um so a flat spot on a wheel of a train is exactly what it would sound like it's when a there's a minor imperfection on the face of the wheel that those imperfections are measured in millimeters usually between 1 to 2 millimeters so as a reference this is a dime I don't know if this is the width I know it's not the diameter but let's call it the depth of a dime and according to google a the depth of a dime is about 1.3 3 mm so we're talking about a flat spot about the depth of a dime um but in a train that flat spot on a wheel it does create uh a tail tail sign when the wheel rotates it clicks um it can also have a slight uh effect to the ride of the vehicle Comfort but flat spots occur routinely they they can occur for many reasons and they're common and Catz has the equipment as all light rail providers do to do a maintenance procedure called tring The Wheel which is literally um grinding the flat spot off of the face of the wheel so that it's perfectly round again um in addition to that the other maintenance term we'll talk about is excessive play in the wheel and the best way to describe this if you think about a wheel and you're looking at your car the Treads from from the front when a wheel is rolling straight down the road it should be perfectly straight rotating it should not be wobbling back and forth so excessive play refers to wobble and the tolerances for excessive play in a wheel are zero right it should be perfectly straight it should not wobble okay so with that in mind um what happened how did we get here um on December 30th of 2023 Light Rail vehicle 113 the operator uh the the vehicle was in service and the operator detected the clicking sound the operator contacted rail car maintenance and the vehicle was taken in for service the wheel was Tred at that point rail car maintenance um ran a test run of the vehicle everything checked out and the vehicle was put back in service uh on the week uh on Friday of last week so January the 5th Light Rail vehicle 113 was again in Revenue Service and an operator reported the telltale signs of a flat spot the clicking so again rail car maintenance brought the vehicle in to assess it they did determine that there was a flat spot when it came in the second time given that it was only 5 days between the first service the tring of the wheel December 30th and Friday rail car maintenance they did identify a flas spot but they they decided that in an abundance of caution they really needed to do further investigation to see if there was additional root cause that was creating it because while flat spots are not uncommon it's not usual to see a new flat spot develop at after just 5 days so they did that work and what they determined was one wheel on on the middle wheel assembly of the vehicle so one there are multiple Wheels per wheel assembly one wheel had excessive play it was wobbling as it as it as it spun um that IM immediately raised concerns and rail car maintenance then notified our cat Safety and Security team and Safety and Security um followed all protocols and notified Inc doot of the situation on Saturday um Saturday earlier in the day based on all of the information ncdot received ncdot then issued on Saturday evening the directive to remove the 100 and 200s now a little from the from Revenue Service now a little bit about what we've dis what we what we know um in that investigation our rail car maintenance did identify the wobble um but you may be familiar over the last year we've talked about Journal bearings or the bearing maintenance that we are doing on the uh Light Rail Fleet they were able to determine that there was no there were no indications that this issue was stemming from um lack of maintenance or um a maintenance issue with the bearing on this vehicle and they are able to do that because we have heat tabs or heat strips affixed to the axle and if a bearing is failing it will heat up and so the heat tabs will register that excessive heat and then you take the um vehicle out of service and you do further investigation the other thing is that ultimately when a bearing um stops working completely so there's no indication that the bearing was uh a contributing factor to this in addition to that they launched an inspection of the middle trucks of the rest of the fleet to determine if while they didn't know why there was the excessive play they wanted to determine if there was excessive play in other wheels on other vehicles in the fleet and based on their um reviews their um investigation they have found no excessive play on any of the other um wheels that were inspected so again um couple things we will make service um we are working with ncdot to understand the root cause of this excessive play in the wheel and Seamans um and at this point um we will we will keep doing the work with Seamans to really do that uh do that analysis uh my team has already been on the phone this weekend and this morning with seamons we anti we have already requested and we anticipate Seaman to send out a team of te technicians here to Charlotte um this week to do an initial um uh review uh or examination of the uh wheel in question so that we can at least have some preliminary data on possible causes of this excessive play in the wheel with that let me pause and see if there are addition but but I do want to emphasize the wheel flat the flat spot on the wheel that is a normal routine occurrence however the directive really stems from excessive play in one wheel on one vehicle so let me pause there thank you Brent uh committee questions I have a couple um so uh for one just to recap uh taking all those trains out of service is quite a dramatic event and I think you know people are going to hear about that and uh wonder and what you've just told us is a lot to take in so I think it's worth highlighting uh a couple of things um for one the way in which that was detected by the driver reported uh in accordance with procedures which frankly a couple years ago might not have happened right we've come a long way from the conditions that you inherited um the very Speedy action that was taken in order to make the determination there were no issues like this uh anywhere else so um I think to a certain extent this is a a strange affirmation of a lot of the work that you've been doing and that we've been doing um and we need to sort of keep sight of the context in the sense that we did have uh a driver who detected an irregularity in the operation of the train that was then traced to a single wheel uh and nothing has been found anywhere else ncdot as they explained to us was concerned that because this had happened twice to the same wheel and that led to the discovery of that uh the wobble um and the explanation for that isn't immediately clear so I think their view was that until we have that explanation out of an abundance of caution we needed to take this action with the trains so uh I get that I I think it's quite a dramatic step they took to to kind of sideline all of those trains um but I just think we need to be careful about how we interpret it you know what it implies for the system um what I I think a couple of things that uh are of concern is uh right now we have capacity uh with the trains that are in service which are the 300 series the newer trains uh we have the capacity to provide service uh to the public on the usual schedule and that involves however those trains working overtime if you will right and uh presumably since that's not the normal order of things there could be some impact on our ability to deliver service uh so could you talk about whether the riding public is likely to see any change in the operation of the trains because of this yeah so the short answer is no to the writing public um the impacts of this will be um neg negligible if if not completely um non-existent so what would happen so I I mentioned we have 23 trains and we need 20 23 vehicles and we need 20 daily to make service um and all of those vehicles um they they require routine maint um and and other things as well so while we are providing service um 23 Vehicles having three spares is is a very lean spare ratio so what would happen if at some point we have 19 trains available we don't have 20 um trains so the standard operating procedure for cats is to run what's called a twocc car train and so for for every one train on the alignment every train consists of two light rail Vehicles right so if we're using 20 Vehicles what that means is daily there are 10 trains running back and forth on the blue line so if we found a situation where we had 19 trains available for example what we would do is send nine trains out with two cars and one train out with one car um the schedule itself would not be affected um operationally is it is completely acceptable to run one car trains or two car trains some systems run three car trains um and you can mix and match that um they don't have to be all consistent right and uh actually for for many years cats did run a mix of two car and one car trains so from a passenger standpoint we will are we do not anticipate adjusting seen the schedule or the headways 20 minute headways along the blue line if we had a shortage of vehicles we could we did not have 20 available it would mean we would send out some Vehicles as onec car trains so the terms of the ncdot order were basically that you need to conduct a root cause analysis in order to be sure about what that wobble represents or whether there's any reason to be concerned uh that takes time in the interim the ongoing process of maintaining these trucks and therefore being able to restore trains to service will continue because once the trucks have come back from that service that train can be put back to work so roughly what does the sort of timeline look like for getting those trains serviced and and then put back on the tracks yeah so that is a good point um what ncdot has said is it's it's an either or um for restoring the 100 and 200s back into service either they um have the maintenance that's already scheduled and once that's complete they can go back into service or we understand true root cause to the wobble and we address that separately some other way so the maintenance is ongoing we have contracted with Seamans in the summer to expedite the maintenance they have stood up an additional shop in Florida it's actually um the bright line uh facility in Florida the bright line is the highspeed train between Miami and Orlando so Seamans has worked with bright line to stand up that shop that's beneficial to us because the Seaman main maintenance facility is in California and so to do the the service takes approximately five to six weeks to do that service with transit to California you add two weeks on both ends it takes two weeks for the truck to get there and two weeks for it to get it back so you end up with a roughly two to two and 1 half month timeline between sending the truck out and receiving it in Florida the transit time is cut roughly in half and so it's about six to seven weeks for uh um the wheel assemblies the trucks to leave Charlotte go to Florida and come back we currently have three that are already in Florida and should be back sometime over the next at different points 30 to 45 days and clearly with um I guess the Silver Linings here is with more of the 100 and 200 series parked uh or grounded if you will we will start to expedite we've already had conversations with Seamans to send them more uh wheel assemblies for for maintenance and that that work that conversation is already been had and we will be working with seens to send more of the uh wheel assemblies or trucks to Florida for immediate uh repair or or so the Outlook is over the the coming months we will see trains returning to service ramping up and at some point in time the root cause analysis will then clarify the issue around the wobble uh which presumably based on your inspection of all the other trains is going to lead to ncdot being able to issue a new order uh allowing them to resume service right we'll have conversations with ncdot about that steps so I would like to recognize mayor Pro Anderson and council member uh Mayfield good morning to you both um questions anybody so uh otherwise I think I just want to make one comment which is uh some people may Wonder okay is this a safety thing do we need to worry about safety and I would just like to emphasize that if anything the opposite is the case what we saw here was a detection by a trained operator of a minor irregularity in a train that led to the report to ncdot ncdot then took uh a uh uh a pretty dramatic action out of an abundance of caution so frankly in my mind safety is the last thing we have to worry about here uh as we as we emerge from some of the problems of 2022 the vigilance around cats is very high so uh we will have to deal with the impact if any on service and you're going to be challenged to kind of get this maintenance work done um but uh frankly I think the fact that you were able to make that assessment over the weekend of all of those trains and conclude there were no bearing issues there were no wheel issues this is an isolated incident is a credit uh and I appreciate that you and your team were able to do that Miss Anderson thank you Mr chair and I heard your remarks about U the speed in which cats address this issue and I completely with you just a question around as these cars come back um is there a standard operating procedure or anything that would preclude you and cats bringing these cars back online and into service at a regular Cadence or will there be another stop Gap or something else on the end to delay that no no there so so when the trucks are set are sent back from maintenance they're tested in the field um right on equipment they're spun to make sure everything's working right they listen to it make sure everything seems to be in order but physically when the truck arrives back in Charlotte it is not cleared okay until it is actually physically tested on the vehicles ncdot Seaman cats Personnel are all on hand for those physical tests that are conducted really literally live with with the uh equipment and so there are there are many safety protocols in place and and we have been following those to uh bring online back online a truck that has been maintained excellent so it just underscores what the chair said as it relates to the safety um measures that when these cars come back there's yet another safety check and then they're brought online so the the riding public can feel very safe and secure that these cars have been tested Ed and