[Music] iule meeting to I have no um appreciate all the work that's gone into this and I will turn it over to Elena Keegan from the central Pines Regional Council who is our facilitator for the next two days yes thank you mayor good morning everyone it's really great to be here with you all um the mayor just mentioned a lot of work went into this weekend and I will say I do not want to take any credit for that I've been meeting with staff and they've put a lot of thought into the content that they are going to be sharing with you um for you to to talk with yourselves about and and decide you know how you want to move forward as a council in then the year ahead so um I did want to make sure we recognize your staff because they've done a fabulous job um preparing for this weekend so um with that I want to start the next two days with you all by doing um a little bit of some ground rules if any of you have been a part of a retreat before you've probably experienced this I know some of you experienced this last year um these are a combination of some things that I personally am recommending as ground rules for this conversation but also things that came out from my conversations with all of you so you all are aware that each of you individually had a conversation with me about what you're hoping to get out of this Retreat what you're hoping to get out of the year ahead um and there's some common themes that are reflected in the ground rules and then and some other materials that I'll be sharing with you throughout this weekend so um what I'm going to do is run through this list of ground rules um if there's questions about what specifically a ground rule means or if there's an addition that anyone would like to make to this list I would love to hear from you all now so um the first one is respect the clock um also respect is we can say respect is in there as well but respect the clock is most important because as you all know we have a packed agenda um we are starting relatively on time but I know that there's G to be a lot of time for discussion between you all and so we really want to make sure that you can get through all the items that you've selected to talked about um and that'll be my job um but would love to have us all collectively be aware of um the agenda that we have in front of us and the work that staff did to bring it to you this weekend the next is be present um this is a hard one um please try and keep phones computers down or off um as much as you can I know some folks might have school closure closures or delays or um other things that are going on um but it's really important that we all are are in the space together and so I ask um as much as possible to to stay off your phones and your computers um and I will be reminding everyone of that throughout the next couple days uh the next one is seek consensus so um you all are aware that the power that you have as a collective councel is when you find agreement with with one another um consensus means everyone's on the same page and that's really what you would like to strive for um because when you all agree you can actually make change right so we're going to be seeking to find places where you all agree on the different topics um that you are discussing the next couple days the next one is in explain reasoning and intent um and this one might feel a little bit confusing so I'm going to explain it um I I I would like to encourage you all when you're saying thoughts as you're having these discussions that you explain how you came to your conclusion so that your peers can understand maybe where they agree with the process you took to get to that decision or disagree and then we can have a little bit more conversation about that context because I think um sometimes if you just have a statement there's not a lot of context there so please I encourage you to to share your intent behind statements and then focus on outcomes and this one was Universal from all eight of you you really want to come out out of this weekend having made decisions and giving staff Direction um and so I really encourage you to focus on um strategic outcomes that you can request from your staff um you are not going to need to answer all the house but that's what your staff is here for and so um as you're having these conversations about the different topics thinking about the outcome you hope to see in the year ahead from your staff will be really important so those are the five ground rules I've got is there are there any questions about those or additions to the list Perfect all right so these are going to stay um up here and I'm gonna keep this here so what we're going to do um I know I heard uh some strong no Ice Breakers we're not doing an icebreaker this doesn't count as an ice breaker but um I want to thank the mayor for um recommending and the inspiration for this activity so mayor it's going to look a little bit different than what you experienced um but uh uh it is based on something that the mayor participated in during a Bloomberg Workshop um and I think what is most notable about it is that um you all have limited time right I I know um I think it was at Last Retreat which I was able to join you all at there was a lot of discussion about how much is on your plat you many of you have other jobs you have families you have um con large groups of constituencies and so time is really really valuable and finite um and so what we're going to be doing is individually and then collectively reflecting on how you use your time and what you want to see from the result of that so we are going to do this in two phases and if anyone can't see this let me know I know the text is a little small so I'll I'll read it out loud as well everyone able to see this okay so you have Post-it notes in front of you you also have a pad you can use either whichever is your preference some folks like to use um po not so you can put an individual thought on each one or you can um put them all on a pad and you're going to answer individually for the next several minutes the following questions in the next six months how do I want to spend my time oh sorry not notepad paper in the front and if you don't have a pen or paper we can anyone need anything else for the okay everyone's got a pen everyone's got paper perfect um so individually answering how do I want to spend my time in the next six months and this should be specifically focused on actions that you would like to take um and I know an example that I can provide is have meetings with folks in the community and then you're going to also answer um in the next six months what do I want to accomplish and you are going to write down outcomes that you would like to see in the next six months and I'm going to give you about five to seven minutes depending on how long it takes everyone that's for okay for for for for for for okay I appreciate just one or two more minutes I see folks are still writing so not we're wrapping up soon all right I know I still see some going but just to keep us moving so then we're going to now um we're going to shift from Individual to groups so um what you have written down um if you still have thoughts you need to jot down you can keep doing that as you shift into groups of four so um I think the easiest way with the setup is going to be if um folks can kind of just mush together so 1 two 3 4 and 1 two 3 4 that should be fine however if there's an easier way to do it that's fine um just for this way and for this way um and what you're going to do in these groups of four is you're going to share your answers so you're going to have a chance to sort of reflect on what you wrote and collectively identify shared answers or concepts that you can agree upon reflect similar things that you all wrote and you're you're really looking to answer the following two questions now as a group what do we want to accomplish in the next six months and what do we want to spend our time on in the next six months and what we're going to be do once you finish those conversations we're going to be coming back together and sort of putting together a group compact or wish list of the next six months um so it'll be things that you're going to be wanting to share back out with us does that make sense to everyone okay and if you have any questions just let me know so give you about probably 10 minutes in your groups cof Cofe the coffee arrived so I'm gonna if anyone needs coffee okay it looks like they're bringing it in [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I know everyone's still talking but we're going to kind of start sharing out so if you haven't written down your final answers that your group decided on do that now and if you haven't identified someone to report out do that now all right so we're going to answer each of them we're going to go Group by group with the answers you're not going to read both questions you're going to do accomplishments and then we're going to talk about time um so group one um Whoever has been tasked with reading nice so what do you all want to accomplish uh oh had a great conversation on what to accomplish and it really revolved around different uh you know connecting with Community but I heard a lot of self what can I do when make sure we have enough time to sleep I heard that and that was really important you know how how do we make sure we manage our time so it is healthy enough to focus on the issues of the day um focusing on learning about issues of the city and how do we say that to the community and make sure we're we're informing them of all the work that's being done so that they can better have a say in creating the future of that um I we want to do that through meetings on the public side on the public participation side but then through our own analysis of learning about the system so trying to summarize that sorry I didn't take notes and so trying to remember everything and there was a lot so no that's fine I want to make sure I capture because so SLE I wrote down a big one um manage your time so that you're able to Ser serve the community is another and then having some interact repeat the second sure so it was just interactive to make sure they we're educating the community to that uh to that end um sleep was was important because I can't like I I didn't say that Janet said that and I was like oh my God that speaks to my soul because I did not put that on my paper but how are we balancing the fact that some of us have other jobs you know that are demanding and we can't always put the time uh I'm going to jump ahead cuz boundaries I have a four month old so I agree on the sleep but uh how how are we working together as a group I think is is a big one and and we I I think I'm jumping ahead to the group one so I'm sorry if I'm not following no you're fine this is yeah it's just what you all want to accomplish then we'll talk about what you want to how you want to spend your time right so that might be where we talk about group okay unless you feel like it accomplish whichever you want to put it under I'm going to say it and you put it wherever you think it belongs um how are we going to work as a group to recognize the strengths of each other to say okay you're great on planning you're great on community engagement and and then work together to inform each other instead of all eight of us working on affordable housing and that being our big thing and then we're missing something so um I think that summarizes a lot but please uh edit my my comments my group if I missed anything yes and please correct me if I summarize this incorrectly coordinating and collaborating as a council does that sound like an efficient summary of okay can I say the one there was one point where we certainly want to hear Community Voices but also want to know what are the trends what are the emerging issues what are the challenges that facing so we want to hear from the community but are we running out of land are we running out of water like what are those Trends we need to prepare for so we have the balance of what we're hearing from the community but also what the challenge before us at a city that we need to solve and then we can educate the community on here are some of the pressing issues that are coming our way yeah we are I was hypothesizing you might spend a third of our time in the formal dut uh City Hall City Council meetings like formal committees a third like out in the community right listening to voices experiencing the city and then a third might be the benchmarking the trends the policy the research the more proactive bigger picture understanding the that help us actually be effective yeah um that makes sense I want to make sure because you said three different things and well I was saying it was about time allocation yes research policy Trends benchmarking and a third on the formal actual meetings got I see some head NOS so I feel like folks agree with you on that okay um group number two accomplishments yeah if it's okay I'm gonna start with how we're going to spend our time that's our discussion started yeah that's fine um and I think we were all pretty aligned and that we really want to stay close to the ground and talk to our residents um speak with our constituents on a regular basis whether that's through you know Town Hall meetings you know monthly or quarterly meetings with residents our roles on boards and commissions as Liaisons and just being um very accessible to our residents and then also accessible to one another so staying in communication with each other and um I'll just put a star the idea of really playing into each other's strengths and competitive advantages so that we can do as much as we can with the limited time we have on this Earth um so how do we what do we actually want to do um we got into um I guess more policy related topics so what we talked about at least in terms of consensus um everyone brought up Public Safety we want to make sure that we are increasing our staffing for Raleigh Police that we are lowering vacancy rates and increasing compensation and benefits for all of our public safety personnel and essential departments we also talked about affordable housing um we're really excited to see how this pilot is working for um folks that are unsheltered and we want to um you know both get the data back about the results and then determine if addition budgeting is needed in this next budget for that program to continue and expand um as well as the DMV site so getting that off the ground and continuing to build that work we mentioned bus Rapid Transit and I'll say a couple um you know topics that just came up from each individual person I'd say you know I think we all agreed with each other on our different topics but you know we have different priorities depending on where we sit so for example fville Street downtown came up how are we really investing in that space um Forestville Road Park continuing to implement that Park and get it off the ground um as well as some of our top 20 intersections that have high crash rates getting budgeting for them um yeah council member Branch had mentioned the DMV site so we have a lot of different topics that we're all following again in our kind of individual Focus areas great all right um I'm going to clean this up so that we can have it available throughout the next couple days um but I just want to reflect on it quickly um so accomplishments and how you want to spend your time I think the biggest thing I heard from both groups is finding out ways that you can leverage each other to be more effective um and I think I heard that in your individual conversations as well there's a lot of desire to see where each of you can can lend a hand to each other and and be more effective as you reach out to the community um a lot of desire for coordination um a desire to spend time in the next six months understanding the trends that are on the horizon or maybe are already here um and that is probably something you'll have to partner with staff on um being close to the ground so being close to your community spending time with the community as much as you can through a variety of ways um and then this is sort of building on the leveraging of your strength so you all obviously represent different parts of the community come from different backgrounds how can you work together to do that um so those are some things to you know in six months have you all uh spent time on that they want to check back and then accomplishments um there's a big mix here and I I know it's hard to sometimes come we all have different priorities to come up with a list that doesn't include all of those priorities but this is sort of what you all collectively would like to accomplish um I'll still start with sleep because I know that's I think that's all more on the time where we were talking about life balance so I just don't want the community to think that what we want to accomplish is is sleep sleep right so I think a lot of what we reported out should be on the bottom part about how we're managing our lives and being healthy and being present yeah no I that's a great con yeah I will happily move that um and can I add just really quickly I think it's the transparency what we were talking about here and you know we can talk about a police officer and and that we need more but we need to be able to transmit to the community what that means to tax increases in order to increase the basis to pay for that so our job is to make sure that the the community understands all of those points rather than just say I'm going to add 400 officers when right now we're in a 100 officer deficiency and we can't hire that so it's it's kind of false to say oh we're just going to add 400 officers when we know we can't do that right away so how do we better communicate that so that they understand what's coming and that's where I think it led to the um you know understanding the plans of the future and the trends that's what I think we were trying to communicate okay that makes sense and this hopefully it's reflected in helping the communicate feel educated and informed on the actions you're taking as well does that feel yes add that um so we're going to move about which I think is is a really good addition thank you mayor um to have sort of the mental uh balance uh sleep coffee will be something that you want to make sure you're prioritizing so that you can effectively serve the community which is also up here but I would say we can move down here for for time um increasing Public Safety Staffing and paying which I know this group said but it also sounds like might be something that is reflected in your priorities over here as well um seeing the results of the pilot on unsheltered community members of providing services for them launching the DMV site um making sure our community is educated informed on the actions that are being taken making progress on brt and funding projects for high crash intersections um anything that anyone wants to add before we shift to our next topic all right so with that let so we're going to move this that you can we've got our next presentation coming up yeah okay for for I got to get a new head shot um so this is a local artist and she is a registered vendor in anyone like in there we go all right wonderful hopefully you had a chance to go into the other side room uh what did we see in that other side room some beautiful Lego displays by fourth graders so what we're going to be doing today is we're going to be focusing on your priorities but we're doing that in the context of the voices of our public and then we also have a little introduction for us today from Joiner Elementary so Luke if you wouldn't mind getting that teed up welcome to the Big Ideas Raleigh podcast I'm your host Dan B today's episode is co-created by fourth graders at Joiner elementary school if you know anything about 10-year-olds it's that we don't know exactly what we're in for but we're excited to find out are we excited yeah we'll be joined by the office of strategy and Innovation aka the office of yes and which seeks to infuse creativity and bold thinking into local government they are currently working on the city's next strategic plan and our local students are going to help us dream big a better like community space or something so if we want to build this new part seef for how are we gonna get the money and what are we gonna put there so it's safe for people to climb on it there might be flying cars lots more technology better AI yeah that's probably what I would think it's going to look like I'm Dan Bagley and we'll see you next time on the Big Ideas Ry podcast so did you guys have fun today yeah [Music] great so special shout out to rtn and also to Dan Bagley for helping us put that together so that will be a season 2's promo for the Big Ideas Raleigh podcast but the work that you are doing today is focused on like the next three years but the next three years are building us to the Future and so for these students it's the work that you are doing today that sets that foundation for 10 or 20 or 30 years from now so again we invite you they have um giving you some little notes um written just for you so we invite you to keep those ideas in mind but today we're going to move forward yeah you don't and look at your priorities so we basically we gave you some homework and thank you for doing that homework for us and we look to you to see about what are your priorities for this next time period And if you can see there's a lot of alignment so Elena talked about the consensus that you're here to build and that consensus will allow you to then have action and to take those steps and have those outcomes so you have had this material before so this is not new to you but for those in the room as you can see we mapped it out and we have tremendous um consensus about housing about environmental resilience Community engagement Economic Development and Transit so now the question is what are the priorities so what we have done is we have taken extensive amount of time to talk to the community and to learn from them what is top of mind for them and now we're going to go through basically a little a workshop with you where you are going to go through a prioriti prioritization exercise okay good morning everyone and thanks again for joining us for part two of this priority conversation that we started at the work session last week so uh at that time we reminded you the structure of our strategic plan and today we're really going to talk about this objective priority level uh set of content so we've heard from you we've heard from residents now it's time to bring it all together and figure out what is it that we want to focus for on for the next strategic plan um so we've already talked about your alignment here we're going to show you how this all fits together with our resident priorities um and you all received a report ahead of today's meeting that had the results of our community engagement efforts for the Strategic plan so that included stories and experiences that we heard from residents that resulted in a list of community priorities for you all to consider including in the next plan um we had an opportunity to then take that list of community priorities map them onto your priorities to see how that all fits together so there's a version of that displayed here but the report you received was organized in that same way so hopefully you could see the alignment that exists so that's an excellent foundation for today that means that what is top of mind for you all is also top of mind for residents and that should make our work easier today to be able to identify a prioritized list of things to work on so you all saw the full results but I'm going to briefly recap the list of community priorities so that we can all be on the same page and then for the benefit of the folks who are joining us today I'll go through this pretty briefly and here's a lovely snapshot of the residents that we got to speak to so the First Council priority around housing we heard two Community priorities here which were to enhance housing security for Raleigh residents and to support high density multi-use developments that provide diverse housing options and integrate with Transportation Networks the next Council priority was around environmental resilience and here we heard three items from Community priorities to enhance waste diversion practices and curbside Services provide programs that enhance climate resilience for residents with a specific focus on vulnerable populations and then to encourage climate resilient new development the next Council priority around Public Safety we heard from residents as well they would like to see enhanced Community safety measures and a broad sense of safety around Community engagement Council all of you nearly all of you identified an emphasis on community engagement and we heard from residents here a desire for clear service standards in order for us to deliver consistent highquality services that are responsive to their needs and for us to deliver a seamless and inclusive customer service experience under Economic Development and Innovation we heard from residents a desire to Str strengthen Partnerships with Workforce Development organizations to build a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem so there's better coordination and collaboration across the organization supporting small businesses a desire to modernize and streamline the city's business support processes Contracting how to do business with the city business support and eliminating barriers and finally to highlight Raleigh's local culture as a driver of Tourism and economic development under the council priority of Transit we heard from residents uh three Community priorities so improving the resident experience moving across the city to a more seamless accessible system especially when you're moving between modes of transit to expand and ensure the safety of the transportation Network focusing on vulnerable users such as pedestrians and cyclists investing in the future of Transportation by expanding clean energy transportation and the supporting infrastructure for that and then finally the council priority around employee pay and benefits the community priority aligned here is about cultivating an inclusive and Innovative workplace at the City by enhancing staff policies and programs so as you can see there is a wide range of issues that are identified here there's a lot of things we can be working on the city will continue to offer a wide range of services to ensure a high quality of life for our residents but today we want to talk about what is that more focused set of priorities where we want to invest more time and energy and jump start our progress over the next three years so that's the focus of today's meeting so to do that we're going to we have a series of steps for you all um we'll walk you through three parts of the conversation the first part is an individual exercise so you all we just covered the list you all have seen seen the list you'll get to think um individually select seven from this list that you would like to suggest be included in the Strategic plan and we we invite you to use some of the criteria here you saw this at the work session this came out of our evalu our strategic plan evaluation learning about best practices on how to prioritize plan set strategic priorities so we encourage you to think about what are priorities that are within the city's purview and influence that where we can leverage existing City assets to help us make progress issues that have cross- departmental or Citywide impact because remember we're bringing together staff from all across the city to work on these issues across service areas and then importantly where we feel progress can be made within three years there is a lot of work to be done over the next you know 10 20 50 100 years for this strategic plan what are those actions we can start taking today and where we can see progress in the three years okay yeah so you have a little set of cards oh there we go we need one more set we'll get to the cards in a second yeah sorry we had a lot of supplies today so you have your list and you'll be able to check your seven and so again there are many priorities that we have as a city we also do have departmental business plans so there could be some items on that list that uh departments are able to carry out but you want to think about the way that the city of R the City of Raleigh organizes it strategic planned is we have cross departmental teams yes you oh that's good and so you have a roster of Staff who were going to come together and be working on initiative teams for these so this is something that you think that a cross- departmental team could really come together and think differently come up with maybe a new approach to doing it it's something that we have the asset so when we come with an asset approach the city is full of that that is um staff that's buildings that's Social Capital it's funding those are the things that are within our purview and that you think if we really put our attention on this in three years we could Advance this forward all right so again there are more of these priorities than our seven but we also have again other departments there are other ways that we could carry out the work but in this strategic plan In This Moment In Time what are the seven that you think we need to prioritize yes before start can I just ask about um this list so there's the big buckets like and then within Them There community priorities that are listed that are slightly more specific some of these have multiples and some of them have one um particularly looking at Public Safety and the one Community priority is enhanced public safety measures which could mean many things to many community members uh is that all lumped together because there was such a vast array of responses or or can you describe why some of these have four and some have one yes that's a great question some of these we were able to pull out more specific things that residents want to see um some of these also are still there's room to better Define what goes under each of them um and we would love feedback from you all as we go forward to define the specific initiatives that go within the plan we want to again what exactly within Public Safety what exactly within housing what exactly within Economic Development do we want to focus on so it's a little bit of both there and then also keep in mind so these are basically uh forming objectives but then underneath objectives there are initiatives so there could be a one to two even three that go under that all right we'll give you all another two minutes to make your selections I think some folks are ready I don't I don't know are we supposed to put our names on here you don't care I did youo I just wanted to provide a quick reminder when you're speaking to make sure you pull your microphones down you'll probably just want to make sure you knew that before we got into the conversation I think it is still struggling to hear some folks yeah about our Legos okay well don't when discuss about the leg you don't need to do it when it's that but future conversation make sure to just pull your mic closer to you okay so I think everyone is ready so the next step is to get into pairs so you can just turn to the person next to you kind of two two two two and share your seven choices but then as a pair you are going to select the seven that you want to share with the group um for the next step okay uh well that's a great opportunity to discuss and collectively decide again kind of sharing your reasoning impact and make some choices and so this is where the the cards will come in handy because you can you can move your cards around you can uh position them in different ways yes thank you heather the cards are colorcoded and they're easy to move around and we'll use the cards at the end of this let see which we I know I know yeah I's put here [Music] n n [Music] oh n n [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] n [Music] you've pulled out um the corresponding cards as well and then we're going to go ahead and and share so uh the pair will share your selected seven and we'll start at this side thank you I was also told that