[Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. All [Music] right, we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. Um, thank you everybody for being here. Um, first I'll just say councelor Silver will be arriving late today. So I guess he has an excused absence up until that time. And um, next we will do the pledge of allegiance and I'll lead to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Next, uh, we've got the consent agenda and there was one item pulled which was H2 on Pulland Park. Uh, do I have a motion to approve the remainder? So moved. Second. All in favor of the motion I. All oppose? Nay. All right. And then for H2, I think we just wanted to have a conversation and I believe Nikki Jones, right, had a comment. Yeah. Oh, yes. Adam Foreman from parks. you just want some background on the Yeah, ultimately uh we think that um starting this contract and this project uh in June would be disruptive to summer operations um and also potentially would run into holiday express uh preparations. So it have severe operation operational and revenue impact. Um ultimately in the best of times I think maybe it could be finished but this is we are have a very inexperienced contractor. um they haven't done work of this magnitude of this type. The largest project they indicated was about $650,000 for locker room replacement. This is a lake draining with retaining wall construction. So given the um the time frame, given the operational impact, given the experience of the contractor, uh we thought it was appropriate to bid this out in June, begin in January, we'll be able to close down the park entirely. able to simplify the contract and simplify the logistics uh of the project so that the next the next bid is poised for success and we think we'll get more experience and more biders. All right. Do we have questions for Mr. Foreman? Oh yes. Um hello. Um are you worried about cost escalations for with the delay? It's you know of course uncertain. Um but we think that with by simplifying the project and logistics that will put downward pressure uh on bids waiting four more months might mean a rise but we hope that that's counterbalanced um by just simplifying the project. At this time we wanted to keep the park open during the summer and that made it very hard for bringing in materials, removing materials. Now we're just going to close in January. We'll make it very simple and we think based on what we've heard from the pre-bid hearing that that will lead to more biders and easier. So, we're hoping it counterbalances, but regardless, the revenue impact of doing it now would be so significant that um on the whole, we think this would be much better, much more fiscally responsible for the city. Got it. All right. If there's no other conversation, I would um make a motion to support the rejection of the bid. Second. All right. All in favor of the motion? I I. All opposed. All right. Thank you so much. Right. Next we have the um report of planning commission. Good afternoon. Hannah Reau, planning and development. So start off with upcoming holidays over the next few months. Um currently scheduled public hearings. Uh there are four uh resoning items scheduled for April 15th, none for May 6th. And just one item on your report today. Um that is Z3924 8415 Honeyut Road. Um request to reszone a little over 14 acres from R1 with the Falls Water Overshed Overlay district to R six conditional use. Uh with that same overlay, uh planning commission recommended approval 4 to two um with an additional recommendation to make amendments to the language in the zoning conditions which uh conflict with the UDO. Um, so if you would like to uh schedule a hearing, we have a suggested date for that, but um there's a recommendation to defer setting the public hearing um to a future meeting to allow those revisions to to happen. Happy to answer any questions. Yeah. All right questions. Um what are the uh conditions that need to be revised so they're not so they're compliant with the UDO? Yes. So, there's a condition that points to um pursuing a design alternate, which is something that the UDO spec specifically calls out as not permissible in a condition. So, that's that's the revision that's needed. Okay. So, they're saying we're going to put in this resoning and then we'll come for a design alternate later and they're trying to commit to that and the UDO says you can't do that. You just have to write in your conditions what the design would be. Yeah, that's right. Right. Okay. Got it. Um, what were the concerns from the opposition for this case? U, I understand the rule was changed a few years ago to limit the amount of time an applicant changes conditions, but it looks like there were some additional concerns that might have been not been included. Yeah. So, commissioners discussed uh um pedestrian safety uh particularly on Honeyut Road. Um, and then another commissioner um mentioned um the impact of the future development on water quality in the in the wershed. um and um what he thought was inconsistency with the green print Raleigh vision theme. Can you uh expound on what the are there watershed protection conditions in there? Um so the the request would still have the falls wershed overlay district applied to it. So there's um requirements uh connected connected with that. Um the request itself does not contain any additional um storm water water quality specific um conditions. Um uh but there is a condition requiring 15% of the site to beat uh tree conservation area. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yep. Uh sorry, me again. Um it's my understanding there's a planned street through this site and one of the conditions removes the street. Is that do I have that correct? Yes. One of the condition uh conditions is to um not provide that connection um with uh travel car travel lanes. Okay. And road connection is it is that allowed through a condition? Is that not normally a comprehensive plan amendment? Yes. So that is um one of the there's the UDO calls out several specific types of conditions that are allowed or not allowed and um things relating to to block perimeter are allowed to be exempted in zoning conditions in certain contctions. Yeah. Okay. Um so then I see the applicant right behind you. So I mean this might be directed more at them but I have some concerns about the loss of that part of the grid. Um, I know that the resident I know this is probably responsive to what the residents have said. Um, but you know th this I and I visited the residents. This is a difficult neighborhood to access. Uh this is the kind of neighborhood where if like a tree fell on Bay Bush Road, it would be difficult for us to provide emergency services in the same I mean I'm let me not pretend like I'm a emergency service expert, but it looks to me like this is a difficult neighborhood access and that not providing that component of the grid is is a real loss not only for the new residents but the existing residents. Um, and I just think like someday we're gonna have to evacuate Raleigh for a hurricane or something like that. Like emergencies and unexpected situations do happen. And so I just wonder since you're holding this, I think it would be worth at least considering building like creating that connection to like a greenways level standard because our greenways I think have to pro fit a EMS and police car and then maybe you put the ballards. So, it's not like regular vehicular traffic, but it's can still get emergency services through there. I just think the loss of that part of the grid is I think it needs the tires need to be kicked a little bit more. So, since we're holding anyway, thought I'd throw it out there. Do we need to make a motion to hold or can we just take no action? We can make a motion to bring it back as a special item. Do you want to? Sure, I can do that. Yeah. Um, so I'll move to bring this back as a special item to set the public hearing um on April 15th. Is that the right date? April 15th. Okay, that's a motion. Second. All right. Any other conversations? If not, all in favor of the motion? I All oppose? Nay. All right. Thank you. Thanks for coming down. Okay. Next, we have uh special items. Council contingency. Michelle Mallette. Yes. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. We have just one actual item before you all today. Just a reminder, this is your balances prior to any action you all take today. And then if you all will take this action which is to approve council member Jones and council member Patton who are splitting a council contingency request for Raleigh County of the Blind for $8,190. Okay. Do y'all want to make any commentary? I just wanted to let everyone know that that uh is a request from the Council of the Blind to help with um Braille and to help educate and teach more people about Brail. So I wanted you to know what you were voting on. Um but but that's I'm really excited and happy to support. Is that your motion? And I move to approve our contingency funds. Sweet. And as the leaison to the uh mayor's committee for persons with disabilities, I'm happy to second it. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion? If not, all in favor? I I. All oppose? Nay. Right. And that passes. Thank you. All right. Next we have a text change authorization uh the UDO to revise storm water regulations to reflect state statutes. Good afternoon. Um this is a text change authorization request for two text changes that are mainly house cleaning. There's a little bit more change on one of them but we grouped them together because to come more in line with the state statute. Um, the first one is for a one or two unit dwelling on a parcel greater than an acre. Uh, if y'all if if you will recall, if you were on council back in 2023, we passed um statutes to line up with the noose uh uh uh river basin management strategy. And um the state code looks at land disturbance size and not parcel size. Whereas we look at stuff that's exempted based on parial size. So what we've been running into is that lots that are just for one or two unit dwellings on an acre or more pretty much got their impervious percentages cut pretty pretty deep down from either 21 or 38% down to 5%. And so that that was a that was a something that we've heard about from citizens and also the homeowner association since since uh May 1st of 2023. So this would tie for those one or or two unit dwellings that are on an acre parcel or more like we would tie the cutoff to limits of disturbance. So, if you're disturbing more than an acre of land, then you would be subject to the full storm water like requirements for rate of runoff and nitrogen um just control and and that sort of thing. So, this is similar to how they were treated before May 1st of 2023. So, that's kind of why staff deemed this as more of like a cleanup and not necessarily a a stand on its own kind of change. So, we're kind of going back for these one or two unit dwellings that are on an acre or more, which is not a ton of properties in Raleigh Raleigh, as you would imagine, but there are it is about a thousand properties that it does affect. So, it's um definitely something that has had an effect and we have heard from. And the second one was more to to change our builtupon area definition based on a state a state statute change from last fall that basically um change the definitions for de decks, artificial turf, and gravel. Um essentially making them more pvious than impervious. So they still have some specifications that they have to hit to kind of have that, but it's still something that we would have to change to kind of treat them more as pvious than impervious. So and that is the current state statute now is how they are treated. So this is coming in line directly with the state statute. Okay. Do you have questions for Mr. Brown? Yeah, I just had one question on that second part. I've actually been uh contacted a few times over the past year or two about artificial turf and why it counts towards our imperous surface limits when in fact it provides a great deal of drainage and and water penetration. So this would actually align our code with the state code which which provides some um pvious uh I guess designation to the turf. Correct. Okay. They would just have to account for the water flowing through that turf. That's not just going to a to an flowing down to a an impervious under drain system or something. It's not just flowing through the artificial turf and then getting But yes, I think will be happy to hear that. Yes, I'm sure they will. I'm happy to make a motion whenever we're ready. Okay. But and you're sorry. And your options are to authorize the the uh the text change and send it to the uh plan commission or to authorize it like with the modification and still send it to that commission or to hold it or to deny the request. Yep. Go ahead, Council Jones. Thank you so much. Um when you mentioned that it's a thousand, it's not a lot, but there's about a thousand. Is there additional recordkeeping with the city that we'll need to comply with the state's rules? Is there a workload concern for staff? Uh there is really not. When we uh when we approached the state about this, they were kind of agnostic, for lack of a better term, about us changing that that spot, like it's not going to run a foul of any rules or increase our workload or it's not going to really change anything. We were treating these lots like this prior to 2023. So, I don't really anticipate much of a workload increase. And then um and you may have said this and forgive me if you did. Can you just clarify how these changes affect directly affects homeowners who want to make improvements? And so is this. So for for the first one, if you fall into that category that you have a one or two unit dwelling that's on an acre of land, then that's definitely going to affect that because currently the current code says if you're over 5% impervious, you have to go and do the traditional stormware treatment, which is usually a larger stormware device to to just control for nitrogen or for rate of runoff. So now this would give you up to your zone kind of a maximum impervious like until you have to do storm water treatment. So it's so it's similar to those properties that are currently being treated that way for under an acre. So it kind of evens that out. And then from the um decks and the artful turf and the gravel if they want to make any improvements uh expanding decks or artificial turf or gravel areas on their property, this would make it easier for that. