whether that's a possibility whether resident owned communities are a possibility if that property is not able to be purchased and i do believe that's possible there are some things that didn't exist when this purchase took place north carolina most cities if any in north carolina didn't have any provisions that allowed residents a first right of refusal that is something at a local level that the city of greensboro could take up to prevent issues like this from ever happening again to ensure that low-income tenants have a first right of refusal to purchase multi-family property or to match an offer to purchase that is put put forward by developers those are things from a neighborhood development perspective that we're looking at for a long-term solution in the short term what i can say is this and i want to be really honest i don't want to offer something that's not possible as of yesterday my understanding is this contract is solid the developer does not have an intention to back out of the contract the executor of the estate does not have an intention to back away from the contract and so as simply as i can put it it's not for sale otherwise right now i am more than happy to have conversations around identification of other property we certainly as a city and as neighborhood development have resources in place for relocation i understand that some of the mobile homes in question may not be able to be moved we have considered as a department ways to address the units that aren't structurally sound enough to be relocated to other areas so we stand as a city ready to assist in any way that we can the reality of this situation is it was approved by zoning in a 7-0 decision in june there were no speakers against it there was no um uh opposition brought in the 10-day waiting period and the project moved forward probably from all that we've been able to ascertain that has to do with north carolina laws that required notification of property owners which meant tenants may not have known that that was happening and it wasn't available to them to come to that zoning commission meeting to speak so it's a to put it frankly a little bit of a systems failure for the ways laws in north carolina are structured for notification um so that's where we are today i don't i've had conversations at least every other day as it relates to this we are as i said stand ready to talk about land trust co-op purchase options all of those things with residents of highest street i would love for you all to continue to be my neighbors you've been my late neighbors for most of my adult life most of you um but that's where we are this particular parcel of land is under a contract with no indication that it's going to fall through and happy to answer questions if folks have any thank you thank you for that update i think it is important that we try to get together with the hyatt street community and neighborhood development to see if plan a doesn't work out what does plan b look like i think everybody should always have a plan b again we want to make sure that this community of interest stays together so i i think at this point we need to look at what our options are and how we can best assist the people of hyatt street so i'd ask you to give us a little bit of time and you know find out who the point person is for the neighbors for the community so that we know exactly who it is that we're communicating and i would offer it matter mayor that i anticipate you'll get a staff recommendation on ways to create some of these uh right to purchase options and first right refusal options that are available for council to consider as local ordinances so thank you prevent this from happening in the future i appreciate that thank you um so those are all of the speakers we have on this particular topic again we want to take in-person um speakers first and we do have um a group um who want to come and talk about the city's step plan uh dell stone madame mayer several of those um employees have left my understanding is that we still have bryce carter and chris yancey um are are you speaking on the city step plan yes i am okay your name dalstone okay thank you okay well good evening my name is bell stone i live in greensboro i'm an educated organizer here and a member of the organization organization i want to speak tonight about an issue that is representative of the false promises and the intransigence that this council consistently demonstrates on july 28 of this year the city approved a proposal to change the way that city workers get pay increases city council voted to follow the example of charlotte durham and raleigh and replacing merit pay increases with a step pay plan where the amount of the raise is determined by time on the job rather than a supervisor's discretion but the city has still refused to go all the way based on misplaced fears that display the utmost contempt for workers city councilors have dragged their feet on basic provisions and introduced caveats like the notion that the pay plan will revert back to the merit system next year the step play plan is not even expensive it costs less than a tenth of a percent of the city budget so why the resistance mayor vaughn lays it out clearly explicitly blatantly she says it's about changing the philosophy quote unquote of how city employees should be compensated meaning she thinks workers should be kept in line by the threat of lower pay abuser's comment was even worse she said it appeared to her that the step plan would encourage mediocrity ma'am you are mediocre i have to question do you not believe that workers should be compensated fairly as they're coming in daily for years as they are risking their lives as they are dying do you not think it's wrong that 90 of city workers cannot afford to live in the city that they work in do you not recognize that these workers are the people who actually make this city run that their time their energy their sweat are what make the buses run on time what takes the trash off our streets what gets the water in our faucets what puts out the fires in our homes who do you work for for this city for workers or for yourselves the dismissal of worker concerns just shows you have contempt for the working class greensboro needs to follow the basic bare-bones example of every other major city in the state if charlotte and if raleigh and durham can implement a pay plan that takes into account worker service over years then greensboro can too the city must include years of service in the pay plan retroactively so long-term employees are recognized for their time in a fair and just way as it stands greensboro's set pay plan is a mockery of the concept it's an embarrassment to the city city council owes it to those who make this city run to pay them equitably that's simply what is right thank you thank you ramon johnson ramon no um brendan wayans daryl brooks bryce carter um i'll let trevor chris here go first how y'all doing my name is uh christopher yancy and uh uh i've been with the city 11 years and basically this is like a crowd for y'all help you know we've been dealing with under staff before the pandemic hit and we're just letting y'all know that basically you know this is an ongoing issue that we're dealing with you know like in my department water resources i could speak that like basically on saturday and sunday you got one truck catching water and sewer cars for the whole city i don't see no sense in it i mean basically you're overworking your workers we have hard times trying to fill in like whenever somebody take off basically we have to beg and ask people do you want to work over and it ain't guaranteed that they can work because then they got stuff that's planned for the weekend or something like that of that nature but basically this is like a crowd for help we city workers man i mean we come to work every day clock in and clock out and we do the work that needs to be done in the city you know and uh we know we take pride in maintaining the infrastructure that we come across day in and day out we just want y'all to basically have our back and don't we feel like y'all basically ain't there for us like basically i said this is like a crowd for help and we just want y'all to hear us because we feel like we don't have nobody else to run and another thing you know when a new worker comes to work and work for the city they want to know what they don't going to be making years and years on down the road they don't want it to be a surprise like you're not guaranteed to get a raise with this marriage system that's it play in place now basically no matter how good of a worker you are we're basically just saying that we're essential workers and we want essential pay and that's all i have thank you um did mr carter want to speak yes ma'am i do thank you thank you for having me uh city council thank you um the step plan um mr carter could you move your mask just so we can hear you all right thank you thank you the step plan um i'm here to speak about step plan in relation as far as to the personnel issues we have with city greensboro um our departments um for some time now have had high turnover i remember one point in time i mentioned that to a director here it's not here today of turnover that's in our sections in our departments um but we do have that now uh right i know some time ago not too long ago 15 we were down 15 workers in sanitation down workers in street maintenance paving section we are actually had three guys new guys start the day which i probably feel like they're not gonna be there long because they're gonna get paid somewhere better which is usually what happens guys leave we train guys in the leave and go somewhere else um we're having trouble filling in people for leap program that'll be pulling guys from street maintenance and uh storm war cruise we move into that so now we have guys having to try to get that work done from other supervisors like me you know having to do somebody else's stuff as well with short personnel um so yeah that the step plan as far as years of service um we had some guys guys have been there for a while we're having people in the door who are seem to be either now up to or close to or passing some guys have been here for a long time i only asked them about the years of service step plans to make those adjustments for those guys to be in here for some time so they'll be a little bit of um to be a little bit different from those guys have been um that are new with coming in the door um that has caused the vision it's caused a lot of issues and anger of some guys um a lot of some of the folks are sharing some things um share some things with me about it when they feel like it's unfair um i know you guys voted it you know you vote for it and you went for it but i think the people who were in charge to make it work was the ones that said it you know what it was doing from the start some of the folks didn't even want in the first place and now that you leave that to them to do to make it work or come up with plan it seemed