are ready to go absolutely and I guess if I if I can just add one more quick thing I would be remiss if I didn't say this and I know that this sentiment has been echoed but um from my view this is a hard way to um you know this this was it was a hard a couple days over the weekends but from my view there is um there is some good news here and the good news is the system works our staff are well trained um they identifi this issue we reported this issue all the way from a rail operator up to our Safety and Security folks this is this is you know safety is first and part of a safety culture this is this is seen that in action and I am really proud um of our staff for for identifying this and taking decisive action Mr manager uh thank you Mr chair members of the committee and I think it's important to um highlight you to Brent because you have um created a culture and casted alliance with the culture of the organization and just the const I I picked on Bren a little bit when I walked in and said I spent way too much time with you this weekend but um that that's great and I think that's the way it should go and and thank you Liz and uh Jason Snider and the team so I just wanted to acknowledge Brent and for the culture that he's creating in cats no I I think it's funny there's a sort of silver line Ling here in terms of uh having a you know a situation that we're going to have to deal with for a few months but also seeing that demonstration of the uh uh of all of our procedures uh and again I think it's really in contrast to where we were a couple years ago so uh good now um if there are no comments from the committee uh it was intended that we would have a cat's update uh other than this report so Mr Kagel do you have anything else to share with us so there were a few things I will be very very quick uh and brief on this um normally we would report out on activities of the work group the work group uh met I believe in October with a tour of our facilities the outstanding items on the work group are the FTA reviews the financial um management oversight review and the special maintenance review that work is continuing in fact the FTA will be on site this week it's coincidental um they will be on site this week to do field work on the maintenance review um as they are doing that we will get a better uh picture from FTA on what their anticipated timeline is for issuing draft reports but I'd say that those that were getting near to um draft reports being issued but but we don't have those yet um in addition the work group was working um we are working on as part of the work group activities a risk analysis um Catz is working with management Partners or bakey Baker Tilly they were management partners and they changed names to Baker Tilly um to help us with that review that work is also ongoing and we'll be able to provide additional reports uh on that work in uh in subsequent meetings and then lastly I do want to say that uh just before Christmas we had a bus operator who was uh um struck by a stray bullet um it occurred the bus was on laau Street um the bus according to cmpd the bus the bus the passengers the operator the bus itself was not the intended target um this was the result of other things going on and and stray stray gunfire um so that's unfortunate that this happened for all of us now I am glad to report that the operator is doing well um he was transported um and and received medical attention but the nature of the W wound was that he is um is definitely um it's it's a very good um prognosis and he is recovering well um in addition to that we continue to look at ways that we can con continue to increase our position on Safety and Security not only for our operators but for for our passengers as well and uh I I think what we're seeing is a reflection of an unsettling situation in Charlotte as it as it relates to Public Safety uh chairman watlington and uh so this is not actually a a particular cat's issue and we've had to point this out before we've seen incidents where trains were affected or had occurrences of violence but it's a manifestation of the violence that's happening uh around the city and uh something that is of concern but not for this committee uh okay and otherwise we can take it that all of the uh uh the items on which you were reporting the Staffing and the other things are progressing uh as previously described so there's uh no breaking news yes sir oh I apologize there is one last thing uh in February in the middle of febu so we have uh city council approved um the new bus operations contract with national Express National Express uh is on site this week they were on site over the weekend and this week to do employee Outreach right introductions to the new management team the new company with the operators and employees who will you know they're employees today and will remain employees through this transition so they are doing that um National Express has a uh new management team general manager uh assistant general manager or or Operating Officer and a head of Maintenance so those positions are in place and National Express is doing Outreach and will be is looking forward to assuming uh the contract uh in February and uh the the terms of our deal with them are such that we have incentives and penalties in place that will help to avoid some of the issues that we were dealing with under the old agreement with the old manager related to to drivers and and absenteeism things like that yes sir yeah okay um if there's nothing else on cats uh thank you Brent good job and uh why don't you take a couple of days off to recover your weekend uh our next item on the agenda is a planning update and for that I call on uh Allison Craig thank you so much um and happy New Year um I think if Wendy okay if we could switch to the yeah thank you um the planning presentation um so we've got a few items that we want to talk about specifically this morning that relate to a business item that you have this evening um a cleanup text Amendment that's coming for decision this month and then an update um where we are on our uh Udo residential overlays but I also wanted to acknowledge too that there are some other topics that are of interest to council and the committee um that we will be coming before you in the next month or two um for future topics and this relates to the duplex Triplex referral that um that we had last fall um some more information about the tree canopy analysis and then an update that we have for um the uh the campus district for the Udo next slide um so you have an item um up for decision and hearing um this evening we had some discussion about that at our last resoning meeting and you should have received a memo from me um um in your packets on Friday you can go to the next slide please so um when Council adopted the Udo um in August um there were there was an accompanying resolution or ordinance that had a bunch of administrative and legal sort of requirements in there and included in that um if you could go to the next slide Wendy um included in that was a provision that if you came in using um prudo zoning District that there was a Sunset date you could just sit out there forever and have those um resoning petitions um in the queue and so we had a Sunset date of March the 1st of this year that if you didn't comply with that date then those uh resoning petitions would be null and void what we found is that we've got some complicated projects we've got the community asking for more time um they just haven't had enough time to work through questions and feedback and negotiations with the petitioner and so what we're proposing is that Council amend the resolution um to extend the decision deadline to December the 16th of of this year um if um the community or the petitioner has had their community meeting and their public hearing by April the 15th of this year that ensures that the public is aware of the project that it's still active that's Mak sure the council is aware of the project and then allows um sufficient time at least eight months for the community to have conversations to talk to you all to talk to the petitioner and work through whatever negotiations need to occur um and so and if both of these deadlines are not met then the project must start over with using um the the udio districts or it it will become dlan voy all right next slide um so we've got our second cleanup text Amendment for the Udo we're anticipating that these will come to Council on a quarterly basis next slide um we have had uh a couple of different engagement opportunities we had almost 100 people attend um this is and we've dispersed this to mailing list and on our website and had conversations with community members this is again a um a cleanup this is not policy issues these are really about making it easier to function easier to understand and so a lot of clarifying language is in this text Amendment next slide I wanted to hand on on a couple of different things that are in the cleanup text Amendment you can um go online or I'm happy to send a link to council members and committee members um with all the different red lines but I wanted to pull forward a few things that I think you've either asked um staff questions about or things that we think are important like U making sure that there's um we're pro we're um prohibiting outdoor entertainment in um neighborhood commercial establishments um so we're having sort of a quality of life um um addressing that we also want to we have in in the Udo that in certain zoning districts uh you can uh you can only have a drive-thru if it was located in the district prior to the udio um going into effect on June first where we're wanting to clarify is it actually needs to also have been in operation so it can't be a drive-thru that just hasn't been um uh converted over and it's been out of out of use for a number of years so it actually had to have been um on the the site and in in operation in order to continue continue that use um and then lastly related to drive-throughs um if it's a drive-thru as an accessory to a restaurant or a bar um you have to have at least 24 seats so it has to be a place where you can go as an individual as a family and go sit down at the restaurant um and have a drive-thru as an accessory use next slide a couple of clarifying languages uh language about about duplex and Triplex so um as it's very common when you introduce new Concepts um in an ordinance you have people that try and test them to find creative ways to get around them and we've seen some um odd driveway configurations and things proposed and so we are proposing to clarify the language just to make sure that what we are actually getting meets the intent and spirit of the ordinance and the vision um we had an a a project come before the Udo Board of adjustment trying um to test some of the language regarding um the sidewall height um for structures and so while the the udio board um ruled in staff's favor we just wanted to clean up that language to make sure that it's clear for everyone and then we've had some requests from code enforcement um to strengthen some languages to make sure that they can um uh do what they need to do in terms of vehicle parking and storage next slide and I think I'll at this point I'm turning it over to um deputy director Hol Hi how are you guys doing today I'm going to talk through overlay districts and what those look like and where we are in the process with putting them into action go to the next slide we have a lovely video that we will be emailing you all for the essence of time today we're not going to show it but it's about 3 minutes and it really gives the community and really people who are not necessarily in the weeds of overlay districts a broad view of what they are how you use them and what they can accomplish next slide so just to catch you up to speed on that there are three tools in the Udo that are new overlay districts that when you adopted the Udo went into effect those three tools are neighborhood character overlay or NCO residential infill overlay or Rio as we call it um and then a new local historic district which is Street side those three tools can be used in different um ways you can see here that uh the street side is very similar to the historic District's process it just limits how much of the lot is regulated by the historic district um and then the other two districts are fall into our administrative process so they are a part of just getting your building permit those are the neighborhood character overlay and the residential infill overlay so I'm going to focus on those two today and what they accomplish um and we put them in the same bucket and I'll explain a little bit more about that um but really uh residential infill overlay is a very straightforward tool it regulates three things they're listed there front setback Building height setback plane and the maximum size whereas neighborhood character overlay involves a study and it involves the option of six different ways to regulate a single family property next slide please so uh the tools for existing neighborhoods Rio and NCO you can kind of see here some of the examples of what uh the type of development and infill development that is occurring in some of our neighborhoods um so these again uh not regulating use these could be duplexes triplexes or single family houses but the scale of them is very different than those houses around them they may be a lot larger have flat roofs uh the parking may be oriented in a different way they you drive by them and you know they look different right so neighborhoods that want to uh limit this control this have something that fits in more with the fabric of the community may choose to use the Rio or the NCO as a tool next slide so first I'm going to talk a little bit about residential infill overlay um again there's no menu for residential infill overlay it is it automatically um uses the front setback of adjacent buildings to set the front setback of an infill building um it takes the average on the block of the building size and that's the average that the house may be um or duplex maybe and then it limits the building sidewall height now I'll just note not here that the building sidewall height and Allison just mentioned it these are things we already regulate in duplexes and triplexes but with the Rio it adds that to single family homes as well so an infill single family house so the residential infill overlay is a rezoning you have a map you take it through the resoning process it is applied you need 50% of homeowners in the community to