we need to do the mic thing so if people at home can't hear us someone just tapped me um what's interesting is council member Harrison and I we picked I think of the seven five of the seven the same and then we actually upon discussion switched out one and added a different one that neither of us had and so we had some balance and so for Transit we said improve the resident experience moving across the city into a seamless and accessible system we also felt like the word accessible touches upon the bicycle and pedestrian experience and so that was a way that we could pull that in since we didn't have the ability to add that specific card with that talked about bik and ped um for housing we did both the enhanced housing security for Raleigh residents and the support high density multi-use developments that provide diverse housing options and integrate with Transportation networks for Public Safety we we selected the enhanced Community safety measures environmental resilience provide programs that enhance climate resilience for res residents with the focus on vulnerable populations um Economic Development Innovation modernize and streamline business support processes across City departments to eliminate barriers to business growth and then Community engagement establish clear service standards to deliver consistent highquality services that are responsive to community needs I just want to also say that I think we both agreed that we would love to do everything that was on this list and so picking these as the top seven doesn't mean that we think any of the other ones are less important we just for this activity had to pick seven and we picked seven that I think Encompass some of the others as well absolutely and again there are other ways that some of this work can be done but we are thinking about again the prioritization of resources and the staff time to work on this I was curious um you talked a lot about or mentioned this notion of w to make sure it was balanced can you tell us a little bit about that process so did you notice some of the things were originally in one category well we we noticed that we didn't have anything from the blue card category the economic development and Innovation category um and so we just did a little retooling of the others uh we initially had two under environmental resilience and the other one we had was the like curbside practices and stuff we sort of felt like that may not be uh wide enough for like a big uh idea that seems like a very specific policy that could be accomplished without it being maybe pulled in and and um and we also felt that the other environmental resilience option focused more on um large scale Holistic Solutions um to climate change and resiliency and we really wanted to include an economic development one um and you know I've personally heard from some folks that have struggled with opening businesses or doing Innovative things with their businesses just due to some regulations or the process taking too long and so you know I had advocated for us to include that okay great wonderful Harrison pulled her mic down I just have to add a plug for curbside Services I think there still are opportunities um to think about compost service um how often we have access to recycling and then loose leaf pickup so those are conversations I hope to continue absolutely absolutely all right we'll go to our next pair so we had three that we wholeheartedly agreed on and then we talked and figured out the other four um so the three that we agreed with right away was under um the employee paying benefits cultivating and inclusive Innovative workplace by enhancing staff policies and programs under Transit improve the resident experience moving across the city in a seamless accessible system and then Public Safety enhancing Community safety measures and then the others we talked about like under housing I had one um councilman imp Pat had the other but we decided the one we're going to select is enhancing housing security for Raleigh residents on environmental resilience U since we can only do seven um I didn't select one but um coun batt did but we decided to um go with enhanced waste diversion um practices um and curbside Services goes back to compost um talking about residents from even food compost but also even commercial um you know cuz even though a different U vendor may be picking up their trash they're going to the same landfills um so really looking at that holistically um under Community engagement um we decided um delivery of seamless and inclusive customer service experience um out of this you know the conversation um I brought up you know the call center 311 um idea and a lot of times people are always emailing us as council members because they don't know where to go or who to talk to um and then our staff they take the the information they transfer it over to the department but then the department may need more information so however we can kind of you know shorten the pathway to a solution um I think is great and that is oh and lastly under Economic Development and inclusion um we chose strengthen Partnerships with Workforce Development organizations to expand employment opportunities for vulnerable populations um and that also includes doing business with the city and things of that nature some of the same reasons um that um previous groups selected theirs but also thought about the group NC works is a great partnership when we talk about our vulnerable community and even our Partnership of those who are unsheltered getting started I know NC Works does free training um and they work with a lot of PE residents in the community and companies go to them for for people for employment so I think strengthening those Partnerships overall are are good did I catch everything yeah I'll just add one thing I thought was interesting hearing the thinking of the first group is that when we were vacillated on which economic resilience one to choose um I ended up thinking that curbside Services would be a priority because I found it to be wider while I thought the other one sort of focused on individual actions like you as an individual can come to the city and request rainwater rewards relies on like individual action whereas I thought curbside service is like a systemic change and thus like a heavier hitter so it was just interesting to hear like the counter you know different ways of thinking through it yeah absolutely um uh with both the way you're thinking those reducing barriers right for for either of those absolutely all right yep so uh councelor silver and I councelor silver and I had a lot of commonality uh we both chose the two housing priorities uh we both chose Public Safety we both chose uh for economic development modernize and streamline and then um on some of the others we we kind of negotiated you know which one uh we were going to so the community engagement delivering a seamless and inclusive customer service experience standards are important but the coordination seems to be uh to me the bigger issue or to us uh environmental resilience we did uh programs that enhance resilience for vulnerable populations and then Transit improve resident experience great and in this process I guess were there certain parts of the discussion you found harder than others or you found pretty good alignment seems we like one of the same person we like council member lamit Milton said they were all important we knew we had to pick seven there was little room between some of them and so we just talked it out and I think we were down just to one so it was seamless uh and accessible so I think it just worked quite well good good so we are building on the movement of consensus today all right our last pair all right uh so for housing we selected enhanced housing security for Raleigh residents uh for environmental resilience we selected provide programs that enhance client I mean climate resilience for residents and with a focus on vulnerable populations all right Community engagement uh establish clear service standards to deliver consistent high quality services that are responsive to community needs Public Safety we picked the only one there Economic Development um Innovation modernize and streamline business support processes across the city departments to eliminate barriers to business growth um Transit improves the resident experience moving across the city into a seamless accessible system and then we selected uh employee pay and benefit benefits the only one under that as well all right and tell us a little bit about your process we were very efficient in that we uh had if we had a difference of opinion we just briefly described what was important to us I know for employee paying benefits and Public Safety um I I think I hadn't chose one we chose opposite uh and then explained to each other why that was important um but in the end found that both uh would would serve the city best U making sure that we have more in public safety but that their employee benefits also went up so that we can attract more people there other than that you we had conversations that really aligned and when we disagreed uh it really wasn't a disagreement because it was just where our priorities lied it's very fair like okay well we pick that one here and now this one will switch you so I felt it was very collaborative great so if we if we look here again we are seeing some Trends so we saw a lot of this when we did your initial mapping and then we're coming to see this again um affirmed in that so we have several on here that actually all four pairs are in agreement on um we have um and almost everything in all of the categories as well so we have enhanced housing security for Raleigh residents we also have um enhanced Community safety measures we have improved the um the resident experience moving across the city into a seamless accessible system and modernize and streamline business supports processes across City departments to eliminate barriers to business growth those are the ones that have um three or four in agreement on that and then we have a couple of twos as well so uh support highdensity multi-use developments that provide diverse housing options and integrate with Transportation networks uh we also have um to in community engagement establish clear service standards to deliver consistent highquality services that are responsive to community needs deliver a seamless and inclusive customer service experience and then we also have cultivate an inclusive and Innovative workplace this is in the pay employee paying benefit section uh by enhancing staff policies and programs yeah I just wanted to add on employee pay and benefits that's very important um it was just the wording of the community priority priority I found to be vague so it didn't speak to me um but if it was worded differently I might have chosen it yeah I would just add we noticed it talked about staff policies and programs and we felt a lot of that falls on the city manager's office quite frankly um but I think we also support employee benefits and pay and um I think it was just the wording of it that and we only got to pick seven so yeah and and lastly cuz I do need to step out for a second to take my daughter to school but um I know it wasn't on the sheet youth but bless just to keep in mind for all of us all these policies and everything that we do impact their future so I still want to tie even though they weren't it wasn't on the sheet it wasn't an option but we do need to keep in mind that everything we do impacts those who come behind us yes absolutely and again I I really encourage you to go see what they built so if you see what the fourth graders built it really was around this ability to have easy accessible um Parks um they came up with like crazy ideas of of spider water parks or um also like butterfly sanctuaries with kind of technology that are allowing them to come in and out but they they want to be connected they want to be around people they want to have vibrancy it was a lot about access to trees to Parks um but to be around people uh let me Echo um council member Branch um I I know you pull some of this from our campaign website I didn't put that in a survey but youth was also a focus of mine but more so on the older youth the teenager basically from teenager to 21 that that is a very important group that uh was also a priority of mine but I did not put in the homework I missed that one but just want to make sure that council member branch is not out there by himself great thank you yeah I just want to note the youth item wasn't on our paper so we couldn't choose it okay yeah we we tried to stick to the ones where there was multiple folks who had identified it just for Simplicity um but as we so really appreciate all of your your comment ments your collaboration with each other since there are some areas where everybody feels aligned I'd love to hear some comments around what would success look like for you over the next three years that will help us start to shape you know the more the more specific and final objectives and think about what work um what initiatives what projects might come under these so uh we can start with housing I'll kind of guide us through it looks like there's three or four but if we could hear from you all what would success look like within 3 years that led to you all wanting to prioritize these for the Strategic plan yes please share with the group yeah the group um I hope that I'm echoing what councelor Patton um and I experienced last night we were part of the pit count pit count um and as we were speaking to people in encampments there was a huge appreciation for the bringing neighbors home home program that we just started this year where we were able to uh house or give direct money to 45 individuals to pull them out of homelessness and even those who were sleeping outside last night were so grateful for that program so when I saw that that's the first thing I thought of um as something tangible that could be um Quantified and and measured over the next 3 years is how are we actually bringing people and uplifting people out of out of homelessness so that would be the tangible item that I thought thank you uh in terms of housing uh I worked on a project in Denton Texas where we came up with an anti-displacement strategy and we often mention vulnerable populations uh this is something we should identify there's a heat vulnerability index I think we should have a housing vulnerability index because we talk about it in the abstract uh I think we have the data whether it's the income or the housing condition uh we should be able to map that so when we have these conversations we talk about oh gentrifications occurring it's often talked about in the abstract uh we know these locations and let's go ahead and map them so both the council uh the community uh the applicant for resoning case understands they're now recommending a project in the era quote unquote that's deemed to be vulnerable uh I think that's just very helpful so there are other examples did similar work in another place where we identified by zones these places that are vulnerable so the information is up front versus it being in the abstract so to me success would be having that tool that would be helpful for all of us not just us the community applicants so when we talk about evolve our population we can know exactly what those boundaries are what those where those neighbors are located I think that'd be a very helpful tool that would help us Advance how we're going to Target programs or plans uh for the vulnerable areas and populations right and on that one it's a good example of something that that is something you would be using multiple departments right to come together and you are looking for a new way to either um uncover that information um get that information out to people and a better understanding of how you can use that information absolutely yeah I think with each of these items what I'd like to see are quantitative performance metrics that we can review over time so like environmental resilience um number of trees planted um in you know socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods um for Public Safety uh number of vacancies um uh let's see Transit um number of uh new frequent routes you know every 15 minutes or or less um that kind of thing absolutely and for this next plan we um have selected a a contractor who's going to come in and set up all the performance measures for us I'll also say part of our goal with this feedback is to get clearer on what are those goals within a large topic area like transit or within a large topic area like environmental resilience what exactly are you all interested in let's get more specific and then we can work on putting some metrics on that putting some data on that yeah yeah I think um for the housing topic like when we think about enhancing housing security for me um it would be really helpful to use some of the things that like I always say if you read one article one day you can think one thing about Raleigh housing market and read a different article different day you can think a totally different thing like setting some sort of True North Stars about like how housing secure people are right now like how and and that would be defined by like uh how many people are housing cord and how many people are severely housing cost burden and how many people are homeless in our community and then setting reasonable targets to reduce to reduce those numbers so saying like reduce housing cost burdened residents by F five or 10% of Resident and measuring it against the like the number of residents rather than just measuring like our programs because to me those are like lower down in that ladder you've showed us right the goal is have zero like functionally and homelessness and then underneath that is expand the bringing neighbors home program like that is a tool to accomplish the goal of el functionally eliminating homelessness in Raleigh so uh yeah so just to say success to me on that first one would be setting like reduction in housing cost burden and homelessness in our city by some reasonable three-year number yep absolutely so yeah number of housing units right coming online approved and how we are streamlining permitting um we have high standards in Raleigh but you know how how can we change to make it easier when we have said what we want to be built to get that on the ground and as fast uh away as possible and I think all this conversation on data like how many housing units are we short in the city of Raley what progress are we making and really consolidating all of the different programs and initiatives on housing and housing security to a very understandable format so that the citizens can come along with us residents can come along with us and understanding this unified goal that we all have and what progress we're making against it yeah how about we move on to the next one everyone agreed on was oh go ahead I just uh now the mayor made that point I just wanted to add that it'd be helpful to understand uh you always have these competing goalss uh that you have all these aspirations for a quality environment but at the back end it has a cost so on one hand you're saying we want to have affordable housing uh or housing Security on other hand you have all these other goals that drive up the cost of housing including getting through the permiting process so if we truly affordable housing is not just a program it's a whole ecosystem of rules and procedures and a permiting process that add to the cost and I think it'd be helpful that we all understand that going in because on one hand affordability is not just a program it's an entire ecosystem that needs to be in balance in order to achieve that goal so I think one of my goals would be helpful to understand that so we're more wide-eyed both us and a community that when we make these decisions understanding as the ecosystem not just a single program but other program to support to truly make that easy to do and affordable absolutely so we think of systems change there's policy change there is behavioral change programmatic change yes absolutely so the next item is around Public Safety enhancing Community safety measures and then a reminder you know in that report residents were really talking about safety in a broad sense so not just kind of safety from crime and violence but also safety around their identity who they are and feeling welcome welcomed in the place where they live so what might success look like for you all in that category well one thing I will say is um certainly having um RPD fully staffed and at some point maybe doing some expansion of Staffing but right now we just got to make sure they get up to um a full compliment of employees in the department so that probably would be the most immediate go thank you I would say again like setting um for me setting standards against things that are happening in the community so like 10% reduction in violent crime or 10% reduction in property crimes or um service level delivery standards that we can easily articulate to the community like full fire response in x amount of time um setting those as the goal so that then underneath that we can see things like um fully staff RPD expand Staffing build new stations and fully operationalize the alternative Response Unit and um Council M branch is not here but he has mentioned a public safety master plan which seems like a strategy to lift up at this time so do that for uh to me it's going to require a balanced approach I'd prefer my recommendation would be more place-based I'll take downtown uh as a location for example we recognize we have a vulnerable population we have pan handling going on there's a perception of crime uh I've heard from people that said I went to downtown I was confronted I'm not going back or businesses are saying three of my employees were uh uh robbed in a parking deck we're moving so I think being very focused on where the problem is uh and figuring out how do we handle those in the vul population of balancing education and enforcement but to me I'd like to see a place-based approach we have recommendations we want to promote this place for tourism somebody comes and visits our city and has a bad experience they communicate that out to others who want to come to Raleigh so I think being very focused on an area that we have to address recognizing that we have competing interests so giving uh because crime is going down downtown but the perception exists and I think if we want our downtown to thrive we want tourism to thrive we want businesses to open uh in our downtown and have it as a thriving destination uh I think enhancing the police department whether it's foot patrol bike Patrol working with downtown Ry Alliance I'd like to be very place-based first and work on a location where we know it's a known problem whether reality or perception we all know perception equals reality so for me uh focusing on that would go a long way to giving people the sense that Public Safety is top of mind and that the police have the support they need to be successful absolutely and you can always take the lessons learned and then apply them to other parts too um yeah I just want to touch upon um vulnerable uh groups right now that might be feeling fear because of new National policies so immigrants um lgbtq residents of Raleigh I just want to make sure that we continue to be a safe haven for all people that you know live here that contribute to our city and so I'm not sure perhaps what the performance metric is but it's about our identity as a city and I want to continue to know Raleigh as a place that is for everyone yes thank you sorry one last thought for me I'm sorry to go twice um I was thinking about public safety and your goal to be cross departmental and I also think um like Transportation has a role to play in this like we you know I hear from residents like we wish you had more cops on this block to enforce speeding we can't even if we do all these things we can't have enough cops on every block to enforce every speeding uh thing but we can design our streets in ways that but get slower speeds right we can uh do more to traffic like we can figure out how to continue to innovate on traffic calming and so I think like Transportation has a role to play in this I think like parks department and even Duke energy like I know these have are things that are evaluated but like where are street lights and are they in all the places we need them to be to get safety like there are these other things that are not just law enforcement or traditional public safety personnel that that can also be done to help us you know just like be more expansive yeah absolutely that comes in smart technology but also uh little things like public art actually can help calm traffic or alert people to uh pedestrians all right so the last one where all folks uh selected the priority is improving the resident experience moving across the city into a seamless accessible system what would success look like there I do not know if one exists I'm both a biker and a runner and I know a lot of attention been focused on a bicycle Network The Pedestrian Network for me is absolutely key uh one thing everyone does by way of transportation is walking that is the common denominator to walk to your car to walk wherever you want to go and and for me as we look at our bicycle pedestrian plan very very focused on understanding more about The Pedestrian connection uh and to me this not just the connection but the experience of that pedestrian um path and so for me that is very important and want to make sure as we have a bike bed plan it's balanced I don't know know I'm new whether it's leading more toward the bicycle Network or The Pedestrian network uh to me it should be balanced but I'll be keenly focused that you experience your city uh walking and the public realm and so for me I'd want to see going forward the accessibility part of not just the sidewalk connectivity but the experience of that pedestrian uh sidewalk all right thank you yeah I'll just add you know all the projects that we have funded in transit to get them implemented as fast as possible um that is something I'm really excited about we have so many plans in the works and they are complicated projects that require a lot of different players and so just keeping our eye on the prize and as much resources are needed um you know Staffing Resources um you know funding I just think we need to kind of have eyes quite open on that so that we can get as many projects completed in a timely fashion as possible well the other thing I'll I'll add to that is that you want to make sure um folks are having a good experience when they're accessing Transit particularly folks who use our public transportation system uh you want to make sure that it's effective and efficient for folks um particularly the people who rely on the system but as the folks who rely on it have better experiences and they communicate that than folks who don't necessarily need to use the system may hear about that and decide well I'll give it a try so um having community members who can go out and be our best ambassadors and advocates for using the system would be great but they've got to have good experiences to be able to do that and I'll add um especially in my district in Five Points you've got this pedestrian Avenue and then you have cars because that's still a big part of us you know we still have to to be able to talk about that and at our Five Points intersection also understanding the relationship with the state so it's not just cross- departmental in the city but it's how do we partner with our state DOT and make sure we're having that communication back and forth so they understand our priorities uh my district and I haven't paid attention to everybody's District but I know mine are mainly state roads the big the big everything is state roads and so residents get frustrated when I say you know that's not we can't do anything that's a state responsibility um and being able to better communicate that to both residents and to our friends in the general assembly yes thank you I wanted to add one other point just about the walkability uh we are looking very carefully at bus Rapid Transit on frequent Transit stops and understand there's a walking shed where people are going to walk to that bus shelter uh where are the crosswalks where are the signalized intersection I met one person that said I'm not going to take the bus because I literally have to walk close to a half a mile to the next traffic signal to cross the street to get to the other side I'm out that's just too much for me so not saying we're going to alter our whole Transportation network of adding more signalized intersections but when I say the experience what is it like walking to the bus stop going to work or wherever you want to go and then returning you may because our signals in some cases are quarter to a half a mile apart you know outside of our downtown core and so when I talk about the experience yes bus shelters are critical you're seeing more and more popping up up but what is the experience of the crosswalks of the signalized intersections to really make that system usable not just the frequency of the transportation but also how easy it is to navigate from going to work or from work or to whatever service you need to me that experience is critically important to make the whole system work right yeah so again those barriers and then also experience of actually using it and then I think yes um and I think on like success metrics could be like one could be uh ending pedestrian fatalities I I mean it'd be cool to end all like vehicular or crash related fatalities but particularly to set an a big hairy audacious goal of ending all pedestrian fatalities um would be a success metric or I know we like to be reasonable like backing into it I know 3 years backing into into something that works us toward ending all pedestrian fatalities um so some some success metric like that I also think about like um maybe in the community survey there's a question that's like like a positive sentiment of like 85% of Raleigh residents say I can get to where I need to go using a variety of options like if if many residents feel like they can get to where they need to go using the methods they want to use then that is a signal of success so something like that like a positive sentiment score on a statement like that one great so I know we have um several other topics um to get to what I think we can um see from this exercise as well though is the tremendous consensus that there is with this Council so you have a really strong Foundation to move forward and a lot of alignment on on your policies um we may not have time for that um today but we did just want to get a sense from you you had expressed some interest in in kind of the the KF categories again that is something we probably don't have time for today oh we have 10 minutes all right um so we could actually quickly map for you right what these priorities look like on our existing cfas or an option b so I think we can definitely do that in our 10 minutes our seven are Le they're right here I will too are we going to share what the students wrote To Us oh please well I was just going to say I think mine is intended for mayor protm Fort because this student says that they want a major league baseball team and we should name it the Raleigh raccoons I'm also in support of Major League Baseball team but I know mayor Protime sport really enthusiastic about it so I'll give this one to you only only if instead of the helmet ice creams there's dumpsters yes uh this student saying uh I want to have a water park uh built and I think we should have a water park because there isn't any any water parks for at least 1 hour and I think we should have one so people can get outside please tell the student uh their wish uh has been granted in a couple of years they can go up to Falls of noose and council member Paton district and enjoy a water park so they do not have to drive in Arrow way depending on where they live I I had a very sophisticated young woman um she wants to make sure that we know that she came up with the Lego project idea and she wants an outdoor