like their thoughts and everything had been washed over this whole step plan you can see it in every little bit of detail in it um you had supervisors when the information come down from the top supervisors were sharing it with guys in their own view not what was on the paper or what was said but in their own view i know you guys had directors hrm had the surveys put out about the step plan my thing is if we're going to do um surveys so let's have surveys on through the years of cyber service matter ask workers that ask about do you think that uh steel workers need longevity again uh this is the second time i've been hired to another place where uh lose out in longevity i worked for the state longevity was lost the year right before i got there now kim city was the same thing um years of service matter um um i'm looking at it like this every day i come to work and i'm not sure if i would even want to stay here for the long term um but i just want you guys to understand that your service matters i really do thank you it's just a louis medina do you want to speak on this issue my name is louis medina i'm with the working class and households organizing alliance first i want to thank the city workers should i ask you to step back from the microphone a little bit especially during covet how's that is that fine we can hear them okay first i want to thank the city workers for coming here and spend their time and taking away from their wages to tell you that you need to pay them better i want to thank them for maintaining our city fixing it repairing it while y'all sit here and leave us outside in the lobby to talk to the chief of police the topic i really want to talk about today i was going to talk about step plan is just how you've treated all these people who have fundamental issues with how you're running your government right our government uh i think it was ordered by people who are fighting for to keep you from bulldozing land um people fighting for affordable housing people fighting for a workers rights workers city workers and people fighting against police brutality police brutality instituted by your police and you spend an hour letting your chief police filibuster city council well we have three minutes to speak i got one minute and 42 seconds left right um and for some reason y'all just let that happen why'd y'all do that why did you think it was okay to do that who do you work for do you work for the people because it doesn't look like you work for people who pay rent people who pay taxes which is i imagine pays all your salaries people who build your city maintain it make sure your trees are cut that your pipes are fixed that they dig the you know what i'm saying like i hope you just didn't laugh i don't have enough time to address the fact that you just left right are the people fighting against police brutality i can't even i can't even explain the absurd cartoonish evilness it is that you put the people fighting for police brutality last right and then you put your chief of police there for an hour before everyone else like yeah and the thing is you think i'm mad i'm not actually mad because this is good for me because i think all you all of you could just step back from the microphone all of you need to be removed from your seats period and you make it way easier to explain that to people thank you [Music] thank you madam so before you i want to address our workers first well that's what i'm the workers yes yeah because i'm i'm i'm a little upset right now well and i think we're all probably a bit confused yeah because i i thought too hard for that i do want to speak but i see you're pretty worked up so i fought too hard for that step plan but we do have this and i have to say i think we're all and so now it's not right can can we at least hear from the city manager sometime come back you mr davis yeah i think we're gonna have to come back and we're gonna have to meet with the with the city workers because you know we're confused um you know i i believe there were five people here who voted to give you the step plan and it appears that the goal post has been moved since the vote happened and i think we need to understand kind of what changed between when we voted for or five voted to implement the step plan and i'll say i was concerned about the step plan because there would be um confusion on what happened and it really limits um future raises so you know i think we i think we you know need to go back and have a discussion about this um and i want to say that i do appreciate our workers and i was one of the early adopters of the 15 an hour minimum wage which we knew would move salaries up for others but you know i think that we need to hear from the city managers and the department heads to figure out what happened between the vote and um today's discussion what i heard was how it's it how it's administrated how it's administered what's in it that that impairs um workers and and instead of what's in it that motivates and lifts workers that's what i heard am i correct um but that's what i think and and perhaps there has to be some tweaking well and some changes was the fact that they thought um that their supervisors uh they wanted something that they could count on that they knew what their what their raises were going to be because they were concerned that their supervisors were were exhibiting favoritism so at the request we implemented the step plan well we heard from them repeatedly for years that the merit system was not fair and that the step plan would bring some fairness to them getting paid and so that's why we pushed it as hard this thing that step plan didn't only pass by one vote five to four because there were four people didn't want to do it and so to me and i kept asking i kept asking i kept passing i kept talking to you all to try to understand the step plan would be the same as the police and the fire so now apparently it's not fair for what you're saying to me but it sounds like to me you want longevity pay and i don't know if we do longevity anymore i don't think we do um so i i just i i just need to get a clear understanding of exactly what it is that you thought it was gonna do if it's not doing what do we need to do to do it because trying to help get it to where you felt like you were being treated fair was really my goal um and i'm a little tonight i'm just saw those 25 emails that said respect my service by people who weren't city employees and now but i hear from you all because that's who i really want to hear from so i i really want to fully understand chris can you well i know chris and i i know tammy mary kay hugh chris do you want to well chris if i would i would like to hear chris first because i know i wrote to him this weekend about it and he was going to research and get back to us so chris if you can share with us your thoughts and and what you know at this point well thank you yeah i'd like some clarification too so i got this request via email on friday and quite frankly i'd like to have discussion with the employees who are concerned um i'm a huge advocate for our employees i want them to get every bit of what they deserve because they work very hard for this community and they do struggle quite honestly from a capacity standpoint so i want to help too i just got this information recently and it wasn't clear from the emails what the actual concern was outside of years of service so with that being said we are researching what durham does it'd be hard with riley and charlotte because they both discontinued their step plan so we're talking to durham to see how they've administered the program so that we can look and see if there's opportunities and if there's opportunities i'll be the first one to bring it back to you but i don't have that full information today i need the opportunity to research it and i want to give it the due consideration that the employees would want and then i want to have a conversation with our employees so that i can make sure i'm hitting the mark i think it'll be take you unless you figure this out it come because this monday it'd probably take me tomorrow oh okay okay because i i made the mistake of taking the day off friday and i apologize for that but i will have information tomorrow well you're entitled to a day off and i and if they aren't dissatisfied i want to know but if maybe we need a work session around exactly i think we can provide you some information as early as tomorrow based on what we research but again i'd like the opportunity to talk to our employees so i can make sure i'm hearing the concern directly right tammy were you through with what you were gonna say yeah i was just gonna say that i think we need to give chris the time to research i think all of us were shot or were surprised by these emails and um didn't know exactly what they referred to and i'd like to give chris some time to do some research as he said two cities two out of the three cities have dropped the step plan we want to find out what's happening in durham and what they're doing and what's going right what's not and give chris some time to deal with this before we really respond or jump all in it um so tammy then hugh um and chris will be the city manager will be in contact with the with the workers who spoke this evening um so mary kay then hugh thank you madam mayor and um i was one of the ones who voted against the step plan and i'll tell you why um it was our understanding that all of the employees wanted whatever the step plan was like the police and fire were getting at that time that is what was given to the employees when the rest of city council voted for that um i do know that i feel sometimes that we kind of rush into things when uh 10 20 people come talk to us about something involving city employees because we are concerned and we do appreciate everything that our city employees do but i also know that you know we have a city manager and we have staff who would also like to talk to those employees and would like to know what's going on because they are open and transparent about that that they do value what the employees have to say so i certainly am willing to give mr wilson and staff any amount of time i know he said he'd have it in a day or so and i know that he will but um you know i do think sometimes you know we go ahead and vote on things and say sure we'll do a step plan just like firing police and that's not what they really wanted so you know let's give him time to go through and see what he can do if we need to call it back if we need to do anything to help make our employees happier and safer in their environment and make them want to come to work every day we don't want to lose any employees we just don't so thank you madam thank you um mr holston thank you madam mayor i'd i'm i'm still learning a little bit about this so help me out uh i received the emails thank you so very much uh regarding the question about recognizing length of service so when we establish the step plan this is really more so for council than or