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Okay. So, do you have you have a motion? Yeah, I would uh move to um authorize the text change and send it to planning commission. Okay. Second from councelor Patton. Any other discussion? All in favor? I. I. All oppose? Nay. All right. Thank you. All right. Next we have the citizen initiated street closing petition related to Willow Street and Woodside Drive. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I am Daniel King with transportation. Uh this is uh a presentation to talk through citizen initiated street closing petitions that are non-conforming with our existing policies. I'll go through uh the legislation that guides street closures. Uh our current city of Raleigh policy that guides our street closure process. And then Woodside Drive uh came to the council uh and was uh asked for staff to bring it back for discussion. So we've got uh facts on that one and Willow Street came to the council via public comment uh in February and so we're bringing that forward as well for direction. Uh the legislation that guides our street closure is a general statute 168-299. Uh it requires council to adopt a resolution of intent to close right ofway as the first process and then requires notice. Uh those notices co in a number of different ways mail posting uh as well as a published notice. The legislation also requires that the findings be that the closure is not detrimental to the public interest or property access rights of any individual. Uh and the actions that are allowed uh the legislation allows council to close right of way but does not require them to do so. Uh so council has leeway to determine what's in the best interest and then make that decision. And then if anyone is agrieved by that decision, they are able to appeal within 30 days. The city of Raleigh pro process currently uh requires an application. That application must be complete. Uh the complete application requires signatures currently from all adjacent property owners. Um we then review as a coordinated review with a number of different departments. We look at policy and technical items um and then make a recommendation. The next step and this is where the process breaks down a little bit uh is for a draft resolution of intent to close the rightway to be brought to council to set a public hearing. The reason this breaks down a little bit is because if council or if staff has evaluated these and found them not to be conforming, bringing forward a resolution of intent to close doesn't seem like the appropriate action at that point. For more standard cases where there's agreement on the public interest, we would then bring it to council with that resolution of intent to close the rightway, go through the public notification process, set the public hearing, and then ultimately have the public hearing where council would then decide whether to close the rightway or not. If they determined to close the rightway, an action would been then be uh put into place and a resolution ordering that closure would occur. for Woodside Drive. Uh it's an existing rightway. This was dedicated as part of the Frier Hills subdivision back in the 1950s. So, this was not dedicated directly from these lots. The application was submitted uh in September of 2023. So, there's been a lot of back and forth with the applicant. Uh the petitioner desires to acquire the right ofway in order to subdivide the property and to build high-end homes in this area. And when staff evaluated this, it was very clear to us that this did not meet our normal policies. Uh it was inconsistent with our comprehensive plan. Um the lot did not originally dedicate the right of way. So they did not have underlying property rights. Um so we did not move it forward at that time. Willow Street uh is a little more simple as to why we didn't move it forward. Uh we did not get a complete application. Uh there are property owners on the east and west side of this stubbed rightway. This is off of Edund Street near Khan Elementary School. The property owner on the east side of the rightway is the petitioner asking for the closing. The property owner on the west side specifically does not want the right of way to be closed and is in opposition to that. The applicant came to uh public comment on February 11th and requested the council direct staff to move this forward with an incomplete application. At that same meeting, the uh other property owner uh sent a voicemail public comment specifically opposing that request. uh considerations for actions for you today. You can act uh on these two cases individually or together, whichever is your preference. Uh council may direct staff to prepare the resolutions as required and initiate the street closing process. You may direct us to discontinue the process. Um and you also may refer these to a committee for further discussion. And you can do that for both or these individually. and I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them. Right. Questions? Just question kind of related to more or less the Willow Street closing closure. If that street were to close, would the property then be everyone would meet like I guess in the middle of the property and so each resident each resident I guess on the sides would get half and because this one's kind of has three parts. I guess those in the the school which is behind it, they wouldn't get anything because their property line ends already. Correct. That's correct. The way the res leg, excuse me, the way the legislation is written, um it requires that the property be or the rightway be divided down the center to the adjacent property. We do not consider the stub end of the street to be uh the property line that would absorb any property. So Khan Elementary would not absorb any of this. It would be the two uh residential lots on either side. And this is a unpaved road as well, correct? Uh it is an unpaved road. It is on our uh maintenance inventory though. Uh it's got some level of pavement on it. Uh so we may do some minor patching, but it it's not on our regular maintenance. Okay. Yep. I've got a question about the other one. Sure. Um, I just looked on Google Maps on the Woodside Drive. Mhm. I'm a little curious about um why staff determined that would be uh not uh one to move forward. Is the intent that at some point that street Dartmouth would connect to St. Albins's right there because it it doesn't look like that that's ever going to that connection is ever going to be made. Right. That connection would not likely be made. No. But um the inconsistency with the neighborhood uh with the development that was proposed uh the private benefit outweighed the public benefit uh from our evaluation standpoint. Okay. So it's not necessarily an issue with us needing to make that connection. Um just more about other policy correct considerations. Okay. Thank you. Um councelor Patton. Yeah. So it seems like we have like kind of this broader need for like uh procedural updates or policy updates so that we this is these two cases are revealing gaps in the process that we need to figure out how we would resolve them in the future. That's absolutely right and we're actually working on that already. Um and uh if the council was so inclined to send these to committee, we would probably want to bring some of that information to committee to you know have that conversation at that time as well. Sure. Um yeah, I'm happy to take that into committee. I think um with respect to the the one by Con Elementary and I would I would be happy to allow staff to like initiate that process because it just initiates the public process, right? Then there's a public notice and a public hearing and desend it does, but it does require us to bring a resolution of intent to close the rightway as the starting point if we do that. Got it. Um, and then to drill down on the Woodside Drive one. So, you're saying by policy we when we close when we do a street closure, there has to be some offset public benefit and what like in other scenarios, what kinds of public benefits could those be? Uh, they could be any number of things. Uh, they could be added connectivity. Um, you know, affordable housing could be an option uh to be a public benefit. um things like that. Uh theoretically compensation could be a public benefit depending on what that looked like. We did have the the right of way appraised on that one just to have some general idea of the value. Uh and it's about $256,000. Um so we do have that information, but we we just got that to know the value of it. So the public benefit could be compensation if not like a transportation benefit or like reduction of maintenance costs. It could be if the council determined that that was enough to offset the private benefit that came from Yes. Got it. Okay. Yeah. I'm happy to take this all into committee, but I know there's one more question. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. I definitely believe we should discuss this in committee. Um though I feel um Willow Street should be closed cuz I don't see it ever being used or developed as a road. I'm concerned about the unintended consequence of having something move forward without our current policy full approval and consent of neighbors and I'm concerned about what other future projects may come and you may have some a neighbor that disagree and where do what do we do then? So, I definitely wish I'm glad let's have this conversation fully in committee along with our great city attorneys um and transportation to help keep us um legally um in good standing. Yeah. Can I just add to that that um you know I I don't think we should be giving away public right ofway for free, but if the one on Woodside is interested in purchasing it for fair market value, that may be a key distinction for us to know at committee. So maybe some outreach to them that this is the appraised value and if you're still interested, the council may consider this um moving forward. Certainly. So, um, if we send this to committee, madame city manager, uh, our next TNT committee meeting would be the 24th. Is that enough time? Yes. Yes. Okay. So, then I would move to send this the whole of this topic to transportation and transit committee for our meeting April 24th. Second. Any other discussion? All in favor? I. All opposed. Great. Thank you for taking it into committee. All right. Next, we have the report and recommendation of the city manager and the first is the acceptance of a gift. So, yes. So, good afternoon, mayor and council. Today, we have three items in the manager's report. The first is an acceptance of a gift or bequest for the Raleigh Police Department K9 unit. We have Deputy Chief Lachetti on the agenda item. However, I don't see him, but I do see Mr. Gorman coming down. Okay. Good afternoon. On behalf of my friend Jenny Parker, Virginia Lee Parker, um I am her executive and we are bequething $50,000 to the K-9 unit. She would be so excited today to see all these officers and especially the officer on the leash. um she always called them the police puppies and um her father BG was a Raleigh police officer and she loved the Raleigh police and um so I'm very pleased to give you this gift and also when the estate is closed there will be additional funds that will be coming. So, um we hope you'll accept that gift as well. And I would like to thank all these guys back here and and um for the work they do and um keeping Raleigh safe. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Yeah. Very special memory. Yes. Do we need to make a motion? Move to approve. Second. All right. Um all uh in favor of accepting this uh meaningful gift. I all opposed. All right. And thank you again. Yes. For coming down. Next we have a strategic planning update and we have Christina Laos in the office of strategy and innovation here to present this item. Hello. Good afternoon council. Good to see you all again today. This is a short update on the strategic plan as a followup to our session with you at the city council retreat earlier this year. Um, but today we're going to talk specifically about the strategic plan key focus areas and we'll share a short update about the next steps in the process for developing the plan based on today's conversation and then where we are in the process. So, as a reminder, the strategic plan includes these three different components. Uh the key focus areas represent broad topic areas that provide structure and organization for the rest of the plan. The objectives align our goals and they set what we want to do and accomplish based on those key focus areas. And then the initiatives are just the more specific work that you would like to see carried out in each of the objectives and key focus areas. So today we're talking about this top level organization. Our previous strategic plan had six key focus areas that you can see listed here. They included transportation and transit, safe, vibrant and healthy community, economic development and innovation, growth in natural resources, organizational excellence, and arts and cultural resources. We have received feedback from you all about wanting to update these names uh to provide some more specificity and clarity around the type of work that you'd like to see here. So, we have updated we have an updated version for you all to review today. Uh you'll see that most of these look the same. There are just a few differences. One is that there are now seven key focus areas. Um the safe, vibrant, and healthy community has split up into two. One specific around community safety and one specific around housing. Uh growth in natural resources has been renamed to reflect a focus on environmental resilience. And then arts and cultural resources has also been renamed. Um but here we have a little we have some options for you. One could be to name it as quality of life. One could be to name it as creative life and culture. So we don't need a formal action from you today but we would welcome feedback and any additional direction you have for the office of strategy and innovation as we move forward to develop the strategic plan. Um I was going to say for the last one I think creative life and culture um gives a clearer picture than quality of life because quality of life some