Amphitheater that is free and she loves artwork and the restaurants that we have that make Raleigh unique a big thing and so yes not us a four grer design sounds like you're building a talent pipeline well the person who wrote the letter that I have um they are probably my spirit connection personally because they want us to build a beach in Raleigh because it takes an hour or two to get to the beach um and it's always uh four hours to come and go so please make a beach and Raleigh so if I could do that I would absolutely be happy to do that tell him about igh closed is it still closed yeah what's the one at Falls Lake there wind Beach at Falls lak yeah I go there but not true I'll give a quick shout out to I maybe mine is the only one he he's name is Randy he wrote this one he put his name on the paper so thank you for that uh he said I made a place where you can read play games eat drink cook outside bring your pet and have fun I hope you like it and uh we do and I want to emphasize our parks department we have a lot of those opportunities at our Parks right now so I hope that everyone can get out and cook outside not now cuz it's too cold but when we get to the to the summer and the spring that they'll utilize our facilities for just that purpose all right so as we are placing these you will see that there are certain areas of concentration that are naturally forming so Heather Jane is going to read Cory yeah this is from Lany they love being here in Raleigh and they created a farm f with a playground in animals out of cages so that other kids that don't have pets get the feeling like they do have pets love it I think what you see just from how their dreams are again places to connect places to um explore and and have fun um but in elementary school do love it when you come toit local place all right so this is what the existing KFA look like so we do see that there's a lot of alignment between your uh priorities Community priorities and how they are currently categorized all right so that they do fit quite well into these uh we do see there is nothing in one of the categories and I think there should be something there um in arts and cultural resources again it was labeled under youth but when it talks about I think access to programming you know for me that's at all ages so um that I don't want that to be lost yeah absolutely and again in this exercise it's not a this isn't the finale right um there's time for iteration on this right all right all right so this is option A so really just um taking the structure that we already have and going ahead and placing these um priorities within that existing structure seems to work pretty well so in that we just continue in that same structure there is an option b and that was just a slight change to one of them to just environmental resilience and that request was just for to make it more clear and concise so there's really no structural impact to that it's just a renaming now the one change that we could do would be to split out the one of the categories into two distinctive categories all right and the request was that it would potentially make something more clear and concise and that was the rationale for that so this is not anything that a decision needs to made on there might be a desire for further discussion but you can see what that does so we we then do add a KFA and so there are some Staffing Resources that go into just administration of of adding an additional one well I also feel like there may be a way to combine the Arts and Cultural resources and the economic development um you know Arts are an economic driver um so cultural resource um and so you know I do think that more clear um focus areas is important like I certainly think we can do a better job of delineating Housing and Public Safety I like a stronger focus on the environment but I do think the economic development Arts and Cultural resources um there's a lot of synergy there you know ARS aren't just things that are nice to have they are nice to have but they also are economic driv as well certainly to thank you for that comment because one thing we will recommend regardless of what categories end up uh being used is to create definitions or criteria for what is the work that you would like to see in one of these categories versus another and that will also help us it'll help guide staff as we go along and projects evolve and work evolves we can stay within the boundaries of what you wanted to see in that Focus area I think the title Arts and Cultural resources it doesn't say parks to me and parks are a huge part of that so I would like that to be in the title of a if we're going to continue that Focus area and I think there is a slight difference you know when we think about Economic Development or our parks and cultural resources are we talking about those resources and assets for our residents or what we're using you know as drivers you know for tourism or visitors so I think there are different elements there and I think I saw in the previous plan a lot of focus on those external um kind of drivers and I want to make sure we're also really focused on our resident needs abs and that was communicated in the the citizen feedback as well I want to build on councelor Harrison's that I agree that instead of Economic Development and Innovation which is more about process is economic health which gets to the outcomes we're trying to get to which is everybody having a job a well-paid job that people have right housing so I think economic health and then instead of arts and cultural resources which I agree is too narrowly defined like a quality of place or quality of life which does dovetail with and now piggybacking on uh councilor Lambert Melton's comment right that that is you could combine and have economic health and quality of life as a larger committee that gets to um the outcomes for our citizens okay so it sounds like there is some interest in further discussion on this it's not something we can really um come to a conclusion today uh but we'll take uh this information thank you for um doing this exercise with us again I think it's been very helpful uh building upon your kind of goals for this morning about building consensus that can be actionable in these next steps so in the coming weeks we are going to take this information craft them into more specific objectives that might go into a strategic plan and start to think about the types of projects and initiatives that would go in there based on what we heard from you today what your goals are so that next touch Point you'll you'll hear more specifics as we get further into developing the content of this plan but I think what uh hopefully you have also gleaned from this exercise today is to really see yourself and your priorities in this new plan I just want to add you know when we think about these categories to make them consistent in the way that they're described so economic Prosperity is a goal um whereas economic health would be could be good bad or ugly um environmental resilience I think is a goal um so if we're trying to move towards a particular something um make that clear in each of the titles in two words or less maybe yes so people can remember yes absolutely yes all right thank you thank you Heather thank you Christina all right um that was really fabulous to get to watch you all um putting oh you can't hear me I can hear you I don't think the public can yeah that's that would be the same that would be the most important see yeah let me just turn this off about now all right um it was interesting to see you all put into action some of the things you already said you wanted to do with the next six months um in these two pair in your repairs there was that prioritization activity that was really interesting to watch I know there was a lot of similarities and then there was a really interesting opportunity to leverage each other's perspectives to figure out which ones um you were really willing to put up there as your seven so that was really exciting to see and I really commend you all for already putting in to you've already checked that box you five more months to keep doing it or still six more months um so with that we are going to give you a 10minute break before we move to the next agenda item which is public comment um so if you need to grab coffee go to the bathroom all the above and we will be back in 10 minutes [Music] n he [Music] [Music] n [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] n [Music] n n [Music] know [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] [Music] a [Music] n [Music] [Music] I he [Music] [Music] w y n [Music] [Music] oh n n [Music] [Music] oh [Music] the Lego so might be oh you're good the Legos are are great that whole set up in the other room is amazing all right we waiting for coun we're going to wait for our final council member to come back and then we will get started they're the designs for your next I'm I think yeah yeah no worries all right welcome back um so we have our next item on the agenda is public comment um and this is going to be our last agenda item before lunch just giving you sort of a I know everyone always want also wants to know when to have food because it makes it easier to keep thinking about things big topics so public comment um I am going to turn it over to the deputy City attorney to provide some background information on public comment um a little bit about benchmarking from some other cities your current process and I'll also uh be then taking back over and sharing some uh information that I heard from you all in our conversations we all had a chance to to talk about this topic and we'll be reflecting on that so we're going to start with um I'm going turn over to Dy go ahead thank you very much and good morning everyone I am standing in for the City attorney this morning and have been asked to give you an extremely brief presentation about public comment if this looks familiar to you is because we had this discussion in 2024 and some of the information that I'll be sharing today is from uh that prior discussion there's very little statutory guidance about public comment per it's one statute 16a uh 81.1 tells cities that they must have at least one period for public comment each month at a regular meeting of the council The Only Exception is if the council does not meet that month and then no public comment is required uh the statute that imposes this obligation also allows councils to adopt reasonable rules governing those comment periods and the statute lists out some ideas that are not exclusive of reasonable rules and you can see that some of them set maximum time limits provide for designated speakers when their large groups with the same um ideas or positions allow the selection of delegates to be in a hall when the room capacity is exceeded and then providing for u rules about the maintenance of decorum or order during the public comment sessions and as you know um Raleigh has rules of the Corum for participants your materials include not only these slides that I am showing you but a memo from uh City attorney McDonald and exhibit a is a copy of those rules of decorum if you're interested in them in 2024 the city council implemented changes uh in the public comment period and there were three uh primary changes that were implemented there was uh the council established a dedicated time period for public comment uh the second Tuesday period was dedicated to to three hours for comment in the T the second Tuesday evenings and during the third Tuesday afternoon session the council dedicated one hour um for public comment this led to essentially in a cap of the numbers of speakers who could speak uh along with that dedicated time period uh the council established uh predictable speaking times for folks based on the number of people who signed up and the memo at page two has those times set out in it if you're interested uh the cap that I mentioned is based on the maximum number of people who could speak at one meeting for that second Tuesday thre hour um period the cap is 165 people can can come and be heard with one minute speaking time each and for the on hour limit that cap is 50 speakers again with a one minute speaking time one other um issue that is very important that um I I'll say righ is is somewhat unique is that Raleigh allows speakers to use digital media during their public comment uh there are three challenges that come with the use of that digital content Tech techical security and legal challenges from from my perspective the the most significant are the technical challenges and the legal uh talented challenges the technical challenges are those that are presented by folks providing materials to uh display that may not be in a format that's e easily accessible or there may be limits to what we're able to show and I know that there is frustration on the part of folks who are having to in the moment uh deal with technical errors as well as speakers uh security is a risk whenever anything comes into our our system one of the things that is a little unique is that at least when we get emails that are related to content we have an idea about what the attachment relates to so if someone's sending an email in that says I've had problems with storm water I'm attaching a video we've got a good idea of what what that video relates to less so with public comment because people are have are not constrained uh in what they can prevent present um the legal restrictions are from the lawyer's perspective the most significant and I I want to start with the fact that government uh is highly Limited in what it can uh prevent speakers from displaying uh it is not a requirement that digital media be used but if digital media is used then First Amendment protections are triggered uh also there are legal issues that are inherent in the platforms that the city uses uh to present information to the public in particular YouTube YouTube's got a lengthy list of community standards that it imposes uh many of them designed to protect um children and uh if those standards are violated then the city can or any user can be um warned and then removed for the platform so those are the the challenges that are that are unique to digital media we uh provided last year the the a summary of the top 12 Municipal um rules uh that apply throughout North Carolina and you'll see this in this slide I will come back to the slide um but you can see that we've got Advanced signup requirements listed the length of speaking uh whether digital media is protect uh is allowed the frequency of public comment all of those just give you a sense of what's Happening among the top 12 uh the City attorney also pulled these uh municipalities to find out if there were any changes the only change that was reported to her was fille previously fville had a 15minute public comment session that the mayor could extend to 30 minutes and uh in 2024 F will change their public comment period to a flat 30 minute period so last year we identified some themes those are the same themes that we would report again this year that uh 92% of municipalities do limit the time uh per person per speaker to 3 minutes or less 58% of municipalities limit the total time of public comment sessions to approximately one hour or less and 50% of municipalities offer public comment at more than one uh meeting per month the uh memo that you've received includes an exhibit B that's a lengthy collection of all of the information that we collected uh about counties and cities uh throughout North Carolina in their public comment periods and with that brief presentation I'm available for questions or we'll turn it over to Elena and I'll go back to that slide about the other municipalities I'd like to pause and see if anyone has any questions about what's been presented thank you so much I guess my question since we just did this last year do we have data on how many times we even came close to the 3 hours I guess I'm just a little bit uh confused was was there an issue with um with public comment I I yeah I would say during the campaign this was one of the most talked about issues that I heard from I don't know know about other people but there was a lot of I felt a lot of anger on the citizens that they felt like they had been shut out of City Hall um that they were no longer going to sit through you know hours of public comment that some of the material being shown was so graphic that they you know didn't want to bring their children into the chamber um so I I got a lot of feedback on this and um a sense that you know a lot of the people I wanted to wanted us to relook at this but I'll I'll defer to others if if that was unique to my experience Branch I saw yeah I was going to say I'm aware of some residents that waited almost two and three months before coming to council because they said they is didn't want to sit there through the long time and the long hours so they delayed bringing their issue before Council because of that and right I understood that and that was why we talked about it last year but I'm saying last year no that's since we changed our time since we changed the time since our Last Retreat and everything when we made the modifications those are comments and things that I heard back in the fall where people waited before coming to us um and you know we have to be accessible to everyone um so right so I guess that's where my question initiated do we have status uh um statistics on how many since last year public comment sessions ran over over and went hours because I don't my memory is just failing me but since this was initiated last year I just don't know how many times we did that no that is not data that we have for this presentation thank you can can I add something um one thing that I heard over the last year and I'm just going to say things that I heard on the campaign trail that I had people email me about is there is a perception whether real or not that the city council is being distracted by the work of the city by the amount of time we're spending on public comment and on issues that some folks perceive not to be City related issues and that may occur over time since I've been on Council there have been a multitude of issues that have drawn I would say significant number of folks that varying people can agree or disagree on whether those are City issues here's an example when I was first elected we had a lot of folks that came that wanted us to make Raleigh a sanctuary City for The Unborn so it was uh folks who were against abortion so it seems to like EB and flow the other thing that I've heard and what data would not capture is the number of people who won't sign up for a public comment because they may have a legitimate issue that they need us to hear about but they don't want to sit through three hours of a meeting they don't want to sit through a graphic that they may personally disagree with or they may find offensive to themselves or their children and so you know I feel like public comment is intended for folks to come to us and say Here's a concern I'm having can you please help me and how do we provide the space for that you know last year I think when we had this presentation was the first time I think we heard and it was a little surprising to hear the City attorney I think act City Attorney at the time say you should not be allowing any media at your public comment and we were considering that and then I think there was some push back from the public and so that's a piece that I'm curious if we could look at um you know I think it's helpful at times to get uh visuals to go with the public comment is there a way to do that that doesn't involve um submitting it and playing it on the on the the screens like could could it be pictures could it be emails that are submitted I'm not sure but I think having a touchpoint on it is helpful but I do agree that there are folks sometimes that feel like um they have a legitimate City issue they feel like they can't come talk to us about it yeah I too uh had questions uh working with the city before uh images I don't believe were permitted did so I did have questions as well uh I'm grateful that it was a warning uh both for some of the videos but I do have questions about allowing the use of digital media thank you council member um before anyone else shares we're going to have plenty of time to continue talking I wanted to share some things that are emerging which are being repeated now that I heard in our individual conversations um and so this was added to the agenda and so when each of us talked of me and you I asked what are your thoughts on how the public comment process is currently working it's been changed since last year and I've reflected some things that I heard and so I want to reiterate and this was very evident last year as well that everyone feels that Clarity around the process is something that should be essential for yourselves staff and the public so I know last year we worked really hard to make sure that there was a documented decision of what the public comment policy and process was so that everyone knew and there was no question about it and that came up again this year many of you reflected on that said it's been helpful to have a clear Direction on public comment areas of emerging concern and these are specifically ones that were mentioned by at least three of you um uh some of them were mentioned by more than three um there is and I'm going to just read them out and would be happy to have anyone expand if they would like to or ask questions of their peers about these um so this is um kind of reflecting actually I think what um council member Melton Lambert just said that um a feeling that there may be too much of your limited time as a collective body together spent on public comment so you only have so much time each month to be meeting and making decisions about city services and I don't mean to put words in your mouth council member um but it's I think a similar sort of theme um and a lot of it is is on the public cont comment that you have at your meetings um visual media digital media that's been discussed several times already um some concern about the graphic elements of it and the risk that it brings to the city um community members that have City specific concerns that you may be able to make an impact on um having expressed to you in the past year so since the last policy was put in place that it's inaccessible to them and um that topics discussed can be uh outside of council's purview what you have control over so these are things that were said by um a good number at least three some of them significantly more than three um and so I I wanted to raise those and see if there's anyone that wants to ask any questions or expand on anything that you see up here um I want to add another I want to add another one to the list um that I've noticed recently to what finding is people coming to um speak on whatever topic of public comment and then they're asking questions and expecting us to answer and I don't think folks understand what our rules of the Quorum are they can come and say whatever they want they can ask whatever questions but it's really in the purview of the mayor as to whether she offers a response to that questions a question or ask the city manager to follow up but it's not for us to weigh in on these questions as people are coming and I'm noticing that as more people are coming asking questions council members are responding which is not within our rules of the Quorum but then you're setting an expectation that folks can show up and start asking us questions about whatever and that they're going to expect us to respond which is not the protocols that we have in place can I can I add to that I agree with u mayor PM Fort um she and I actually met with the community group once and they said oh we didn't understand that's how you felt about this issue because you don't ever respond when we come and talk to you and we had to explain um it's actually in our rules of it's our um it's not our rules of deorum it's a code of conduct that we are not supposed to engage during public comment is our time to listen and that may be creating some confusion with community that when we sit there and we don't respond that we don't care or that there's nothing we can do and I don't know how you address adjust that expectation we do have a part of the regular meeting agenda for um the council members to raise issues that are important or concerning last meeting there was a public comment about an issue with the dog part and then later in the meeting during my during my Council concern I brought it up as something that I had requested some followup on it was Al already sort of talked about during the public comment but I do think it's important point that there seems to be confusion in the community about why we don't respond during public comment and then maybe some inconsistencies at the table about when we do respond or when we don't and folks may feel like well that person got a response but I didn't and and so I think that has been an issue to I don't know what is on the website when someone signs up to speak but is it possible to explicitly State uh that as part of our rules of decorum uh Council will not be responding this is a public comment uh your comment will be captured but the council will not be responding to your specific request and then the mayor her prerogative could say the same as people come up to speak so the expectation is stated up front so there is no confusion I think that's a great question I would say for this conversation what I would love for the table to be deciding is if there's a change and what changes those are and then your staff and I say this to say your staff will tell you the best way to do it so if you agree recommend that on the city's website that the the Quorum uh is stated upfront as someone signs and whether they say you have read the rulle and check a box and then the mayor her prerogative can reiterate at the opening of the comment public comment section that we will hear your comment uh but as part of our rules Council will not be responding I appreciate that at that meeting and it sounds like I'm going to add it I waited to add it to the list because it sounds like you also agreed that that is a challenge and I wanted to make sure there was consistency that at least three folks felt that it was I'm getting a thumbs up too from staff that that they've heard you um can I just add that some of the issues we're raising we may personally feel but some of them are just things we're hearing so um the first one too much time he spent on public comment that is something that I have heard on the campaign Trail whether I personally agree with that or not I don't think really matters I think it's just these are things that are emerging Trends or concerns that we're hearing from the community um anyone can sign up for public comment but I have had people come to me and say I will not sign because I can't sit through 3 hours of public comment to talk about a tree or a trash issue and so if if I'm if we're hearing it enough then I think it's merits a discussion when we have this time together at The Retreat thank you C branch and I was going to ask having just live through the you know pro-life um movement that came before Council and wanting us to do things in this having video um when we're living through the unrest in video um like I really do believe you know having lived through all of that removing video as an option should be something we should change I think we should remove the opportunity of people having video um because even sometimes even the video can have the best intentions we still have audio issues we still have situations where it's not being shown or time so I think if we can remove that let the people speak to what they have if they have any pictures or whatever we have a process for that already where they can leave a their imagery and it'll come to counsil um Ora email so that's something I do want to uplift having been here and gone through so many different groups that have brought different issues and and just that overall experience um and then sometimes I think it takes away from it it may re they may feel they're reinforcing what they're saying but sometimes I think it takes away from Council Members really listening to okay is there a solution piece because they're so impacted by whatever imagery and we even had chance through another group where some council members walked out um of the meeting you know because of the way things were being presented as well thank you I mayor pretend myself I potentially you moved your microphone I mean I was just going to jump in and Echo council member Branch's sentiments I think if folks want to send us images or things that anything that would require the mayor to make the the the notification that the image has you know disturbing components and so forth and so on folks could send that to us in our emails and you know we can look at it if we choose to or not but I don't necessarily think we should be we should be subjecting the public to to that imagery thank you um curious on the digital media question if anyone feels strongly in a different perspective that they would like to share or if if there's others who agree with that that sentiment I have a few things um being an avid user of public comments I will say that the decorum is listed when you sign up um it's listed along with the code of conduct so as soon as you you they choose just like we can choose whether we see it they can choose whether they follow but but it is it is currently there um uh secondly as we talk about whether that's public comments this is um why that data to me is important because as I'm thinking back on the experience over the last two years where we did have 250 people sign up and that was why we put it on our on our uh Council agenda or Council Retreat last year since then since we uh and we're talking about the resolution since that it has dramatic decrease which is what we talked about we said as soon as we do which was them asking for a resolution and we voted and it failed then it's it it's cut off drastically the two maybe three handful of people that do come um I think this is a little bit targeting them um and I understand the perspective of digital media to me it's First Amendment and people get to and we can choose we we do the warning so for me it's a nonissue uh but I but I do hear what you're saying I I understand that this was brought up in the uh to some councelors it was not brought up to me at all during the election maybe because I was I was for that and maybe that's why I didn't hear it but I am I think we've for the last year done a really good job and I'm I'm a little bit confused why we're why it's coming back up thank you sorry I think I saw council member silver first and then we'll come to you I would agree with u Mayor proam Fort and council member branch that um I would like to see the not using the visual media uh and graphic uh content um as part of the public comment can so yeah I do think that there are many instances where words can't describe a full picture and so having a visual aid is very helpful um I understand that if we allow digital media to be displayed we cannot regulate the content and so all we can do and I've had to chare these meetings when I was serving as mayor proam have to do the disclaimer um and that issue aside I'm hearing we've heard from it we've heard from legal I would like to see um uh policy that still allows us to accept pictures or slide decks or things that folks may think are helpful but maybe that is printed and submitted in advance anyone can come and hand things up to the clerk and put it in the basket if they want us to look at it while they're talking and not for us to get it later maybe there's a procedure where the photos are handed out at the table but I I would be in favor of not allowing things to be played during the meeting and uploaded but still providing an option for folks to put a visual to their their their comments because that is helpful sometimes thank you so I want to reiterate that because it sounds like sort of a proposed option um so not allowing digital media but making it probably clear in some way in