city staff when we establish the step plan did we do we build many steps with many levels meaning that it would help to minimize compression along the way so that those who come in anew are not coming in close to where those who have been here for some period of time or are there less steps and so therefore it feels like the compression hits that i've been here for x number of years and someone comes in anew and their rate of pay is relatively close to mine so my my impression was they were put on the step based on what they were being paid at the time what their grade was if somebody can so if they didn't start at the bottom of the step plan they were placed on the step plan based on what they were making at the time so there are a lot of people on the same step or or what's the dispersion between the bottom step and the top step and it's a 15 step process um and it was patterned after police and fire so you could be anywhere from step one to step 15. for some of the grades that came into the employee step plan we actually don't even use the lower steps anymore because they are below our minimum 15 an hour salary so for the lowest grade you steps one through five are actually off the table you come in at six and then you work your way up to step 15. so they're really ten steps for that particular grade yes and then at step 15 you then graduate back to a merit program which again is what police and fire have now so so we have helped me understand what which you just said did i hear you say that some at the bottom are not even at 15 an hour no we eliminated those steps because we don't pay anybody below fifteen dollars an hour if you are a full-time i didn't hear you so thank you so much that makes me feel a whole lot better so i we can get the city manager to um we'll include an outline of the step plan the history as well as any opportunities we investigate in our conversations with durham okay that'll meet your approvals so then there are basically 10 steps and those 10 steps income no it's more than 15. no it's 15 steps there are 15 steps subject to our minimum salary requirements so if in a particular grade having you at a step would literally pay you less than 15 an hour we do not put anyone on that step so it's there but it's essentially not used okay i got you i mean this this was a concern around the 15 we we you know when it was 15 so yeah i mean we they don't they make you know less than 15. that might be a problem with new people coming in and some of the people that have been there a while but i think there's some adjustment even there too right there it should have been i apologize so um your question again yeah how can we give chris some time and let him come back to us with a complete report we can we we we can't fix this from here yeah so if you can get it to us sometime this weekend if i can't appreciate it i talked to these people for like six years they formed a union around this okay so um so it gets a little concerning to me and i hope that chris will be able to i've heard the direction we'll bring back some information thank you so yeah if we could get those who have spoken to leave the chamber and then i want to make sure that we get in person people to speak first mr roberto while the council is turning over if you would like to speak oh you're on redistricting okay so um the is daniel shelf we'll take up redistricting when do we have people coming in from the lobby if we could get the remaining speakers from the lobby is daniel shelf here [Music] okay um jason hicks good evening uh starting off settle the suit my name is jason hicks i come before you today as a parent as someone who has previously been houseless within the city of greensboro and as the creator of a blog exposing gso as a parent i can't fathom what marcus smith's parents have been through and i wonder if you as members of council could councilwoman thurm how different would you have wanted this handle that this happened to your son evan councilwoman ambusator i would ask you what would you want have to to happen differently and how would you want this governing body to provide some sense of accountability if this was your son yusuf mayor vaughn what if mark or john were the ones on church street in september of 2018. i couldn't imagine having to re-watch much out's homicide while seeking accountability greensboro pd was incompetent in dealing with marcus smith just admit it and provide some sense of accountability to the smith family settle the suit furthermore like marcus smith i too have been houseless within the city of greensboro i have fought what seemed to be the never ending cycle of being houseless i i've dealt with greensboro pd late at night i have been abruptly woken up just to answer a bunch of questions and then sit on my way i have been left humiliated in an already ignominious state no matter how humiliating i've always left with my life and being without being harmed greensboro pd has an issue with interacting with people of color all of those issues will come to light i recently created a blog exposing gso this blog will be centered around truth and transparency the two things some of the members of this body struggle with some of you will be held responsible some of you will be judged by this community some of you have played on both sides of this suit for far too long it stops now some of you the ones that is necessary will be exposed for what you are i'll close with a portion of an asinine quote from mayor vaughn's recent deposition in which she is speaking about a conversation she had with mary smith quote you know i did tell her that i thought the officers you know acted with compassion and restraint end quote mayor vaughn i would ask you would you still consider this compassionate had this happened to katherine would you feel the same way if she was home tied by greensboro pd the next speaker is esther petty good evening my name is hester petty live at 3402 canterbury street here in greensboro mayor vaughn on october the 5th you accused three speakers from the floor of parroting mrs smith's attorneys and you a city attorney chuck watts you found it interesting that the speakers gave the benefit of the doubt with the depictions from plaintiff's council that were fair but did not extend that benefit of the doubt to those who serve the public interest as a speaker from the floor who has often recited facts from public court documents from the plaintiff's attorneys i would like to explain to you why many of us choose to believe flint taylor and not those who as you said quote served the public interest it's because of the smith lawsuit and flint taylor's investigation into the homicide of marcus smith the public now has access to depositions from many of our public servants and because of what we've read many of us no longer believe that the police the city manager and members of this city council have been serving the public interest we believe you have engaged in a cover-up it began with the first press release that made no mention of the hog time weeks went by without anyone in public service telling the smith family that their son had been restrained only after the smith family father mr smith watched it did the public find out about the hog tying and this cover-up continued with a slip shot internal investigation and final report that exonerated all eight police officers and that report was approved by then deputy chief brian james and you wonder why we don't trust our public servants it has continued into 2021 with councilman outling stating that the police did not engage in any misconduct but he offers no facts to support his opinion flint taylor has stated that 50 incidents of maximum restraint employed by greensboro police officers in the nine months before marx's death 75 percent were maximally that were maximum restraint were black 75 is mr taylor lying and if what he says is true how do you justify this racial disparity you continue to defend the police with taxpayer dollars you are defending a racially motivated police department make it stop call it montgomery good evening my name is paulette montgomery and i'm here to parrot some facts about marcus smith our city leadership and the continuing overreach of the greensboro police department concerning the body-worn camera videos discussed at the october 5th council meeting i know there's a gag order in effect and you can't talk about them but can you say how watching the videos made you feel emotionally were you able to eat that day sleep that night or did you go about your day as usual because police brutality in greensboro is pretty much the norm now and really that is greensboro's legacy isn't it now you have officers raiding minority-owned hemp shops confiscating inventory returning it a month later expired and unable to sell creating a loss for hemp essentials of 25 000 plus in retail sales that can destroy a small business one that pays taxes to the city is the city going to reimburse them for those lost sales it's all due to the ineptitude of the greensboro police department because they don't understand the difference between delta 8 and delta 9 formulations which are perfectly legal the bigger question is why were only minority-owned hemp stores rated there were two others besides hemp essentials my white own vape shop sells the very same product same levels as the stores that were rated i guess i should say my old vape store my money will now be going to hemp essentials and other minority-owned vape stores our leaders actions point to the same two motivations every time racial bias and money over people is this the legacy you want for greensboro you also have the city workers union protesting today and even the greensboro police association is upset with our leaders all this with a crime rate of 45 per 1 000 residents and the chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in greensboro at one in 22. greensboro also has one of the highest crime rates in america from the smallest towns to the largest cities this high crime is a direct result of your decisions and lack of investment into marginalized communities you lessen crime by creating healthy happy communities that aren't fighting over material resources housing food but i think you already know that again is this the legacy you want for greensboro and for yourselves that's what your actions show marcia fouch um oh she's on zoom we'll come we'll come back to her we're trying to get the people in chambers lewis pitts good evening my name is louis pitts i'm i'm here also also to support the city workers union and clarifying taking into consideration years of service and to support the hyatt street people but i mainly want to talk about racist policing in our city our city residents more than half are non-white there are nine of you sitting up here tonight that includes new council members to holston but the rest of you eight all of you excluding mr holston have actively are by your silence engaged in covering up the hog-tying homicide of marcus smith and spreading a false