of the other things housing community safety environmental they could all fall in quality of life but I think creative life and culture the creative part help and culture helps see that we're kind of talking about the arts. Okay. Yep. I was just going to add um we've got seven key focus areas here. We have four council committees. I know organizational excellence has always been off on its side just because that is typically handled by the city manager's office. So that leaves us with four council committees, six key focus areas. I know one discussion we've had internally and at our retreat is trying to align and streamline our council committees and these key focus areas so it's very easy for the public to understand and for us as a governing body to know where we want to put specific issues. And so I think maybe if we could do a little bit more tweaking on this to try to create um four key focus areas or alignment with council committees keeping organization excellence off to the side. To that point, I almost feel like quality of life is easier because I was thinking maybe economic development, innovation, and quality of life go together. But if we say creative life and culture, that's a really long committee name and key focus area. But I'm I'm sure y'all can get creative with it. But to me, I think transportation and transit is very straightforward. I think economic development innovation could include um arts and cultural resources because we do know that those are economic drivers as well. And so then that leaves community safety, housing, environmental resilience to sort of divvy up between what is currently safe, fiber, and healthy communities and growth of natural resources. And so that would just be sort of my feedback on it. Yep. And just the one thing I would add is that sports is something that comes up a lot and that right now we don't really have a governance structure to deal with it. um it tends to be dealt with in quasi judicial or you know quasi public organizations and yet you know we're talking about uh baseball leagues, professional women's soccer, we have the hurricanes. So kind of where would that fit? And it could be the creative life. It could be economic development. Um, I like your idea of maybe combining those, but um, I would just put that out there as a question as to where would sports fall. Any other Y Yeah, I just wanted to add that I do agree we need some mapping of these onto our existing committees. I don't want to have more committees. So, I think four is definitely sufficient. Um and and it may be that we just have a committee for example that is housing and environmental resilience. So that could be what is currently growth in natural resources and we just know if we have a housing issue it goes to that committee. If we have an environmental issue it goes to that committee. Um I do like organizational excellence and pulling that into one of our committees. So for example could it be community safety and organizational excellence? So maybe that's the new version of safe, healthy, vibrant communities committee. Um, yeah, I don't know exactly where to go with the name of the quality of life, the creative life one, but I like it being tied to EDI. I think those are two kind of yeah, things that go together. And the only one that probably is standalone up here is transportation transit. That committee is named aptly. And just to add, and I know we're getting kind of in the weeds here, but to the mayor's point about the governing structure around our sports and how that sort of drives the region, I mean, that could go in with the community safety, organizational excellence. It could also go with the quality of life type initiative. So maybe we just try to delineate it a little bit, but um grouping things together. I agree. Should stay at four, not adding more. So you got that lots of feedback. Thank you. I think for so it sounds like you know you all might want to agree on what groupings for your committees make the most sense. Um as long as these seven sound right um and then maybe we can revisit the name of whether you know quality of life or creative life that's enough for us to keep moving with the strategic plan development and we can kind of refine and words smmith how that fits you all can refine how that fits with committees um as next steps. Yeah. Well, and I would just say we should make a motion that somebody come back with some of the committee names so that we're not just leaving that floating. M was also thinking maybe that they send a do a little poll or something for feedback. We've done that. Okay. Previously, that way we all have some feedback and that gives them some direction to see what's common, what's not common, and then kind of go from there instead of, you know, one person just saying this or that. Y yeah, that's one way to do it. I was also just going to make a motion to authorize y'all to just consolidate these into four. Um, but if you would rather us provide more feedback on it, that's fine. I don't know that we'll get consensus on a poll, but it may be helpful. Maybe we do both. Maybe we ask them to combine these into four key focus areas to align with our council committees and we'll send a poll to help give some direction. I defer to staff. Y'all have gotten a lot of feedback. you you know if you're comfortable or you've got some ideas um let us know if you need additional feedback or polls right and the plan comes back to you in June anyway so we can kind of wrap that into it and then kind of roadmap how it looks in the future and when it'll be effective with the with the naming changes perfect thank you so that was my last slide here was a reminder of where we are in the process so we have um gotten your input on the priorities We have received the results from the community survey which we're using to help shape the rest of the plan. That will be presented to you formally in a few weeks in early May. Right now, we are working to develop the initiatives and the data that will go into the plan. We'll bring that back as a full package later spring, May, June for you all to adopt. And so, we'll include this as a part of that as um the city manager said. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Um and so the next item is the employee classification and compensation study update. Um as you all know for the past year and a half we have been working with Seagull um consulting and today we have Mr. Patrick Bracken here who is going to give us the final results from that um 18-month endeavor and kind of set the stage for us to make some decisions um in the way of implementation for the FY26 budget. [Music] Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thank you for having me back. Um, today we are going to um go over some materials relating to the comprehensive classification and compensation study that Seagull was pleased to partner with the city of Raleigh on. Um for today's agenda we have um a bunch of items but starting with um some project overview information like to walk through some of our methodology specifically related to the job classification architecture the market study and then the implementation phases that we have been um midstream on the overall project plan consisted of six steps. We broke this down into these silos on the slide before us. Um working from left to right. Um I think it was yeah about 18 months ago. We kicked off the project with um um variety of data collection efforts um but also kind of a getting to know you and some required foundational information. We then moved into the classification analysis phase which um included a job description questionnaire process of about I think 1500 um employees were invited to participate in the JDQs. Um we received a very strong uh response rate from all of that effort and that really gave us a solid um understanding of the job functions that are performed across the various departments here at the city of Raleigh. In conjunction with that effort, we also um liazison directly with departmental leadership to conduct um follow-ups where needed um if there was um kind of unclear information. But fundamentally we um left that phase um with a very solid understanding of the job architecture and were able to um provide some recommendations around that. Once we conducted the classification analysis, we moved on to the compensation study. Um, I'll talk more in detail about this on some subsequent slides, but the goal here really was for us to understand how competitive are Raleigh's compensation structures and provide opportunities for um, enhancement or improvement. We then used both the information from the classification analysis and the compensation study to develop our recommendations. This included both changes to the classification architecture, which I'll outline, as well as potential changes to the compensation structures. And then we're here today to talk about the final results and um of course answer any questions. So let's dig into the job classification structure a little bit more. Um as I mentioned the job description questionnaires were utilized as the basis for analyzing the current job description structure that the city of Raleigh maintains. Overall we had a 95% response rate um for the JDQs um which is a very strong number. Additionally, the JDQs just from a process perspective, um they were completed by employees, but then they were also reviewed by um their supervisors or design to um provide additional opportunity for comment. Overall, the county's classification structure um was expanded from 350 job titles to 485 proposed job titles. Um the basic idea here was that when we looked at the job structure, there were u many job titles where there was opportunity for additional clarity or additional definitions and also alignment with what we see in the marketplace for public sector employers. So that expansion of the number of job titles from 350 to 485 better aligned with what we thought was a better representation of the diversity of work that employees perform. Additionally, we um worked with the city of Raleigh to identify what we called our job families. There were 37 in all that we defined. Um these are similar to occupational areas and they can be really helpful for organizations as a grouping mechanism for job functions. Once we um had a the job classification architecture developed, we then were able to move on to the compensation study. As part of this phase, we broke this down into five major five fundamental steps. The first is what we call identifying benchmark jobs, comparable peer employers, and published survey sources. Benchmark jobs, and I have a slide on this in in a second, but these are the jobs that we surveyed as part of our custom survey process. The peer employers are the specific public sector employers that um we um invited to participate in our survey. And the published survey sources are survey sources that Seagull purchases that represent private sector compensation levels. Once we had those found um key parameters in place, we were able to then distribute the survey um to the peer employers. Seagull worked directly with those peer employers to collect their information and validate it where necessary. We then use that information to analyze the competitive competitiveness of the city's pay structure and use that information to design alternative options for the um for the city's consideration. I mentioned the benchmark jobs. The benchmark jobs, these are the survey jobs that we included. There were 101 survey titles that we um had for inclusion in our custom survey document. There's some key principles around the identification of benchmark jobs and they're listed here. But just to quickly touch upon these um first we want to make sure that when we're looking at the benchmark jobs. Um one of the questions you might have is why not survey survey all the jobs. Um the re the reality is that that survey would be too long and too cumbersome and and entities wouldn't participate. So about a 100 jobs is the max of what we see um in terms of um the likelihood that a peer employer is going to participate. So working with that we have to then winnow down from the 485 jobs the hundred or so jobs that make the most sense to survey. And one of the first things we look at are we want to make sure that the jobs are reflective of the workforce composition. So when we think about things like title groups so things like specialist, analyst, assistant, we want to make sure that we have a broad array of those. We want to make sure that we're capturing a um good cross-section of job families. So things like administrative support, public safety jobs, operations jobs. We want to make sure that our benchmark jobs are represent representative statistically of both highly populated positions. Um but also that we're getting as much coverage of the workforce as possible. And we also want to make sure that we have jobs that are readily found at the peer employers. So for example, if there was a very uniquely defined job at Raleigh, more of a hybrid position that is unlikely to be found at peers, we would recommend not selecting that as a benchmark. I mentioned the peer employers, also called the defined peer agencies. On the slide, uh we see the 12 peer employers that we were contractually um um engaged to survey. We have listed these and we've colorcoded these by participation, but the key takeaway here is that we were able to get data from 11 of the 12, which is a very strong response rate. You'll notice that we've got peer employers um both within the state of North Carolina as well as outside of North Carolina. Um we do adjust for geographic differences when the peer employer is um in a geographic area other than the city of Raleigh. Uh and let's just see and then um just as an additional data point we in some cases were um the peer employer participated directly meaning they sent us the information other cases they directed us to source information and seagull had to uh data mine. So that's what we mean when we when the black here is that seagull had to complete that information on their behalf. So just a note on external comparisons um for folks that um maybe have not seen a um a a comp survey in terms of the methodology around some of the key principles. But one one of the key ideas here is what we call job matching. The job matching exercise is looking at the Raleigh benchmark