the policy or process that folks are able to and should feel comfortable bringing a visual element when they submit their public comment so sounds is that what your does that reflect what you said yeah I'm not sure the specifics of it but I would think that um our staff could bring it a proposal and say um here are some modified rules for visual aids and um it could be an option where um maybe for example our voicemail public comment those are sent to us and then uploaded um when they are received if someone has a picture or that they want us to see and they submit it with their comment maybe it could be on our seat waiting for us when we come into public comment or maybe it's handed up and then passed out rather than put in the basket I I'm fine with finding some um compromise so folks can give us a visual aid but I I do think it I I don't think it should be videos and things that are uploaded and played throughout the chambers um I I think of it more of like a picture of a a storm water issue or um if there's a video of a storm water issue staff can make sure that it's in our inboxes like the voicemail public comments that we get things like that and just a clear procedure on it thank you just just yeah go ahead just quickly because I I heard the word used I just want to be clear that I'm not trying to Target anybody I it's that's why I use all the examples of my time being on Council where different groups have done different things so I just want to be clear that this isn't trying to Target anyone specific group it's just in general saying that we've had times where imagery that was brought before Council that we probably should have been reading that statement five to 10 years ago thank you mayor I know you have no I mean I would just I've support uh councilor Lambert Melton's proposal thank you so um yes go ahead I just um G to chime in I think I'm more on this side of status quo um we worked really hard about a year ago to recalibrate and um I think try to like future proof understanding that the moment we were in at that time was going to end he was time Bound in some ways but also likely to occur again on some different topic and so the areas of consensus you mentioned resonate for me and and I think deserve reiteration like what we wanted at the time was something quite objective at the at that time it was the discretion of the mayor how much time would be afforded and we were hearing from the community like I don't know whether to write comments for three minutes or one minute I show up I I know I'm not really sure if the meeting is going to last three hours and um we also like sometimes our members of the public do not always know the difference between the different ways of communicating so public comment and public hearing are technically different but they were occurring at the same meetings and you could be gaveled down if you were talking about something at public comment that was actually supposed to be for public hearing but your opportunity to speak the public hearing had closed at that time by the time you were realizing your mistake you the opportunity was closed um so this like objectivity was really important and there was some intentionality of like creating the separate meeting so there were fewer opportunities for that like these conflicting types of Engagement the public comment and public hearing um and so I think there was just a lot of work that we did at that time and I think we added all that consistency and I think it has worked really well and we're not currently in of those moments of like acute Community feedback we will again but I kind of feel like we've added these guard rails that are you know re reasonable um so and then as council member Lambert Milton said at that time that was the first we had heard that there were these sort of like FCC guidelines that were diff I was learned for the first time that like we stream in these different ways and so there are different rules for whether it's on broadcast TV or YouTube or this or that and the that is being managed on the back end so I am sensitive to that but I also think that like our community does use those visual tools to communicate things like there storm water issues floating in their backyard like speeding in their neighborhood things that we can address and so I'm like in the larger sort of communication landscape that we find ourselves in where our ention are controlled by algorithms and on and on like I am sort of loathed to change move very much from where we are right now thank you I appreciate that I know mayor P was next and then council member s Dy Daddy I'm gonna put you back on the spot real quick but um you indicated in your presentation that we're sort of in the minority of municipalities that allow this digital presentation is that correct uh that is right and there are actually two other cities that allow it Durham and Greensboro and we've reached out to uh both jurisdictions and it happens in frequently in Greensboro I don't have any information about Durham but Greensboro has uh had one or two legal issues arise with the digital media um but has not had it used to the extent that speakers in R use it so I guess as a a followup to that this is not necessarily a common practice across municipalities throughout the state of North Carolina um don't know where the general assembly stands on it but do know that we've gotten some feedback about the displeasure of some of what's been broadcast over the last couple years but again I just think um The Proposal that council member Lambert Melton presented is a is a balanced approach so that you know you're not saying people can't provide those images to us they can't Prov provide whatever they want us to see and take into consideration when they're making their public comments but we're just saying it it may not necessarily be necessary for it to be broadcast throughout the meetings and be you know offensive and and sometimes even triggering for the general public to consume that information so there's you know we could put a process in place to receive the information but it just doesn't have to be publicly broadcast thank you council member silver I also support council member Lambert Melton's compromise uh as we all know there's been a change in the National Administration and while I haven't been here the last couple years to experience what yall experienced at a public comment I can't imagine with all the uncertainty uh that there will be issues that will probably be out of our control that will be brought to our attention recognizing the uncertainty of uh the change in administration on a federal level uh that some people will be concerned about and want to speak out because when I'm sitting I'm not sure if we're the intended audience or there's a broader audience that people are communicating to and so I would support if somebody wants to submit visuals they can do that um on paper uh and not uh as part of a pres digital presentation thank you go ahead c yeah I just want to acknowledge a lot of the improvements that we made in the last year I appreciate the objectivity in terms of number of speakers the amount of time and we have seen it be quite calm um in recent time and I I think that has helped um I think the only change that I would potentially support would be the Restriction of the digital media but still making sure that we receive the images and so if folks want to submit a printed version of things to us um and I say that because do want people to feel comfortable coming to our meetings and I do think there is sometimes a triggering or an emotional flooding that can occur depending on the topic and that can make it difficult you know for others to engage with us but at this time I really do support the amount of time we offer for public comment and making it as accessible you know to everyone in our community as we can thank you so I I know that I'm hearing a majority of folks support in the proposed change from council member melon Lambert um and I want to see I'm seeing a lot of head nods um on this proposal yeah I mean I think just trying to find a compromise from the two options no none at all or status quo and I would like to just see if staff could bring us an option U and then you know like last time we could talk about at a council meeting but something that provides a balance where people can still put a visual to their comment because that is very helpful sometimes but also um maybe address some of the the issues that our City attorney has raised for us that yes I think that is probably a great Next Step um and we can have staff send bring a proposed um proposal for how folks can submit imagery um to you all while restricting any submission of digital media during public comment any other go ahead council member I I don't know if I'll support what is ultimately presented to us but as long it sounds like there's critical mass of people to consider this type of proposal and so I would just offer um as part of that development uh if we could consider how like there should be some kind of like onsite printing opportunity because we are move you know not everyone owns a printer some people don't even own computers anymore and are are operating solely on their phones and um so they may not have a mechanism to print eight copies of uh like a color copy of the flooding in their backyard or whatever so um some consideration for how we might help our more um more Tech challenged and residents would be important in that thank you and I'm adding to what I have really briefly summarized of The Proposal um accessibility because I think that came up as something that everyone feels is a challenge in different ways and is really important and so I think it speaks to what you're saying about if there is a change making sure that it is accessible um I guess I would want legal on that I mean that specific proposal I just think some of the images that are I'm just anticipating what could what if we get into like extremely racist WRAL you know images or pornographic images C can't you know the extremes here are not Out Of Reach because what we've already seen presented is pretty x-rated stuff so do we want taxpayer dollars on printers printing off right things that people anyway I I just would want a legal perspective on that um as part of thinking through this process which I I think we're all trying to be the same is giving people some options um yeah I hear that and it sounds I think staff will bring that back too at a at a future meeting go ahead council member Jones and I'll end by saying you know this is not something that I support just because I haven't seen the data to prove that it's changed uh from anything's been detrimental in the last year um it seems the emotions of it I understand um and that's fine you know democracy says you know the majority went out and that's fine what I would ask as we continue forward is if the concern is that people aren't coming because of these if we change all these rules what is our metric to judge how many people are coming then because if it dramatically decreases who comes and they don't speak how do we then how do we judge that then it does seem targeted if the people who say they're going to come don't and then we just don't have any public comment so that's what I would uh in whatever proposal is voted on um how are we measuring that moving forward because then I feel that this is a target but thank you thank you and I see head nods on I think folks want to make sure that it's it reaches everyone that wants to attend anything you want to add mayor or no I I agree with the data I think like the city of Boston did a lot of data tracking and they know every demographic you know age of people who came to their public comments public hearings I haven't seen that data either I would be very curious to know how many people actually Avail themselves of this is it widespread you know if we change this do you see you know more children and boy scouts you know coming back who now have opted not to come uh you know because of what they've experienced at City Hall um it it would be nice to have more data any other thoughts on the the data item okay Pro Data Pro Data plus one on the data okay awesome um so it sounds like we we definitely have a next step I want to make sure that we um touch on any of the other see if there's any other areas of consensus for direction for staff so um gonna I don't know if everyone can see I've kind of moved everything around on you all but we've touched this V visual media elements item which did come up as you can kind of see from the consensus for many of you um there's three other items for if we count the codes of conduct conversation that came up today um uh too much of council's limited time together where you can be making decisions for the city is being spent on public comment um community members with City specific comments have expressed it's inaccessible and I think this actually is is intended to still address that in one way make it more accessible um and topics discussed can be outside of council's authority so time um inaccessibility and topics outside of your purview is there anything that anyone wants to expand on or propose well I I would just say on the fourth I understand the concern I have been convinced by the city attorney's office that that and I listened to last year's uh debate that that is a very difficult thing yeah to um do legally and and I certainly as mayor do not want to be in the seat of having to try and tell people like is it or is it not so to me get the concern but I I think the attorneys have told us that is um very difficult to impact yes they have go ahead um the one part I don't think it got written down that Mayor protm Fort brought up about um not responding from the table does the public expect it is there consistency on Council I maybe there's a better way to address that I don't know I I'm you know our meetings are transcribed there's minutes um is there a way to capture issues that are brought up during public comment and have more of like a transparent or visible way of saying hey we've received it it's and here's the followup process I I don't know I can't think of it right now but maybe there's a way that maybe staff can think about it and see if there's a way to um sort of better acknowledge that your feedbacks being received and here's the next followup and sometimes sometimes the comments don't have they're not for follow-up sometimes they're just for General concern but there are a lot of folks that will have a specific thing um and public comments scary I did it before I was on Council I went down there I was a nervous wreck and I I talk in court I'm a lawyer and so to go down there and have your comment No one's responding then you leave and you're like wonder if anybody heard me that's not a great feeling and so I'm wondering if there's just a way that we could fine-tune that to where the public knows we're listening there's no expectation that we're talking over people because I think in what the intent of the um Cod contact is is not to argue with the public but the way it's written is we're not allowed to respond at all and of course I understand we can't have everyone in the council jumping in but there may be a way for staff to um come up with some ideas that helps us sort of let people know that we're listening and there is followup thank you go ahead I was just thinking if maybe if we informed the public when they sign up that you know staff will follow up with them after their public comment depending on what information they give I mean staff can't follow up on someone that says concerns um and we'll see that on some of the forums it'll just say concerns and so you kind of have to wait um I think if there's some way to try to encourage the public to give more information ahead of time about what their topic is I think it'll better help us even the mayor or whoever presiding when the person speaks they have an idea of what the topic is then they can better respond to them than say okay we'll have staff foll with you on X or on y um but some of them just say concerns are General and I mean we all you can do that is just throw it up in the air and see what lands yeah go ahead the only thing I would say on that is um you have to be mindful because there people who come in and they they make allegations about other Ed officials and you know really go way off base on the topics that they're talking about and so I don't necessarily think having some type of statement that yeah we're going to you know follow up on you calling such and such corrupt or whatever I mean so I mean just being completely honest so you I think it's got to really be a balanced approach in terms of what we're saying we're going to follow up on because then you have people will have an expectation that we're going to follow up on you know things that are clearly not within our perview and that kind of puts the mayor in a bad position to say well yeah I'm going to follow your yeah exactly I agree I I agree I I would be interested in just seeing if it were something like my trash weren't picked up last Tuesday if there's that's a lot different than um you know count member Lambert Melton's a snake we get that sometimes too like there's no followup there but but the the you know I'm just trying to figure out a way to help people understand that we're listening in a way that doesn't put anybody at the table or the mayor in a weird situation thank you I I think oh go go ahead mayor um just touching on the first uh comment too much or limited time is is uh dedicated to public comment as a body as a body um I'm I I guess I'd like some better understanding of what that means because we have two meetings one is specifically dedicated to public comment so it's not like we would have any other conversation if that public comment time was even reduced it's not like we're going to talk about City things other than that the only other time is in the second meeting where it's in the middle of our our council meeting but we've dedicated an hour so I'd like to understand better what does that mean too much time dedicated to it when we've already put limits on that would anyone like to expand if you feel comfortable sharing I mean I can it just when I was going through this time exercise that today's was inspired by was like how much of your time do you want to spend on things you know that you campaigned on or that you think the council has consensus that we can change and do something about and then you know there's always there's ideas we haven't heard or can't think of or other things that will arise and so maybe that's going to be 15% of your time or 10 but but you know you want to deliver on what we all talked about and so for me I look at how much time are we spending and I would I mean to me if we have that much public common it's a failure of our other processes we're not covering we don't have committees that are addressing or we're not working on the things that people care about and therefore they're spilling over into this very open-ended public comment as opposed to the budget hearings the comprehensive survey the part I mean all the other means that we have so for me it's about I campaigned on certain issues I feel like we've got a lot of consensus on certain issues let's spend our time on those issues and have 85 or 90% of our time dedicated to those and then that hours and hours of just random public comment on things that are Way Beyond it's just something I'd like to you know try to contain to that smaller percentage so I can deliver my campaign promises right I guess for me because it's just one the the first Tuesday or the second Tuesday and it's 3 hours which we have not used in a year 3 hours I guess my question back would be well how much time is that what what is that to you because if we don't do let's just say we eliminated that public comment again we're not t there's no meeting that's going to take place on the second Tuesday that now says oh we're going to do a committee meeting instead of public comment so I I that's where I struggle with that uh uh thought and I just um I if we were to say we're replacing that with further communication of council then I could buy into that but just limiting it or eliminating it sounds not so fun thank I appreciate you explaining your reason your one of our ground rules your reasoning and intent behind what you just said I just wanted to call that out because it was really great thank you go ahead well I mean even looking at the slide that's up right now you got several municipalities that only do public comment once a month and so we've already you know we we set opportunities out more than for example I'll use Charlotte as an example because they're comparable in size us they do it once a month for 30 minutes and it's limited to 15 speakers so I mean we are giving the public public uh more opportunities to come before us and address their issues and their concerns so I don't feel like we're tamping it down and limiting people's opportunities to come and address US council member Harrison yeah just to continue um uh I have found that having public comment on the second Tuesday of the month separated from public hearings for me has been really helpful um that means that it doesn't eat in to our other work um and that I feel prepared when I'm going into that work um it's important for me to be able to digest what the public brings and to have space from that public comment and then our work so that has helped me um and yeah so I I just feel like right now things are working TimeWise but you know I certainly understand you know if someone comes to public comment and they're not getting their issue addressed and they're coming back to us over and over again about something critical that is a sign of failure so I always you know ask my residents to reach out to me directly come to monthly meetings that we are hosting be engaged in other ways because public comment is one way um but we have many other forums we do want to make sure our residents know how to access those thank you well I mean I'd like to I would prefer to not have a three-hour time liit I mean I'd like to reduce it if there was uh you know others on Council that were open to that um again I I've talked to now like like 40 different mayors and the folks I've talked to are like much more aligned to 30 minutes to an hour and we're already giving a second session so I just want to at least ask is there any interest in trying to bring our time more in line with um practice across the state and Country I see a few folks I say my my interest is there I don't think there's five interests that are there um um then honest that's just how I feel about it um and everything because I my other piece is and I know this isn't going to change but I'll voice it is moving public comments back to the public hearing evening the reason why I choose will prefer that and I already know others don't want it so I'm aware of that so I'm not going to push for it but I feel that's an evening that even if I'm if it's only an hour or whatever that I could have planned something in the community or in with individuals in the community on that day that's another evening cuz right now there's two evenings that are gone automatically um if not three sometimes CU we could be in closed session that could last forever on that third meeting um depending on the topic so but again I'm stating that because I'm voicing my opinion I have talked to others I know your opinions but I'm just stting how I feel well and I think it aligns with a common goal that is what is the best way for us to engage with the Community I know council member Jones you said that as well if it's not public you're saying it's not public comment it would be something else with the community so how are we just being most effective I think is a theme everyone's reflecting yeah my um sort of opinion has evolved during this discussion initially I thought I don't think we need the afternoon public comment the evening one is a space just for public comment take as much time as we need thinking about it more though um s o'clock doesn't work for everyone so having an option in the afternoon for folks who can be there in the afternoon I think that that helps um to I disagree with council member Branch I I I have found it so helpful to have the public comment separate from the public hearings one thing we did talk about though last time was we have our work session at 4:00 on that Tuesday but then we have public comment at 7:00 is there a way to move it up to it's closer to the work session there's consideration of people having to get there from work things like that um and I will just say it I'll put myself out there I will support the mayor I do think we need to look at the time limits people can be mad at home saying we're reducing it we have always gone above and beyond what everybody else does and when you are presenting with data about Charlotte I disagree with mayor protm Charlotte is twice our size and they do public comment 30 minutes 15 speakers once a month I'm not saying that's the right thing to do but when we are so out of line with what every other municipality is doing in the state I I I think that that maybe we are the issue um and so if there were a proposal to look at the length of time we're spending and modify it I would be receptive to it if there were a conversation about does public company to be at 7 o' or 5 or 5:30 or 6 o' I would be receptive to it we can't be scared to have these conversations publicly because we're afraid that some folks on the internet are going to hit us for it um I think we're doing ourselves a disservice and I think we're doing the public a disservice to not daylight issues that we're hearing and be willing to talk about them and if anybody wants to ding me in a nasty blog or a tweet tweet or an ex I'll take it because I I I I will take it because I think that we're here to be good public servants and to we talked a lot about data when we were talking about the digital thing well here's the data on the time limits and the number of speakers and we are way out of line thank you I've heard a few folks sort of start to support Bayer's proposal so I just want to see if there's any other few other head nods um and I'm not and some non head nods um because I see a majority head nods um I'm wondering if it is useful to have a conversation or if anyone has a proposal that they would like to bring um so that staff can at least bring something back for you to react to so I think that would be the most important Next Step so if if there's opinions on what that should look like um or all I'll say is I heard Council M Branch say the 7:00 or the evening portion of that Tuesday is difficult for him personally I don't know if that's for everybody I I heard the mayor talk about how she's talked to 40 other Mayors we are so out of line on the time limit there may be some flexibility there to see the amount of time and the time of that public comment I would like to keep it on a separate meeting I don't have any appetite to move it back with public hearings but that may there may be flexibility in there I don't know I know the reason we stuck with s is because it had always been at s there was consistency issue and then also folks getting off of work things like that um I don't I don't know how many people are coming to our public comment at s who come after work you know speaking for me if I worked until 5: and then I went home i' probably not going back down to City Hall but maybe I would stop there on my way home from work if the public comment were earlier but just throwing out ideas just real quick I wouldn't say it's difficult I think there's more conflicts um because people know historically Raleigh City Council meetings are the first and third Tuesdays so when you add a meeting on the second Tuesday a lot of events and things that were taking place on that Tuesday that inlies the thank you I want to expand on what just so that folks have something to react to to what council member L Milton Lambert said and you can correct me or add to it if you'd like to so it sounds like potentially some sort of proposal that maybe modifies the time and the start time of a separate public comment session is that what you are saying I was saying I think that's where the flexibility is we're talking about the second meeting of the month is where we do the public comment separately it's currently set at 3 hours mayor was saying based on the data here talking to other Mayors thinks that's to too long would anyone support coun Branch was saying that the 7 o' is difficult from people scheduling us for other things and maybe personal commitments so I think the flexibility there is maybe staff comes to us with an option that looks at the time of the public comment that second meeting and the duration of the public comment that second meeting doesn't mean we have to accept it but it could be something worth exploring I know we had this conversation last time um about what is the right time for an evening meeting um we did hear from people after we agreed to 7:00 that like I can't come at 7:00 I have kids at home I could come 5:36 after work stop by then go home but once I'm home and I'm feeding my kids and doing bath time or doing my second job or going to the gym I'm not coming back down there and so I don't think that just because it's always been at 7:00 means that it always has to be at 7:00 I do like the option of having an afternoon public comment and an evening public comment because that gives flexibility the timing of the evening one I think is where the flexibility where the maybe room for tweaking is whether we accept it or not I don't know but it could be what staff could bring us thank you yeah Council M silver just want some clarification uh about what we're talking about so I'm clear uh other jurisdictions do it once a month are we suggesting because I was not aware uh coming in that I was told first and third and then I learned that there was a meeting on the 2 of Tuesday of the month so are we saying eliminating that second Tuesday of the month and just focusing on uh public comment on whatever the first to the third again I don't know when it is held or we're talking about modifying that second Tuesday I just want to be clear uh cuz I don't know everything about the public comment I know it's twice a month so I'm assuming it's at one of the regular meetings and then a separate meeting on the second Tuesday so what is before us because I too I I do a lot of Consulting and traveling and I planned everything for the entire year around the 1 and third come to find out oh no there's also the second and so I'm trying to rejigger you know my personal schedule because I just was not aware you got bad information because we haven't done the first meeting public comment in um so oh I guess when I started guess it was a condensed schedule right after the election yeah maybe we do public comment the second Tuesday at night and then the third Tuesday during our afternoon meeting okay that's fine I I like having an afternoon and evening option um for folks so I think the concerns I heard at the table and again I'm speaking my opinion on certain things and sometimes I'm trying to like help us get to a consensus and what I'm hearing is there's some question about is 7:00 the right time and then some question is 3 hours the right amount of time seven okay and so I think that that's maybe where the flexibility is the one in the afternoon I think makes sense and quite frankly it's not a lot of time so um but even that if we did a first sorry the second Tuesday and the third Tuesday we're still doing two most cities do one and even if we did an hour each time that's two hours and most cities are doing 30 minutes to an hour so we're still what I hope people can appreciate is we're still going above and beyond what other cities are doing in the state of North Carolina including Charlotte which is twice as large yes so I think the per so to to expand on that the proposal is for that additional nighttime public comment to be have a proposal from staff to shorten the time and propose some alternative times that are maybe earlier than 7 p.m. does anyone have any