narrative about what happened you've authorized the spending of over a million dollars on private three hundred dollar an hour lawyers to have the federal lawsuit brought by the family dismissed you are complicit in that injustice and none of you ate in my opinion are fit for service on this council either now or come march therefore i want to speak to mr holston and to the public in particular the factual evidence concerning our city and proof of racist policing and excessive force is overwhelming and goes back decades three minutes is not enough to even recite a summary of it but paying attention to those 50 incidents of hog tying in 2018 is critically important people of color 78 percent of those 50 half nearly half were women and then most recently just weeks ago as you've heard our greensboro police seem to have singled out and targeted legal hemp and cbd stores based on race seized thousands of dollars worth of of material and merchandise from and for no legitimate reason mr hector sanchez who owns one of those businesses has been arrested and i hope he gets to speak to you tonight so mr holston tonight i ask you to do some homework engage in the due diligence that i know you do as a banker i'm asking the clerk to hand you three documents and i sincerely plead with you to read those they are from the federal civil rights lawsuit the community letter to the u.s justice department signed by reputable people please read those and follow your moral compass so we'll know whether to vote far are against you in march thank you thank you madison fields uh good evening my name is madison fields i will be speaking about marcus smith and police accountability alongside the greensboro justice coalition the mission of the city of greensboro is to shape an inclusive future for equitable economic opportunity and sustainable safe neighborhoods the resident services and programs you have failed i'm just speaking to police brutality but i now see that statement as applicable to affordable housing and equitable wages on september 8 2018 marcus smith sought the help promised by the city when he asked a police officer to take him to the hospital he was suffering from a mental health crisis with an illness that sometimes manifested in anxiety paranoia and delusions despite marcus not exhibiting violent or confrontational behavior officer robert duncan elected to hogtie marcus while awaiting an ambulance officers robert duncan justin payne michael montalvo albert alfred lewis lee andrews along with sergeant christopher bradshaw and colonel douglas straighter pummeled and already distraught marcus face down on the payment pavement his cries for them to stop fell on deaf ears instead marx's hands were handcuffed behind his back before pulling his knees back beyond a 90 degree angle until his feet were touching his cuffed wrists at the small of his back marcus stopped breathing and died the north carolina medical examiner ruled his death a homicide however instead of being met with prosecution seven of the eight officers that helped murder marcus smith received merit raises since his death but did we really expect accountability from a city that waited 40 years to apologize for the greensboro massacre the eight officers that murdered marcus are not the only villains in this story you are this is the ugly truth about greensboro's police department it's not always a lack of competence but a malicious spirit in the police officers that get off on dehumanizing black bodies in a brief filed by marx's family's legal team it was disclosed that greensboro police department hogtied at least 50 people in the months leading up to marcus's death mostly black and many of them women an elderly woman with dementia a pregnant black woman what warrants this kind of restraint on anyone and this system and the city council has allowed police brutality to persist and thrive here in greensboro but if you truly listen to the community that you claim to serve that is where you will find your answers you will find that mental health or drug related crises should be direct redirected to trained medical professionals or community members with lived experience you will find that communities respond better and crime is decreased when needs are being met and residents are nurtured all residents you have a lot of work to do if you want to make the diversity and inclusion tab of your website actually mean something but let's start with holding the officers that killed marcus smith accountable and ensuring that this never happens again thank you thank you one of the speakers did mention that we are under a gag order but i do want to read just one sentence from judge webster's recent opinion and it says further there is no assurance of any public benefit if exhibits one and two are publicized as they do not present an objective or balanced depiction of the bwc's footage content and that is what i referred to at the last meeting that if you haven't watched the videos for yourself you need to be careful what you continue to talk about again moving forward with people who are here in chambers amanda burton good evening my name is amanda burton ms goldie wales is my representative i am a small business owner here in greensboro on september 11th of this year i was sexually assaulted by someone who works in the law enforcement field in another county but lives in guilford county i have done everything i know to do and yet i'm still denied justice i'm here today to express my concern on how the greensboro police department failed to do their due diligence was my case and my perpetrator is still walking free in the streets with no charges pressed against him i am appealing to the city council as a voting citizen to direct the city manager to get this matter resolved the police chief is a direct report to the city manager as i understand therefore he can get answers that i cannot i am appealing to the seven women on the city council as a woman violated speaking to another woman no matter the circumstances i said no i've been scrutinized more than the person who assaulted me the time of the day and my clothing does doesn't condone the violence i experienced and survived i am asking the women of this council to not let subordinates of the city manager bury my case to please advocate for me as you would want for yourself had you been fated to be in my shoes right now i am a mother of two girls i am not okay with this man still walking the streets i'm not okay with it and i have asked for help and this man is still walking i'm not okay with it i need someone to look at my case because the detective who got my case he he mishandled some stuff just looking to my case it's not right that's it thank you so did you go to the family have you been to the family justice center i've been everywhere did they not you spoken with the manager chris will you talk with her mr manager would you set an appointment thank you mr davis hi you've reached 3-3 thank you thank you um i want to make sure we got all in person speakers gregory walker um is there anyone in chambers who signed up to speak about non-agenda items it was non-agenda okay and i'm sorry i can't hear you this is miss christine hoffner i can't hear you it's miss christine hoffner okay if you would sorry i missed you my name is christine hoffner i moved to greensboro just around the time that would have been marcus smith's 40th birthday in the next three minutes i'll restate accurate talking points to drive home factual information as i discuss three issues one the marcus smith suit two the hemp store raids and three what i understand about the uh ue local 150s uh pay plan could you pull your mask down a little bit oh sure i'm sorry these issues reveal false narratives ineptitude and apathy towards daily concerns of residents of greensboro as a pattern and practice by city council and the greensboro police department to start i just want to say remind you all that brian stevenson and the equal justice initiative whom i know several of you respect very much point out that false narratives helped create and sustain injustice so to move society towards justice they advocate confronting and changing such narratives as telling the truth so first concerning the smith suit the mayor's caution about quoting the written summaries of the police videos implies those summaries are inaccurate and that's how false narratives get started her response to citizens including myself carefully researched comments contradicts her view of city council's duty to be transparent i'd support her call for transparency if it were put into practice say an investigation into greensboro police department's egregious use of hog tying and how much of that mentality of hog tying remains to this day second the raids on the hemp stores owned by folks often seen as other it's unclear if there's a false narrative about the illegality of the merchandise or if it's ineptitude that was involved but these raids sure display apathy toward daily concerns in this case the store owners making the living raids at hemp essentials and the muslim family store suggests racial and religious bias if they are honest mistakes they should be corrected will city council ask seek investigation on these this matter my last concern is the city's step pay plan for ue local 150. my understanding from reading the statements by ue local 150 is that this is good for city workers but wait pay based on years of service is not included which makes workers pay less fare and interferes with their dignity by rewarding brown nosing over commitment again ineptitude and apathy about folks daily lives is apparent to wrap up i'll parrot greensboro's recent success story wicked act one scene eight we're not being told the whole story they aren't telling you the truth lastly if it weren't for the pandemic the city council and mayoral elections would be held tomorrow i'll leave us all with that to think about thank you are there any other in-person speakers from the floor on non-agenda items so um are there any other people who have not spoken so i believe that you want to speak about the trees so i think everybody else is on zoom so why don't you but i mean i think all the rest of our speakers are on zoom so why don't you go ahead and kick off the issue what i think she would like to speak less so um madam clerk could you call people in yes ma'am i believe we have hazel landers nice landers you need to mute please thanks i see mrs landers on our screen okay i'm i'm hazel landers i live at 2905 new garden road east that's east of north lawndale and country club and country park i've i'm here to speak on behalf of the sierra club of which i've been a member for 22 years and i'm currently serving as group chair for the piedmont plateau group due to a growing concern about the disappearance of greensboro's tree population some of our members started taking photos of construction sites in early 2018. a few months later another member and i started researching the ramifications of clear cutting and grading the land