sign a petition to do that but it is a it is not a multi-step process C it is a single set process you have the signatures on the petition you take it through rezoning that can also be done by Council action if for some reason people didn't have the signatures and there was a strong desire to make it happen it can also happen through Council action next slide now I'm going to talk a little bit about the neighborhood character overlay which again accomplishes some of the same things as the residential infill overlay but it's a different process so the neighbor neighborhood character overlay has a menu there are up to according to North Carolina law there are up to six things that you can regulate through a neighborhood character overlay so those six things are lot width or lot Frontage so how big that is um where the setbacks are the maximum height uh how much a building covers the lot where the parking is uh and how much parking and then the tree planting protection and standards so you can pick one of these if a neighborhood all agrees they can limit one of these or they can do all of these but it is based on the existing character of a community uh so it is a multi-step process next slide and I'll talk a little bit about that process next so it it is not a um quick process so I want to be really clear that there to do a neighborhood character overlay there are several steps first uh you have the application and eligibility meeting we have several standards that are written in the ordinance about size of the area How old uh the development is uh all to meet that criteria of when you are eligible then you request a neighborhood character overlay planning process so you have to have 25% of the property owners or 25% of the land area or a majority vote of council once that process starts uh you go through several things you have a public information meeting we have Consultants jointly with staff work on a neighborhood character plan and development um you have another meeting and you work together with your community to to decide what are the things we want to regulate do we just care about parking do we care about how tall the buildings are do we care about how big the buildings are and you have to all agree uh 50% 51% or more um on what those standards are and then you submit for the zoning map Amendment petition and go through the adoption of kind of the plan and the standards so this can take uh about 8 to 12 months at a minimum so we've been working closely with other communities that have this a very similar uh type of overlay district and they've said that some of their Raleigh for example said that some the quickest they've seen is about two years uh because not because of Staff time or because of the plan process because of the time it takes to get the signatures and the time it takes to all agree on what the standards are that people are willing to kind of place on themselves so again um I'll just reiterate that this does not limit use in any way it is just form based so the form things that we talked about we put asteris here also to set forth what the standards are and steps are in the Rio process so I mentioned it earlier but you can see here there's the application and eligibility meeting same thing as you have to do with NCO and we're really using those meetings as an opportunity to inform people about what the tools are and what they accomplish um and then you go through the zoning map Amendment petition and adoption so next slide so we uh when we adopted the Udo we had a lot of conversations and heard a lot about the desire to use this tool and uh we were we were concerned no one how the intensity of Staff uh resources the survey that has to happen how would we kind of set forth the process to prioritize uh who gets to do it first right who gets to use this tool first so we worked uh with staff and with community members to really set forth a process of how to prioritize who would be in the first uh neighborhood character overlay program who would be in that first phase and so you can see here what some of those standards were um were they in the vulnerable to displacement geography was it an in ring neighborhood and a lot of these overlap was it within a corridor of opportunity um is it a transition between a historic district is it eligible for a national register historic district so uh we put all of these in place and then according to ordinance it is really up to the planning director to make the recommendation as to when we have a large number what are the ones we're going to do first so next slide so through that we and we opened the process we closed the process in uh late October for that initial batch of NCO applications we had 11 communities apply 10 eligible um six were selected to participate in that phase one based on the prioritization uh things that we just showed you you can see them listed here Rolling Acres Clinton Park Medford Acres Eastway Sheffield Park Washington Heights Belmont we are currently kicking off that neighborhood character plan we would like to to kick that off and get going on it and then we're going to really evaluate how it goes uh what are the roadblocks what are things that are a challenge um and how can we kind of continue to learn and modify the process as we move forward so next slide so you can see here this just shows you what those look like on a map and where they're located it's the good diversity of neighborhoods from across the city again the key part of neighborhood character overlay and Rio is that the neighborhood is control in control of actually getting the signatures uh working through the meeting process getting their neighbors on board staff really takes the role of completing the analysis and the education component so we're very excited these are the communities that are are really um dedicated to getting this work um to happen so the next step will be for them to all work to get their 25% of property owners um or land area to sign on to go through the character plan we already have one Rolling Acres has already met that so they're they're uh ready to go um and then we will start uh with our consultant again the kind of survey component which will take us about six months and we will see where it heads so you will probably be seeing some of these coming forward um as some will definitely move quicker than others um and with that we'll be happy to answer questions on any part of our presentation Miss W lington thank you I've got a couple just first question is just clarifying I saw here um that these petitions not meaning these deadlines must convert to preo districts should that read udio districts okay and then the rest of my questions are with the overlays I'm curious I was under the impression that the West Boulevard neighborhood coalition submitted an application for the full Corridor and I was curious how that was handled was that something separate from Clinton Parks or was Clinton Park selected out of that petition or did you all see that petition I believe they worked together to figure out what the boundary was with the one that should go first and how they should work together with that and that's how Clinton Park was selected and then my second question was in regards to the other five neighborhoods what does it mean to not be selected for prioritization so this is the first badge so it it doesn't mean it's a no it just means that once we get through these we'll start working on the on those five so as long as they're eligible and they still want to keep moving forward they'll they'll still be able to participate it's just because of capacity and how we have to do the process we just can't do all 10 at one time we really want to do this first batch move them along and then we'll start the next batch and so then what is the message to the the five that are in the queue they if they want to pursue the Rio they're more than happy to do that we're willing to work with them if there's something that that meets their needs differently and then we're sending basically communication to them to stay in touch stay involved in this process see where it goes they can work to get their 25% signatures in the background they can work on the education piece it's just when we actually start the study that kind of gets them across the finish line so there's a lot of work that can happen kind of in parallel that can be Community Driven okay um and then you just mentioned something that I had a question about can you just clarify the 50% signatures and the 25% signature requirements because as we're talking about neighborhoods that are vulnerable to displacement we know that part of what drives that is that the home ownership rates of owner occupants is low yes and we actually have some maps we don't have them in here but we've been doing some analysis around that as to which of these neighborhoods are home ownership and renter because we are concerned about that to be really transparent so the 25% is to start the study the 50% 50 51% is to for the resoning which would actually put the standards in place Council can override either one of those through Council decision so other communities um that have used this tool you know starting 20 years ago haven't necessarily gone that route they've just used that signature um as the guide but they also haven't been matching up the communities with the vulnerable to displacement work and with where that homeowner renter balances off if that makes sense it makes perfect sense which is why I would offer to my colleagues um some time ago I suggested that we take a step to go ahead and initiate that process as a counselor for these neighbors um I would ask that we consider doing that for these ones that are in need of um or that may need some help getting their signatures um completed certainly we don't want to be able to provide resources and not be providing those resources um so I think that is it for my questions at this point thank you we can stay in close contact on the 25% and where communities are with that and just tracking that because like I said we have done the research on kind of the percentages of homeowners versus um renters thank you so uh I just wanted to emphasize the first item we just heard about the the deferral of these deadlines uh really important that we do that tonight because if not a bunch of hearings that really aren't ready are going to have to be held next week so I just hope there's no Discord about that and then we can move on quickly um concerning some of uh what we just heard about the uh text amendments a couple of these are in areas that are potentially sensitive uh and in some instances it could be construed by some that it's not just uh a clarification but actually kind of a refinement and it has the effect of somewhat narrowing so uh one question for example is if we look at the driveways and some of these other things with the density that people thought they could get be affected by having to adhere to these standards in terms of so you mean in terms of the um the Heights and things like that well driveways in particular uh the parking and the driveways because I mean we have a situation now where we don't Define a resoning category in terms of density we Define it in terms of the requirements and that implies the density right so if you start tinkering with the details of what the driveways and the parking are or some of these other things you've told us about it could have the effect of changing the density from what some people thought they could get to a new standard so I'm just wondering is there an issue like that and this really would not have an effect on that um because it's it's really just clarifying so in in the Udo there's a language that says the driveway has to be you know certain percentage of the total lot width and so it's really just clarifying what that language actually uh how it reads in the ordinance because what what was happening is that we had people that were meeting that and then expanding the driveway past the setback line and we kind of trying to ensure that that driveway is maintained through the front of the house so it's a it's a really it's a minor clarification it really would not have a material effect so I I appreciate the clarification on neighborhood character because initially uh people in my district for example thought oh great you know this is maybe a tool uh to preserve our single family neighborhood character uh and they're apprehensive about mature single family neighborhoods suddenly seeing these new structures popping up uh but I think the message back is that's not what this is here for I mean the 50 years the uh all of the different requirements you you listed so there's no need for them to go out collecting signatures uh right and then you know just need to be clear about that uh Mr neld I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit from reic um uh in general we don't have time for a debate right now but in general would you say that you're kind of aware of and comfortable with or do we need to have more conversations from the industry perspective about what we've just heard can we get to uh everything I think we have had ongoing discussions um we are we meet regularly to talk about refinance we'll continue that process okay I mean you you'd need to be at a microphone to speak but I just wanted to get that's all right uh uh get in touch right if if anything we're hearing uh is not quite as easy as it looks or gives anybody heartburn just so we're aware of it but uh at least you've been in the loop thank you thanks um with that uh yeah I think that's all I had so we're ready to move on to uh our next agenda item which is the Strategic energy action Plan update and for that we have Miss Hazel okay I'm going to step out just for a minute let be right hi Miss Hazel actually uh the chairman had to step out so I'll be helping you guys with the meeting that sounds great if we could pull up the slides that would be helpful so while we're doing that I can just tell you what we're we're going to be doing today so um this this morning there's three things really the first thing is just to provide a little bit of context around a update to our strategic energy action plan now that um it was adopted in 2018 and so this is time for us to review it um and look at updates in technology science and alignment with Council Community goals so we're going to talk a little bit about that and I'm joined by Dr Robin buer she's going to get into the the meat of that at the end I'm also going to provide a couple really brief updates on some