reflection on that proposal yeah I would be willing to like entertain the part of The Proposal that moves the timing of the evening session comment um to better accommodate young professionals people who might be like factoring this into transportation and Transit needs of their own um I I am trying I'm like recalling that we conducted a survey I think to ask that very question but I I can't remember what the return of the survey was only that I think we did ask the community that question but so I would be willing to entertain that part um but I am I I believe the amount of time we've afforded uh was well debated at a year ago and um you know is I think we talk a lot about like tools in the toolbox and and for some of our community members public comment is the tool they would like to use to reach us and um I want us to be like the front door to government and the front door to elected officials and we know that our residents are are shut away from many of their other elected officials and I just want us to always going above and beyond I know the point's been made that even a reduction would still be above and beyond but I just continue to say I just am Resolute that I think the amount of time we're affording is the right amount of time for now thank you council member Jones uh I Echo um councelor Patton in that again before I would be able to support anything I'd want to see how many people were seeing because I think this is all theoretical and we all have anecdotal evidence I mean I I'll name Josh Bradley who comes to public comment and is late because he has work and so he makes that app Point almost every single time that I come directly from work to hear uh at the o00 meeting so for every uh for one comment you have the the alternate you know it's like statistics it's going to go either way but um to base this on uh we're at 3 hours and the fact that we've never met that 3 hours I I I think we we've hit the right spot and so I I would not be able to support that thank you um I want to be mindful because I I know that we are going to be headed into lunch soon but um I know that there is a majority who have voiced support for a proposal from staff to shorten the time a proposed shortened time for the second Tuesday potentially shifting time which it sounds like that's actually there's consensus on options for shifting time or maybe not consensus but um some general agreement does that sound do folks feel like we're okay with asking that of Staff as a Next Step just a clarify I'm okay with considering adjustment of the start time on the second Tuesday I'm not looking to restrict the time thank you y okay so then I think for staff that's that's next step all right um with that I know we we're going to need to take a break for lunch I know there's a couple other items here that I think I think we've made some significant progress um in terms of this discussion and I really appreciate all of you um there was a lot of yes ands which I I think is really great even when folks were not necessarily fully in agreement there was a really strong attempt to find where you agreed with one another and I really appreciate that I thank you all for doing that um continuing to do what you promised to do in the next six months today so with that um we're going to take a break for lunch I believe and I don't see Michelle I believe it's how much time do we does anyone know how much we're going to take a break for lunch and be back how long do we have for lunch okay so it's be 45 minutes and then we will be back um after that for our panel discussion uh with some folks talking about the legislative agenda or legisl oh [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] a [Music] [Music] oh [Music] n n [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] n [Music] a [Music] n [Music] [Music] oh [Music] n [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] [Music] you n [Music] oh [Music] you oh [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] [Music] oh n you oh [Music] [Music] oh n know [Music] [Music] know n n [Music] [Music] a n n e [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] e oh n I [Music] [Music] no n n [Music] [Music] n know n he [Music] [Music] yes maybe yes good afternoon everyone we are back from our lunch we are excited to have before you all a very qualified panel to help set Council up today we're going to discuss some of the legislative priorities that you all may have but we want to make sure that we give you again this qualified panel the opportunity to shed light on some of the things that they may want to help you all when you're starting to develop what going to be your priorities moving forward this discussion is really more sort to kind of help you guys start the conversation we will not set an agenda today but we will talk about some of those highlevel themes and different things that are important to you all so I'm actually going to turn it over to our panel to introduce themsel individually we we will capture notes over here for things that we're hearing as you have discussion and different questions that you all may have and we'll follow up to make sure we've captured them accurately okay ready turn it over to Ben Canada good afternoon my name is Ben Canada I'm the chief of staff in the Wake County manager's office and I have been in uh local government in this region for 20 years at either Wake County or the City of Raleigh hey Philip asley served on the Raley city council with Janet beginning 2001 so 24 years ago we were the two youngest members of the Raleigh city council she went on to much bigger and better things than I did uh I got off the city council in 2009 I've been representing the city as your lobbyist since 2016 so I'm happy to be here again hello mayor cow members of the council uh thank you for this invitation to be here today I'm Ain winia the director of government Affairs for the North Carolina League of municipalities I'll tell you a little bit more about that organization uh when we start the panel but I have been in government Affairs work uh for over 16 years now all of it at the league um and I'm a Raleigh native so love this city and I'm glad to be here thanks awesome hello all right we're gonna start with Ben Canada going over the Wake County's approach to their legislative agenda they went through a really good process and think it's worth you hearing how they walk through the steps in order to develop their agenda take over all right so first thing I want to say is this process is really designed for Wake County the Wake County Board of Commissioners so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's the best that it's awesome but it would it does help meet our board's expectations of one another and of staff and before I get in um I always start um any conversation with my board when it comes to legislative Pro with with two harsh realities one Wake County has little or no political Capital down at at the legislature that's a bummer but we always start there and then the second part is um that staff and our lobbyist and and Philip as our lobbyist as well we will spend about 90% of our time playing defense I wish that wasn't the case but that's reality and so we always start at that position and that really underpins everything that we do so with that let me just talk a little bit about how we do things and I've never used this kind of clicker so forgive me just GNA go this big green right there oh okay thank you yes the Big Green era that does make sense all right thank you so our model um let me just very quickly um in the manager's office which is primarily me I largely play what I call Air Traffic Control so I work with others including Philip to identify legislation that needs attention um and that can come in through other ways sometimes our commissioners let me know that they heard about something uh I coordinate that staff analysis so if it's a tax thing I'll call Marcus kinr the tax administrator or or some other staff expert um we share information and advise the board on what to do and then for these types of discussions I'll facilitate that with the board and then our lobbyist Philip largely what we ask him to do is Advocate to legislators and their staffs help us find that legislation that needs attention um serve as a liaison to state and federal agencies sometimes and we we do have a separate uh federal lobbyist that helps us in DC and then give advice to the board on political and legislative matters so we have what I call a three-prong approach to legislative priorities and let me start with the first one which is what I call a general guidance statement and this is in your packet but the really short version of this is that gives staff and their and the board's lobbyist permission to play defense so when we see that maybe the legislature is considering something that might harm the tax base or take away development regulation Powers we know to oppose that and I don't necessarily check in with the board to make sure we have permission to go Advocate against those things um some other examples uh you know one of our big partner organizations is the public school so if we hear of a bill that might decrease funding for the public school system we automatically know to oppose that things things like that so that's the general guidance then we have a top three list and we we try to get the board to focus on those top three because again very limited political Capital but we can use that more effectively when the board speaks with one voice and so we try to get them to really focus on Wake County operational needs and summarize what the top three is uh for this year in just a minute and then the third prong is what we call the opportunity list and this is a longer list of issues that's basically basically like on the radar and staff and our lobbyists we don't pledge to go Advocate or go on offense for these things but what we tell the board is if we see a bill come up that we know sort of advances this issue then we we'll support it or we will link Count's name to it um and that sort of gives some flexibility for different board members to get their their needs out there um our top three at the state level are housing affordability and there are some specific things we've put out there we would love to see the state do foster care foster care is a very complex issue um it's a it's one of those things that it's hard to make that onepage fight paper on that um but there are some things we'd like to see the state do there and then a unique thing uh require for tax line signage which fortunately has already been repealed so one out of three is already done hooray yeah I'm not going to walk through the opportunity list but this is just gives you a flavor of what our Board of Commissioners is is interested in and again we will not be doing any proactive advocacy for these issues but again if a bill happens to get introduced and it does something in the area of veteran services that we think is helpful we will ask Philip to go Let the Right folks know then at the federal level we'll focus on earmarks again housing um and EMS medication and Supply challenges which is a uniquely County issue and we have an opportunity list there again we're not going to proactively advocate for any of these things if they happen to come up we'll let our federal lobbyists know and that is an overview of weight County's approach thank you Ben is it okay if I stand right here and talk to youall uh one of the things Wake County does very well uh that Ben needs to have a lot of credit for and the manager's office as well is the entire time before they develop their legislative agenda he's coalescing information and trying to figure out the things that are doable you know that we as a county want to accomplish but also things that the general assembly is going to want to do to help us and so those are those are big things that he does throughout the year that changes and morphs all the time but you deserve a lot of credit for how you've done this it makes it a lot easier for me and clearly the three things you've chosen we're already onethird of the way there uh all because of Ben uh by the way U again I'm I'm really happy to be here to be your lobbyist I think it's important for y'all to know sort of some of the things that you may have remembered from last year and I believe the mayor was in the audience in a different capacity but it's helpful to sort of remember what we're getting ready to start next Wednesday the 29th we're beginning the the next bium so that's 20 to 27 basically there'll be a long session there's going to be a a short session and the long session will start on the 29th it probably won't be in Earnest they tend to sort of get ramped up a bit but I would say within the second third fourth week of February you'll start seeing more committee meetings you'll start seeing more bills filed but recognize that beginning on uh Wednesday the 29th you're going to have a lot of people that don't live in Raleigh living in Raleigh and as you may recall from last year and the years prior when they're in Raleigh they're your constituents too and they do things that our residents here do which is pay attention to the city they watch the same news media Outlets that we all watch they read the same newspapers they go to the same restaurants they drive on the same streets and so just recognize that these 170 well maybe not 170 the folks that don't live in the in Wake County or the surrounding areas they're here and whether we like it or not they're sort of paying attention and so to Ben's Point earlier you know we're we're always under the microscope and Spotlight because of We're the capital city we're the capital County and these folks have to be here and if you go outside of Raleigh you we think that everybody knows what we're doing here and it's funny to me when I leave and they don't don't really know what we're doing outside in say Kataba County or cabis County but when these legislators go home they all talk about what we're going to do in Raleigh and how we're going to you know we're going to do this and we're going to do that and so Raleigh is sort of a bad word down at the general assembly which is again it it hurts my feelings because I love this city but it's just that's the reality that we deal with and especially this year we have a brand new speaker of the house so we've had this the same speaker of the house for over a decade I think he's the longest serving um we now have the superlative for our new Speaker of the House Dustin Hall who's an attorney from Caldwell County which is Lenor North Carolina not the county but the city he's from the western part of the state he's 37 years old I'm informed he's the youngest speaker of the house since 1819 so it's a completely different scene now in the house the Senate didn't have a whole lot of change Senator Phil Berger is still the president protm of the Senate and there's 50 members so just because of numbers 50 is less than 120 in the house but you have a lot of new faces in the house there are new committee members they in fact the house just released their committees yesterday but it's important to to to understand that what happens in the house now we really can't predict moving forward because we've not had this speaker yet uh I personally believe that this new speaker uh representative Hall is going to have a little more um professionalism from the standpoint of scheduling he's a real lawyer he likes to practice law that's how he makes his living uh he's he's going to be a dad in here soon uh um there are things that he likes scheduling he likes to he knows because he lives this like it'd be nice to have vacations it'd be nice to have a schedule when we really don't have an end time they have a start time which is sort of fluid but the end time is just whenever they feel like going home I think you're going to see a lot of effort to make this more uh Humane from the standpoint of everybody driving five six seven hours to get to Raleigh to be here only to not have a committee meeting or it be cancell so I do think that's going to be positive from the standpoint of them being around and things they can do to either hurt us or help us I think the other thing to to keep in mind is that with Helen happening this past September October the state coffers at the moment are not great and I mean I won't even get into the fights that we had back in October November December on Helen funding uh but it'll be interesting to see what happens moving forward where the state will be be with respect to some of the funding opportunities that cities counties may have moving forward and those are the things we need to keep an eye on and so as you're contemplating your own budget as you're comp contemplating your own policy decisions you need to just just to be mindful that you know All Is Not Great within the treasurer's office I hope I'm being overly pessimistic and there will be more money there for other things like Transportation water infrastructure and some of the things that we care about deeply in the city but that's just one of the things to sort of keep in mind the other thing that's you know here is that the the house is one shy of a V2 proof majority and there's been a lot of press about that right now um that's certainly different than we've had in the last bium you know we had vetto proof majorities for the last two years we had one member flip to a republican which created The veto proof majority we don't have that yet in in the North Carolina General Assembly but there's enough Democrats that are are um willing to have conversations with Republicans so I wouldn't get hung up on the lack of a veto proof majority at the house level you just need to consider that there are times when there may be technically a vet veto proof majority but that's certainly going to be something that that the new governor who is also a friend of ours who lives in Raleigh before he got to the governor's mansion to keep in mind as we move forward to that despite what we may think there could be a difference of of what the expectation might be be just because of you know pure partisan politics that everybody's going to be trying to get vote so I'm going to stop here right now and let eron say what she wants to say but we are happy to answer any questions we're happy to to opine on anything you ask us to oine on it I'm really happy to be here and I appreciate your time today thanks Philip and you all should know that Philip and I have worked so closely together for a decade or more and he is absolutely absolutely one of the best um it is it is really true Philip can get things done uh we are so grateful that you all have continue to uh rely on him to represent the city's interests at the general assembly um just really appreciate your partnership so thank you Philip and uh Ben you also uh from your perch in Wake County have done a lot to organize cities within the county uh and you include us as well and I think that kind of coordination is really really helpful so thank to you for all of that over the years um let me tell you all about the North Carolina League of municipalities the group that I work for it is a Statewide umbrella membership Association virtually every city and town in the state is a member of The League uh that's roughly 550 cities and towns Raleigh is the second largest and it goes down to towns of a population under 10 um and in fact of those 550 as you might imagine most of them are small towns um and it everybody comes together at the league to speak as one voice and that's why the league was founded uh over a hundred years ago it was to have uh amplify the voices of cities before our state general assembly so the government Affairs group that I work for carries forward that mission uh to today we uh as staff work cities uh and City officials through a process to set a legislative agenda for the organization that should represent the priorities that cities share Statewide we are just at the tail end of that process it began last September uh and has has continued through uh to this week and I hope uh if it's not today then it'll be early next week we can share those top priorities with you I can tell you generally they focus on bread and butter issues for cities and towns infrastructure such as water and sewer storm water roads uh roads and bridges um parks we consider Parks part of infrastructure as well that's something that we always focus on economic development is another big area that we partner with the general assembly on and that usually appears on the legislative agenda as well uh of course Ben you mentioned defensive issues those are where we really spend the bulk of our time um that's that's where we see Power clashes you know the power that City officials that you all have uh is in the land use area primarily and that's something that often makes its way to the general assembly and they want to weigh in on that so we spend a lot of time digging into those issues I should pause here just to say that uh we are also governed by a 28 member board I'm looking at council member Melton here you serve as Raleigh's representative on the league board is it is it 28 we may be up to 30 right now okay in any event um it's a it's a lot represents the diversity of North Carolina on our board of directors and uh council member melon we're really grateful to you for your service you've been on our board for a couple of years and really carry forward Raleigh's perspective um in those discussions uh for our association um so with that we take the goals that City officials set and our team brings them forward before the state general assembly as well as state agencies um we have a very experienced team of Advocates and it's really always a pleasure to work with them um this year we expect to play a lot of Defense um Philip I think you set the stage so nicely part of what uh we're trying to figure out is how the new leadership is going to affect uh our ability to affect change um I think the League's approach is often like yours Philip we look for results um which means we're not into the partisan knife fights um we just want to get things done we don't care if we get credit for it we just want to make sure that we have protected your ability to make the decisions you want to make for your community that's really that's the heart of our work we work cooperatively with folks like Phillip uh with our uh counterparts at the North Carolina County Commissioners Association uh as well as other local government groups and Industry groups across the state and as you might imagine the real estate industry is one that we have to work with a lot on land use issues um I think that you know as politics has become more partisan certainly over my career I've been I've been doing this for over 16 years now and in that time I have seen our political discourse change and it started at the federal level right like you all have lived this just like I have uh and it has filtered down definitely to the state level here in North Carolina uh it calls for different kinds of tools of influence and we really do our best to try to fit into that to make sure that the voice of City Statewide is not the bear we want to be in the room we think it is better to be in the room to help get Solutions rather than to be on the outside throwing flames and so that is our approach uh we appreciate it when cities do that as well um Ben I you were talking about your uh the County's legislative agenda I think it's pretty modest but it's focused on true needs of the county and I think that you'll have a lot of success given how you've structured that so I've probably spoken too much um but that's my overview um and I guess we'll take questions I do think this is worthwhile pointing out before we start take the question is that local governments just want to be left the hell alone like you everybody everybody that's sitting at your at the dis with y'all every eight all eight of you want to do the job you got elected to do and like that's what I wanted to do too so it's really challenging when you sit there and you have the thoughts you have you you know what your constituents want and you're constantly being told hey watch out and the way I've described this to everybody is you know we're sort of the kids at the local level and the general assembly's mom and dad and so you just have to be mindful of that and you know to bring up two not so fun experiences that we had this past year related to the municipal Services district and then Senate Bill 382 which everybody hates by the way at the local government level those are things that happen and it's crazy how they happened there was no notice there just sort of you know lob grenades you know over the over the parit and both of them ended poorly I will say with respect to Senate Bill 382 I'm encouraged by the reaction of leadership the general assembly that you know all of us well Aaron Ben myself others around the state were going to have an ability to try and rectify and fix some of the the the most glaring problems that we have and again everybody hates it the the best news for local governments with respect to Senate Bill 382 is they've been loud to the majority they've been loud to the minority and everybody wants to have something happen we don't know what that looks like yet I don't see a full sale or wholesale repeal of that but from the planners out there I I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to have the ability to sort of level set where we got to again in a really strange way during the relief bill funding that nobody should have voted like that's just what happened so not to try to sort of mess up what Aaron and Ben are saying but I really just anything that you do as an elected official is like just leave me the hell alone and and that means try not to do anything that makes mom and dad mad and that's really the very simplest things to tell y'all part of my language by the way well thank you all for that expertise and just kind of laying the groundwork I want to turn it over to you all now are there questions that you have for the panel Council Branch thank you so and this is for you Ben um what's the process of getting to year three like how you have seven County Commissioners I'm sure all of them have probably have 70 ideas so high level what's the process to narrow that you all use to narrow it down yeah sure so we start course at the staff level um and I and others in the manager's office we'll talk to our department directors others at sort of that senior middle management levels and up um to get some ideas and then we we centrally coordinate this because it is political in nature we we set a starting point for the Board of Commissioners in the manager's office and so that's where that that initial top three list comes from is from the manager's office um and at the state level that's foster care housing and the tax signage bill because we and our criteria is where can we get the most bang for the buck out of a policy change or additional resources from the state we also get input from Philip early on because what I I want all of his feedback but particularly I wanted I want his assurance that these are safe things to ask for and we will not get any adverse attention that we don't want if we go ask for these and we felt good about those those things um the legislature is willing to talk about housing they're willing to talk about foster care and they already repealed the tax Le so so there's there's little risk so so we start the board there um uh what we have generally done is take it to them once uh let the board think about it for a while and then we come back maybe a couple months later and I asked them to bless it um in this past cycle they made no changes to the top three they did add some some things to the opportunity list so thank you okay sorry sorry Mike struggles over here um it strikes me and I guess this might not come around to a question but you all can like nod in affirmation if I'm on the right track or or redirect um but it strikes me that as we think about forming our own legislative agenda the more we can be in line with the county the better like again singing with one voice for the region I mean when I see housing affordability as one of the top three I'm like okay well that's that's our that's on our top three list all the time every single day so that it makes sense to me that we would find the city equivalent to fit under a similar bucket and then when I look at these other two like foster care is sort of a core service provided by the county so I feel like when I'm thinking about ours like housing affordability as one some core service that we offer Public Safety Parks or something like that and then this like text Lean signage seems somewhat like it could fit into a bucket called like technocratic tweaks or something like like deep in the weeds policy tweaks and I feel like there's probably something similar that there's some equivalent that we have that like a state code update would um give us a big bang for our buck in one of our departments in a way that like BBE we as elected officials aren't we don't even know because we're not that far down in the weeds um but anyway it seems like these kind of buckets of like housing ESS one essential service ask and then one like sort of technocratic change makes sense to me so but if you if you would characterize those buckets differently please please do adjust I mean I think you're right but it's going to change depending on the year depending on the politics the mood and I would just say again d of reset what Ben said early on 10% the legislative agenda is about 10% of what we do the 90% is playing defense and that's when you I mean I'm not trying to exaggerate and Aon you can you can agree or disagree that is our breakdown that's our percentage breakdown you you get things from Left Field all the time like oh my God you know who why do they think about this and it's usually I mean honestly it's always it seems like it's just land use issues or some not getting a permit or someone getting you know messed up by C or like all the things that maybe Ry doesn't think about C like people on the coast do or people down the women whatever but the 90% and again I'm not trying to say the 10% is not important but the 90% is really the hard work where you're actually having to think on your feet and react quickly without you know y'all meet twice a month and you know you can't take policy decisions votes you know on the Internet or or you know online and so we we're always down there trying to do the right thing and what's good for rley and look what's good for rley is usually going to be good for weight County and vice versa but I do think that you need to recognize that your needs may be different may change just because of the the what the county does what the city does but generally speaking when it look when you're looking at core Services that's so easy to to advocate for with the general assembly you know not a oneoff it doesn't seem strange it's just you know like for Asheville and again they're one of my clients but like water's a big deal they lost their water for 60 days after Helen so you can imagine that's likely their top list you thing on the list now so it's different for us although water is very important but um I do think as you go through this process when y'all decide to do this keeping sort of the big picture items in in your mind is going to be helpful moving forward because you know you're you're less likely to stray to get off the beaten path it might create some animosity and we don't like that as advocates yeah I I would just say I think we often uh beyond the top three when we're playing defense we are often aligned uh partic like 382 is a great example um that is that development regulation bill was one it was unique in that it it didn't just harm or take away Authority from municipalities but it it had a very adverse impact on counties as well mayor proin yeah I was going to say um Philip you acknowledge that we've had some changes on the minority side I mean the majority side in terms of leadership but we also had some changes on the minority side in ter terms of leadership and I guess my question is um how do you think that