results of our research photos and life experiences are reflected in the following educational slideshow which my four colleagues now and i would now like to present can you show the slideshow please wrong slideshow it's entitled where have all the force gone this morning yeah absolutely these are the same it's like two versions of the same one i don't believe we have that slideshow there must be a technical issue so if we could move on maybe without the slides at this point i don't think that would be very effective would it be possible for uh dr prescott to speak first since you have her slideshow and i'll i'll try to send you one that the group is speaking perhaps if the information could be emailed to us yeah that could disseminate it that way that would be a good idea if we could i think it would be a good idea to email counsel with this information and we will review it tomorrow that's very disappointing because we put a lot of time and energy into this uh presentation and i send it to you right now while um sarah is speaking we really do have to move on at least to the next um yeah i mean i i could speak now and then if she could just email it really quick would that work um we can try it but let's move on to the next speaker okay so you want me to go then if you would like to yeah sure okay okay um hi my name is dr sarah prasievich i live at 3008 collier drive in greensboro i'm an associate professor in the department of geography environment and sustainability at uncg specializing in vegetation water interactions and urban streams and i'm here to support the sierra club's save our trees petition which hazel will be telling you more about in a moment but i'll kind of set the stage by briefly going over some of the benefits that urban forests provide so trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis so protecting forest is an important strategy for reducing co2 emissions and mitigating climate change especially this is the case because cities are the fastest growing global land use even more important than the global effects of urban forests is their local effects the urban heat island effect describes observed higher temperatures in cities compared to surrounding rural areas and one of the most important drivers of uhi is that cities have fewer trees than rural areas and trees help cool the local environment by releasing water vapor to the atmosphere through the process of evapotranspiration and also by providing shade so urban forest can really help reduce summer cooling costs urban areas also typically have worse flooding than surrounding rural areas because of their high impervious surface area and low vegetation cover urban forests helps to reduce runoff and flooding by providing soil that infiltrates the water and trees that use water and evapotranspiration trees also benefit the water quality of urban streams by removing pollutants decreasing water temperature and reducing bank erosion trees also have important health benefits they remove common air pollutants that are a major threat to human health these pollutants can cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases as well as cancer in addition urban forests have physical and mental health benefits by providing opportunities to get outside exercise connect with nature and enjoy peace and quiet all of these health benefits have become even more important during the pandemic finally urban forest increased the property value of neighboring communities the pie chart shows the dollar value associated with a single 12-inch diameter red maple in greensboro that one tree increases property values by 25 per year in addition to 39 in other economic benefits so with thousands of trees those benefits really add up so the benefits of having healthy intact urban forests in terms of global and local climate water and air quality physical and mental health and property values adds significantly to our economy so i urge you to support the sierra club's save our trees initiative thank you thank you madam clerk who is the next speaker dennis wreath please madam mayor he is in zoom but i can't hear him i'm really having a hard time hearing you mr ruiz that is in the zoom meeting but i could not hear him i think he's trying to connect he is supposed to be our second speaker i was going to be first just to present is mr wreath on the mr dennis is he on the phone yes ma'am he is in the zoom call but he was not um he didn't have any volume all right how about karen katula i'm here okay mrs catulla miss catulla yes i'm part of the hazel's presentation can you turn your camera on thank you i've got it yet uh yes i'm part of hazel's presentation have you received the the slideshow yet it is a google presentation is there somebody who can speak without the slideshow at this point happy mackenzie there it is i have it the slideshow is essential to illustrate important points but they're trying to pull it up i just had here eleven one [Music] was that it the tree benefit calculator entitled where have all the force gone ms landers do you want to pick up where you left off give her two minutes dot i will i can read the script that goes along with the slideshow but it's very unfortunate that you won't be able to see um images it's on the screen we have it up we don't see it you can't see it you're gonna have to share the screen or can you go back to the first page yeah if you would go back to the first okay it is up on the screen thank you i appreciate your willingness to let us continue where have all the force gone next slide over the past two decades we've seen staggering losses of the world's forest due to logging surface mining for coal pipeline construction wildfires catastrophic catastrophic weather conditions highway housing and commercial development immediate actions must be taken to address this global national and local crisis next slide globally brian swim and thomas berry warned us in 1992 of these environmental disasters in the book universe story and i quote we humans are deliberately terminating the most awesome splendor that the planet has yet attained each year we are destroying a rain forest area the size of oakland without trees earth cannot dispose adequately of chemical residues spewed into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels next slide nationally the oregon forest resources institute warned us that clear cutting has a large number of deleterious effects including but not limited to erosion and soil damage changes in carbon dioxide levels loss of health and habitat risk for natural disasters and aesthetic concerns the next two speakers will talk about these hazards dennis is the next speaker dennis can you hear us dennis are you there okay happy mackenzie uh-oh they were going to use their um phones for their voices can i continue then no we really need to move on with the next speaker now um karen is here okay locally the north carolina department of transportation not happy you know let's make um let's make an executive decision here we don't normally hear from speakers from the floor during our second meeting but since this seems to be rife with technical difficulties let's just continue this right now and bring it back at our next meeting we'll do this as an exception if i can get some agreement from counsel okay thank you and if we could make arrangements um for the next meeting um so madame clerk anybody else on the line who has yet to speak no ma'am they were all signed up for the tree presentation okay so there's no one no one else on the line that i am we've completed our speakers from the floor okay um can we move our consent agenda quickly or do we have to come back to it at the end of the meeting um may i oh that's right you want to remove one if i i would like to ask if we could uh withdraw the first item on the consent agenda and uh bring that back for some discussion later for further discussion yeah for further discussion you know we've had a long-term relationship with developmental associates and um you know i think they just uh completed a three-year agreement with us in september so this is another three-year agreement so i'd like to bring that back for some okay there's some discussion and then seconded by mr um without objection we'll bring it back at a later date okay um do we have a motion to move the consent agenda two through eight okay moved by uh dr wells seconded by mrs johnson mrs hoffman mr halston yes dr wells mrs johnson i'm es mrs abuza waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes that passes nine to zero we're going to come back to the public hearings because we do have um speakers on the other items um let's come back to item number 11. um item number 12 is a resolution approval of a number resolution approval of loan in the amount of three million thirty thousand seven hundred dollars loan to partnership homes inc for acquisition of 2701 north o'henry boulevard this was postponed from our previous meeting we do have council here and um partnership homes are there questions or i know we had a we did have a presentation i'm happy to move the item i just wanted to be clear i think mr allen and i probably both shared the same concern but i think he had his concern about his drought ability about the apartments and the use of them a year from now mr elton i have comments on if there's no presentation previously last week city staff provided an excellent work session explaining the project at which time i and others raised a number of questions a portion of my questions and concerns related to a couple of aspects of the transaction first then phase one the city would provide a three million dollar loan to a private party as phase one and during that time it would be used for essentially emergency housing phase two would provide that the city working with several other to be determined partners will come to an agreement to provide permanent supportive housing at least as of last week and i understand at present those partners have not yet agreed to phase two therefore one of my concerns was that in phase one we would be committing to something without knowing that we were getting a corresponding benefit for a three billion dollar loan um fortunately staff has likely worked overtime to address and explain my concerns um consistent with that i feel comfortable supporting the item especially looking at the draft contract that was provided i hope will be shared with the public it's important to understand that it's a 3.03 million dollar loan if the private developer does not follow through with their commitments the city could essentially take possession of the property so it would have the property itself additionally the loan term is 20 years as zero percent interest however as a condition of the loan there will be affordable housing for that 20 years at a rate to be determined by the city effectively in my view that means that what the city is getting and what the city is voting on right now is not necessarily a deal that we hope will happen and i do hope that it happens