um items related to the Strategic energy action plan and in particular I one item that's before Council today which is uh a vote on our participation in Duke Energy's green Source Advantage bridge program and so um I'm going to take the opportunity to talk a little bit uh through that and so um just for for context as you all know the Strategic energy action plan is the city of Charlotte's main climate action plan um which works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions um as an organization through our Fleet and through our buildings but also for our community next slide um this is a component of the context in the beginning of our strategic energy action plan but just as a reminder why are we doing this at all and and you know what is the bigger picture it's really about protecting and preserving our environment addressing climate and doing that um for the impacts that we see today but also the impacts that we see for future generations and how we as a city understanding that cities do make up uh about 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions globally are um leading by example and encouraging and working with the community to to make a difference next slide so here's just a couple things as you know uh annually we do an update to city council typically around Earth Day there's a few items that um have come up over the past couple months that you might not be aware of so I'm just going to quickly highlight a few of these things for context one is last year we launched our power down the crown program that's an energy benchmarking program and we're working with a leadership cohort of 12 Community Partners including people like UNC Charlotte um Central pedmont Community College Honeywell just to name a few and the goal there is to reduce energy use intensity by 10% by 2030 and so um over the course of last year we launched this program worked with Duke Energy EPA um to look for available resources and connect our community partners with those resources so they can be along with us in the journey um so just wanted to highlight that on the left hand side and then in the middle um for the second year in a row we received an A minus um when we disclosed our uh data as well as information about the efforts around our strategic energy action plan from the CDP CDP used to stand for carbon disclosure project it actually doesn't stand for anything anymore but it's a independent agency that rates not only local governments but also the private sector um and basically works with people who have made strong commitments to sustainability to let them know where they stand relative to some of the latest science and efforts and so second year in a row we receive an A minus I think that's really something that city council and the community should be proud of but um the the way that this relates back to our update is they also give us some feedback on what we can do to improve to make the highly coveted A-list um which is really just the gold standard for where you want to be and so we'll use that feedback that we've received over the last couple years to help update the Strategic energy action plan because it is based on some of the latest science uh technology and efforts globally and then the third thing here is um just an update for you all we did launch our strategic energy action plan dashboard um chair dggs you you actually U made this suggestion a couple years ago um and so we're excited that um now we have sort of phase one and a half I'd say of the Strategic energy action plan um and I encourage you to check it out we're looking at our greenhouse gas emissions CommunityWide um we have information about our Fleet we also have information about our investments and on-site solar um but beyond that we are pulling data from some of our partners like um ncsea North Carolina sustainable energy Association to look at where we are CommunityWide with things like residential and commercial solar all of that will help us as we look at this update in the future um and will give us some good Baseline data and so um that is live now and our goal is to continue to improve upon that with um feedback from you and also from the from the community as time goes on next Slide the other way thanks um and so uh because there's a vote today on the Duke Energy green Source Advantage bridge program and the business meeting I wanted just to remind you what that is um Duke Energy has uh with the Utilities Commission approval developed a bridge program so it's a limited capacity program for large scale customers who want to to invest in bringing on more um renewable clean energy sources and and meet and work to meet their goals and so this is um this is the program that's available today and so um a little bit about the program so we we partner with Duke Energy and a solar provider utility scale solar developer to bring a project to fruition and then we pay Duke Energy when the energy comes online um and so we did r FP um we received a a couple of opportunities and the one that we're bringing forward is with Cypress Creek renewals for an 80 megawatt um worth of of uh solar energy and then when energy comes online it's a function of the cost per megawatt hour um subtract Duke Energy's avoided cost rate which is the rate that they do not need to pay themselves for for finding this energy elsewhere um and then what we get on our Energy bill is the difference um and and what that looks like if you go to the next slide a little bit of details here is overall a 1.17 Aver million average annual cost on top of um of our Energy bill and so for context again we're typically between 32 and $35 million as a city for for our Energy bill um this is a large project 808 80 megawatt so um it contributes to our goals um by stepping into a gap of about 45% of our building's energy use um and then again just to sort of put that into context when you think about a large scale solar farm that's the equivalent of about over 13,000 homes powered annually so um just putting it a couple different ways to think about the impact of this and then I think finally the big piece is you know one of the big strategies that local governments and and large customers take is to participate in these types of programs they're called Green tariff programs um one of the reasons is that the equivalent cost to build on-site solar is is quite High um to that scale so if we were to work to to attempt to build solar at that scale on our own buildings and on our own roofs for example um the the capital cost would be something uh to the tune of 236 million we don't have the space to do that anyway um we we we wouldn't be able to get that far even if cost Was No Object which obviously it is um but I just wanted to provide that information so you have a little more context for um why this is an approach that's outlined in in your strategic energy action plan and then the next slide um is is probably the biggest reason which is it gets us um within 19% of hitting the 2030 goal of um powering our buildings by zero car carbon sources and and it's local enough um in our regional grid that it helps to not only you know decarbonize our grid but the environmental health benefits from not needing to produce um Duke Energy not needing to produce as much carbon intensive energy our partnership with Duke in this is to accelerate the opportunity for more renewable energy and to to help choose where it is as local as possible to to Charlotte and the region um and then that's my my last slide on this so if you if you would like Mr Driggs I can either go on and turn back to the CF update or we can pause on this thank you Mr chair and thank you for this update um I remember just about a year ago we were looking at participating in the GSA program and there's a bit of consternation amongst uh council members as it related to the cost can you speak to the cost of U of participating in this program today relative to the cost about a year ago when we were discussing it has it increase that what's the Delta roughly of that cost so um we've had a couple discussions about the program so the one thing to note um uh is that the GSA program with the existing program that we're currently under contract for we have heard from the developer that they are not going to be able to meet the terms that Council agreed on in January now we haven't gotten an official termination notice but um it is it is very um clear to US based on those conversations uh they have said that that is forth forthcoming so that will I'll just I'll say that to say that even and so we are acting on the information they have provided us um we had gone out and done an RFP because we're looking at getting all the way to to the 2030 goals and what opportunities exist uh this is two and a half times as big and so relative the cost relative this is actually a more cost effective um opportunity for Council but it's bigger and so previously we were looking at something around a $775,000 uh a year program with 35 megawatt Farm now that it it looks as if that is not going to move forward this is an 80 megawatt Farm and it's about 1.2 million on average modeled per year however on the first five years that's modeled to be a bit higher in the last 15 years the program it's modeled to be a bit lower um but when you look at it overall it's still um it it is a more cost effective and it gets us farther towards our goals that's good to note and I think um it would be just beneficial to root this conversation in that because you know the just saying the GSA program is going to automatically tap some history right uh but this this program is significantly larger as it relates to megawatts and just from the back of the envelope um calculations that I've done it looks like it is more cost effective and you just underscored that so I think that should that's important when you convey the messaging to the balance of council later on this evening thank you thank you so uh I wanted to say that um as as the cranky old Republican on councel uh you know I'm I'm I'm pretty focused on on kind of the financial aspects of it I'm not a climate denier uh and so my concern is just to be sure that we have a good relationship between costs that we're incurring and measurable results uh and I have to say on this occasion uh I I'm actually quite pleased because uh uh what I'm looking at here is a situation as you've described in the past where depending on the avoided cost you could actually have money coming back right and we thought we saw the prospect for that when fossil fuel prices were very high at this point frankly we don't right so you're you're projecting these the the cash flows that you showed us uh at least that I've seen on other occasions which actually in present value terms translate to about $18 million of current commitment uh and or $900,000 a year so My calculation is we are making an investment in the pursuit of our clean energy goals of $9,000 a year and we are getting 80 megawatts and I find that acceptable uh so uh and I think the fact that we've been able to position Charlotte as a leader uh on these uh issues uh is a credit to the city adds to our appeal to a lot of people for economic development who might choose to locate here so uh I think it's valuable to us uh to be cutting edge on these things I appreciate the a minus rating and uh so with that I intend to support it tonight uh and uh Miss Hazel I really appreciate the work you've done to get us to this place on these issues so thank you okay so let me just um then move on to the last couple slides that we have here which are about the CF update if you're if that's okay with great so then um before I hand it over to Dr buyers you you probably don't need this context but um as you know uh the conference of parties the global climate change conference happened just recently and so while a lot has changed since 2018 also not a lot has changed since 2018 when you updated the CA and I thought um kind of puts a a finer point on this that what has changed is there's a a growing recognition um and commitment to transition away from fossil fuel so we've been talking about that in our own work for years um but the problem Still Remains and so some of the solutions um may be different um or slightly modified but the problem Still Remains and so um I'll just hand it over now to to uh Dr Byers to talk about how we plan on doing that and answer questions related to the CF update all right go ahead and go to the next slide please so we're going to break this out we're going to talk about the kind of the path we're on and then talk about our next steps um next slide just to recap um city council adopted the 2050 resolution in 2018 and then after that in December of 2018 um city council adopted the Strategic energy action plan um both of those things committed to two goals one um Sarah had just mentioned um strive to Source 100% of the energy use in buildings and Fleet from zero carbon sources by 2030 we also have this larger goal to strive to become a low carbon City by 2050 and that's CommunityWide that's not just the city um so we've been working steadily on those goals um since 2018 but now that we're 5 years past the adoption of that um we can start looking at our lessons learned and our next steps next slide please so where have we been we've been all over the place it feels like um again in 2018 that really created the foundation for a lot of this work in the city of Charlotte um over the past 5 years we've been focused on implementation so we've done policy work um we've also coordinated projects and programs with other departments that have seen success um and in 2024 what we're hoping to do is update our CA 5 years after adoption take take in the new science any of the new trends um and really align with a lot of our other big initiatives we have a 2040 plan we have a strategic Mobility plan um we have new tree canopy updates and so all of these things can be brought together um into an aligned plan that brings it all um heading toward the same goals next slide please so these are the six main themes that we just wanted to cover with yall today um the first is really to connect to the the latest science as you guys know science changes all the time um we Monitor and keep up with it um with that we also update and track our project data as Sarah mentioned we have a CF dashboard we're going to continue to add to that and upgrade as we move forward in the future um but we want to continue to track that we're really going to look at the goals the two goals that we had set out in 2018 and re-evaluate