impacts your ability to play defense on a number of issues well let me say initially that both uh Senator cityy batch and Senator Dan blue are very good friends of mine I like them a lot and I I'm I'm glad that you know the the Democratic caucus has a good leader with respect to the Senate you know Senator blue lives in Raleigh uh Senator batch doesn't but she works in Raleigh she's working in downtown Raleigh most of her professional career um this is probably is too broad of a statement to to state out loud and on TV but I I believe this yeah I and I know that I I really do think think that the Wake County delegation wants Raleigh to be successful you know whether you're in Hol Springs whether you're in zebulun like we are you know we're the capital city we're the capital County and so that's the way I feel I may not be right all the time but I view you know Senator blue was the the caucus leader for decades um and he's still well respected I think sen Senator batch is just a different personality she's she's also a lawyer she's a little bit younger than Senator blue she and Dustin are going to have interesting convers Dustin uh speaker Hall we'll have interesting conversations when it comes up but you know the other thing to keep in mind and the same is true with the City of Raleigh 90% of the votes at the general assembly are unanimous or nearly nearly unanimous they're and it's just running the state or running the city and they actually do like each other I mean y'all I I was not here when we had the uh retreat at Dicks um and I think we had representative Reeves uh Senator Bell Senator burger or maybe maybe Brian Fork was there but it was a cool group of people and I mean you could tell no Senator blue was there also they really do like each other they disagree on some pretty big policy things but and they say you know things on the floor that they may not state to each other when they get in private but mostly they're just trying to do exactly what you're trying to do which is do the things that you were elected to do which is govern the city of oy the best way you can um so I'm looking forward to Senator Batch's time as the caucus leader I think she'll be great and I I don't anticipate that being a problem at all mayor yeah I mean given all the differences between the Republican L general assembly and this Council I would still think think there's a lot of shared goals around wanting to add more housing to the state um and I'm just curious are there at you know in the Alex or the ncsls or some of these legislative agendas things that you know might be helpful and examples might be something like the building codes for apartments are are more punitive in the United States and we need to like make it easier to build multi family is you know is there something that could be a sweeping Statewide sort of assistance to cities and in in facilitating that or could we Empower our you know our housing authorities to help cities partner for deeper affordability and more units I mean are you seeing ideas where there's enough common ground that we could you know get behind as a county and a city um but it's helpful to hear that from y'all because it's you know obviously we don't have as much transparency as to what bills are being filed and um some of those National trends yep everyone's looking to me and thank you for that question mayor Cal there is a lot of conversation around this topic nationally um I am fortunate to have networks of my peers in other states so directors legislative directors for their state leagues of municipalities and we are not alone in this conversation bubbling up to the top um what I can say is right now in the states uh where there are Republican majorities the default tends to be the way to build more housing is to loosen zoning regulations that's that is the goto policy Choice um putting that into practice is more difficult if it's a mandate then it gets very technical right because this is probably some of the most technical part of your code it gets really Technical and it differs so much from City to City to County to County uh and it's hard to legislate that at the state level and so I think that creates tension because what one city council may be very comfortable doing another might not be and so the approach that I and my colleagues across the country are often put in is when we get those proposals we have to try to limit the mandates and if we can turn them into incentive programs so some way to incentivize the change you want if the legislature wants to see that how can they incentivize that at the local level without slapping a mandate down that can mess up how your codes are actually um implement Ed and enforced uh that is definitely a policy prescription that we see a lot of I also think just quickly to say the disaster of Western North Carolina and the loss of housing stock with red and blue counties and cities has in a strange way get giving everybody an eye opener to say gosh how can we get this these housing you know these houses built quicker what what what are the impediments and so if there's any lemonade out of a horrible situation I mean there's a what's it 40 members I think on the Helen Recovery House committee that are meeting on Wednesday at 2 p.m. and that's one of their biggest challenges right now is how can we get the housing going again there but obviously if it happens there it's going to happen everywhere how many units did they lose depends on who you ask yeah I mean I'm just thinking like La they lost what around 10,000 housing uh units or more and you just think about the that massive whole uh what that mean to any municipality it's thousands but it's also spread out over a much bigger swath of property too um you know it's there are going to be challenges with respect to what you can build by the river I mean they're having a challenge right now so like what can you do to ensure that you still have access to the F Federal flood program and not take yourself out of that and there's also people that don't want you to build anything back and so again I mean it feels a little bit like you know what we all went through I mean like there's that there's the tension between the growth and development I don't care whether you're a big city a small City but that's always going to be there council member Lambert Milton yeah I was just going to add that something that I learned to appreciate um during my time as a board member on the league is there really is sort of this like um rural urban divide and so I'll talk to some of my fellow board members about housing affordability and supply and they're like no one wants to live in my town our greatest struggle is we can't get someone to open like a Chick-fil-A and so like there's like there's sometimes you know it's just the needs are very different and I think you know what Aaron's challenges sometimes is as a league board we have to come up with like consensus priorities um you know and I moderated a a panel on I think adus and short-term rentals um at at one of the city visions and it was like Mass hysteria in that room because the folks who were from towns that are High tourism you they hate the idea of it and then the other folks are like this sounds great if someone would love to come visit here and stay in someone's house and so sometimes even finding um I guess consistent opinions on issues that seem universally like we need more housing like some the these places just they're not feeling that they're like we don't need housing we need but I think what's helpful sometimes is remembering that decisions we make in Raleigh affect the towns around us and eventually that pressure will be so great on the towns around us that what this is they make are going to affect towns around them and so it will um sort of trickle into these more rural areas um but so it's encouraging that things like the the bill that was um sort of pushed through that there has been we had an entire board meeting about that about um how what the response would be but um just trying to get more opportunities like this to sit in a room and figure out like where can we find um consistency on things because even in that discussion we were like we need to like let the smaller towns be the ones that go in there and talk about how this needs to be pulled back and not like the Raleigh and the Charlotte so it's it's really odd um the needs of different communities around the state um so yeah and we see that at the county level too I I I um it was very Illuminating to me at the association of County Commissioners legislative conference in November um that getting housing affordable housing as a policy priority for that group what was not a challenge but it wasn't automatic and so and so I I sort of lost a little bit of my nav that day as well that across the 100 counties they don't all perceive housing similarly did I see a hand I mean just one other thought I guess my main thoughts are just I don't I want us to be use our political Capital wisely and just coordinate if we're going to ask anybody in the general assembly to do anything for us and then I also would love y'all's help on us being creative on with whom we partner knowing that Wake County unfortunately has so little power uh in the general assembly can we find you know other General Assembly members who have been Mayors other people who are Downstream of us who could help us on a storm water bill because they're representing Goldsboro and the New River Basin things like that that give us uh Creative Connections and alliances that help Raleigh move a ball forward in a way that's a little better than you know asking J Cho as great as he is uh right to run a bill knowing it's it's just Jay if you're watching this right out you know and look to to that point we're really lucky here I mean you have the opportunity to see any of these General Assembly members at any time you can walk literally three blocks from City Hall and have lunch or break breakfast with any member if you get on that member's particular calendar I would encourage you that meeting all 170 is probably not worth your time but we're you you're going to run into people all the time and you know they're just like you and a lot of them have been County Commissioners a lot of them been City councilors and so we do strive to find people that have been elected at the local government level because they do understand but to Ben's point and to Jonathan's point you know that rural urban divide is very very strong and you know the other good news for Riley is they actually do like living here you know they're here a lot they like what we have to offer and so that's half the battle too they may go back and talk smack about oh here's what we did to rileigh but they mostly enjoy their time here they like the way our cities are being run they they like the way our count is being run I mean you give them true serum they're going to say that they just we have to give them the ability to not only help us but want to help us and I think that's that's the way that you do with anybody in real life I mean that's just human nature and I'm encouraged I mean I I am optimistic about even though we have issues with thean recovery I'm still encouraged with sort of the new light with new leadership in the House and Senate I think it's I'm again hope I'm not naively silly but I really think that we have a lot on our plate moving forward and while stuff may not happen this year we still got a a great state a great City a great County and I know that we're going to do a ton of great work together so y'all are a big part of that council member Patton I think oh yeah I was just going to say you you spoke to to zoning code and the tension between like local control and like impacts on zoning uh zoning codes but then there's also if I've understood correctly there's like the State Building Code and something like the single stair regulation on like multif family like a release from that would would open up multif family opportunities for us but I wonder if like on a broader scale like easing adaptive reuse like regulations that prevent adaptive reuse could serve all communities right for us it might be retrofitting empty office Towers but in other you know in other communities that could be turning in like an old textile mill into to a food hall or something like that so has there been any discussion of like how zoning or not zoning code sorry building North Carolina building code there has been a lot of interest and attention paid to the building code um over the past seven or eight years and I'll attribute that to the interest of a specific legislator in the house who builds homes and really does a deep dive into those details what there's kind of two ways to go about making building code changes in the state you can have the general assembly pass a law that says Building Code Council which is a separate appointed entity that actually passes the building code they can direct the building code to do a very specific so we do see legislation every session saying that otherwise the Building Code Council on its own valtion has the ability to change uh the building code it's a long regulatory process nothing is quick even when the general assembly passes a law you're still talking months afterwards before you see anything um but those ideas are out there and I think there are people paying attention to it so you know that may fall into that technocratic bucket that you were uh referring to um certainly worth exploring yeah any more questions for the panel here okay so panel any final thoughts that you would leave them with because we're going to jump into a very short exercise about themes but just want to ask you all are there any parting thoughts before we start to kind of ask the council after hearing what you all have shared what are some of the themes that they want the staff to work on and come back as we will develop a formal agenda so start with you been nothing ready I don't know if I have any I think I think I have already imparted sort of the main points I wanted to make and talk a little bit about our process so um no I cannot can't think of anything else that I would say um good luck with your first term as mayor your first term as an uh District a counselor I I do think that the folks in Riley are going to you know we have a new Leaf to turn over and so I I feel like we're going to have the ability to be symbiotic when we can and we have a lot of um knowledge experience here at the table and we just need to figure out a way how we get y'all and your ideas in front of the right people at the general assembly when we need offensive help or defensive help and so again y'all are lucky because when I need your help I can call you and you can walk three blocks down to the general assembly I'm excited for you all to be embarking on this process um and I know you're going to take it seriously and be very deliberative I can share that just from observation over my career the cities that have the most success have very limited legislative agendas uh something more in line with what Wake County uh has you know just a top three maybe that I love the opportunities list that's a great way to capture the breadth of all the operations and all the things that you're interested in uh but helping to be focused because there's just only so much bandwidth um so I would recommend keeping it really small yeah thank you we are going to actually pull up the priorities just to remind you all the exercise that you just went through with the Strategic plan group is a transition just a few minut okay so I'm going to switch to this microphone so I don't mess with the frequencies yes okay good job okay so after hearing the advice um from your own State lobbyists as well as our partners over at the county and the League what are some of the themes and different things that you all would like staff to consider and coming back to you all because this is just the beginning and we know there was a lot but I think they gave you some really good advice so as a reminder in front of me are kind of the priorities and things that you all have shared with us are important to you so I already have Council M Lambert Milton um I was just going to add I really like this um opportunity list and I Envision that we will probably have a lot of themes or areas on our opportunity list and very few on our um ask list and so for the and we can start there right the them we just throwing everything up or should we specify opportunity or I think you can throw it up and we can star kind of start there but I think for for staff's purposes and direction I think it's helpful you can start big and again you're going to have larger conversations I'm sure that we even direct budget conversations later but just give us those kind of themes that you know I think will to your point will lend itself more to opportunity list and we can help you weed that out but what are some of the things you want us to kind of capture in the next five seven minutes I mean for me just more funding big picture is funding for Transit Transit and then there are a lot of little things underneath it okay but just big thing yeah it would be just Transit funding yes and we also can tease out kind of federal and state too so don't limit yourself in this conversational exactly that's what triggered me to remind you there so I'm hearing Transit housing I heard you but you might want to use the mic I think I heard housing yep so Transit housing related to Transit I know there's a state policy that the dot cannot focus only on pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure they can only add that in to a project that focuses on vehicular so I guess as an opportunity if there's an opportunity to remove that restriction okay so restrictions and limitations around Transit itself okay so I think that funds pedestrian and infastructure yeah okay within H within housing I know that sometimes the um the way the tax credits work Way North Carolina Housing Finance Agency allow like not all the money can go to all the types of things so something like a parking deck cannot be funded with tax credit okay money so tweaks to the so tax credit limitations maybe expansion there okay mayor also talked about state owned land and how we could do you know long-term leases um around housing or Redevelopment okay give aana seconds to catch up there all right stayed on land how the opportunities I think council member Jones was right before you may your protein sorry I just didn't want to jump ahead um I was wondering about especially with the Helen stuff that's going on how do we tap on to with our storm monitor management you know we have a big big budget or not budget but we have an ask you that 800 million that we learned about and how can we utilize what they're already doing for Helen to kind of tap on and make sure that that all of the state especially areas in the city are benefiting there as well that larger bucket and concentration on state funding yeah storm water and mayor protin well the mayor took one of mine which was state owned property using that for um housing but the other part of it is um what are some additional funding sources that we could use through the state as well as through the federal government um especially geared towards affordable housing okay so larger bucket around funding for housing at the state and the federal level council member I going to add the um the building code reform I think we could do a lot more um if we had some more flexibility and then one that seems to pop up every now and then is um I don't know how to frame it this may be too small for this but like retail use in our city okay and I mean I can elaborate but I think you should it kind so like when we talked a few years abouto about trying to make it easier to open like neighborhood oriented retail we're limited on we can't specify and and then recently we've had issues with certain types of retail opening downtown that people don't want us to allow but we don't have theth you know there's just not a lot of flexibility for us I looked at it more of what can we provide to the public um but because there's no no limitations you know we can't say you can open a corner coffee shop in your neighborhood because we can't promise it won't be a corner gun shop or a vape shop but if we had more flexibility to particularly go into areas where we know we have food deserts or lack of resources and loosen it up to where folks could provide necessary services with some guard rails I don't know if we'll ever get there but it's something that has been the ability to limit in areas that need certain Services because it seems to be holding us back sometimes gotcha no thank you for expanding on that did I see a thought in the middle mayor just public private Partnerships I know for things like the airport you know they they want to do quaries land use to fund their long-term aspirations you know in other countries Canada Mexico Etc I mean there's a much greater success of public private Partnerships around sophisticated infrastructure um so anything the state does to enable you know those sorts of uh Partnerships okay counc Jones I don't know if this is something that goes on to this list but I think it last year with our experience with MSDS I think I just like to learn a little bit more about what the priorities are of the general assembly because I think I was kind of Blindsided like what is going on and and wanting to better understand that as we move forward with future MSD proposals at least foundational happening with MSDS okay gotcha council member Patton what's next and then Branch um probably under the housing affordability bucket um is updates or changes to um property tax relief options uh I know the uh income limit for when you can have your property taxes abated is very low right now and so raising that income limit or allowing municipalities to like be a little more targeted or like give give us more options in our toolbox okay sping tool box Branch this may be more Federal related um I know we see the funding that our human relations commission gives out in Grants comes based on our I guess population whatever but just finding ways to increase funding for community and youth um proactive programming okay so funding around Community programming bill to loosen that up based on population and size okay then there were a couple that I've met with some groups recently on that they've talked to me about I met with the historic preservation group and they feel like there's a lot of um opportunities that other states are leveraging um through state law to help incentivize historic preservation I think that may be an opportunity list item for us okay and then when we were talking about election reform stuff a couple years ago this we had this big group pushing for rank Choice voting which which is not recognized under state law and so I think again that would be an opportunity list thing that if there were ever a bill going through on that that may be something that we we might want to weigh in on in the long term okay all right voting election flexibility more kind of final themes you want staff to Mayor well uh on Public Safety I know we've had some progress recently on connecting the fusus network and some of these camera networks but I know from law en M friends for me that the interconnectivity of all these different departments state capital police the sheriffs the state highway patrol and all that uh communication across jurisdictions and groups information monies around technology right data Communications um we're funding this at a local level but I would think uh you know given the that we're we're working with especially here in right uh a lot of State entity uh Public Safety groups as well so more final themes and again this obviously will not be the last opportunity to weigh in but it kind of gives staff an opportunity when we're able on board staff to help you kind of walk through they at least have some themes and different things to start researching on obviously our partners in the back as well can help us as we start to develop um at least that draft and I'd like to your point uh council member Lambert Milton starting off with an opportunity list and then pulling over those things that we actually sounds like you should always Target things that you're going to have success in and you actually already have momentum at the state and the federal level so we'll take this list again not your only opportunity but we'll take this list and we will bring something back to you in the form of a work session in order to help you kind of massage through and as you get um to your final I would say opportunity list as well as your formal agenda I think you guys will um really be set up for Success so I want to take this opportunity now before you take a very quick break just to thank our partners um for this wonderful panel and yes thank you for kind of giving Council I think a really good foundation in order to start this work so we will take a five minute break five [Music] oh n n [Music] [Music] n y n [Music] n [Music] [Music] n [Music] oh that's I know we good mayor well you guys patiently waited all day and you finally get to hear about sales tax collection rates so I'm sure you're I'm sure you're excited uh I'm Ryan Bergman from the manager's office I'm going to turn it over in a minute to our really capable budget and finance team uh I do want to talk a little bit about a few of the themes we're trying to accomplish today trying to get in front of you uh we'll talk a little bit about the current budget and the process and the reason for that is we know that there's a desire for you guys to dig deeper into this budget during this process we really want to lay it out so you understand it better and you can kind of uh uh be concise with the questions and the analysis that we can help you with uh then we're going to talk a little bit about the upcoming budget uh we of course have a lot of needs uh city council last year took some uh excellent action that definitely does help us as it relates to Public Safety Staffing and the compensation study uh you're going to hear an Outlook from Sadia that is uh fairly reasonable uh there is potentially a narrow path that we could have some targeted investments in the areas that you choose uh without additional Revenue but it will take uh prioritization on City council's end it's going to take uh existing staff department heads a little bit more intense budget process we already started that internally uh and then we're going to switch to more long-term thinking and Allison's going to talk about our bonds our long the way we manage finances long term and there actually is going to be some recommended changes there on how we account for our resources uh a little bit of changes to how we handle capital projects with the entire goal of all these changes to be more predictability and flexibility for City councils moving forward so with that I'll go ahead and turn it over to Sadia okay all right thank you ran um good afternoon mayor um and City Council Members I'm Sadia satar uh budget director for the City of Raleigh uh delighted to talk to you all this afternoon about a very fun topic uh called budgeting and finance I know it's a little late in the day where we promise that we'll be um you know as uh concise as we can be um on a very lendy topic so what is our agenda for today as Ryan mentioned we will be talking a little bit about fiscal year 26 and talking about our Outlook there but first where are we now so talking about the budget that you all helped us put together uh for this year that we're in currently we will do a big overview of our general fund revenues and expenses some of the key Investments that we made in the City of Raleigh and then we wanted to go a little bit deeper into the budget so going into general fund budgets by Department uh just kind of layering showing where Personnel dollars lie where non-personnel dollars lie um taking a little bit of a deeper dive into the capital budget and then Allison will talk about where are we now with our fiscal year 25 budget after that we'll go into fisc year 26 Outlook it is incredibly early in the process uh but we did want to chitchat a little bit about what we've heard around the community as we've wrapped up our engagement sessions what we're hearing in the city itself um and of course what our upcoming budget process uh looks like Allison will then take it over with some long-term financial planning that is what Ryan was speaking about earlier at the podium you have all seen those two words steady state uh last year as well she'll be expanding on that talking about some dedicated Capital funding how we could make some changes um in how we do uh budgeting and finance here in the City of Raleigh talking about an advanced Capital plan planning program and then also taking a deeper dive into how we've historically uh you know funded Bonds in the city and what the future could look like with Bond funding and then I'll wrap us up with some next steps uh we've heard a a budget note note from you all uh we wanted to just chitchat a little bit about some key dates and work sessions uh coming up um and then we hope to wrap it up and excited to hear you know any questions any comments any feedback that you may have so with that I am going to dive right into fiscal year 25 so no surprise here this should all be super super uh common to you all by now our overall budget is $1.4 billion this is an overall look for the City of Raleigh so our revenues there on the left hand side where does the money come from again no surprise there property taxes being the majority of that pie um followed by our water and sewer revenues and our fees and charges um again this encompasses the entire budget so this isn't just looking at our general fund which is our primary fund but all of our funds um as a whole and then on the right hand side you'll see you know kind of where the money goes where are we spending our tax dollars again no surprise there our biggest investment is our people so that largest slice of the High being personnel and employee benefits followed by all the stuff that we need to actually do our job which is our operating expenses and then of course our Capital Investments like our bonds uh of course uh also our pennies that we put towards affordable housing streets resurfacing Parks maintenance and then of course you'll see Debt Service right there and what is that that's like payments on principal and interest and all the bonds that we have in the City of Raleigh so that was our city as a whole uh let's dive a little bit deeper into the general fund our general fund again is our primary fund here in the City of Raleigh um and then again revenues on the left hand side no surprise there over half of our general fund dollars come from our property taxes followed by sales tax and Allison will be doing a deeper dive as we look into where we are now into property taxes and sales taxes here in just a little bit and then again where does the money go so no surprise there again Public Safety encompasses the majority of our expenses here and when I talk about Public Safety I'm talking about our police officers our firefighters and our ECC personnel and then the other slice of the pie that you can see is capital in debt that's again transfers to those funds uh followed by infrastructure Public Services that's your Engineering Services your transportation department and then you'll see General government well what is general government that's folks like myself Allison the city manager's office our office of sustainability and others um and then we of course have Leisure Services which is Parks and Recreation um and then you'll see a little that orange slice which is special Appropriations that's about 9% so what is that well special Appropriations actually stands for all the stuff that doesn't really belong to a department in particular so that's like stuff that we kind of all share um that's something as little as postage or let's say safety shoes so something as big as let's say workers comp or like post employment benefits something of that nature and the teeniest part of the slice uh or the pie right there is our grants and you