working with the county and other partners for permanent supportive housing but instead what we're voting on tonight is really providing a three million dollar loan for affordable housing at a rate that the city determines is affordable for the population of persons who we understand are going to be targeted here those who are chronically homeless in my view that is utterly consistent with what the city council has done in the past even on less favorable terms again i'm very hopeful that there will come a day where working with the county and others we provide permanent supportive housing the city has done its three million dollar loan and others will provide seven ten million dollars to accomplish the goal of permanent supportive housing but right here right now i think it's a pretty standard transaction providing a three percent excuse me a three million dollar loan for affordable housing at a rate to be determined by the city in exchange we get 20 years of affordable housing guaranteed with the potential for more so i thank ms kennedy thank ms blue thanks uh to others who shared that draft contract i hope it will be posted and provided to the public when appropriate but it addressed my concern so thank you i'd like to move on and since there's no presentation i'll also note a couple of other things that provide greater comfort because some lawyer i think was doing a great job when they structured it um the money will be provided in phases if the private developer does not adhere to the schedule for the phases the city can obviously stop making payments and so that provides a further assurance um i just want to say justin like full credit to cindy for crafting this to make sure that all of the questions and concerns brought at our work session were appropriately addressed so not an attorney but she could play one on tv well cindy you did uh did an excellent job and then full candor you know just looking at it the the only situation in which i really at least readily saw there being a further concern was the scenario in which we provide a three million dollar loan at zero percent interest and all candor compound interest is an amazing thing so that's that's really a thing for the private developer obviously the private developers say 10 years from now if we don't have permanent supportive housing can say hey i just want to sell this property that being said it's a forgivable loan at the city's choosing so the worst case scenario really is that the developer would likely be required to pay back the loan and we would have forgone interest during that period if you look at the support that the city provides to other affordable housing projects i think that's on par with what the city does um and that's not even taking into account that this is actually really targeted at those who are experiencing chronic homelessness so i appreciate the again miss blue you're working on this and sharing it with me and other council members uh before the meeting um i enthusiastically support the actual thing that's in front of us so thank you thank you i think tammy i'd like to make a promotion yes tammy has worked long and hard on this along with michelle i have move approval of this item okay so it's moved by ms therm seconded by mrs johnson um and i do want to recognize mike cook who has been really patient sitting here all night and i want to um thank him for his partnership um i don't know if you've got a quick comment you'd like to make i i would like to say that i was on a call with hud earlier today with some city staff and certainly the the move forward is with housing first and permanent supportive housing and that they really wanted us to look at our housing dollars and arp funding and how to move forward really with an emphasis on housing first and permanent supportive housing so um i want to appreciate staff and mike for working on our first permanent supportive housing here in the city of greensboro because that will be a life-changing experience for those who right now are experiencing chronic homelessness we've had people you know talk about issues that are going on with the city and why can't we do something um with our homeless population and certainly this gives us an opportunity with our first permanent supportive housing and will allow us to move um first off right into the winter emergency shelter which is right around the corner so i do want to thank cindy i know you've been working on this a long time with stan and with michelle so thank you for your hard work mike do you want um we could we could vote while he's so i'll i'll be brief i know it's been a long night for you guys um it's an exciting time to be involved with the affordable housing in greensboro we're we just got the cos today by the way for 31 units of affordable housing that you all are funding over on terrell street that was a a project that we have renovated and are beginning to begin to lease up today so yes it started with stan and several months ago and we've been uh i've been very happy to be involved with it um continue to work with cynthia and michelle and we're ready to go this is timely uh our drop dead date for purchasing the property is the 12th of november so we've got a lot of work to do between now and the beginning of the shelter period and that's what we'll be doing we'll be preparing this the the site for the shelter period and there's not a lot to do but we'll be doing deep cleaning and some repairs and renovations making sure that everything is safe and then we'll operate that as a shelter for those four months for a four-month period primarily and be working toward developing plans uh for the permanent supportive housing and hopefully be able to begin that sometime uh you know late spring summer of next year so thanks for your confidence and and me and i really appreciate what you guys have done and particularly what cynthia and michelle are doing thank you thank you i'm not sure if the computer is catching up with us because i know i'm kind of jumping around a little bit so um mrs hoffman yes mr holston yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am yes mrs bushwader yes mr outland mrs thurm yes and uh mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero mr outline i know it wasn't closer to the city's website sorry um i was asking if the interim city manager could provide the draft contract and additional information i know it wasn't posted in time for this meeting but it contains a lot of important information including with regard to which what is the council actually voting on this evening additionally has information that was not reviewed at least publicly with the council relating to the administrative fees of the developers and other details that the public you know may find interesting and at least want to be aware of that should not be a problem perhaps i can do it simultaneously with signing off on the permanent contract with mike and then get it posted at the same time i sort of like to suggest that the actual legal review occurs just a thought sure all those points are pretty important in terms of the council's actions i'm sure they'll be incorporated into final agreement so my request isn't necessarily that the final contract be provided it's more that the relevant and material points be provided to the public especially since it wasn't available to it before the meeting so so maybe we could do a summary of it or something i'm sure are you saying to be clear just to clarify one of the goals that we have for this project from start to finish is to really carve out a space for public information as it relates to this project so we'll ensure that all that is brought up to speed on our website as soon as possible yeah just thank you market to draft and send it out um so chuckling so you're gonna haven't seen it are you saying you haven't seen it girl please go on this one but the allen guy saw his name somewhere he saw it right it's an internal draft that's basically based exactly on our existing drafts for affordable housing but do legal see it so does legal see it yes so now we'll move on to item number 14. i'm jumping around a little bit because i know that we've got people here 14 is a resolution to adopt council realign districts to submit the no to the north carolina board of elections uh we do have one public speaker on this um we had a long work session we had a work session on the previous item both of those are available online for people to view mr roberto do you want to comment now good evening my name is michael joseph roberto i live at 317 south chapman street district 4. i saw the paper this morning and you'll have to excuse me uh everyone here knows me except mr holt mr holstrom and you know when you know dr roberto you know you get the good bad and the ugly so let me just say that when i read the newspaper this morning and i realized in the little box it said meeting on monday come tonight i thought there would be hordes of people here because of all the of all the agenda items redistricting is the most important so i will take two minutes here to lay out three points very briefly and they're brief because they're conceptual and for dr wells you know dr roberto he's very thorough okay pie redistricting is the only option if we want to democratize wealth in this city because districts one and two need capital formation they can't get it from the outside so we must do it indigenously now this is complex because in the 21st century as you know mr owling because you're a lawyer everyone has a right to the city everyone habitation education public safety infrastructure so what i'm saying is we all know the role of the downtown here in greensboro everyone talks about the key to development in greensboro is downtown so if that's the case what we need each district especially districts one two and three need to be connected to the downtown now think of the city as a totality as a pie everything that we've talked about tonight everything that you've listened to i've listened to from policing to affordable housing to justice to what is needed in the way of resources it comes down to this people i understand political economy mr outwing the way you understand the law and right now in this moment this is a moment of transition in this country and i'm going to beg you for a few more minutes because i've been sitting here all night and i'm the only speaker i'm the only you're the only okay thank you and i do want to say we've had two public hearings i know i know but i've been ill and i i since the rest of the city please if you could if you could yes i will the only way to get economic equality in the city is to treat it as a whole as a totality if we have a pi system that means that there is a dialectical relationship between the core and the periphery do you understand this mr atling do you understand this mrs hoffman because if only tweaking is done with this current map that we have districts three and four which underneath the district system mr holstrom contain most of the wealth in this