those we still want to maintain um ambitious goals um but at the same time maybe look at some Milestones that we can hit between now and 20150 so it's not just this one looming large goal um in addition to that the CDP some of the feedback we got with our a minus was we really need to look at some of our goals at a CommunityWide renewable energy goal go down to Net Zero instead of just a low carbon city um that will get us that a rating and keep us in that Leading Edge Across the Nation so we're going to look at that um we want to address Equity directly throughout the plan the capap was developed with a lens of equity at the time what we have found in the 5 years is that um it's not as directly connected so some people don't realize that what we're doing is actually trying to help provide Equity as we're doing this work as well we're going to highlight local efforts to date again this is pulling in the Strategic Mobility plan the 2040 plan some of our tree canopy data um but we also have a lot of community- based organizations doing work on a smaller scale throughout the community and we want to highlight those efforts as well see what can be leveraged um and what we can add to and the last piece is to relate the Strategic energy action plan to climate resilience you guys have heard the term resilience and we have a lot of programs throughout the city focused on that but there is a climate piece as well that we can tap into and make sure that that's in alignment as well next slide you'll see three tasks throughout this process just wanted to go over them with you we are going to update our greenhouse gas inventory so we have one from 2015 and we have one from 2019 those are both on our CA dashboard we are going to go ahead and update that as well um the hope is to get a 2023 update however some of that data may not be available yet so we'll at least get 2022 um we're going to update the document itself it will look very similar this is just an update this is not a whole new plan um so it will look very similar to what we have now again with updated goals and action items to reach those goals the new piece I want to highlight is a climate risk assessment this is going to be a very brief kind of summary of climate risk and what we're anticipating in Charlotte and relating that back to kind of the why why are we doing this why are we focused on energy um things um that we'll look at are heat index heat waves flooding things like that that helps create that context for why we're focusing on energy in Charlotte especially with energy burden information all right and so our charge um go ahead to the next slide this is just a quick set of next steps for you guys so you know where we are throughout this process um our RFQ request for qualifications is out now and that closes at the end of January we will follow through that process the rest of the winter of 2024 we hope to start this work in the spring of 2024 and really get into it um we are anticipating about a 9-month working process and having a finalized draft for Council adoption in the winter of 2425 I do want to note um we will check in with you guys as a committee and as Council as needed throughout this process we will also have public engagement again this is not to revamp everything from scratch um but public engagement is really important to make sure we're hitting what we we need to hit throughout our community um and we will have a more updated um and more detailed engagement plan once we get our consultant on board and we can finalize that so with that I will do you guys have any questions or comments Molina thank you Mr chair um thank you for that Dr Byers and team um I actually um this is one of those um initiative that I've taken a particular interest in since joining Council um and I have a few questions and my first question begins with I know we speaking a lot about what our deliverables are from a city of Charlotte perspective but can you give me a little bit of information on where we are with our community stakeholders I know that this is a Citywide process and we have additional stakeholders that there's a contingency on their participation in order for our success um and I know that there needs to be some level of cohesion in order for us to meet those standards so um what are we doing to kind of you know work towards that goal collectively as a community because we have Private Industry right and so they need to participate with us they need to be on board with us so where where are we do we know any more about where that is sure and um I think that was one of the reasons why I highlighted the power down the crown work which is really about bringing industry leaders into the conversation that we have been having you know for a while and highlighting their participation and and celebrating that as well as working directly with them I think one piece of this update will be talking about programs and and projects like that I mean then there's the other side of things which is how do we work with the community and some of it is through partnership through um things like the ebike program I mean these all of a lot of the work around the Strategic Mobility plan and the Partnerships that are created do have implications on that larger 2050 goal we don't necessarily make those connections as strongly as I think we could and we can through some of these Community conversations and as we update this plan um but I think there's more to be done and I and I think the um update will outline some additional steps that we can take I guess the final piece is we also have a role in what we can do through regulation and so items in the Udo like the um requirement for a level of electric vehicle charging it and there's also a bonus so there's the carrot and the the stick um those are ways in which Council has also continued to work with the community and that was obviously developed with the community to align these goals so it's simply not just what's the city doing with our investments but how are we incenting and um working with the community so their Investments also meet this overarching in Gold because to your point you know it's a we're we are a big Force but we are a drop in in the bucket overall absolutely um okay and I guess I got a got a followup question first of all I know that we're talking a lot about the integration of various plans and I know we have uh ACM asku on the line I'm really excited that we're working towards an Erp right um uh an Enterprise that actually speaks within itself will help us to from an information and Technology perspective really align these goals create swim lanes and make sure that we're not you know Reinventing the will each time that we'd like to discuss Equity um so I'm I'm really excited about that but I also wanted to ask um I know that we talked about the integration of community you know getting that update uh from community and it it has been my experience that each time that we you know tell community that hey we're going to you know check in um cuz you you kind of have to have a project management training which I've done uh to understand that you have to continue to update that you know particular key Milestones right to get that information to Monitor and control your Baseline make sure that you're still on time on budget let me get off of that but you know I know that that update um will be key in in making sure that we're doing what we originally set out to do and making modifications but uh can you talk to me about the plan to reach out to community and how we're going to be effective in that communication um I'll I'll start and then I'll let you jump in so um first thing is you know we're going to work closely with our consultant to make sure that we're really deliberate about about the the engagement so we're going to work with a a group of folks who are industry experts um at sort of a higher level and have a a cohort um that we'll be working with to help steer some of these efforts but we also want to make sure we check in with the community to share where we are what we have done what some of the challenges have been and then um to talk about some of the the next steps and share some of the latest technology and data um and so uh our goal is to be really deliberate about um about how we do that um and and to work with our consultant to map out a really good process so we don't have that outline um in its entirety but we have conceptually know what we want to do and so we'll be coming back to talk more about that anything You' add Robin yeah I just say that um we know that there's different levels of Engagement for different pieces of this so like Sarah said we'll have a steering kind of group we will have information that goes out broadly to as many people as we can get it to and then um we'll work with some of our connections and hopefully continue to grow our Outreach um to get some of that um information to help with decision- making in the short term um but I think one thing that is key is that it's not just for this plan whatever we do with this plan will continue to move forward with um we're working on creating tutorials that we can put on our website to help teach people new ways that they can add sustainability into their lives that maybe they haven't thought of before and so even though that's not exactly the same process we're doing that concurrently okay no that's really good and then my last question Mr chair um it it's related to equity cuz Equity is a a very different word than equality um and you know thinking about I'm actually going to make sure I'm clear slide number 13 where we talk about what's new where we talk about the climate risk assessment um Citywide right we all know that according to where you are in our city you could experience different temperatures right you can experience a very different reality uh than someone in in certain parts of our city which is really going to uh demand that we take Equity seriously can you give me just kind of a high Lev view of you know what you guys Envision for what that means from a city perspective yeah um so you know I think the the really exciting piece is as we pull in things like the Strategic Mobility plan that Equity is embedded into um the comprehensive plan and we're making sure that that this effort is also continually aligned and that helps to do that but uh some of the work that we've done recently by looking at energy burdens so households that are paying a larger percentage of their income um per square foot you know these are these are um inequities that overlay other inequities that you talk about in every in every committee and so what we want to do is ensure that when we're talking about this Clean Energy Future we're talking about a just transition to a clean energy future where everybody gets the benefit uh of the um transition both from a you know who's doing the work but also who's receiving the benefits and so that is not inconsistent with your current CF um but we just want to make that a bit more direct especially as we're looking towards that 2050 goal and um some of the efforts that you know we'll we'll be undertaking you know we do want to continue to look at energy burden we do want to continue um to look at opportunities for solar and um low and modern income households and pair some of the resources that are out there um with with some of the work that we already do as a city and so it it will look like that which will be not entirely new um but will be more deliberately outlined so that the path is is clear that um it is uh really using an equity lens throughout the different action areas I just want to let you know I'm really excited to see it my imagination went wild when I saw it right because with that data and that tool we could really take into consideration a lot of our constituents that are directly affected by energy use issues right higher you know bills things that they may or may not be aware of um you know partnering like you guys said with community members who are on the ground who are providing those services that would mitigate some of those risks I mean I just I see you know just bright light like all over that so um great job really excited to hear more and let's get to work thank you um so uh just a couple of quick comments if we got an A minus because they expected us to make stronger commitments with respect to the uh the larger Community uh to me that's a reflection of sort of realism the truth is the city has finite Authority it has uh limited capacity through incentives and persuasion um so we just need to be realistic it's it's kind of like like if we had a 50% by 50 tree canopy goal and we stuck to it even though our housing requirements are what they are and it's you know you have to question whether we can if you have an unrealistic commitment uh when you are not able to attain it because it's unrealistic you don't have accountability so Dr buyers I appreciated what you said about having kind of these Milestones spelled out so that uh our performance can be appraise uh on an ongoing basis and in a real world context so appreciate that uh I would suggest colleagues that we all look at the background slides that were not part of the presentation providing more information about GSA and we're technically at the end of our meeting but if you'll bear with me for a couple of minutes I would like to quickly address the last agenda item with be deferred from the beginning of the meeting which is the council committee charge and procedures so if we can get those slides up what this is about basically is kind of a level set for this year it's an administrative thing but it just talks about uh how committees in general work and how this committee is going to work uh the status of some of the things that we've been looking at um so the first very basic thing is the committee charge then we'll talk about process highlights and referrals if we could go to the committee charge please next slide so the Bold up there describes what we do right policies designed to pre Mobility environmental stewardship and plan growth uh the interesting thing is that that environmental stewardship thing was kind of snuck in there um we did we don't have an environment committee anymore but it appears that this is now the environment committee so uh we will take on that responsibility we have various assigned boards and commissions so all the boards and commissions have been linked to the committee that is most relevant to their activity those are the ones for us next slide please committee process is important just