you'll be hearing more about those um later on as part of a work session so now that you've seen the budget as our overall kind of where that budget goes let's talk a little bit about the key Investments that we made in our budget um these this slide was actually shared as part part of the fiscal year 25 uh budget proposal that we did in May um so we invested in a lot of fantastic things in the city we invested in our operating infrastructure what am I talking about there we invested in storm water folks we invested in uh our Urban Parks our historic Parks we invested in our Advanced Recruitment and Retention efforts what does that mean we actually added 5 FTE to our HR department to ensure that you know they do their job in in as much as bringing folks into the city we also invested in our people with uh not only a market adjustment but we also did Merit increases um we also maintained efficient core services to meet increasing demand and that's really you know just keeping the lights on um what does that mean that means that we added maintenance Specialists we ensured that as far as funding critical Public Safety Services is concerned we had uh invested in our cyber security we invested in some software at the ECC to help our emergency call takers as they take those calls and then thanks to city council we did two really important big things well the first thing you'll see at the bottom left is that city council allowed us to dedicate a penny for the implementation of the classification and compensation study I'll be talking talking a little bit about that in a little bit as well but what does that mean that was about $1.4 million that we set aside as Ryan alluded to here a little bit ago that really helped us especially we know we we actually don't know what the cost of the study is but it's good to know that we have a little something in our pockets as we prepare for the implementation and then last but not least we actually dedicated a penny for Capital and deferred maintenance um this was a fantastic thing to do as well we have a lot of needs here in the City of Raleigh as far as our Capital Improvement program goes so this really helped us set some funds aside to really tend to our infrastructure so I said I would talk to you all a little bit about the general fund budgets by Department um and as you can see um the blue bar here is Personnel the red bars is non-personnel that's all your operating expenditures that we need to do our jobs and then that little green bar right there that some departments have those are transfers to other funds actually those are like indirect costs so as you can see Blue Rules what does that mean the majority of our expenses or where our budget lies is our people so to make any significant dents in our budget it means that it there's definitely going to be a Personnel impact there because when we talk about budget we're talking about our people and then I wanted to hit a little bit on the capital budget as well we talked a lot talk a lot about operating right which is kind of our everyday what we do but we also dedicate a lot towards all the other stuff that we have in this city I like to talk about capital is stuff we can see touch feel and we normally in the City of Raleigh if you know anything about our capital budget we dedicated we normally dedicate three pennies one towards affordable housing one towards Street resurfacing and one towards Parks maintenance and last year as I alluded in a prior slide you actually gave us an additional Penny towards our general pgo needs so we went through a Ral last last year and our fiscal year 24 value of a penny was $7.9 million and as you can see it grew by $3.5 million to 11.4 million so what does that mean let's say on a regular basis we've been dedicating you know overall uh $23.7 million because of that reval because of the addition of that extra Penny we are now dedicating about $ 45.6 million towards our Capital needs in the city of which I think is pretty fantastic and of course let's not forget that that's not the only dollars that we spend on affordable housing right we've got the bond we've also got an operating budget we've also got grants similarly for streets resurfacing yes that's a dedicated Penny but then Transportation also has you know the bond they also have an operating budget um Parks maintenance same thing we have a Parks Bond and then of course for General pgo that was something that's been really great especially as we look forward to building the fiscal year 26 budget you know something that we actually can dedicate uh particular um our needs toward so with that I'm going to pass it on to Alison bradsher to talk about kind of where we are now with the fiscal year 25 budget all right well thank you I appreciate that um I have a number of slides that I'm really going to cover really a snapshot of where we are now so we're six months uh into our fiscal year uh which started July 1st and this first chart covers where our Revenue collections are so if you look at the graph uh what you'll see is uh two bars one representing last year and one representing this year the color coding essentially represents those four buckets that Saia spoke to earlier uh property tax sales tax user fees and what we call our other revenues uh so right now the general fund has collected um almost $420 million against our Revenue budget of7 32 million so that's roughly about 57% um the blue bar there just to give a perspective is property tax and that's at about 77% collected uh versus this time where we were last year we were at about 76% so I will take a deeper dive into property tax and sales tax again as our two largest revenue sources in the general fund but the real key takeaway from this slide is again with 6 months under our belts we're really really tracking where we would expect to to be for Revenue collections in the general fund all right moving to uh general fund expenditures uh again this is where are we writing those checks what is the money leaving the bank um same concept here with the bar chart except there are really three colors that you'll see there you'll see the blue is salary and benefits uh the red is our operating and the green is the transfers that go to support other uh functions across the city uh including Capital as Saudia just spoke to so again the general status update here is we're really on track with where our spending is you will definitely notice on the green part of the bar chart there uh that our salaries and benefits are significantly higher than they were last year and Saudia really spoke a little bit about that in the 25 budget there has been a tremendous amount of investment in our salaries and benefits both with the market adjustment which occurred in July of last year uh we had our merits which are in the fall and then also Council approved a new incentive program uh for employees across the organization so that's uh again significant um dedication of resources for salaries and benefits again overall operating and transfers are on track so property tax so property tax by far is uh as was noted earlier you know the largest revenue source for the general fund uh that graph really just shows over time where we have been uh percent collected against budget again we're right at 77% so we're really on track with our property tax collections the first year after any revaluation is a tough year to budget for property tax the reason for that is the appeals process so the appeals process really has three different stages there's an informal appeals process which actually closed out last year and then there's two processes that are still ongoing uh one is with the Board of Equalization and review uh and Raleigh for the City of Raleigh we have over 700 cases that are still being uh reviewed uh and that's going to take them several more months to go through then uh through the appeal process you can appeal to the property tax commission or the PTC um and right now we have over 200 cases for the City of Raleigh that are in there so again while we're on track we definitely have some unknowns associated with our property tax collection but in general December and January are by far where we collect essentially almost all of our property tax for the general fund so again net message for property tax is uh we're really on track with where we'd expect to be uh I know Ryan uh made a little joke in the beginning about sales tax collections uh sales tax is the most volatile Revenue Source we have here in uh the general fund uh you might notice right away it's on Watch and what does that mean that really does mean we are going to be watching this Revenue Source over the next several months I personally love this graph so I'm just going to take a few minutes uh if you'll humor me uh the years are sh known uh by color starting all the way back to fy19 uh the red line at the very top the dotted line is the fy2 budget and so uh the quarters are across the bottom so really essentially every quarter connect a collection dating all the way back to February uh I'm sorry uh fiscal year 19 uh what you really see kind of coming out of the pandemic um is those bars really spread very far apart and we saw that through our collections we know we had record high inflation we had Federal stimulus dollars and so those bars were really far apart we were growing rapidly from our sales tax collections if you then start to notice in 23 24 25 you're really seeing those bars come much much closer together they're still growing they're just at a much much moderate pace and that's important as we think about the FY 26 budget development so right now uh in order to make our fy2 budget uh we needed to grow 2.7% from where we landed last year uh right now we are only at about 1% growth so that's why it is on watch this is something that we are going to monitor we had talked for a long time thinking when is that slowdown going to come and it definitely appears that we're seeing it now we are seeing inflation go down so hopefully consumer spending will um will pick back up again because that's really what drives this collection uh the thing that I would leave you with here is in order to make our FY 25 budget uh the remaining collections that we have have to grow about 4% so uh again when compared to last year so definitely something we're going to continue to keep an eye on I also I do want to put a PL in for uh the North Carolina Department of Revenue we've been partnering with them for some time and they've been able to provide us some early headlights on our sales tax collection which has been really really helpful uh because the way the sales tax process works it is three months and a re uh from the time it's recorded at the real uh the the real um what am I saying um the vendor the business um and then by the time it gets collected recorded sent to the state and distributed to the entities so a three-month delay is is certainly long and makes things more difficult to forecast so that's where we are for sales tax so to round out the rest of the city's Financial uh overall Financial picture these are our Enterprise funds so we do have six operations here at the city that the revenues are largely derived from individuals who pay for the services the largest is Raleigh w which we all know is a regional uh water system and uh the good news here is all of our uh entities here are on track uh with the exception of Transit and parking the reason for that is as the council is well aware Transit this is the first year that we are back on with uh Transit fees and those got off to a little bit of a slow start in the current fiscal year that was really by Design but that's something that we're going to continue to watch for parking parking by far is our operation that was hit hit hard by the pandemic and is still slowly rebounding uh you will notice there is a column called general fund subsidy our parking operation used to be fully what I would call a full Enterprise meaning the revenues from the parking operation covered uh all the expenditures and capital investment uh as a part of the 25 budget and just the way revenues had been coming in it needed to be propped up by the general fund so it's a general fund subsidy of almost 2.7 million so we are going to continue to watch Transit we're going to continue to watch Parking but overall they um the rest of the operations are are really uh on track with where we would expect to be uh six months into the year we will be releasing our quarterly report probably within the next month uh that'll offer a little bit more detail um that council's accustomed to seeing and so with that I'm going to turn it back over to Saudia thanks Allison so now that we've heard about fiscal year 25 let's talk about where we're going which is fiscal year 2026 I can't believe it my first budget at the city was 2024 so this is very exciting so let's talk about the classification and compensation study I wanted to lead with that because let's face it it's the elephant in the room um we've had the age director come and speak to you all about where we are in the process and where we are right now is where the arrow is which is that the HR department is working with our consultant um to develop recommendations those hopefully will be wrapped up by the end of next month so you can expect the HR Director to come in front of you uh to chat about the results of the classification and compensation study during the march budget work session um I did want to highlight that while we did put $1.4 million aside for the classification and comp study we really don't know what the total cost of the study is so how we'll implement it whether we'll phase it or not is something that of course will come in front of you from the city manager and the HR Director so what has been our engagement strategy for the upcoming budget process uh this year we did start a little late and why was that because there wasn't just a municipal election there was also a federal election a lot of our Park sites were occupied as early voting sites uh but we did uh host eight total sessions uh we did two virtual we hosted our annual budget and Bruise which is quite popular now with the community and then we went to each district and held in-person sessions at community centers around each district as I said um and we got a lot of great feedback uh all of the feedback will be captured in an engagement report that will be published by the end of next month uh but I just wanted to hit on a couple of things that residents said that we do super good um which of course um sunny as you can see on the left hand side and things that we don't do really well or we could do better um so residents love our parks and Greenways no surprise there almost every session while feedback did vary from District to District there's no doubt about it we are amazing as far as our offerings of parks and Greenways our residents were also satisfied with our Public Safety Services uh you know no complaints there folks were really supportive of our Public Safety um and then of course um folks were also really supportive of our water storm water and Solid Waste Services departments uh we had quite a few residents say I love it when I get my flyer in the mail telling me when my trash is going to be picked up I love my you know Raleigh water bills saying XYZ so that was that was pretty nice to hear because that isn't the feedback that we've been hearing over the course of the this is our third year doing this so that that was a nice change to hear and then stuff that we can improve upon of course just like you all mentioned here as well there is a need for more uh housing affordability affordable housing here in the city um so that definitely Rose to the top of the list as stuff that we could do better and then of course uh sidewalks every district is so concerned about sidewalks here in the city uh and then this year we also heard about uh a maintenance in our city facilities of course uh some of our infrastructure is old um so folks did kind of voice you know talk a little bit about the maintenance and state of our facilities there and like I said a full recap will be available at the end of next month when we publish uh the engagement report So speaking about the fiscal year 2026 budget I really wanted to put in perspective where we are now it is incredibly early in the budget process and by incredibly early it means even I don't know where I'm going to land but where are we now and I'm just looking at our base budget um where are we starting with uh so if you'll see let's let's start uh change direction a little bit let's start looking at the revenues on the right hand side of your screen so as Allison was incredibly descriptive in describing we are predicting a slower growth um in our sales taxes and of course uh the year after every revaluation is super tricky um so we are being um a little conservative and and I wouldn't even say conservative we're just you know kind of being cautious that's a better word um as far as projecting our revenues are concerned and right now um because I am still waiting to hear from departments about what their asks are for the upcoming budget we are projecting fees to be flat again the main drivers of our user fees are development services fees as well as our parks and wreck fees so we're just unless I hear anything different which I'm sure there will be some changes as part of the budget process we are imagining those to be flat so our revenues right now we're projecting are going to be $ 7451 million now let's look at our expenses and if you know if you'll say well where you are right now with the expenses you're just who you do have a deficit of $2.6 million but let's talk a little bit about how we came up with that number so you see we're like leaning a little bit heavier on the expenses side and that means our people so what we've built into the base budget so far is right at the top you'll see is our classification and comp study so we've got that $ 11.4 million in there but on top of that we've also budgeted merits for our staff just like we do every year we are also learning from our departments that just doing business as usual is costing a lot more and that should come as no surprise to anybody body in this room Big Driver of that is inflation but just things are just much more expensive right and then just like I said doing business as usual whether it's our health and de Insurance uh my apologies council member silver I do see two acronyms there so I will correct that the next time I'm in front of you uh but our elgers our local government employee it's costing us more to just keep the lights on right so if I am right here right now when we talk about our budget it's a 1.4 billion budget I'm thinking $2.6 million isn't bad but let's face it I really don't know where I'm going to Land once as Ryan mentioned I really don't know what the needs of every department is going to be because it's super super early in the budget process we intend to get those uh requests back from the departments in the beginning of February then we'll start our meetings with the city manager her calendar is blocked thanks to me in my department but we'll have more information coming to you hopefully when we do meet um and February 17th if if there are any changes I'll be sure to share but this is where we are but I do yes council member maybe take this later how would you expain tax increase right that our tax collection is down I just it's a it's sort of an intuitive disconnect after such um dramatic increases for so many people so when let me understand what you're saying you're saying that we had a 20% tax increase that included the two pennies that we added for uh one for the Deferred maintenance for Capital and then one for the property tax values right went up dramatically in White County yes so many people even though we kept the rate right their value went up so they got a pretty big hike of property tax and how does a a citizen understand how a lot of people seem to be paying more taxes oh or paying more taxes but yet you're saying that our tax revenues are flat right now given where I am in the budget process to make sure my assumption is I am not projecting my taxes to be flat I am projecting that my sales tax is going to grow 2.25% whereas in Prior years it's grown over 4 5% so that I'm projecting slower growth and from my prop tax and Allison can um attest to this we are assuming a 2% increase in our property tax but we're going to hear more from the um treasurer's office at Wake County soon oh sorry the yeah no the tax administration yeah that information from Wake County will be coming in early February so I think for initial planning purposes right now there's been assumed to be a a smaller growth hopefully we're going to get better news and that's going to be much higher something yeah of course uh mayor one thing I would add is that when you go through a revaluation year it gets really tricky for everybody where even though before the tax increase even though residential may have gone up 11% or something commercial went up at a different amount so even though the city ends up with the same amount of money on the whole residents end up paying more so unfortunately a lot of the increased taxes that residents are are seeing in the change is related to that commercial versus residential split which the city or the county has no control over that's really the only way we can assess taxes so the the piece that is within our control last year was for things like this year's compensation study and the Deferred maintenance needs so I mean those are essentially going to other items but the growth from year to year absent a tax increase you're looking at two and a half% roughly usually okay thank you all right so what are we doing as part of this budget process um last year when we brought the budget to all of you especially when we were going through our June budget work sessions city council had asked us to thoroughly review our base budget expenses um if you all recall in Prior budget uh Retreats I've always talked about our budget as a triangle where the majority of our budget is the base of that triang triangle and what we're really left to work with is that Peak which is a very very tiny amount um so what we did was we are looking within we kicked up the budget we told departments that given the fact that we did raise taxes last year and we've got this big classification and compensation study to fund yes we have uh $1.4 million for it but we do not think that that'll be enough let's look within and let's see what we can do um to pay for this study so we have gone as part of our message um you know has been we have given departments targeted reductions um and we have ask them essentially to do what they're doing with less is that reasonable or not we'll get to see as we meet the Departments later in February to hear from them what they'll be able to achieve um and the goal is that every department and we were only focusing on general fund departments but we've asked them to focus um looking at their operating expenses looking at their personnel just kind of seeing you know what they can do looking within to fund the classification and compensation study moving forward again it'll be a piece it probably won't be the entire study so with that I am going to pass it on to Alison Brader to talk about long-term capital planning yeah thank you we'll go to the next slide next slide oh that's all right all right uh so debt financing is a way that that allows the city uh to take a comprehensive look at our Capital infrastructure needs we have a very sophisticated uh debt model here at the city and it accounts for all of our debt service payments so that's debt that we've already issued it includes both our general obligation bonds which we use to fund Parks transportation and affordable housing here at the city and also our limited obligation bonds or our lobs which we typically use for City infrastructure so think of a fire station as that example our debt model monitors our management policies to ensure that we uh do our best to remain a AAA credit rated entity that allows us when we go into the market to get the lowest interest rates posses which is great for our taxpayers what it also allows us to do is to really look forward how much capacity or debt affordability might exist in the future for us to do more long-term Financial Planning and that's really what I want to focus on on the next couple of slides so uh Saudia mentioned it at the very beginning uh we did believe it or not a year ago uh talk a little bit about the concept of steady state and how that works with long-term financial planning so the uh left side of the slide there where the box is in the white box that is the exact slide that was shared uh again almost a year ago to to the date where essentially what we're talking about here is being very transparent and direct about how our current resources are allocated between our operations which Saudia talked a lot about versus how we fund those Capital Investments that we know take several years to build out so these next couple of slides I'm going to talk to you about a change as uh as Ryan mentioned to how we dedicate funding for Capital planning going to talk a little bit about the concept of an advanced Capital planning program and then end a little bit with uh kind of the concept of steady state and debt affordability and what that might look like in the future so I know there's a lot of boxes so I'll definitely uh take everybody uh through these so just to kind of Orient on the left side is our current process and on the right side of the slide is our future process but today when we receive and record our property taxes and our sales taxes they are all booked in the general fund the general fund then obviously pays for operations so we talked about that it also then transfers some of those resources into our debt Serv Service uh fund which really think of that as our debt model and then it transfers into pgo which was also a slide that Saudia talked about so the proposal for tomorrow's uh budgeting process is to really take that property and sales tax up front be very transparent with you Council as well as the public about how that's going to be allocated and it will go directly into the general fund directly into the debt service fund and directly into the pgo funds the advantage of that really is to create that transparency so everyone knows exactly how much of the property taxes paying for current operations and how much are we allocating for our long-term uh Capital needs um any budget surplus that might uh arise which is when actuals might come in higher than our budget would land not just in the general fund but it would land in The Debt Service fund as well that would increase our debt affordability as we look into the future and then the way uh one time uh if if when we implement this change is it creates actually a smaller general fund and so certainly members of council know how our excess capital reserve equation works and it looks at next year's general fund budget which is going to be lower uh and so therefore we're going to create some one-time seed money to essentially talk about an advanced Capital planning program which I'll talk about on the next slide so the advanced Capital planning program um again a little bit busy on the left side of the chart here but I'll walk you through so the current process when we uh make an investment into a a project so think of that as uh you know a road widening think of that as a fire station our new city hall Council really approves the project Capital appropriation one time and within that one time you're approving the design dollars as well as the construction dollars and we know that design can take uh quite a long time it that is where we're engaging with the community on how that end result is going to look and so the future process really just takes it into two steps so the first step there would be that Council would approve projects going into this Advanced planning uh concept or program the program the the project would come out the other in with essentially a preliminary design so I'm certainly not an engineer but whether that's a 65% design or some agreed upon uh end point and that's going to do a lot of things for us and at that opportune time Council then would essentially make the final appropriation which would be any fin fin design money that's needed or any construction dollars or the construction dollars that would be needed to complete the project so there's a lot of advantages with this concept and the first really is it helps assist in our project scoping uh so again we know that the design process through our community engagement you know can take a while and so um it will enable us to do that project scoping it allows for more accurate Construction costs construction costs by far are the biggest part of a a capital uh project and so it enables us to have that design again pretty well underway so we're able to accurately predict what those cost elements are for construction it certainly would allow Council a more informed uh decision-making process around what projects do get selected and would be incorporated into the budget and then because we would have a little bit of this list if you will and identification of projects it would enable us to potentially create opportunities to leverage uh public private or P3 relationships or grants that might be out there that might enable us to finish that construction piece of the project uh again I spoke a little bit about the funding side the funding for this would come with a one-time reduction of the general fund again as we make that switch with how property and sales tax come into into the fund and think of it like a revolving fund so when we go out for the next debt issuance we're recouping those design cost and then the next program comes up so it really is a revolving fund uh concept uh relative to um to advance Capital planning yes mayor I miss last year of of this so when you talk about lowering reserves because the general fund is smaller and that is that something that municipalities across the state and country are doing and is that how is that the bond rating agencies viewing that and how is the local government commission uh viewing that yeah no great questions and I guess I would say we're lowering it from a a true dollar perspective but we are not changing our policy so actually two years ago Council voted to actually increase the percentage of reserves we do manage in the general fund so that percentage will not change we're now at 177% we were at 14% that was viewed very positively by the rating agencies but because now simply your general fund is smaller because you have those direct allocations uh the dollar amount is smaller but our percentage will not change I hope that's helpful well I understand but that practice how is the local government commission viewing doing a direct allocation decreasing the size of your general fund and how are the the bond rating agencies viewing that practice well I definitely know that other entities across North Carolina have taken these steps and I do not believe their credit rating has been damaged or any LGC or local government commission uh conversations with any of those entities so this is not uh this is a little bit of a of a copy from other uh jurisdictions here in North Carolina that has successfully done uh this type of work yeah uh just adding one thing um this is the way that it works in Charlotte uh our experience is when we made a similar switch about 5 years ago uh it was actually viewed favorably uh Finance reported To Us by the rating agencies and the reason for that is because when you create that dedicated Revenue stream that's not subject to other general fund pressures that's actually viewed at viewed as the the big favorable impact of that thanks yeah I just want to jump in with a quick question here um in switching over to this practice because I'm not familiar with this are there disadvantages so you have the advantages listed are there other areas where they say there are disadvantages to this method yes great question I think one of the disadvantages uh which I don't necessarily know if it's any different