city if we want to have fair development throughout the city that means the periphery must be tied to the core so whenever there's economic development downs downtown madam mayor that means that the people in districts 2 and districts 3 have a concrete way to address development that's how we achieve democracy in this city and i know you want to rush me off madam mayor but i think you need to listen i know i think you need to listen because i will be a candidate i will be a candidate at large after 40 years thank you um i'm taking your curse that's because i'm using my laptop um mr mccarley is here for questions city staff is here for questions we did have a public hearing on this we've had some work sessions on it motion or comments so if i had a question if this is high tower i don't know how to get a question here yeah i'm not sure i don't think we're going to have to get a refresher course on this screen but um so go ahead um did you consider in the month where's my sharon could you take your mask down where is this man christmas the man you want to talk mr mccarley yes ma'am hey mr mcgraw um thank you for everything and working with the independent committee and everything like that i just had a quick question um you split the precinct in the lease change map did you consider splitting 26 in the moderate change too would that have had a different impact or no the issue with district with precinct 26 is that we needed to move population out of district 2 and out of district 1 because they were both fairly large and precinct 26 was the easiest thing to move out of to the only place to move it is into three okay okay i just questioned because you split it in the least change but you didn't split it in the moderate the committee split it in the least change and not in the moderate and not in the moderate okay all right that was just a question as i was going over it i get the rest of it thank you they keep it communities of interest so i get it thank you mrs thurm um yes thank you for all your work on these maps um there was a lot involved and i appreciate your efforts as well as the committee's efforts may i say at this moment that it also is the planning staff and your city attorney staff this is a team effort absolutely and thank you for correcting me on that um you know as i look at these maps um i i have real concern that when everybody represents the downtown business district in effect nobody ends up representing the downtown business district i think that we have made great efforts and we we talked about the fact that we didn't want to split committees communities of interest and yet in some ways the pie shape map splits a community of interest it splits the downtown business district i understand that the intent behind doing that and i appreciate that and i can agree with that to some extent i understand the intent um i think that when we look at the first pie shaped map with the most changed to me we are impacting almost 80 000 people with a very short timetable i know we've heard from a number of people that have talked about um or that have emailed us concerning the fact that well everything is going to change for everybody and so it doesn't matter people get used to it um yes that's true but not everybody's having a final election this spring um for those people that have a final election this spring and have to live with their response or live with their their choices for 10 years um i think that moving almost 80 000 people at one time is very confusing i've heard a lot of negative feedback about that a lot of um problematic comments about it just being too much change um for that reason i would if you're open to um and are you open yes i would like to suggest that we choose the moderate change to draft mat map and i'd like to move that map is there a second on that seconded by mrs hoffman um i i just wanted to say um i have studied this i was i i i was going to go with the recommendation of the naacp and steve bowden for the pie but i know the votes aren't here i'm going to support the moderate because the votes for that it are not here thank you mrs hightower so thank you um i i'm going to support the moderate change to map as well and i would like to say that while i understand even dr roberto's rationale district one does have a piece of downtown right now and it doesn't have an economic impact to my district not to that great of a deal so um the pie map disenfranchises 77 000 people in a short election cycle to be able to educate voters about changing their precincts so who they vote for no we don't move the physical body of a precinct but um we actually do change their representatives you have to look at their interests are the interests going to be the same um you know i'm more concerned about the economics of these districts as well and this one has some good economic potential uh i'm afraid that to make it a pie map dilutes that economic potential because it drives the interest away from district 1 into one central district which would be downtown and all of us enjoy downtown absolutely but there are other outer line areas that really need to grow in economics and improve improvement so for me right now with the least change would be the moderate change to map which is one i think after talking to some of my constituents they pointed out that they could live with it and yes it does change uh some population from district one to district five i believe but it's it's not a big community of interest that would be shifted so i'm i'm okay with the um moderate change too after talking until the question many this is a visual oh wow that's an entrance um yeah i i do support what mrs hightower mrs thurma said and i one thing we've been hearing is that um we are not respecting the committee if we don't vote for the pie shape this was a recommendation advice for them to give to us so that we could review all three maps and then make a decision on based on how our constituents felt and how everyone in the city felt i've heard many many people say please do not do the pie shape what you are doing then yes we're not physically moving people out of precincts i want to make that very very plain that was reported in in some of the media um but what we are doing is people are going to be very very confused and when we say that other district people do not care about downtown they do care about downtown i think everybody here has made some kind of comment or some kind of voted for something for downtown and also the people downtown or wherever you are you have not only a district person you also have three at large and your mayor so you've always got five people that you can talk to if you have a concern so um according to what i've looked at and the way it's done and even though it's not the least change map the least change map cut a precinct in half and i i know we don't want that so i'm going for the moderate map thank you thank you mrs hoffman um you know i'd just like to note and i appreciate the uh work of the committee and staff um i i i think that to me the problem with the pie shape map is that the rationale for what was intended there it was flawed uh from the beginning and so um you know and i think we've we've already said that and instead of really um i think you you got the opposite effect you really were diluting the representation of downtown by by trying to to spread it out and you know i think if you look over the last four five six years at the economic development projects that that we have um that we have have voted on and have underway in the city they're happening in all five districts and so economic development is key to every part of this city and every district and i and i think we all understand that and uh and and we've looked at the projects that were have been presented to us accordingly and so um you know i i think um i think we're making the the best choice here in terms of this particular map that was presented to us the moderate change um i can support the moderate change too we um you know we wanted a map that was submitted by the by the redistricting committee um it was important to me to at least accept one of those in january of this year january 19th i suggested that we go with independent redistricting and i'm glad i think mac that you said we're one of the only cities or the only city that has done it the only city to your knowledge to my knowledge you're the only one in this cycle that's doing it and i think um you know i think this has been a really good lesson i i agree too that by by just focusing on downtown you have the potential to dilute it and it's forgetting um profit centers that we have like the greensboro science center um the proposed mega site the the publix that is coming out airports surrounding the property i know that we don't get revenue off of the airport but there certainly a lot of industry around it and then the coliseum who is a huge generator so you know i think just to focus on one spot really does an injustice to the whole rest of the city we want the rest of the city to benefit um as much as downtown so i think that the committee did a great job again i want to thank staff for the work that they did um running those numbers i know was not easy so um you know i am comfortable with the with the map um are there any other questions or comments call a question all right then um we will we will vote it was moved by mrs therm and seconded by mrs hoffman mrs hoffman mr holston yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am yes um mrs abuzawader yes mr outling yes this is thurm yes and mrs hightower yes and that passes nine to zero again i want to thank you all for the great work that you did um and now we're gonna jump back to the items that we skipped over let me so uh go back to our h1 we um hold on one second um public hearing agenda item h1 public hearing for the adoption of an amendment to the land development ordinance amending sections 30-4-5 map amendments 30-4-15 plot plans and site plans 30-4-17 subdivisions and 30-9-3 street access of the land development ordinance ordinance related to transportation impact studies and cross-access regulations note this item was postponed from the october 19th meeting of council without further ado advertising and item h2 in adoption of an amendment to the code of ordinances amending article 3 division 1 of chapter 26 streets and sidewalks related to cross-section regulations this item h2 does not require a public hearing but it is associated with h1 we do not have speakers lined up for this move the item second moved by mrs abuzawader seconded by mrs thurm mrs hoffman yes mr holston yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i'm a yes mrs abuser waiter yes mr outling yes mrs therm yes and mrs hightower yes that passes nine to zero um so item h2 doesn't look does it require a vote it does okay do i have a motion for h2 some uh um moved by mrs abuzawader seconded by mrs johnson um mrs hoffman yes mr holston yes dr wells yes mrs johnson i am a yes um mrs abuzawader yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower yes yes that passes did i skip you i just said maybe oh no yes that passes nine to zero thank you for that clarification you're right we do um so those let's see now we um skip to item number i1 which is a resolution authorizing the contract for fiscal year 2021 guilford county emergency rental assistance program funds in the amount of 10 million greens for a housing coalition greensboro urban ministry housing consultants group and the salvation army removed the resolution oh man that was being served by everyone um mrs hoffman yes mr holston yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes i am a yes mrs abusa waiter yes mr outling yes mrs therm yes and mrs hightower yes that passes nine to zero let's see okay item number 13 is a greensboro city council resolution on the town of summerfield's request for extraterre extra territorial jurisdiction and i believe you i've wrote a memo to council over the weekend i don't know if there are any questions do i have a motion but mayor i think you ought to kind of explain i i can't hear you i think you ought to kind of explain what it is explain she said um so the item at hand is that the town of summerfield has asked for extra territorial jurisdiction into one of our growth areas areas that we have already um have plans for and have provided utilities it also is in conflict with our 1997 annexation agreement and they did not um come to the city to notify us of their plans did i get that right yes okay um so that was moved by mrs hoffman seconded by mr holston uh mrs hoffman mr holston yes dr wells yes mrs johnson yes amy yes this is abusive waiter yes mr outling yes mrs thurm yes and mrs hightower no i'm just kidding well thank you because we want to make sure that you yes that the county commissioners get a unanimous resolution so if we could get that formalized and sent over to each of the commissioners i would appreciate it um so i believe that we went back and grabbed those items that we skipped um we'll do um we'll do boards and commissions mrs hoffman mr holston none tonight dr wales mrs johnson none i have none this is abusive none this evening mr outling done this evening mrs thurm none and mrs hightower um very brief comments i'll i'll kick it off i do want to recognize mrs hightower that she received the distinguished legislature legislator award last wednesday in raleigh for the north carolina parks and recreation association and we were really glad that we were able to surprise her with it and we were able to do that by asking her to come up and read a resolution for a lifetime um award for ken free senior and while that was a ruse to get her there he certainly got that as well so i just want to um recognize mrs hightower for that award thank you him yes so um if we have comments brief promise mrs hightower yes madam man so um i want to say thank you to um parks and rec greensboro parks and rec and let me just say they won um some creative awards for the adult um recess as well as the gso online uh doing covet and they were the most energetic parts of wreck um that was in the room too i must say um really truly but they really are a good team of people and uh they're very sneaky um they had me thinking i was going in a good way yeah they are they were sneaky i mean they went all out i mean they went full blown i mean they they sent me the resolution and everything and i'm ready to read it and then somebody read my resume and i was like i think i know her but i wasn't sure so um i really appreciate it it was a very nice honor um from them because they do a wonderful job in our community you know parts and wreck is one of those things that you don't have to have a lot of money you know you can just go there some days and things may not be going right and sit and just enjoy the atmosphere and um it's a place that we go we love it adds to the quality of life so i want to thank the parks and rec department um for the honor and i'm gonna continue to push for windsor chavez bond to get past let's make sure that happens um and then i just want to say i enjoyed a fall festival on saturday it was a saturday me and mr holston went i believe out in the nice cool breeze um sponsored by uh one of our faith uh institution of off random road and i thought it was very good uh they had lots of bouncy houses so halloween trick-or-treats that's no longer but it's now been converted into uh fall festivals and it was really fun for the kids it really was they um and they provided food um so it was a real fun event so thank you thank you um i do recall i forgot two things and one is um we need a motion to cancel thursday's work session i know you're all disappointed um moved by mr holston seconded by ms abu's waiter um without objection can it pass all right it passes without objection and i do also want to recognize um miss abuse waiter that she got the grady hunter award for uh regional excellence award and that is really important and she does a great deal of work we all know that she does with transportation and that was at the ptrc yeah so um i know that you were surprised that um issa showed up and um i know you're probably afraid he'd say something but so um so those are two great two great awards um that the city of greensboro and our representation got so thank you very much for that um dr wells microphone at amt they had the community engagement summit and we were on the panel and that was interesting on thursday because some of us went out to the animal shelter for the guilford county and it really is a nice facility that's all i have to say thank you mr outland nothing further this evening thank you um mrs hoffman mrs thurm nothing this evening mr boos waiter thank you madam mayor just very quickly uh several others were at the guilford county animals resource center that was amazing grand opening uh mayor mrs therm dr wells and i was really pleased to see that they're going to have a lot of education and opportunities there for that i did want to mention um mayor vaughn mentioned about the piedmont triad regional council a lot of people don't really understand what they do so um i just wanted to let you know we cover a 12-county region it is workforce development it is aging agency it is weatherization but one thing i wanted to highlight is the fact that greensboro is benefiting by the one million dollar hud grant because the ptrc applied for that it is going to provide weatherization and upfitting of homes and it's in collaboration with uncg ncaant so a lot of regional things that the piedmont triad regional council does helps benefit not only our entire region but also specific areas within the region so um that's why i'm really happy to be able to work with them there are i believe 30 other elected officials who do the same and when the delegates are there there's probably 50 or 60 people but anyway i was very honored to receive that award and i'm thrilled that we can start seeing some of the things that the regional concept really helps all of us with so um thank you so much that's it thank you mayor pro tem well as you all know north carolina had its greatest homecoming on earth and many of the alumni came the band was excellent they did lose the game i went to the gospel show which was excellent at the coliseum it was packed so um had a very successful understand very if very little if no fights or any disturbances at all so the police could pay their attention to other places so thank you congratulations north carolina nt state university um dr wells mr holston yeah i forgot to mention that the concerned citizens of northeast greensboro will have a virtual meeting on thursday night at seven o'clock and you can check my facebook page to get all of the information thank you mr holston thank you and uh councilwoman hightower did share this past saturday that we were both in attendance at the harvest festival on the randall road rumor has it that there are photos of councilwoman hightower in the bouncy house i don't know but it as good as the fall festival was there's also a trunk or treat with it and had the opportunity to speak with some of the vendors there or some of the uh folks handing out the candy and i learned that they were small businesses looking for some funding so i was able to talk to them about arp and they've responded and said that they're applying they're going to share it with some others so it was not not only a good and entertaining event for the kids in the community but also hopefully productive when it comes to arp and business economic development very nice mr city manager just very quickly i wanted to say thank you for allowing chief james to come speak tonight we speak to the community too and they need to hear from the police chief with re sorry with regard to what is going on in our community so it's very important i also want to make sure the public hears this i absolutely support our police department our public safety as well as all our employees we will do everything we can to make sure they have the tools necessary to continue to have capacity to deal with the issues in our community but what i also heard loud and clear and several of you said was that we have to invest in community too very strategically and we're going to continue to do that you helped pass something tonight that allows us to do that very thing we're going to continue to bring that forward so public safety and investment in our community will be part of every meeting that we participate in so i just want to say thank you for the support but also thank you for the opportunity my agreement with you during this interim period was not to sit on my hands and this will be no exception thank you i'm glad you said that because i meant the the the remark that was made disturbed me because we we we should have had the police chief speak because of the number of homicides and violent crime and for us to talk about it as a council and with the chief and with the staff i think is a healthy thing and with the people in our community so thank you for seeing that well mayor pro 10 with that many cases let me just say i had a three and a half hour town hall meeting uh last three hours and 33 minutes three hours and 33 minutes and that was one of the issues we talked about was around police yep um before we do um mr city attorney just want to remind everybody that we do have um some interviews tomorrow at two o'clock by zoom so remember um to sign on mr um city yes uh very briefly i just wanted to say uh mac thanked the staff and so forth for getting this process going but i really wanted to thank you and also the citizen committee um when um mayor vaughan put that idea forward uh our concern was that we would not get across the deadline and you've done it with time to spare i know of at least one other city in the state of north carolina it will not make that deadline so and they didn't use a public group so congratulations thank you um motion to adjourn moved by mrs johnson seconded by mrs thurm without objection we're gone