to clarify some issues that have come up during Council meetings as to how items get on a committee agenda what the referral process is and we need to emphasize here that uh uh any uh committee activity or staff activity needs to be supported by a majority of council asking for it uh so individual demands that we take up a certain item in committee um cannot be acknowledged uh uh unless they are propo duly proposed and supported by majority so you'll see here some of the uh uh some details on the referral by the mayor the city manager majority of full Council and then the committee work referral items are worked through in committee to develop a recommendation from the committee to full councel uh they should be moved out of committee within three meetings we've had a couple of instances where things kind of got referred and then languished there uh one of them in mind quite honestly um and uh some items that are recurring assignments will not be require action so I would just encourage all of us to hang on to this and be aware uh and then the the goal is that the committee goes back to the full Council having processed something with a recommendation now we did have one or two instances where the committee kind of wasn't sure or or sort of thought okay this is actually a full Council question and therefore where the majority of the subset of council that sits on the committee uh is may not be that important but the intention is that the committee does more in-depth work uh like a district rep on a resoning and then comes back with the results of that so that the entire Council doesn't need to spend that much time on the issue that's the way it's meant to work um so uh I'm interested by the way to talk to the City attorney and other places where I've been a referral a a motion made by committee does not require a second but I don't know whether we play by that rule here um and then the last thing uh is 2023 highlights and current committee referrals so the Udo duplexes and triplexes we did make a referral for infill development as a result of a controversial resoning where residents complained about what the developer could do by right and said you know what kind of a Udo is this and in truth I looked at an old uh slide deck uh describing the n1a and it said there's an expectation that there will be single family in there and so what we're seeing is uh high concentrations of the duplexes and triplexes and uh I think the work that uh staff is is currently doing would seek to kind of spell out more plainly that we do expect a genuine mix of housing types in those infill situations at 5 Acres or more uh sustainable environment we just heard a report uh from app about that uh and we will continue to work on that cats we also heard a report uh we will follow the ongoing kind of recovery effort from the issues of 2022 as the maintenance is performed on the cars and the working group will continue uh its work not regular meetings but it will meet to talk about the FTA uh report that is in preparation uh and our uh risk management process uh as Mr Kagel said before we are now trying to go beyond repairing things that happened in the past and better anticipate things that could happen in the future uh and then the uh review the work of assigned boards and commissions I will just editorialize there the boards and commissions often meet uh and N none of their work actually makes its way to us uh so I think they would appreciate and it would be valuable for us to have a more meaningful engagement of some kind with them we need to figure out how it works cuz this committee alone as you saw has 12 of them or whatever that was Mr Mitchell is here up in the come on in here um so that was that did I leave anything be good all right so with that unless there's anything else I'll entertain a motion to adjourn all right let's adjourn [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] course [Music] [Music] s [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] Happy New Year to all uh we're here for the job Economic Development Committee meeting before we get started if we could have everyone to introduce themselves let me start here at the uh main table uh with the young lady who's really in charge of all of us miss Tracy doson I don't know about that Tracy doson assistant city manager Ed dggs Committee Member marger Molina Committee Member charari Committee Member Dante Anderson mayor protim Natasha Smith Charlotte business inclusion TOA Brown Economic Development andq have staff to introduce themselves please okay econom [Applause] development Eric spanberg Business Journal thank you everyone and I do have a uh a comment from our chair uh chairman is attending the president address on race in Charleston at Emanuel Amy Zion Church where he lost his sister Cynthia and eight other eight other church members about nine years ago I will ask that we all keep council member Graham in our prayers uh without further Ado I'm going to turn it over to miss doson and you can take us through the agenda great thank you council member Mitchell um first as this is the first meeting of a new committee we will talk about the introduction of the committee and the charge for the committee and just remind everybody and then um I will ask Ned Curran to come up with me um for agenda item number two on the impact of office vacancies and really use that time to set the stage um for the referral that uh mayor La did last last week regarding um office vacancies so if we can go to this first presentation as you all know the committee work that you do plays a key role in what council uh role and Mission is and it's really we' we've done a lot of improvements over the years with enhancing staff support for committees um more in-depth discussions with Council and try to improve the committee reporting process it's also boost cross-discipline collaboration and creates a clearer role I think for the mayor protim um as she starts her new role so with this for the economic development committee you can see up here on the stage the committee charge is to review and recommend policies to create a thriving economic climate where businesses are connected to highly skilled talent and Technologies you will also see that each committee has assigned boards and commissions to it and I'm not going to read all of those you can see all of the ones um that fall under the jobs and economic development committee next slide so our committee process if this is not your first committee meeting for the day you've seen the same slide referrals allow for in-depth consideration and review of issued by a work team and council members prior to being presented to the full Council for Action so you can see the process again an item is referred it can be referred by the mayor the manager or majority of the full committee and then they're taken to committee where they really should move through Committee in about three meetings some items however are ongoing or reoccurring and may not follow the same process once they come out of committee they go to full Council action ction review and then in a future meeting the council can take action um on the item that is presented I'll stop quickly with that does anybody have any questions about the process yes Mr D as a council member I just want to underscore what this signifies we we have seen situations where somebody proposed that we ought to be doing something or working on something uh questions were raised during meetings about the referral process so so I I think it's important that we're all clear uh this work staff work and committee work doesn't happen unless a majority of council or the mayor or manager uh supports it uh we have a standing policy on Council that more than four hours of Staff work would need to be requested by a majority of council um and uh we we we need to be clear on these referrals as well so if somebody does have a PRI personal priority they need to get five people to agree with them that this is something that we all should look at and otherwise it doesn't move so I just want to underscore that because uh there have been some questions in the past I think that's I think that's important to to reiterate if we can go is there any other questions okay we can go to the next slide so we have several items that are kind of standing reoccurring items CBI program um with regular updates there's also promoting business new um or proposed plans or policies to the committee um also inter and that falls within international business as well I think you'll see their second agenda item today kind of Falls within this same one um and then the other one is the review of the work assigned boards and commissions and this is kind of as a standing annual item as well next slide if we look back at 2023 and some of the accomplishments that we had again you can see we've um CBI artarts and culture arpa funding which is really around small business support Workforce Development support um and corridors the business advisory committee and the um CBI advisory committee restructure came forward and then what's a little bit unique about this committee was that um sometimes we see projects referred to a committee and Eastland yards uh showed up quite a bit in this committee last year um I will I want to underscore one that is in there but um we do a lot of work with it over the past couple of years is the corridors of opportunity as well um within the within the committee any any other Reflections from 2023 I think for any other of the council members that were on the committee Council MRI so I will note that the arts and culture plan was essentially a generational update of our uh funding policies and funding for arts and culture uh defined what our priorities are uh indicated at Grassroots Equity priorities also intends to fund the uh the Legacy the large venues that are owned by the city so uh we had gone for 10 years I think rolling over the same funding and and and not very thoughtfully uh about arts and culture so that was a significant event in the year and uh I will mention personally that I was very pleased to see that some of our arpa funding was devoted to higher uh I believe Workforce Development is it needs to be a critical component of our efforts uh to achieve inclusion and to allow for the advancement of people who faced obstacles for whatever reason so very happy to see that investment take place and then I guess I'll just mention Eastland yards we're not done yet so uh we we have a process that's ongoing right now that's considering a merger of the two competing proposals that uh became such a showdown in the past year um and I think that's a a good outcome of that process but we still have work to do particularly given some of the indications we just got as to possible cost so we'll be seeing that again I expect yes thank you great mayor pro thank you Vice chair I Echo the sentiments that Mr DRS mentioned but I also would like to say that I believe this committee perhaps more than others engage with the boards and commissions that align with this committee um there's been a lot of Engagement with the restructuring and of course with the arts and culture um Advisory Board as well Mr dggs committee for transportation and and uh planning has quite a few boards and commission that align with it and I think this year we need to do we need to be more laser focused on engaging the citizens that volunteer for these advisory boards and commissions so they feel that they're doing meaningful work that is reflective in the work that bubbles up to council thank you second Council May Molina thank you Mr Vice chairman um actually I um what the mayor protim said I think is is very important and I remember um in our you know actual previous meeting when we covered this particular agenda item um our chairman mentioned the same thing I think we have to be more intentional about um kind of how we gain you know an update from you know the boards and commissions that are directly related to our work um actually recently um I actually tuned in to the business um advisory committee and you know was virtual so that allowed me some flexibility to be able to do so but um I I was really you know I I thought what they were discussing was you know some great information that I think we could learn from so so I mean I'm not trying to put anything more on our plates than what we already have but I I would like to you know as we move forward kind of you know think creatively about how we get those updates and how what they actually come up with is something that you know they have a touch point with us so that we can you know better use that information councilor madri's followup uh I appreciate that exactly right the difficulty though is when you've got U eight or 10 or 12 of these committees and given our schedules we need to be thoughtful about how we can make their work more meaningful give them maybe an opportunity to communicate with this business advisory in particular there was a long process and I believe Mr barari was involved in that as well uh business advisory committee right um where essentially they reached a point where they weren't quite sure you know what are we doing and we don't want people that step up and prepared to serve to feel that way so the question is what would be the criteria to have an activity in one of these boards and commissions brought to us as an agenda item for a briefing uh maybe give a member the chair an opportunity to speak to us and give them a greater sense of connection with the city council because quite honestly over the years I've had difficulty even knowing what many of them were doing so I'll just stress that thanks great discussion excellent points uh Tracy I turn it back over to you if there if there's anything else on that particular one um we can go ahead and move into the second agenda item any other comments great I'm going to ask Ned Curran to come up here and join me um we can go ahead and get to the second the second slide um you know we wanted to bring this conversation forward to you all because what what Charlotte is dealing with is not that different than many other places in many other cities ities in the country where there's concentrations of office vacancy in our employment hubs and many cities are taking a action to help mitigate the issues and ensure uh vibrant places of employment in particular a lot of what we're seeing in this is in in the down towns um we want to lay out the issues today um that are really related to the mayor's referral and kind of how we got to where we were um but