than maybe what we experience today but you may get to a point where you've sunk money into the design of something that that arguably you don't construct so whether that's too expensive to move forward or a different direction is decided so there could be some uh design costs that do not move forward into construction okay thank you all right so before I really jump into the future I wanted to really show a 20year uh look back um so this is the city's historical bonds over the last 20 years and so we've got the house there on the top line for affordable housing uh we have the tree for our Park spawns and then the curvy Road there for transportation again all of those are Geo that's our general obligation bonds the buildings there across the the bottom are really what we would call our limited obligation bonds or our lobs which again go more for our in infrastructure here at the city so again think fire station there I really bring this slide up to show the variability over the last 20 years so you can see there are a number of years in between bonds which uh can definitely create some issues from the time of you know when you issue and move forward to ultimately final construction on projects and so really what we're attempting to do with steady state is to make things much more uh concise and um in a a much more rapid pace and so on the next slide again if you look at that white kind of graph what you'll see is those same icons so affordable housing Parks transportation and our limited obligation or city infrastructure and you will see that they align over the calendar years and really what that means is and the reason why it aligns with calendar years is because that's when the voters have an opportunity uh through the referendum process to vote on the bonds and so our next opportunity to do that is in the calendar year 2026 uh you can see again in 28 you can see again in 30 and you can see again in 32 there's a dollar amount there that you can see and that's really what staff is going to continue to work through because ultimately what we are driving towards is that uh column if you will that has those icons would offer Council a uh a maximum amount of money if you will that you could move forward with Geo and limited obligation bonds again on an every other year cycle there's a lot of advantages to that uh definitely from a debt financing perspective we would have smaller bonds they would be more frequent um because again that was why I showed that 20e history there are many many years in between uh it reduces the city's risk to ask for a bond uh extension um and it creates opportunities uh it enables us because of that advanced planning concept and the fact that our projects are much further along in the design phase we're able to really size those bonds because we feel like we have a better estimate of the cost specifically the construction side of the equation uh it enabels uh many of our internal staff to be able to focus on the design side or the construction side so today they are are doing quite a bit of both just because again the timing of when our prior bonds have come through and the Hope clearly is that we have a quicker project implementation because again we've done that pre-design work uh ahead of really asking for the voters for uh approval to move forward on a Geo Bond so that is the concept of steady state so again that direct allocation upfront of property and sales tax the creation of the advanced planning Tool uh and program will enable us to move forward to a steady state where we've created some debt capacity some debt affordability we know what those are and we can look to the future and in order to implement that I'll say just one quick thing on that first bar you will notice there is no tree uh the reason why there is no tree is because we just did a $275 million Parks spawn so um I don't believe that that's on the uh the thoughts for 2026 um so that's why the tree is just out of that one uh one bar there that's essentially our long-term financial planning uh discussion thanks Allison so as we wrap up uh you've heard Allison and I talk about the current fiscal year budget um you've talked uh you've heard me talk about uh what our plans are for the upcoming budget process and then of course Allison just outlined really nicely what Our intention is uh with the budget as we move over to a steady state um so I would like to wrap us up talking about some next steps um so as we go through the fiscal year City Council Members identify budget not notes and primarily those are your way of finding out you know little tidbits about hey if I would like to do XYZ for the budget how much would that cost what would that look like so far we have received one budget note from council member Branch uh and that is the request for a cost of a city historian we will bring all budget notes back uh in June uh during the June Council budget work sessions and of course something that yes sir that was actually from council member BL that was from both of you actually yeah um so so something else um as we go through every Retreat it's similar to what we do when we do our budget engagement sessions we are incredibly attuned to hearing about City council's priorities and just ensuring that the manager budget is also a reflection of those priorities when that budget is proposed during May so this is where our tenative schedule looks like for our budget work sessions um in February um just like we've done in your past we'll come we'll do an overview of what we've heard uh from the community in our engagement sessions um then this year we will be talking or giving you all a preview of what we've heard from departments uh regarding the capital Improvement program for the City of Raleigh again it'll be really early in the process this session is scheduled for February the 17th um but we hope to give you all a you know kind of daylight some of the issues that uh departments have kind of brought forward um for the capital budget in March uh because I had mentioned in a prior slide that you know the results of the classification and com study will be wrapping up in February the HR Director will be coming forward to talk about the study kind of what those results are and then we'll also be having the HR Director talk about our benefits in the city as well as uh bring forward the separation allowance report which I know that some of you are really eager to hear more about and then our last work session we'll be talking about grants uh we have three Grant programs here in the City of Raleigh we have our arts program program uh we also have our cdbg program as well as our Human Services Grants so in your prior we've always normally brought grants forward and um in April and we'll be doing that and then we'll have our Enterprise departments come and chat with you all about what their budgets and fee increases would look like so that's our Raleigh water our storm water and Solid Waste Services departments so to wrap up I'm going to talk about some key dates there's a lot of dates in this slide I just talked about the top uh which are your budget work sessions our goal is to propose a balanced budget knock on wood on May 20th um our public budget hearing is scheduled for June the 3rd um and then we've got a slew of Council budget work sessions scheduled each Monday um in June um so you will see five uh there that have been scheduled these have been approved uh as per your 2025 meeting calendar um so our first possible date of budget adoption could be June 16th or the 17th which actually happens to be a Tuesday a regularly scheduled city council meeting and then of course our last case being June 30th of course that being the last day of the fiscal year that would be really scary if that were to happen um yes sir why is it the 16th and not the 9th sorry I do have the nth in there you said the first time we could approve the budget is the 16th because our public budget hearing is uh the 3 so um that'll happen you you can't adopt a budget up prior to um the ninth is after of the third well if you want to adopt it on the 9th you can you just haven't traditionally okay okay yeah so and then um I think that's about it that about wraps it up for us so we're open to any questions and comments that you have at this point yeah just a few items thank you for this very helpful um one item that I've mentioned and I just wanted to make sure I guess it becomes a formal budget note is around those top 20 intersections and potential improvements I know we're not going to have a committee meeting until the end of February about that so weon have data about which ones could use support but that was something I've been in talks with Michael Moore and Paul Callum about and I didn't know how I need to bring it forward in a more formal way so I do understand that that is currently in committee um and I I understand you had said um that is a budget no but I think we're waiting on the committee to to decide before it would become formal in like March for example okay so I think the intention then is that we'll bring this forward in March instead of waiting for it to be an official budget work note and June okay yes that sounds good yeah just wanted to clarify on that one also curious on our sales tax assumptions so we're a little bit off from what you showed in the graph and it looks like the Assumption maybe that was made was that things would be a similar change like that happened from fiscal year 23 to 24 I wonder how do we make those predictions and forecasts um is there is it very complex or we usually just say it's probably like last year or how do we think about that yeah that's a great question um and sales tax is by far the toughest uh Revenue to forecast so certainly we pay attention to what the larger Dynamics are happening in the economy um that's one of the factors where definitely those lines there that I talked about in that spacing you know I don't know that any of us predicted this historic inflation rates that we saw uh so high all that Federal stimulus money um I would say outside of the pandemic what you generally see is much similar to property tax a a general steady growth um we know people are moving to Wake County Raleigh all the time uh but we definitely look at the larger economics we certainly look at history we look at Trends uh so it's I I guess more of a art than than a science do we review what other communities are predicting or forecasting sure there is some benchmarks um I definitely would reach out to my peers and the in the Big 10 which is the five largest counties and cities to see what they're doing definitely know that budget also does that so yeah we would absolutely uh be looking at what other peers across our state might be doing as well okay and just one more question about the every twoyear steady state Bond idea um it sounds great from a planning standpoint I'm curious about the appetite of residents to vote for such a item every two years are there other communities that have been successful with this approach um or is there push back yeah I don't know Ryan if you wanted to to speak to that yeah so I mean I think the key distinction is if you're doing something over 70 years and you're saying we have enough for a $70 million program if you're doing something over two years you have enough for a $20 million program so you're not saying that just because the frequency increases that uh you're putting more money into to it but the advantages are you can kind of take more bite-size projects at what you're trying to accomplish uh you do have to prioritize a little bit more rather than saying um eight projects are in this Bond you may have to make the decision that three projects are in this Bond and then in two years we're going to look at those next projects so that's probably the big distinction I would say uh it's a lot better because you don't end up uh five years into a bond with projects that are really disconnected cost-wise from what you initially planned so so that's probably the big Advantage um the disadvantage of course is almost public relations where you're talking about a smaller Bond than you did before so trying to explain that this is intended to be over a shorter period of time can be a bit of an issue yeah it seems like the communications requirements of doing this are going to be high and we need to prepare for that yeah and and to make it clear there's there's no magic to two years I mean I mean right now we're at seven years if Council wanted to try four years or something to kind of phase it in that works too it's just and any uh any amount that increases uh the frequency would be helpful from a planning standpoint and to avoid some of these uh big inflationary issues quick question while you're there historically with um transportation and with Parks we know exactly which projects are part of the bond with housing sometimes it's more of a bucket so how does how do you account for that uh from a housing standpoint yeah that's a really good distinction and uh it is notable that you're not likely to put any projects for housing into quote unquote Advanced planning uh whereas for transportation for instance we could get to a point where Council decides to add a couple projects to advance planning this year for next year's Bond um it is certainly uh less important with housing because you don't have that advanced planning component so I mean if if housing stayed on a more infrequent schedule I think that's okay um because the way Finance structures it with housing is they're not going to uh structure the actual debt until the costs come in anyway so yeah that is a distinction and there is some flexibility there okay thank you once member silver I have a question about the sales tax uh just want to make sure um I State what is going on there is volatility we understand that but recognizing the importance of getting those businesses that collect sell tax is a priority um I just heard a campaign Trail it is very difficult to go through the permitting process to get a business open sales tax is going to be Goods it's going to be restaurants so I'm just wondering are we focusing on you know is that clearly an issue and if it is we want to get those businesses online as quickly as possible so that we can start collecting the taxes so I want to go a little bit more granular to understand what is happening because this is something I've heard and since sales tax is so volatile it would wouldn't be in our best interest to find out what is happening on the permitting process to make sure those projects that actually produce sales tax are getting moving along a lot quicker whether it's more handholding to make sure not just come back for a second review but how do we expedited because it is vital vital to how we predict what our sales tax collection is going to be yeah be happy to follow up on that I think maybe I heard two things so I want to make sure so so certainly the way uh entity or a business would register that's all done through the department North Carolina Department of Revenue so I'd be happy to reach out to them to see to your point is there any backlog or is there any additional education I I wanted to make sure that I yeah the second part is like I said I'm hearing this from people I don't know how true it is I try to open up X restaurant it took me 12 months okay I don't know if that's true or not true but there was a sense of frustration and if collecting sale tax is important then opening up going through that permitting our permitting process to upfit a building to open it up would be a priority so I don't know I'm just sharing what I've heard saying Raley wants to be business friendly uh but this is my experience this was one individual I don't know if it's true or not true but if that's the case then I want to make sure we prioritize helping those potential restaurant tours or retailers getting their business open so we can start collecting sales tax from their goods and uh their food and beverage Services great yeah again I think I heard two questions and we'll be glad to follow up on both of those I think yeah you have cool um couple for me thanks y'all for this um so I saw the budget note captured for the city historian I do also think separately we directed the city clerk's office to explore uh challenges and opportunities related to that and so I think they might be traveling parallel paths and I wonder if we could get a like a manager update on whatever information is known because I know sometimes the budget notes are not uh presented to us until the budget process but if there's something ready that we could review in advance that'd be appreciated um and then Sadia I don't know last year in the budget you made this little diagram that reflected individual like an individual taxpayer's allocation a medium median homeowner would pay $1,200 in property tax and five go to parks and 10 go to public safety and uh I found that to be very useful I made 100 copies and I handed them out at all my community meetings and people were very appreciative so if that wasn't too heavy a lift I'd love to see that in the next budget presentation sure um and then sorry I'm trying to be quick um for steady state I think sometimes it's helpful when we're talking about these huge numbers to try to put a metaphor together for the the public that c like what this would be similar to uh or not I'm sorry not City State uh the the thing where the money doesn't flow through the general fund it goes to the direct allocation um so tell me if this is a useful metaphor or or redirect it if I'm if I'm off so in the current situation like my husband's paycheck and my paycheck flow into our bank account and then I pay our mortgage I put money in my Roth and my kids college fund and I also pay my bills and my groceries and in this model that you're suggesting rather than those two paychecks flowing into my bank account and then flowing out the paycheck would just like some of the paycheck would just go directly to the mortgage company some of it would just go directly to uh the rth and then some of it would some of it would land in my bank account to pay by my groceries is that like a reasonable metaphor absolutely um and ultimately it's it's almost like think of it like you're checking in your savings account um today you might put all of your deposit into your checking account only to transfer some to your savings account what this is going to do is say and I'll just pick an 8020 rule 80% going to go into checking and 20% would go into these other buckets so hopefully that helps yeah got it and that's useful to me as like a like when I'm managing my own funds it's helpful when the money just kind of whisks off into the savings accounts because then I'm not tempted to be like okay but actually this month I do kind of want a new pair of shoes right so um and then okay and now then this one really is about steady state um is the intention if we're going to run these sort of small bonds more more regularly is the expectation that there's a commitment from the council not to raise property taxes through their own authority in those intervening years and my follow along question is like bonds fund capital projects but someday it's going to it's going to continue to cost more money to pay our employees and we'll these will these will not cover those operating costs so um how do do we just solve for that through natural growth in the tax BAS yeah so I mean I guess historically Ry a lot of the times when they do a bond there's a property tax increment that goes towards the bond some kind of increase I think and and we're unfortunately not at the point where we can just implement this it would take some time but eventually you're trying to get a point where you can do a series of bonds that year without increasing taxes and you're also leaving enough capacity that two years later or four years later whichever way you guys would want to do it you still have that same amount of capacity now nothing would preclude that Council from saying we're not going to take any of the future capacity but we have this urgent need or urgent project and we would like to do an extra hundred million to do this and pay for it with some kind of tax increments so you can build on it but the concept is once you get going you're not starting at zero you're not binding future councils to say even to do a basic level of capital increases you have to do a tax increase there a couple just playing Pros uh pros and cons on that I mean we all saw car's two bonds fail this year so there is a sense of political timing on when you float bonds so this steady state you know could be problematic politically um the other is I know when I was promoting the parks spawn there was this sense that you know you had to have projects that were across the city so that everyone had the state AK that yeah I want to vote for this Bond because I know I'm going to get a Whitewater Park in my district if you have much smaller bonds then clearly you're expecting the entire city to vote for a package that may only have two or three projects none of which may be in a district so it also seems politically a little more challenging to to build support but I mean I'm I don't have a I'm just brainstorming uh how how that might play the the other question I had um council member Silva and I have not been around so this Transit $21.5 million deficit certainly is a big number uh and I would just be curious both that and the parking much smaller uh but getting a little bit of a deeper dive to understand the Dynamics around that deficit and just just Trends I I know we've come out of a period of American Recovery and federal funds and we're losing those funds and but I mean that's just an enormous deficit to be running as a city so and and mayor just just a clarification of that I don't if you can go to that slide quick Saudia when you're looking the two that have the subsidy I guess solid waste does for now as well so solid waste and parking are true subsidies that the general fund is supporting with Transit that's actually a maintenance of effort from when uh gowake or was uh was it go wake or go R I apologize was was created so we have a required level of general fund support so the terminology is probably bad that's uh apologize um that one's a requirement so so we we cannot go below that level okay like I said I think it would be helpful for me uh to understand all of that uh regardless of if that's really truly a$ 21.5 million deficit that we're paying or not but just mton yeah it may be helpful to have a separate work session or budget work session on these Enterprise funds you know the parking fund we've got this pilot out there for downtown where we've been providing the free toour parking we're going get that data back to us for years since I've been on the city council I have heard a discussion of why are we in the parking business can we sell our city-owned decks is this an asset we want to maintain anymore I mean $2.7 million to your point um feels relatively small compared to the full budget but it it's real money and um if we can find ways to trim these these things I think that could be really helpful I mean that's the that's the Gap that you showed us on that little scale for now for now um and so I think it may be time to actually have a conversation about some of these assets and there may be some competing interest right because if we don't own parking garages anymore then we cannot offer free 2hour parking and so we will have to figure out some strategies and some trade-offs but I think it's worth having a conversation rather than seeing it on a TR like oh well that's just how things are and then we keep keep going I'd just like to Echo uh what counselor Melton is saying and and expand on it a little bit I think when we do these budget in the last few years what I would like to see more of is where we can cut you know what programs what he's saying with parking but when I have the discussion with residents and they say oh you're overs spending and I'm like okay where like tell me because I don't think we are but I don't have the background to say that so if when we have these discussions in the public format you can show me where we can make some cost reductions um that would be beneficial for my conversations thank you thank you and perhaps it's as simple as I know in one of the slides you said you went back to the Departments and asked them to look for places to trim the fat maybe a report out not a deep granular line by line report out of what they found but but some broad stroke categories of how they found to do that is actually something that we will we will be doing as part of our budget proposal when we come to you in front in May yeah just another question on the revenue side um you know we're talking a lot about sales tax which is 11% of our uh revenues but fees and and charges are 16% I'm curious if you know if we have additional data on benchmarking of fees you know are there areas where we are potentially I want say undercharging overcharging ju but just uh given how important that is as a revenue Source uh having a better understanding of um how we're competing absolutely yeah and that that'll definitely come as part of that budget work session with the Enterprises in particular they have very sophisticated rate modeling cost of service studies Etc and so I know each one of the department directors in the room will be prepared for that discussion I'm intrigued by the steady state I understand there are political considerations around it of how will the capital planning occur is there going to be a four-year plan a 10-year plan so you know how you rationalize that every 2 years versus starting from scratch every 2year cycle so how will that work over the life of the program would it be you know some cities have a four-year Capital plan then they have a 10-year Capital plan and it's updated so in the steady state model how would that Capital planning occur yeah great question and I'll certainly take a stab at that so um on an annual basis we are looking at a fiveyear CIP really quite frankly under the covers we're looking a lot further into the future uh but the way the budget process works is Council is adopting that first year of A Five-Year Plan um and so a little bit to your point we're already having headlights uh three to four to five years out on uh projects that maybe uh could fit in our Capital uh Advanced planning fund um but again we have a lot a lot of data even past the 5 years any further questions I see a hand okay all right well thank you very much we really appreciate thank you thank you thank you Ryan thr vegetables just uh thank you all right thank you so much to the finance and budget team that was really helpful I can tell from the conversation and discussion you all had so we are almost at 4:00 um which maybe you can believe it maybe you can't believe it I'm not sure which one you feel more aligned with um we're going to do just I would love to end because we do have a whole another day tomorrow with each of you having a chance to reflect and prepare for the next um day that we have together and this will be quick because I know everyone is probably ready to get out of here um so if there's anyone that this speaks to you're welcome to go first you don't need to go in order along the row um one thing reflect there's two things to reflect on the first is um something that you feel um you learn today that will be useful for you in the next six months and something that you're excited to hear more about tomorrow on the agenda yeah I really enjoyed the fourth graders Lego um depictions of their vision for Raleigh um yeah love them tomorrow what am I excited about for tomor um getting through the agenda and do a good job at it perfect tomorrow I'm excited for the housing and Zoning discussion because I feel like we often talk about affordable housing in a silo and I think our housing and neighborhoods department is going to do a really good job just looking at theenda materials talking about how they all work together L use and then the public subsidies and then today something I learned um I don't know if it's something I learned but it was really nice when com over Harrison and I compared our seven priorities and five of the seven were the same and then the two that were not were just sort of like well she picked one in the same category a different one than I picked and so it was nice to just sort of have that um I guess that consensus where um you know there's a lot more commonality with our colleagues yeah that's great yeah sorry counc I'll come back to you Council I learned uh there's a lot I need to learn uh but I also appreciated the alignment among all of us on some of the priorities uh like uh council member Lambert Melton very much looking forward to the it says smart Ro and annexation but the land use and housing very much looking forward to that conversation thank you for me definitely the alignment and just working with councelor Patton on where we align and then how we really weren't that far off on the things that we didn't check is that we can only pick seven um and I think for tomorrow I definitely the housing was definitely growth and annexation and having that conversation um and Road mapping it out on on how we want to move the city because regardless of some things we may plan the environment will force us to do certain things as well absolutely anyone else at the farther end of the table oh sorry go ahead Council m p no I have anyway um yeah I it's always good to be reminded that we are like more aligned than far apart so these exercises are always really useful um just to like say another thing that hasn't been said had hasn't been said is it was also it's always nice to reaffirm that we are aligned with the public so seeing some of those charts that were like this is what the community said and oh look this is also on y's websites is reminds us that we're all like moving all rowing in the same direction um and then like my colleagues this sort of affordable housing conversation that's coming tomorrow um I am looking forward to bragging on EML about our new direct Voucher Program because we got some to see some cool like feedback about it from the streets yesterday which is cool she has that to look forward to then yeah I mean great to see some just the first budget conversation um it just makes me like you uh council member silver know just how much there is to know the benchmarking the metrics and really the Deep dive in the next few weeks and months to really understand that and feel like we're looking at you know where is there waste where can we improve and then trying to do all of these uh common goals without raising property tax and like how how do we do that uh um so million dollar question yeah literally um certainly enjoyed uh seeing how much consensus there is amongst the council across a variety of different topics um which is great um I know everybody's looking forward to housing and those conversations but definitely the growth and annexation conversation I think is going to be really really important as the city is um is continuing to grow uh quite quickly and rapidly you know what are some things that need to be on our radar um that and certainly some things that need to be on the radar of the public so thank you uh and then for me uh I think consensus is great I also think it's great when the public gets to see when we don't agree so I really appreciate our conversation on public comments so that we can show our values and and and let them know that just because we disagree doesn't mean that we can't work together or that we can't come to a resolution um so I really appreciated that today and then for tomorrow I'm most looking forward to uh the boards and commissions discussion uh I think having that conversation of how we grow and amplify those who are on advisory panels for the city and how we utilize their voice and incorporated into the decisions we make is going to be a really great discussion so great job guys you guys have done a phom job all around thank you to staff um well with that we're not going to keep you any longer we will see you tomorrow we're starting again promptly at nine everyone have a good evening thank you [Music]