job and trying to find the best analog for that job at the peer employer. And we know that job matching is not um a perfect science. And so we draw a threshold of the 75% rule which is used by a lot of um human resource professional associations to determine whether or not a job match is appropriate or not. Meaning that if the job function at the peer employer at least encompasses 75% of the duties and responsibilities that the Raleigh job that that job would be eligible for a match. That doesn't mean that in all cases it is a match. We might have other factors that we look at to determine whether or not it still stays as a job match. But as an initial culling exercise, we draw that minimum threshold to um determine inclusion as that um as to that data point. Additionally, the published survey data is a collection of sources that seagull purchases um access to. These are the economic research institute, pay factors and comp analyst. These are large national um conducted compensation surveys reflecting thousands if not tens of thousands of private sector employers. Uh we use that information to supplement our analysis so that we are blending both the private sector and the public sector compensation information to create an overall comparison. Once we collected all that job match information, we then brought that information back to the Raleigh project team, worked very collaboratively with them on um the data scrubbing exercises, and then once we had uh confidence in the underlying accuracy of all the information, then use that to um compare the results to Raleigh's current compensation structures. And so digging a little bit more closely into the market assessment, we um wanted to show the highest level findings of our um competition benchmarking exercise. And I'll just take a minute to talk about this table and the construction of it. When we are looking at the competitiveness of a client's pay structure, we look at it in market ratios. What I mean by that is we take the client's information as a percent of the market average. So when you see the percentages on the screen here, what these are are they are reflective of Raleigh's compensation information as a percent of the market average by those respective sectors. So the first sector on the the first row is the custom survey data sources. These are the um 11 peer employers that we uh were able to get compensation information from. This reflects the public sector compensation in our analysis. The second row is the published data sources which is the private sector and then the bottom row is the overall market average. When we look at the market ratios, we then categorize those market ratios by market competitiveness. And what we define at Seagull as market competitive is between 95 and 105 of the market sorry 95 and 105% of the market average. Meaning that if a market ratio falls within that corridor, we determine that to be market competitive. If it falls below 95%, it's considered below market. If it falls above 105%, it's considered above market. And then we color code those market ratios. So in this case, we use red as below market, black text as at market, and then blue text as above market. And you know as you can see from the data u both compared to the custom survey which is the published sorry the public sector information the published data which is the private sector information or on an overall basis we do see a lot of non-competitive market ratios and if we just focus at the overall market average when we think about breaking down the comparisons along the pay ranges. So this is the pay range minimum pay range midpoint and pay range maximums. Raleigh's pay structures are 86% of the market average at the minimum, 91% at the midpoint, and 93% at the maximum. So overall, when we think about the across all benchmark findings, the city's pay ranges are below market across the minimum, midpoint, and maximum. So if we break down those results on the previous slide a little bit more granularly by peer organization, we have the same construct in terms of the color coding and the market ratios. But here we've broken it down by the peers. And what you can see is that um if you depending on which pier you're looking at the respective market comparisons generally kind of doesn't matter except for a couple here they're uh the Raleigh pay structures are lagging uh the respective peer employers pay structures which would make sense given the overall findings but there is some variation as you look at this and then the only other additional data point on this slide that wasn't on the others is what we call a count of job matches which is that second column in from the Right? These are the number of job matches that we were able to make out of the 101 jobs at the peer employer. So you can see in some cases we had a bunch um like close to all and in other cases not as many but at the end of the day all of the job matches that we made we still feel confident that they are appropriate job matches. It's just the number of them does vary by the peer. And then additionally broken down a little bit further, I mentioned the job families that we created. Um this the next couple slides um take the job family information and array the benchmark jobs by um by those groupings and help the council better understand some of the variation of competitiveness now at a job family level. And so the story depending on the family uh changes in some cases and in other cases it's the same um in terms of being below market. But this hopefully gives you a little bit more information about the job family breakouts of market competitiveness. The next slide of the same breakout of the families. And now I want to talk a little bit more about another finding with our analysis related to pay range width comparisons. So I mentioned earlier pay ranges of minimums, midpoints, and maximums. When we talk about a pay range width, we're talking about the minimum to maximum comparison. So the percentage difference between the minimum and maximums, what's referred to as the pay range width. And when we looked at the benchmark jobs for Raleigh, the average pay range width is about 70%. But when we look at the market data, the pay range width is about 57%. Which in and of itself isn't necessarily an issue, but it does suggest that the pay range width for Raleigh is wider than what the pay ranges we're seeing in the marketplace are. And we just pointed this out because it did help inform some of our salary structure recommendations and opportunities for the city to consider um the adjustments of the pay range with if if necessary. And that piece is a little bit more complicated because it's also a function of the number of paygrades, but we did think it was an interesting finding and wanted to include it for your consideration. I think previously the council's been u provided with some information regarding the compensation philosophy sorry the total compensation philosophy. So this is a slide that outlines some of the parameters that the Raleigh uh project team has been working with um I think the council and then other groups within the city on. But the idea here is that the compensation philosophy statement has multiple factors. The factors that are being um uh identified are job evaluation which is really what we consider internal job equity or job worth comparison markets which we talked a little bit more about the peer employers. the pay systems that it uses to reward employees, program governance, pay communication, and ingenuity and adaptability. And the idea of this slide is that these components all work together to help the city of Raleigh think about its positioning from a total compensation perspective. So once we had um a good understanding of the existing salary structures and some of the key features of them, we just wanted to put together this slide to outline some of the principles around what we were finding with your existing structures and what we were uh looking at in terms of um principles or features for the new structures. And I'll just list these because I think they do provide some um good insights into the proposed pay structures and their development. Some of the key issues with the existing structures relate to firstly the inconsistent midpoint differentials between grades. So what we mean by that is if you take if you do the math to check the percentage intervals between the midpoints, there's um not always a consistent logic to how the pay structure is designed. And that can create some confusion in terms of how the pay structure operates. And when we do these types of studies, we firstly look at that to see if there's an opportunity to create some logic in terms of how the pay structure is actually mathematically uh oriented. Secondly, because of some of the non-competitive findings, we didn't feel like existing structures, at least all of them were aligned with market conditions. some of the pay structures because there's multiple that the city maintains are unnecessarily complex. Um the city has a multiple pay schedule approach which in some cases may work but in other cases may add complexity that's not adding value. And then as I noted before the pay range width is wider than the market averages that we were seeing. So with these things in mind some of the new features of the sorry key features of the new salary structures relate to um what we call open ranges. So the this is the same idea as some of the existing structures where you have a prescribed minimum and maximum and then calculated midpoint and these open ranges can provide flexibility for performance-based pay if that was something that the organization wants to um consider. We did not recommend any step structures meaning structures with prescribed values at you know step one through whatever um as part of this exercise. So all of the pay structures we recommended were open range structures. We ensured that the pay structures themselves were designed to be market competitive. So we use that market data to help us create anchor points and then build out a structure that was logically consistent. Overall we were able to streamline this number of salary structures and grades associated with those and have that logical range spread and midpoint differentials. One of the key uh principles that we wanted to ensure was that there was at least a 5% midpoint differential between job levels. This is pretty much the minimum that we would recommend. If anything less than that doesn't create a meaningful distinction between pay grades. So having that at least minimum 5% differential it uh was a key feature. And then we also want to make sure that the pay structures themselves are easily explainable to staff and that they align with the Raleigh's um total compensation philosophy. Can I maybe just ask a question right there to clarify? So just using a police lieutenant as an example. So in the past they would have been promoted to that level and there would have been different steps within it and now it's one big range is I mean so just explain to me in in sort of English with one position how this then changes. So depending on the structure um the the the job function has its own prescribed pay range meaning it has a minimum and a maximum and then a calculated midpoint right to give a sense of the middle point of that and the idea is that an employee can be paid any value between that minimum and that maximum value depending on experience um education if that's the case um or other qualifying credentials. So like unlike a step system which has a prescribed value for step one, step two, typically those are those steps are rewarded based off longevity. In this case it's an open range structure. So it would be more of a function of um general wage increase process and but it won't be a specified value the way a step would be. Okay, that's helpful. I think since I'm interrupting maybe just another question. One of the uh things we've heard is well you've talked about salaries but you didn't look at benefits and so how how is that being addressed? So I guess number one would be are do we have up-to-date benefit information right that helps complement the salary and classification study. So that's not part of this study. However, um as committed, Miss Jones will be bringing forward a comprehensive memo that outlines all of the questions that were raised at the um benefits and payroll um work session that we had earlier last month that speaks to the total rewards. Okay. Yes. So, that will be presented at the next Okay. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. So, just a couple other notes about the proposed salary structures. As I mentioned, they were designed to be in alignment with market conditions. Um, as well as some of the best practices we see for pay structure design. So, for the current salary structures that Raleigh has, they they maintain a police sworn, they have a fire sworn, they have a general pay plan, a broadband pay plan, which includes um what look like kind of separate structures within for supervisors, managers, and directors. And as part of our proposed pay range structure, we're recommending five discrete pay plans. One covering non-exempt jobs, and it's non-exempt based on the Fair Labor Standards Act, FSA, um, which simply put is overtime eligible or nonovertime eligible. So we break this out by non-exempt where there's a nine-grade structure, exempt which is a 15 grade structure, the police structure which has 10 grades, the fire structure which has nine grades, and then a newly created ECC structure for emergency communications that has seven grades. And each of these separate pay structures and the number of grades um within them allow for the jobs that are associated with each of these structures to be assigned one of those pay grades. And each of those pay grades as I mentioned before is an open range. And that will provide a lot of flexibility to the organization but also having these structures separated out will help the organization respond to changing market conditions. So, we see this a lot with clients where when they're uh depending on what's happening in the labor market, they're able to more finely target compensation decisions based on the respective structures. And overall, just as a key note, um I mentioned some of the complexity with the existing structure. If you add up all the grades that we're recommending versus the current structure, we were able to reduce the number of paygrades, which also administratively makes it a little easier for the city in terms of maintenance of the compensation systems. The last I think the last uh slide on proposed salary structures talks about some of the design parameters relating to the open range structures. I'll actually start with the graphic on the right because maybe that helps um distill some of the verbiage on the left. But the idea here in terms of a principle of a pay structure design is that when we think about the starting paygrades, so these are the pay grades at the lowest dollar value end of a structure, we wanted to make sure that we were being flexible and also that we were accommodating the variety of work that gets generally more complex as you work to higher ranges of a structure. So what we're trying to illustrate in the diagram on the right is that at the starting paygrade levels there's a at least 5% midpoint differential but there's a narrow narrower range width of ranging 28 to 35% depending on the structure you're talking about. Then when you look at the middle section of of a particular pay band or sorry pay structure, what we um have done is we've now widened that midpoint differential to now ranging anywhere from 7 to 11%. And we've widened the pay range width from 40 to 53%. Again, depending on the structure. And then at the top end of the structure, we've got between 8 8.5 and 15% between midpoints. And that range width is uh between 40 and 60%. So this is really like a pyramid structure of a uh of the pay range widths as well as the ascending midpoint differentials. And this is a structure that we see a lot for large complex clients in terms of um how the design of it can help the organization recognize some of the more complex and nuanced roles especially as you work through the middle and the top end of a pay structure. So now to talk a little bit about implementation. And I think the last time I was here, we were in the midst of showing you some principles that were guiding the implementation scenarios. Uh there are three approaches that we um are here today to uh talk about. Um the first is what we are um we didn't really label these per se, but um approach one is what we are calling I guess the bring to minimum approach. So the idea here is that with the adoption of a new pay structure, there may be employees that whose current compensation is less than their new pay range minimum and we would recommend that they at least be brought to the new pay range minimum so that they're paid within the pay range. Option two is um kind in addition to that. So thinking about that first step of bringing to the pay range minimum, we then have provided models to the city to um to to consider would that include a general wage increase. So this would be analogous to a general um an across the board increase or a general wage increase or phrases that we hear. And the idea right now is that the modeling is looking at a range of that increase between 8 and 12%. Um and the third option is to do kind of all three of those things or sorry all two of those things but subject to a cap meaning that based on the increase that an employed would receive associated with a bring to minimum as well as a general wage increase there would be a cap put in place so that an employee wouldn't receive more than x amount and these three models um give right now I think the city uh options to consider in terms of how the implementation of these proposed structures could be brought about. And then just to talk a little bit about salary structure maintenance and one of the things that we think is really important is that when an organization does this work and it it's been a lot of work um for the Raleigh project team as well as for Seagull is we want to make sure it doesn't go stale. And so one of the things that is important to think about is that you know salary structure development although is important in the moment really shouldn't be ignored from a maintenance perspective. And so one of the things that we're recommending that Raleigh consider is that so that you don't get into a position where your salary structures either become stale or outdated or non-competitive is that you consider uh doing some type of trend factor analysis each year to update those salary structures if necessary. Right? But most of the times we do see that at least annually sometimes every two years the structures themselves do need to be addressed in terms of staying relevant with what's required to recruit and retain the highest quality staff. So there's a couple sources out there but most uh clients at least of seagulls um you know it doesn't need to be overly complex. Some do um you know kind of an email feeler on annual local area wage increases to get a sense of what the um labor market is doing in terms of pay structure changes. Um there are surveys that you can purchase that target both private and public sector information regarding annual uh salary budget planning. World at work is one of the ones that seagull purchases. Um but there's others. Um, and we do think it's important that you consider if you're going to make these changes on the pay structure side that you uh either formalistically or informally consider some type of annual analysis as well as doing some type of salary survey every 3 to 5 years. Doesn't have to be a full-blown um, you know, 100 benchmark type seagull study. It could be something a little bit smaller. But it is important that you continually ping the marketplace. the marketplace changes rapidly and it's really important that you keep eye an eye on what happens to the local area wage movements and so that your salary structures can m work as intended. So then just to wrap up with next steps, um we are in the process of finalizing our report. Um should have that to the Raleigh project team shortly and um we are we're actually done with writing all the um 485 job descriptions, just doing our final QC and should have those again to Raleigh within the next week or two. That is it for the body of the presentation. Branch and then councelor Jones. First of all, thank you for the presentation and I have a couple questions um maybe for you may need staff or city manager to respond to. Um but one of the things I want to ask first is I know this one's for you. Were there any challenges when you were trying to match up like within a certain area maybe within fire or police as far as job titles and positions um and trying to match in order to get the numbers to make sense? there there's always some challenges with like data cleanup and ensuring the accuracy of a job match. Um, specifically, I you know, I wouldn't say we have any unique challenges here. I think it was standard run-of-the-mill job matching questions, but we do a lot of due diligence in working directly with the peer organization. So, for example, like if we had a question about a job match, we might ask for a job description from that peer employer. If it wasn't available online, we might send them an email with a summary just clarifying, you know, this is a little bit more information about the Raleigh job. I know you told us this is your peer is are you sure there's not another level. We'll go back kind of back and forth to make sure that we feel comfortable that it's the best job match available. Okay. Um, and this one I know is for the city manager and I'm taking three questions and making it one. Um first of all I like approach two or three um for me as far as the two approaches but one of the things that import is important I think is the salaries and what's that number um what what does it cost to implement approach two or implement approach three and my question is at what point will we be able to see that information? So, as soon as we get the data from um Seagull where everything is compiled with the job descriptions and everything and we have a total comprehensive packet, we will then go and tweak those numbers that we gave you a preview of last week and finalize some recommendations to you. Um that kind of look the full gamut of the 8 to 12% and and then it becomes part of the budget conversation where um you all make the final decision at the adoption of the budget. Okay. And then I'm sorry I did have one last question. Historically um I think we did a salary analysis or thing onethird of the city positions each year. Um what's your idea? I saw where you're saying look at the positions. Do you recommend looking us at all positions each year or would a one-third approach each year be beneficial? Still I might need a little bit of clarity on the one third because I don't know that I have that policy fully baked in my head. Historically, each year we've done one-third of the benchmark positions as just an annual go out to market to make sure that we're remaining competitive. So, I think Patrick the question he's asking is should we do one-third continue with that methodology or all right to do all 485 is very cumbersome, very expensive. Yeah, that's another comp study. But I I see. I mean I I think one thing to keep in mind is that the 100 benchmarks the 101 that we ended up surveying we felt really comfortable that they were representative of the cross-section of the overall employer and so that idea of having to do 1/3 oneird I guess on the one hand yes it touches all the jobs but my hunch is it gets harder and harder to find matches when you are honing in on so many job titles so you might want to consider if you're comfortable with the hundred benchmarks as representative kind of doing that group as the refresh and that gives you again the barometer to how competitive are your structures still, you know, next year and the year out. Okay. Thank you, Council Jones. Thank you so much. Um, what I know you did the survey uh with roughly what you said 1500 of our staff. Um, the JDQs. Yeah, the job description. That was JDQ. That was the job description questionnaire process. Okay. So, that's not the entire So, we don't know how staff feels about something like an open range option as opposed to the step option. We don't know their how they feel about that with that. I I don't know if HR knows more about that, but Seagull doesn't know. So, as part of the JDQs, there are several classifications that they do as groups, meaning four or five employees get together and they complete one JDQ. Then it goes up the review process from supervisor to manager to assistant director to director for approvals. And then ultimately as we got to the decision points of trying to figure out what our new structure would look like, HR and Miss Jones can come up had conversations with um leadership and both police, fire and ECC to kind of determine what would be the best structure to meet the needs in this current environment. So what you see today is a recommendation of input from leadership and all of our public safety departments. So this has been vetted through what you're saying has been vetted through the departments and this is what they has risen to the top as the as their options their choice. Miss Jones, you may want to come to that. So there's never going to be 100% consensus agreement around a decision in any department. Let's be clear about that. But as part of our ongoing conversation with the leadership, the chiefs in both departments as well as the director and ECC, this they felt like this allowed the greatest degree of flexibility and for them to be able to properly administer according to our pay administration guidelines the new study in a way that is best for the employees. all the things that she said is correct, but we also had conversation with the public safety collaborative as well. And a lot of the feedback that we got was that employees wanted a little bit of flexibility as it relates to performance. So if you're going to a performance-based pay system, it is hard to do that when you're on the steps because everybody has to get the same amount. There's no flexibility. And so some of the feedback that we got was, okay, if I'm exceptional, what am I going to get that's different? Right? That's hard to do with steps because everybody has to land on the steps. So, we took that into consideration as well. Okay. So, I think you just touched on a little bit what the benefits or as opposed to what the pitfalls of each one are. I think the pros and cons the pros and cons of each program are. And I think what I'm looking for is to really find how did we capture I know you're saying the safety collaborative, but this encompasses more than just public safety. This is our entire staff, correct? This study or is this mainly public safety? Yes, it's the entire organization, but we also have an employee advisory group as well that's separate and apart from the public safety collaborative. And they did they also weigh in on this? Everybody gave feedback in regards flexibility. Okay. So, the entire not just public safety, but everybody got to say that this is the the chosen um or not their specifically. Believe me, I understand we don't all agree. I'm I'm very very aware of that. Um but when we had the meetings that you've had both with this uh collaborative and on the other group that you're talking about um this was discussed and this is what was as a group decided this is the movement forward is what I'm understanding. We had conversations about overall about pay and you know flexibilities and steps and things and and overall the conversation was flexibility and that's what we take into account for this pay structure because you can't have flexibility with steps and do we have uh I I know we're talking about it here but here I have a presentation and and I'm just trying to wrap my head how do I how do I hear from the staff? Did you take surveys or is it just these collaboratives? It's just the collaboration and then we also look at the seagull for recommendation in regards to best practices as well um when giving their recommendations. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Do we have questions down here? All right. Um councelor Patton. Y um I just wanted to cl Thank you. Hi presentation. Um I wanted to clarify my understanding. So you made a point that our the salary widths were larger than the market. So the distance between the person persons in the same job who make the minimum versus the mac the high end of the range is there's a greater distance than we might find elsewhere in the market. Is there a best practice? Is that a like a is it a judgment or just a fact like should we should is there and then just to clarify in case I misspoke on that it's not about the a person's pay that we're really talking about the published minimum and the published maximum. There might be a person that's paid at the minimum, a person at the maximum, but what we're looking at is the structure. Um, and so yes, the, you know, anywhere between 40 to 60% is what most professional HR associations at least would start at as in terms of looking at pay range with. So we're not too far off at 70%. But it is still outside that outer bound. And then we're seeing that 57% with the peer employers to be a little more in line with that 40 to 60% range. Okay. And then less a question more a comment. I was um surprised to see as you broke out these job families there are sort I think we sort of always accept that the public sector is not going to pay as competitively but there certainly are positions that are being paid competitively. There are some that are getting that 98 to like 105%. Um we even have some some folks at the top end of their job family making 109% of the market. So there are departments where we are competitive, but there are certainly some that that aren't. And um they they were surprising departments to me. So I thought that chart was very informative, but I think like code enforcement, fiscal services, transportation, um just definitely there's definitely like work to do to invest in our employees across the organizations. And can I just make a clarifying point about that? So again, those percentages are not employee compensation levels. Those are pay range comparisons. So, it's just an important distinction because employee compensation can vary anywhere from the minimum to the maximum of a pay range. Those figures are only reflecting the pay range comparisons. So, it's just they're different metrics. Questions? Well, I had a couple questions. So, building on councelor Jones questions about the the sort of more performance-based pay versus steps, what is the the percentage of say uh public safety or cities working off more of these open range structures versus those that are on more traditional step? That's that's really tricky and it really it varies dramatically depending on honestly the state you're looking at. It also when you're looking at public safety, if it's unionized or not unionized, u dramatically changes what type of structures they maintain. Generally speaking, pay for performance, that concept that we might be more familiar with in private sector employment doesn't exist as predominantly in the public sector. Um, so but that doesn't mean that there aren't organizations that that that have that. It's just that kind of true model is probably less adopted in the public sector than what we would see in the private sector. But it's really hard to say the prevalence of steps versus open ranges. Generally speaking, there was a trend toward open ranges maybe a decade ago. And we still we have lots of clients that still are asking us for open range structures. But there is a predictability with steps that employees like um it can also be challenging for um governmental groups because it's it's hard to keep a step away, right? So you know if you have a step structure and you know to not fund it can be really demoralizing for an organization and so that I think might be part of the calculus for decision makers in terms of thinking about the pros and cons of open ranges versus steps. Great. And then the second question goes back to these sort of options and I'm uh trying to understand so if there is a position that is let's say 20% under market in terms of their minimum if you go to option two then you're raising them up maybe 20% to a minimum and then they potentially get an additional pay increase. But in option three, they wouldn't they wouldn't get anything above because that 20% was already high enough. It's Could you just explain a little bit how some of the most underfunded positions would fare under two and three? Sure. So when we think about the below minimum, that is an employee-based calculation. meaning you look at that employees pay today and you look at their new proposed pay range minimum and if whatever that gap is then you increase their pay to at least the minimum of that new pay range. So under option two, the idea is that that would be the first mechanism and then a an additional general wage increase, again this is what's being modeled as part of that would be an option for consideration. And so in that those scenarios that employee could receive more than the 8 to 12 that was on that slide because depending on where they are now and what the minimum increase is then if a general wage increase was applied the idea would be that all typically all employees in that group would get that same increase. That's where option three provided that cap. Meaning if you do the calculation of whatever the minimum the bring to minimum cost is then apply a general wage increase but then subject that overall increase amount for that employee to a particular percentage amount. That would be that third option of the cap. Did I explain that correctly or mayor? I have I have a question. Um, when you're looking at your job families, where would Solid Waste Services fall? Which category, which family would you consider them to be? I just need to go to that. Let's see. And I might need a little bit of help from my HR colleagues here. Let's see. operations. Ah, thank you very maintenance and operations. Thank you, Charell. Question. Yeah, I have a question just for the city manager. Um, you had forecasted obviously that you're going to do the final report and bring us the figures for budget consideration. Do you have a timeline of when that'll occur? I know we had the actuary study also and there will be questions about that. I just want to make sure we have enough time as a body to weigh all options in the financial impact and make a holistic informed decision about what this is going to look like because I anticipate it's going to be fairly challenging. Um absolutely it will be. Our hope is that we'll be able to get all of the compensation pieces to you prior to the actual um presentation of the FY26 budget because the actual study was part of a budget note that comes back when we present the budget. That's the procedural process of bringing the pricing or costing of a budget note forward. So that'll be on May 20th. Um hopefully between Seagull tidying up everything and us being able to go back and and slot like B talked about last week, we should be able to have at least some projections and some recommendations for whatever that range is from 8 to 12 to anything beyond that within the next couple weeks. Okay. And then I if there were outstanding questions on this or the actuary study would we get that before the May 20th we had asked them to come back with like some specific data. So yes so that is the in tandem with all of this the HR director is working on that comprehensive memo that responds to all of the questions which required some additional benchmarking. So we're waiting to get all that data back so it will speak to all the questions that were lifted up as part of that budget work session. Okay. Typically, it's like a four, six weeks, but she's doing um speedy response on this hopefully so that we'll be able to get it back quicker. Well, I I I know I I appreciate it. I'm sure we all do, and I think we're all sort of bracing for the information you'll give to us. So, the more time the better, basically. Yes. Yep. Councilor Jones, and then Harrison, do you want Okay. Um, just to go back to the steps and the open in the cities that you the 11 cities that you heard back from, do they each have the are those the only two options? Are there other options to do that they are they do those 11 fall within steps or open range? It's a it's a great question. I don't recall specifically. We could certainly find out and get back to you. Um, we do ask for copies of their pay structures, but I don't remember which ones have steps and versus open ranges. Yeah, I would love to to know what the other cities that you studied are doing. Thank you. Sure. Yeah, this would be a question um for Marshall. I'm just thinking about, you know, for this larger conversation that we're going to have with all these different considerations. I'd also like to set some goals around in particularly for public safety and thinking about increasing the number of positions over into the future. How do we set goals as this body? We've had goals in the past that were set around affordable housing units, for example, how many units we want to get per year. And I'm just curious when do we have that kind of a conversation? Does that get rolled up in all this or I'm sure it'll be easy. Um, but just trying to get some, you know, thoughts on how do we, you know, start setting some, you know, goals for the future. So, great question. So because that is operational an employee completely attached to an employee we are doing staffing studies as you're all aware as the fire master plan should give us some recommendations um around what staffing level should look like and projected for the future as well as the staffing study that we're doing for RPD. we will bring forward to you a recommendation and a plan of implementation for that based on what that total number looks like and what is a realistic opportunity to implement it and part of the issue that we have currently right now because we run our ownmies in fire and police as well as in ECC based on we can only get so many people through the system in a year in a year's time and so short of additional facilities being able if if you all authorize 200 positions right now in police, we couldn't hire 200 additional police officers because we can't get them through the academy strategically to figure out what is the appropriate amount that we phase in over time so that we'll get to that benchmark number of whatever the appropriate number is. I think we're way off personally, but I don't want that to be my decision. And I wanted to be informed by the staffing study that will tell us based on population, based on crime data, based on the demographic makeup of this community what is the appropriate number. And so rather than just picking a number, we will strategically plan and phase for that. And that will come as a recommendation to you all as well. Can you remind me the time frame of that study? Ryan Bergman is working on that. So we'll get you an answer for when all that comes to um completion as well. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Council Johnson, just to follow up, will that be before this budget cycle gets presented to us? I doubt that we'll have the total numbers before that um before we bring the proposed budget to you guys on May 19th and to the public on May 20th. However, we will have the opportunity to after we get that data, get a recommendation to you and depending upon how the fiscal year closes out that we might have some opportunities to do something midyear. Thank you. Yep. And piggybacking on that with the fire master plan, will um there be some um component uh addressing the possibility of switching the firefighters to 12-hour shifts as a part of that study? I think there are several components of that study that looks at resources facilities staffing, and I think all of the elements that were requested at the table and a part of the scoping exercise. So, we should get that back within the next 30 days. So, hopefully um your question will be addressed. And if not, I know deputy um city manager Tancy Hayward had done some um preliminary work before she left and we have access to that information as well. Thank you. Okay, I think we have exhausted our questions. Wait, okay, I have lots of questions. Not not anyway. Um can what what do you suggest for long-term employees who are already making more than the minimum? What are the suggestions in the study for those employees? More than the minimum. We don't have a recommendation in terms of our options for additional employee compensation increases beyond the general wage increase amount. Okay. All right. Thank you. And just from my understanding of this information, there's minimums, midpoints, and maximums. So if they're more than the minimum, then they're either above or below the midpoint or close to the max. So I think options two and three are the ones that address the midpoint and whatever adjustments need to be made instead of option one. So that's why I didn't like option one. And to piggy back off of that, any recommendation that HR, finance, um, payroll that we'll bring forward as part of a recommendation will address not just the minimum, which I think is a priority. Everybody, if we're going to implement a new compensation study, everybody should be making what the new pay ranges are, but um, in addition to that, there'll be opportunities to kind of look at and make sure that whatever we do won't create unintended consequences because we've learned from past mistakes. And that as one part of the range shifts, we shift the entire job simply because that decreases the ability for additional compression and leaprogging. So, we will be really intentional about making sure that as the structure is implemented and as we make those movements that there will be considerations for if we move those minimums, what does it look like for most people who are closer to the midpoint or beyond the midpoint so that we're not having employees rub up against each other and touch to the point that there is compression and nothing separates them um based on tenure or years of experience. So that is some of the back of the house stuff that we do every day on a daily basis to try to try to minimize what the impact of a new system. And as you all know, anytime you implement something new, there's going to be kinks. But we've learned from some of the mistakes that we've made over the last several years and really intentional about making sure that as we move, we move everybody this time, not just those that are on the lower end, so that the compression doesn't become a compelling issue. and predominantly in public safety leaprogging. That's where particularly if you have a promotion cycle in the middle of