recognize that rise in office vacancy is impacting several parts of our city and it will continue to also um impact our property tax revenues um towards the end we want to hear from you about additional questions and ideas on next next steps and as I said I've invited Ned um to join me today for additional perspective he and I have had months of conversations together but then we've both talked to several people from the real estate Community I lean on that a lot of times for his expert advice um from a real estate perspective as well and then we've also talked to Business Leaders to understand return to work and and things such as that so Ned I don't know before we jump in is there anything you want to say I'm just here to help and answer any questions he's been a good partner off some insights with some gray hair so we'll go through the referral now and I think you can see from this that just really it's about postco um and what has what has happened again in many markets mostly Central Business districts but it's not just Central Business districts part of it is returned to work part of it are other factors and so what we want to ask is what are the effective strategies that the city can employ to mitigate the impact of Uptown office vacancies through Economic Development efforts to ensure positive growth in the tax base in uptown Vitality the committee charged that was in the mayor's referral is to conduct a comprehensive review of other cities review initiatives underway develop a framework potentially for Strate iies or policies on how we might participate and propose us anything that comes out of that for full Council consideration around strategy or policy before we jump into this because many of you have seen this before I want to make sure um that we remind everybody that when we talk about Uptown vibrancy we've really been talking about this in three pillars and you saw this I think at the um in the housing committee when you talked about quality of life and some of the ordin discussions that you've had for today we're really focused on the real estate and the economic development pillar but I'm always going to bring you back to thinking about these three things together while we might work on them individually they're all re really are they thinking about it so these are just examples um of other cities and what they are doing across the board I think we've nationally seen a 35% Plunge in office values that are forecasted by the end of 2025 and it's unlikely that we have recovered to full value by 2040 so this is not a quick fix for any City and part of why we want to talk about it because if you think about revaluations this could go on for for several Cycles so Boston in 2022 um adopted their revive and reimagine strategy for downtown um revitalization and they had a couple of different initiatives just to give you example continued vibrancy of office space expand housing daily use of downtown Beyond just the work hours multim multimodal transportation and infrastructure and then economic growth for small business creatives and underserved um communities as well as grow tourism San Francisco um they have seen a commercial property valuation decline that puts at risk almost 700 million of their annual general fund Revenue so you think about that that starts to have a heavy a heavy impact um some of their efforts um they're about not quite a year in now on their road map to San Francisco's future some of their efforts are you know how do we keep San Francisco's downtown as a job engine clean and safe destinations all times of the day um transportation and Equitable economy so again you're seeing some common themes here about how cities are are thinking about it um they budgeted nearly 5050 million for non-p police Community Based Ambassador programs over the next couple of years um and they've also amended codes to ensure flexible zoning that can accommodate um a wide range of possibilities and activities um if you're converting buildings and things like that um New York I will hit very quickly uh this city of yes the goal is to produce as many as 20,000 homes for 40,000 New Yorkers um and that aims at they've committed 24 billion to creating affordable housing so a lot of that is focused around building conversions um they've launched an office conversion accelerator it's a process that convenes various experts from government organizations like a New York City's Department of buildings and the board of standards and appeals to help building owners determine how to Fe how feasible projects are and to secure necessary permits we hear a lot about building conversions but really I think it's 1% Maybe that it's really appable to um and so that gives you an example in Charlotte there's been a lot of conversation around this um I'm glad James is here because this week they'll roll out uh their vintage office design competition um you'll hear more about that on Wednesday but then we've also convened um a lot of people from the real estate Community to say how can we help tell us what you see as the issue um and what your whether it's your uh building owners whe whether it's tenants what are you hearing and how we might think about this creatively so with that I'm going to turn it over to NAD for a few minutes um to give you a little bit of background specific um to to Charlotte so part of the reason we'll look at this slide and a few others you know we could talk about Market swings market conditions um thank you K thank and and say well look this this will self-correct it it always does I I bought my house at the peak or I sold my home just when the market was you know getting ready to take off and I missed it Market Cycles happen why why would you all take special attention on a particular asset class being Office Buildings uh and it's because we're now in unprecedented times the the return to work the changes in our work habits have simply created a a paradigm shift in demand for that product and so we have excess inventory so I know it's hard to read this this chart this is published from uh the commercial real estate industry publishes this is the end of the third quarter this data is similar to any other publication that would have similar data and to give you an idea of the magnitude of the issue stabilized office Market would have vacancies in the 7 to 10% range Charlotte has historically been a little bit on the higher because we've been so growth oriented for decades that developers like my former life we would build product in anticipation people coming so on the on the published we would look at 10 12% vacancy rates but stabilized 7 to 10 so when we look here at Ballentine it's a 31% vacancy if we look at Midtown Metropolitan 21% vacancy North End 48% vacancy this is Office Products only the university uh almost 40% South Park 21% Uptown 21% % these are never before seen types of vacancies uh and so it's not while we're focused on the CBD for this conversation you see this is wherever you have office concentrations so if we go to the next slide this graph that top graph uh the blue line that is trajector up that is employment so it's good news for Charlotte employment's up this covers about a 20-year period but the dark line is is occupancy and and and you see we've got this where we have more employment we should have Office Buildings full but it's going in just the opposite and the one thing about charts we should look at is whenever something is unusual something else has happened if you look back over the last 20 years and if we took this back the last 100 years you would never see that drop you would never see that office office vacancy is lower when job growth is is increasing and the lower slide just shows that even even if we had people returning we're finding ways to be more efficient in the office space so we don't even need as much office space just in the way people work in their work patterns so this next slide is solely focused on the CBD if we look at the total inventory it's about 23 million square ft I think U 940 total floors in Charlotte I know it's a little hard to to get a feel for what these different Graphics mean but wh you see that light blue line in these different buildings that's a full floor that's available the Orange is a full floor that's available on a sublease Company still has it under lease the landlord is still collecting rent but they've vacated it they won't put the the asset up for for uh rent five of these buildings have over half of their floors available um and about a third are non-owner occupied buildings meaning the owner is not that invested in somehow sticking through this and and seeing it uh seeing it through we go to the next slide um the the same chart that showed us what the vacancies were charts how many leases are expiring over the next 12 months or 18 months here we have 1.7 million sare ft expiring in the center city remember the total is 23 that's a big number and we know that it's not going to get better these these folks are not going to renew it the same square footage if they renew it all they tend to down size um or they've already vacated the space and so the vacancy numbers I gave you are only going to get worse and they're going to get worse in a in a material way so if we go to the next slide um this slide if you look at the orange colored buildings and I'm we're not picking out any particular building here to we're saying it's troubled only because of its vacancy it could be that that uh the building owner has got a a marketing plan to find their way through this so we want to be careful uh not to say that some of these buildings will likely go through a foreclosure process but these are the buildings that have the greatest vacancy and the challenge we've said that this challenge every city is facing what's unusual about our situation is the concentration of buildings so in about a six block area you have over half of our distressed buildings and we all know that if you're in a house where the house next to you is vacant doesn't feel too good and and so we worry about um ancillary damage occurring in the general neighborhood here uh to further further diminish the values of these buildings uh and so you know what has to happen here in many instances when Tracy talks about this will restabilize in 2040 and nationally based on on past absorption models a lot of these buildings just need to go away there's more inventory than there is demand and as demand as demand continues um it's going to newer product it's going to the South End area it may push back out to the suburbs closer to people to reduce commute times we don't know we just know that we have a heck of an issue here in our CBD yeah I will also hit on that if you look the the red and the orang squares are you the older buildings and so what the market trend is right now is what we call this flight to Quality um but I also wanted to use this slide to to reiterate everything that's in blue circle or Square we are talking about making public Investments and so we're making Investments adjacent to what could be troubled assets and I just want everybody to kind of think think about what that what that means if we go to the next slide we recognize we still have good market conditions this is where all the new development is current this is where you have probably that right balance right now of residential and other amenities and things like that this is where all of our office users say they want to be so um or many of them that are that are coming to the CBD want want to be in this area so it's this Dynamic where a lot of people as we've talked have said oh no we've still got cranes we can we look out the window and there's still cranes there's good momentum yes there is but we also have the series of of assets within our community not just this employment District but many employment districts where we need to be saying should we be doing something if we should what should we be doing um and there you know some might be conversions but not all of them are conversions um and what do we want to do to to try to work work through this this issue so next slide if we think about the public sector role I think um there's a lot of questions to ask um will our investment expedite the market correction um if so do we again then do we want to do Investments how long should we consider Investments again I mentioned the conversions how feasible are conversions Ned mentioned demolition which is just a hard thing to get your head around of we're going to take down an office an office tower um or how do we participate in that um and then what is the impact of doing nothing I mentioned um the data point from San Francisco if you look back um and our Economist has mentioned to me a couple of times that what we saw in the increase of our residential property tax rise is the offset of a 2% commercial decline so if we think about this now and it go back to what I said in the beginning not correcting until 2040 that's a couple different revals where all of a sudden our residential property tax could go up to a point we have a discussion about affordability um I've started doing research in to where these residential valuations are going up which communities are hardest hit things like that to try to better understand that but I'm just starting into that work as well next step or next slide excuse me so for today um like we said we just wanted to kind of set the stage in the data points behind the referral give you a little bit um and then also just hear from you what would you like to better understand what do you potentially see as um paths forward or things that you would like for staff to start to work council member mrig start off the count discussion please yes uh that was a lot and and a little uh scary uh I would mention the recent revaluation indicated that commercial properties had gone up in value 40% do we know what the breakdown is between office and other commercial no um I can go back and look at that I will um what I have been really focused on are some of the more troubled assets around the community like that we talk about have seen the vacancies what their increase was between the 2014 and 2019 revalve versus 2019 and 2023 revalve but I'll get the breakdown of all commercial because that would uh underscore the flight to Quality concept like in the aggregate you do actually have uh growth like people coming here a demand for office space some of that uh is people migrating from old office to new offices some of it is a net growth but kind of understanding those Dimensions better the other