implementation, we we've kind of talked with the chiefs that we won't do that either because when we do that, that upsets the apple cart as well. And then you got to go back and make some tweaks for the people who are most recently promoted. Right. And thank you for for addressing that because I think in my conversations with uh unions of staff unions that that was a big deal back in I think 2017 when that last uh study went through and that it led to compression. So definitely want to make sure that's on top of your mind. So I appreciate uh you bringing that to the table um for those that have been here for you know a long time that don't want to watch everybody below them you know make almost as much and then them not not increase. So I appreciate it. Thank you. as long as they're performing. And trying to promote people, thank you for all the thoughtful work and for all the studies and and effort going on across multiple departments um for all of this. So all right, we will move on and we have the report recommendation of economic development which did not meet and then we had growth and natural resources. Uh chair Harrison Let's see. Yes, we did meet um let's see, last week and we had a split vote on a uh authorizing a text change which would create a minimum 30% forestation requirement um for commercial lots and then uh residential lots of greater than 1 acre in the urban wershed protection overlay district. This is actually reducing the forestation. So currently 40% is what's required. The vote that was uh passed 2:1 was to make it 30% and then to have somewhere between um I think it was probably 0 to 30% forestation required for anything less than 1 acre. There are have been 70 variances or so um on this particular watershed. Just to note, this is um in district B. Council member Patton's district. This is not a, you know, watersheds across the the city, but rather it's a specific area where there's been some error made around uh the forestation requirements. It's no longer a water supply watershed. That's what our discussion was. Um anyway, a number of options there to consider. Um and I guess we could take action today based on our recommendation. I'm going to open it up to council member Patton and we might need to have um some presentation. It might be helpful to see the various options because there's three distinct options on what can be done. But what I'll emphasize is that again residents who are looking to make improvements to their home, you know, like a single family home on a less than 1acre lot are having to come to the board of adjustment for a variance um because they can't meet the forestation requirements. And a lot of these homes were built on uh maybe, you know, suburban lots that didn't even have uh a lot of tree cover to begin with. So, um I'll stop there. Yeah, for sure. So, just to put like an exclamation mark on all that, this we're we're we were discussing whether to authorize a text change for one very specific district in the city, not all water supply, water sheds. And and as council member Harrison said, like these homes were built in the 90s and then in the early 2000s, this um water supply district was applied over the top after most of the development had already occurred. And it basically says 40% of your lot has to be forested, but 70% of your lot can be impervious. So obviously 40 and 70 is not not 100% of your lot. So that's what's creating this issue and residents are having to go basically go through like a quasa judicial process is basically like going to court. So it's very expensive and and time consuming. So we'd like to um the vote of the committee was to authorize a text change to clean this up. So any large lot um com or commercial sites would move to a 70 and 30 70% in pvious 30% forestation and then the small lot residential would have some some amount of forestation between between there um and so what I would what I think the motion will be is um to ask staff to bring back a special item with these options and then the the vote of the council would authorize the text change if that was the will of the So that's a motion. Can I get a clarification on the options? I was the person who voted uh in the negative. Uh we had a very good presentation from staff. uh it came to light that this is a urban watershed and the wershed is no longer basically serving its purpose of providing a waterershed for water supply and there were three options and I had preferred the option which probably would have been a reasonzoning to remove the overlay since it's no longer serving as purpose as a watershed for water supply. The option two does provide leaf for some of the homeowners, but there are other property owners that will still have to abide by regulations that's not fulfilling its purpose. So, I didn't know I just, as you know, walked in again, my flight was cancelled, so I'm very grateful to be here. Uh, so I don't know, uh, council member Harrison if you said you wanted staff to present the three options or I think that would be helpful for the rest of the council to see it while we're discussing something. Mhm. I mean, if the the reason we have committees is to sort of do this work and help nudge us forward. And so having staff bring it back as a special item, do the presentation all over again sort of defeated the purpose of it going to committee. If the committee's recommendation was 21 to authorize the text change, I would vote I'm prepared to vote today to uphold the committee's recommendations. It's authorizing a text change. So it will still go to the planning commission and then back. But, and not to be disrespectful, but quite frankly, there was no point of this going to committee if we're going to have it as a special item for staff to do the entire presentation. Again, to clarify, I was thinking it could be on the the screen right now just in case folks wanted to see it, but I will second your motion. Right. I I I will move to uphold the committee's recommendation with the understanding that this is coming back for final council approval once the text change process has been exhausted. If we were going to do that, I think we would need to provide some direction to staff because what we left in committee was that we were going to we were going to square up for the large lot and commercial and then we they were going to bring us back sort of like should the small lot residentials residential have 0% forestation or 12% forestation or whatever. They were going to bring that we left that as an open thread. So they wouldn't we would need to tell them. So is there still work left to be done? So, it sounds like to send this back to committee second. No, I don't accept it. Let's just put a percentage out there. Can I get maybe Pat um do you all need a specific number from us or can you come up with a number that you think is reasonable based on our discussion? Sure. So, good afternoon Pat Young with planning and development. Um you all certainly characterized the conversation at the committee very well. What we could do is bring several options to the planning commission. Um it would probably be in the range of zero 10% plus or minus and 25%. Somewhere in that range not not please don't hold me to that precisely. We're working with our colleagues at storm water and others to make sure we're follow following best practices and having a credibly based percentages. But we could we could go directly to planning commission with those three options. Let them deliberate, discuss pros and cons and then it would come back to you. or it can come back to you as a special item, whichever your preference is. Councelor Silver, important clarification. When you say the three options, were those the three options that were presented to the committee or this is a variation of option two? It's a variation of option two. So, so what was brought to the committee was that the forestation requirement would go from 40% to 30% for our all parcels over one acre. Um and then for residential parcels below 1 acre that there would we would eliminate the forestation requirements to zero. The committee by voted 2:1 thought that maybe that needed some further consideration. And so um what we can do is either as special item or to bring to the planning commission several alternatives about the forestation requirement for smaller residential lots. I think right now there's been has there been a motion and a second to go ahead and approve the text change. Yeah, with the notes that Pat has given with these options for planning commission staff direction on coming with this percentage. Okay. Any further discussion on that? I'm going to vote for the motion to move forward. Uh, but the caveat again, I'm going to express an undue burden on all property owners for a watershed that is not needed. And so I just want to make sure that as this conversation continues, I'm hoping there's a good conversation at the planning commission. Uh, but I'd be interested to see when it comes back. But I just don't believe it's fair to have an overlay that is burdening property owners. We're going to uh eliminate the burden on some, but there are still others. The purpose of an overlay, the intent is for this one is to help with the water supply. There is no water supply being captured by this wershed. And just another note, we have looked into increasing tree conservation areas um you know in different ways across the city. We have a variety of uh authorities that we lack to do this. In this particular watershed, we have more protections than usual. So that is where I don't want to lose all of those additional protections because we we can get rid of things we can pretty much never add back these days. Okay. Thank thank you for uh illuminating what happened in committee. All right. Uh and further discussion at planning. So uh we'll go ahead. All in favor of the motion on the table. I All opposed. And uh sounds like we'll have some good future discussion as well. I have a couple more items on growth and natural resources. Just some uh I guess uh ideas for future meetings. Um first I do want to say uh happy Earth month. Um so April, this is Earth Month, y'all. And uh we've done a lot of great things in growth and natural resources over the last couple of years. And I think this council has continued our environmental uh commitments wherever we can. I just want to lift up a few of those. Um we have approved a tree protection and planting plan. Um it's underway right now with parks. That's for our public spaces. Um Raleigh continues to protect hundreds of acres for our Falls Lake every year. That is our primary drinking uh water supply watershed. We have prohibited invasive species. We've made new commitments for green storm water infrastructure. We have a uh USGS study that is almost complete that is going to indicate vulnerable areas of stream bank erosion and health that we may be wanting to consider um opportunities for protection of water quality and to prevent downstream flooding. Um, we've also created a new program for ebike vouchers and have already provided 220 of those ebike rebates to residents. Um, also wanted to note we now have 10 routes, uh, bus routes with frequent every 15 minute service. So, we've made a lot of improvements in just the last couple of years. Um, there are a couple items I would like to um, ask for your consideration to move to GNR um, for discussion. um that would be in May. So, we've got a little bit of time. And the first is uh related to our UDO text change prohibition on invasives. So, I just want to get an update from planning about where we are with that because we had to have some changes um because of uh certain uh state uh laws that um basically we had to, you know, some of our policies became moot last year and I just want to make sure that we're still following up on that. Pat, do you want to give a quick update? Yeah, I'm happy to do that. I'm Pat Young, Planning and Development. Um, the reference change, the invasive species prohibition was part of a text change that was invalidated by state law uh 202457. We are bringing back um it was invalidated only because it was uh there were other provisions that were explicitly prohibited by that law. This provision was not. So, this and a number of other provisions are coming to the planning commission in April and will likely be be back before council in May. Okay. So, that that's coming. General Assembly is pro poison ivy. I hope not. Um yeah, so then a couple other items. Um there was a removal of trees next to I440. Um and it has basically removed both a visual and a sound barrier. My understanding is this was an illegal action in the shod and I'd like to have an update in our G&R committee about what are the penalties for removal of trees illegally um and what are the remedies because in this particular case now folks are do not have a sound barrier or a visual barrier to the highway and I don't know how fast we can remedy that or what is being done so that is something I would like to have uh just discussion at in the May committee meeting. Um, a couple other items. Um, I am curious to have a, uh, I guess a reflection of how we are, uh, tackling tree protections during large events like Dreamville. So, I think following up after the festival and looking into any improvements we can make. I want to say thank you so much to parks who has been in conversation with residents on this topic. I know are, you know, really focused on what is happening right now in the park. We have a lot of beautiful uh old trees that need our support and protection and we want to make sure that those are being uh taken care of. So, there's a couple ideas for improvements. I'd just like to hear a status report from staff in May on that one. And then, let's see, do I have anything else here? Um if there is an opportunity to hear an update on the tree planting plan that parks is working on with the parks board, that would be great. I just don't know if the timing is right. as well as uh we had discussed a native plant list that would be available to developers, not a requirement but just some kind of a recommendation of plants um that are native. So those are just a few items hoping to get some updates from staff on Marshall. Is that clear enough? I think it's really clear. I don't know if we can do all that by May. So, let us work um through management team tomorrow and kind of figure out what's a realistic time frame and I'll circle back with you scheduled. Okay. Okay. And I think I don't do I need support from council on that right now. Okay. They're not saying no. So, I assume we Okay. Thank you. Um councelor Branch. Yeah. It says there's no pinning items, but at our last meeting, we do have one item that was referred to council um in dealing with um um commercial and residential the impacts and that will be discussed at our main meeting. May 27th is the day after Memorial Day. Memorial Day. Yeah. Staff noted that earlier today. Um I just wanted to add on to that. Uh I thank you to city attorney McDonald. Thank you for helping me draft this language for this request. But in in conjunction with the meeting, I just want to set some um goals for staff to help uh what we're looking for. And so we said, I would like to request that staff research the implementation of time restrictions on commercial trash pickup, focusing on concerns raised by residents about early morning noise from dumpsters being emptied. This issue issue is affecting the quality of life in affected areas. Please prepare options and potential solutions that balance minimizing disturbances with maintaining efficient waste management for presentation to the safe, vibrant, healthy community committee on May 27th. This will allow the committee to consider appropriate recommendations for council action, future council action. Is that enough? Is that good? Cool. Thank you. Okay. And then we had the um anything else from council branch? No. Okay. Good. Uh, transportation and transit committee. Yeah. So, transportation and transit committee met last week. We had two topics. Uh, one of the topics had sort of two two items within it. Uh, so the neighborhood, we discussed the neighborhood traffic management program. One piece of that conversation was around the approval thresholds. So, we know that there's an on street threshold and a broader neighborhood threshold. And the um decision of the committee was to lower the lower the thresholds so that it would now be instead of 70% on street and 60% broader neighborhood it would now be 60% on street and 50% for the neighborhood. Um so I can that was the recommendation of the committee. Do we want to vote on that and then I'll keep going for keep it clean. So, uh, we move to lower the neighborhood traffic management thresholds from 7060 to 6050. So, moved. Second. All in favor of that motion? I I. All opposed? Okay. And the second second part of that same topic was that uh we looked at the Falls River Avenue project when it was presented to the full council. that was one of those like cusp cases that um very nearly made the thresholds but not quite. And then we also saw that there were like several other sections going to that were going to be offered traffic calming in the future. So uh we asked staff to see if there was like uh both give us a history of that of those projects and then see if there was another way we could approach it. um staff's uh sentiment was that it there wasn't really another way to do it, another program like a road road right sizing or some other tool. So with that in mind, the committee moved to take that Falls River 3 project and and move it forward which is you know was an option at the time of our previous conversation. So so moved. Okay. Um second uh all in favor of that motion I all opposed. Okay. All right. Then our other topic was uh sort of West Raleigh, Blue Ridge traffic considerations. This was not uh direct discussion of the resoning case that we'll hear tonight, but obviously had some like overlapping contextual information. Um so we got information around projects that are happening in the area. Um information about transit in the area. uh a little a tiny touch on the TIA that's been done by the applicant, but we'll hear more on that tonight. And then we heard from the public. I would say by and large the the comments from the public were around pedestrian safety, pedestrian access to the site and um wanting to understand better how those concerns will be met um by the application. So the applicant was there. We hope that they took those comments on board u but we'll motion to recommend this out of committee with no action. Okay. Joe moved. Second. All right. All in favor of that motion. I I All opposed. Right. Thank you for all the work and discussion and that's it. Right. Okay. So now we have report uh from the mayor and city council and we can start with mayor prom. No report. I have a report. Um some things that we did that were good through the consent agenda today. Um we authorized the Raleigh Housing Authority to go and and seek issuance of debt that will allow them to build um 340 affordable housing units. Uh we also set the public hearing for the consolidated plan and the annual action plan which are our like sort of guiding documents about our affordable housing future and we set that public hearing for April 15th. Um, and then we also signed a cooperative agreement with the state of North Carolina for our hazard hazardous materials regional response team. And so I'm just always saying like we worry so you don't have to. And that's just a small example of that. Um, other things I just wanted to let the public know my off my next office hours are April 10th from 6:00 to 8, location to be determined. And then I wanted to ask uh for a report from the appropriate department around uh some sort of key to the city process. I know it's my understanding we used to have one um and no longer do. Uh it doesn't have to be specifically keys to the city, but I wonder if we could get information about pier how peer cities recognize um significant contributors to to their city and and what if what if any opportunities we have there. Uh my only report is that um I had the privilege of attending the American Plan Association National Conference. I know Binham Walters attended as well. Uh there is a report anyone can download about the top trends that planners are planning needs to address for 2025. The big takeaway is that AI seemed to dominate artificial intelligence just seemed to dominate the different categories which is what to act on now, what to watch and then things in the future. Uh also there was some fascinating conversations about another trend that's happening across the country where certain states are passing legislation to allow religious institutions to reposition their land for density for affordable housing, senior housing. So there were just a number of great trends. uh an amazing conference over a few days and so uh just something again for the public it's free theplanning.org or if they want to download that report just to understand what are some of the trends that are happening uh across the country and that's it for my report. Okay. Uh I will say uh citizen boards and commissions has been um an item that has been referred to a task force. That task force will be meeting on April 15th at 9:00 a.m. in room 305. And uh that will be uh four uh counselors uh on that task force. But we'll be talking about right the existing uh volunteer citizen uh boards and commissions whether you know they all continue or there's some that might merge. Um also recently there was a national civic league program that councelor Patton and I attended that also talked about you know different tools and things of citizen assemblies etc. So can add that um to that conversation. But if you are interested um please come to that. And then I also have um two uh the Raleigh Housing Authority. Um they had some vacancies on there and asked that um I uh nominate two individuals um that they had vetted and and felt you know would really add value to that board. So, I have submitted Evan Coington Chavez and Geronica um Goodwin um to the clerk's office and let me know if there's anything else that I need to do there. Councelor Jones, thank you. Our next district E community meeting will be held at Lacusina Italian Restaurant on April 16th from 6:00 to 8. Our Decoding Democracy Book Club will begin our second book from the UNCC School of Government about ethics and government on Saturday, April 19th from 9:30 to 11:30 at Oberlin Regional Library. And then lastly, I want to send a big good luck to both Raleigh Fire and Raleigh Police this evening at their hockey game at Lenovo. I wish that we could be there to cheer you on, but I'm sending my family to represent me while we're at a public hearing. And a big shout out to Fire Union 548, local 548 for sharing their shirt, their hockey shirt with me. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. And also wish all our employees there and just I don't think they can use workers comp. So absolutely please be safe um as as you're out there and waiverss are in hand and and you're working. And also want to thank the um local fire union for the shirt that they provided um I think to all of us. Um, one of the things I want to mention is April 16th, I have a District C town hall at 6:30 p.m. at Barwell Community Center. I want to thank our mayor who's available who will be attending. Other council members, I haven't heard back who can or who can't, but you're welcome. Please attend if you can. Uh, I want to thank our police chief who will be there. Um, I know our city manager and fire chief, you have conflicts, but I know you'll be seeing representation u from your departments and also the other departments. My political analysts will be reaching out to some specific departments, but all departments are welcome. Um, my goal is to bring the city to the community um with this town hall. So, that's the purpose of it. April 16th, 6:30 p.m. at Barwell Road Community Center. And my last comment on top of the AI conversation, um, it's good sometimes just to flip channels. I was doing it the other day and I landed on NC Impact and there was a story and they were actually talking about AI with the city of Raleigh um and how we're using AI and transportation, storm water and throughout and I just want to thank our city staff and those that contributed to that conversation. I'm pretty sure you can go out and still find it. Um but it's with NC Impact and they talked about the AI and the conversation how technology is being used with the city of Raleigh. Yeah, I just want to say everyone have fun tonight at the hockey game and no report. Okay. And mayor, I'd like to just note, I thought Council Member Branch was going to say it, but tomorrow at 6 PM, Chief Rico Bis will be officially sworn in as our newest police chief. Um, and that will be at Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School at 6 PM. Great. Okay, we now have appointments and I will turn it over to the clerk's office. Good afternoon. First, we have B under appointments. Board of adjustment one. Board of adjustment, excuse me, one alternate vacancy. Rob Codddle received three votes. Keith Satisky four. So, this will be carried over to your next ballot. Design Review Commission one alternate vacancy. Dylan Davis received eight votes. So would be appointed environmental advisory board two regular vacancies. Jeffrey Bullard received two votes. Elise Denof 5 Vincent Potter 7. So Miss Denoff and Mr. Potter would both be appointed there. Historical resources and museum advisory board one regular vacancy. Emily Grant received seven votes. So would be appointed. Parks, Recreation, and Greenway Advisory Board, three regular vacancies. Uh we have Michael Alderman received three votes, Daniel Gilligan, seven, Jack Hilton, seven, Linda Pierce, five. Um so you did have three individuals who received enough votes. However, council member Lambert Melton did nominate Dan Walker, so it is up to you as to how to proceed. I think the folks who got the vote should be appointed and if there's another opening, I'll I'll submit his name again. Okay. Next is planning commission. One regular vacancy. Brian Bernett received five votes. Nick Neptune one, Mark Shelburn two. So Mr. Bernett would be appointed. Storm Water Management Advisory Commission, one regular vacancy. Council Member Jones nominated Marinel Ubaldo. So that will be carried over to your next ballot. And then jumping down to nominations, Design Review Commission, one regular vacancy. Resignation has been received from regular member Matthew Griffith. Past practice has been to elevate the longest serving alternate, which is Dave Toms, to a regular slot and declare an alternate vacancy. So moved. Second. And then I was going to say I I can co-nominate Marinelo. Um she sent in. She has a great background. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Uh just a clarification. Um I just noticed the name. Uh Mr. Thompson and I work at the same firm. Um just want to make sure there's no conflict or out that way I could just recuse myself. Just one clarification if there was a conflict for appointing someone to an advisory board. Okay. Well, I just want to disclose the fact that we do work for the same firm. Okay. So, we have a motion in the second. All in favor? I. All opposed. Okay. And lastly, we have human relations commission. Uh one regular vacancy term of Christina Espa is expiring. She would like to be considered for reappointment. Per council's direction, attendance information was provided in the agenda packet. Move to reappoint. Second. Second. Okay. All in favor of that motion? I I. All opposed. Okay. And that's it. Thank you. All right. Report of the city attorney. No report. Okay. And we have report of the city clerk. Good afternoon, mayor and council. We have one set of minutes that were included with your agenda materials from the March 18th regular session. Move to approve. Second. All right. Uh any other discussion? If not, all in favor of the motion I. I. All oppose? Nay. Right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, we um need a motion to move to close session. I do not have no close session today. Enjoy the afternoon. Madame Mayor, if if I could briefly just every year I know staff and these go out throughout the city. They're about um prevention child abuse throughout. I just want to highlight it that parks direct does a great job and I'm not sure where they're going to plant them if they're going to be in Nash Square or at a city park or pulling park. They're in Pulling Park. So they're in Pulling Park this year. Thank you. Thank you. Um, all right. So, with that, we are adjourned and we'll reconvene at 7 p.m. this evening. [Music]