thing was in the revaluation we came up with is it 200 billion or something the total base uh uh of all the property subject to property tax I'll go back and look at that one I think it was 200 in any case what I'm just saying is it's an enormous number okay and so you have that this segment that we're talking about represents many billions of dollars our capacity to invest and try to impact that market um is limited right so when we look at policy tools or talk about investment you know we need to be realistic about uh what kind of macro impact we can hope to have and therefore I think our conversation needs to Target either incentives uh persuasion those things it's a little bit like with the capap and with uh our Udo and the trees and stuff um we we can sort of try to push the community in a certain direction but we need to be honest about uh how much difference we're able to make so I think it's good that we're recognizing the problem uh I look forward to getting more data uh and greater detail about what policy tools in particular have been employed in other cities just so we have that repertoire to look at and the last thing I'll mention is I I have heard anecdotally from people Uptown that conditions Uptown safety conditions are of concern uh that people are afraid to be out and about out Uptown uh after dark and uh I wonder if that contributes to the migration to South End and therefore I think part of the conversation really ought to be what are we doing to ensure that Uptown where these buildings are is an attractive environment for businesses to locate excellent and and that's exactly why we always we're always starting with the three pillars to remind you that it's not just about filling up office space or or building conversions we have to think about what happens on the street or or a visitor an employee a resident's perception of being in up toown as well um couple things council member J I just want to point out that we've started to think about and I I'll give you one unique example I think for Charlotte so Duke Energy builds a new headquarter building which means they vacate their existing two buildings um one building is sold that building is up for conversion the um other building is then backfilled with w Fargo people which now leaves two Wells Fargo on the market which leaves a big uh vacancy in 301 South College so you can look at how to your point some of this is about new development but we're not back filling back filling as fast and we're not seeing um that growth in the business because a lot of it has gone to either a hybrid less square footage or we've lost a couple of floors in up just companies that have gone completely remote so you know it it's it's looking at all of the factors kind of holistically and what are those one of those tools right but since you mentioned what do we need I'm just suggesting maybe a greater detail of how that breaks down uh in order to see because conversions conver conversions could mean uh a conversion uh of the existing floor plan of the building to a more modern office type of environment and I've seen some of this do people just knock things out they create bigger Open Spaces they put the little game tables in um or or maybe to residential and if we are talking about residential the information I had at one point by a local uh Architecture Firm was that maybe 20 to 30% of these older B buildings could be converted based on simply the plate the floor plate but then you still have economic questions and so uh for us maybe the issue is can we leverage the dollars that we have to incentivize a conversion can we achieve maybe some affordable housing in the process so that would be an area I think to investigate uh be clearer about what can be salvaged because you know a knockdown and rebuild uh that's a big deal and frankly I don't think in the current market uh that extra cost of knocking a huge building down uh can be covered by the value of the new building going up so you see a lot of these projects you just pointed out and they're going in places where there wasn't anything like that uh anyway I think very valuable conversation for us to be having and uh hope we can come up with some good ideas thank you councilman yes thank you Vice chair uh thank you for this information uh I have to say it's a bit Bleak right uh when you look at the Outlook in particular on slide 11 where you outline our Hospitality Investments and our transportation Investments which we as a city is a growing thrive City fully believe that we need to make these Investments but they effectively sit on the out the outskirts of this troubled asset cluster here and um and then that creates potentially an environment where as Mr Driggs mentioned you know constituents may not want to come up town um to live work and play or they come up for a specific uh event and then quickly exit right and then that takes away those tourism dollars for the for the restaurants and bars in the Uptown area so it is a bit of a uh conundrum that we're in also not surprised that on slide 12 it it looks like a lot of the growth that goes through the Southend area which in parts of South End are in District One one but it also follows the rail trail right and so there's something to be said about our overall Mobility plan and how we build uh Light Rail in the future and and and the additional development that comes along with that I'd love as you as you say about as you ask about next steps I'd like to see you know some cities that have gone through significant growth spurts who have U un fortunately experienced a decline in those in those grow spurts and see how they have handled it so I'm thinking about cities like Detroit or Philadelphia um where the uptowns were quite vibrant at a point in time and then they they experienced Negative they they experienced decline it's good that we're not experiencing that but it is creating these sort of troubled areas in in an area that we need to be vibrant um in order to ensure that our city is growing the way that we' like it to but I'd like to see how other cities are handling it as well as you know City like Atlanta which over the um over uh the the pandemic you know um experience the hybrid work like we did but due to traffic and then companies just effectively rationalizing their real estate portfolio and rationalizing their their Opex they've decided that there they would take on this you know hybrid environment or a completely remote environment and Atlanta is a is a city where it is a growing technology Hub in the Southeast and there's a lot of VI uh hybrid and remote work there so it'd be interesting to see how they are handling the impact of their downtown area as well thank you yeah Trac like to respond well because there there was a lot in there and I think that um we definitely need to pull together what other cities are doing I'll ask uh Ned to speak for a second on a study and some conversations that yall had along the way about other cities as well so Walter Price and I were working with the Char executive Leadership Council and helped uh engage ernston young to do a study of what other cities are doing to to your point um that's not necessarily A retrospective on when Philadelphia was in decline or it's more about what are they doing today on these challenges uh and and two two parent elements that came out of that study one was a affirmation that the number of buildings that are really eligible for conversion to residential is really small so unfortunately we can't look too much to that uh and the second thing is there's no cookie cuty answer here each asset is almost unique in its own right it might have something about where it's located or what's adjacent to it or is there a retail component to the floor of it uh that they that they're trying to work with and so I I I think as you all work with policy directives or or the extent to which you can do something corrective here council member Driggs appropriately pointed out you don't have enough currency to solve a multi-billion dollar issue here um but I think working with Tracy um encouraging uh engagement with other members of the economic development sphere the county for example to to the extent that you can use things like property tax elements um U like Tigs and cips those types of things like you've used in the past Cy's got to participate in that too just because the relationship of their tax rate 60 some odd percent being County and City I I would hope and also the other players that are part of the economic development ecosphere this is a time to go back and this is what Philadelphia did this is what Atlanta did this is what Detroit did and said okay we've got new challenges how do we reinvent what we're doing what it is we're offering because we need to get we need to grow our market share so that we at least recover some of these assets or at least grow new assets while we change the nature of our tax base so that by the time we get to 2040 office as a percentage of the tax base is probably a lot less than it is today but we've grown other elements through restoring vibrancy to the core of our center city council member Bari yeah thank you um good information uh and I'm glad we're having this conversation first uh just a dovetail on what was just said there I would caution us not to of course we need to look at what other cities are doing and I think this is a bit where you were inferring there as well let's not burn too many cycles on that because every asset's different every City's different and to be honest everyone's trying to figure this out at the same time right now and everyone's first step is to probably look at each other and we're going to try to uce things from different cities that were actions taken probably prior in most cases to the spot we're sitting in right now so I'm not saying let's not do it but I'm saying let's do it let's do it pretty quickly but we're going to have to craft a lot of these strategies from scratch and these are the ways that other people come to you to look at it um and and what's actually done uh secondly I'd caution us that we've made a couple statements and Ned obviously you're one of the the four Forefront experts in the space so uh no offense meant by this but I I still don't know that we have all the dust to settled on exactly what the go forward themes and Trends are going to be and this is definitely unprecedented um but my perspective I only I my hunch is two things are going to happen here one is we are seeing the data points in an unprecedented way because we have the most unprecedented set of events that have ever occurred in modern history we've had the pandemic for several years which for that period of time changed the way people work and we're seeing that right now but then we're in this depressed economy and the depressed economy especially in a town where we are so concentrated on banking particularly where everyone is struggling and with mantras of surviv to 25 and things like that right now that there could be this could be prolonging something that may have rebounded had it not been the case and we may very well be in a case where 5 years from now when everything is back and times are great where everyone's has a lot more leeway and the hirers have much more strength to be able to say everyone's coming back in or at least at a more significant level I don't know that it'll ever be the same but I don't know that we should just make the Assumption to snapshot where we are right now that this is the new normal and it it doesn't mean don't assume that The New Normal will be different it just means let's be you know cognizant of that as we're making those decisions the other thing about this the lens of us having Ed and Uptown on this which I think is great we're going to have touch points to the other committees and broader um broader topics that we have our part to play in I I think also secondarily that what we see that's good right now in Southend and bad in uptown when those times get better and things like that South End is constrained geographically and there's only really One Direction ultimately it can go which is back into uptown at some point and so that means that there may be a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of cases when the economy comes back when the new normal of working from home or in the office in that case comes back and then South End starts to Bubble Up it'll be hopefully a perfect storm so what can we solve to anticipate and escalate that timeline from happening in the Uptown area and I think that from an ed perspective there are three basic lenses whether it's our investment in our policy we can look at one is quality of life and safety and I'm not going to go deep into that right now but I think that is fundamental to everything that we're going to solve for here and we're we're working towards uh on the taskforce and other public safety items um efforts to bring us to The Retreat where we're going to have a serious conversation about that so Uptown is Ground Zero for that in a lot of cases and we'll be having more of that conversation we talked about housing which is number two and you know um up retro fits things of that nature I think that's interesting we need to definitely have that conversation more but I think the the one we really need to emphasize is business development and whether that's infrastructure like where we see where the private sector is going where we're investing um the Entertainment District things of that nature or more specifically what I would really like to see as my takeaway here for for staff and everyone to bring us back is recruitment business recruitment if if the things I've said as my hypotheses end up being correct one of the greatest tools we can have to trigger um an early recovery would be greater business recruitment uh and and and bringing more folks here that right now have these hybrid environments that are looking for a deal uh to be able to come in here so the infrastructure then plays back into that so there's a lot to do but my punchlines there are um I love the data that's been presented I would just caution that we need to make sure um we don't make assumptions that the world has changed to look like this forever and two what can escalate or or uh you know speed up the path of recovery and I think in this context putting Public Safety aside which is number one a close number two is Recruitment and how we can use that as a tool as we move forward thank you Council M Mar council member Drees follow up thank you Mr chair uh very interesting comments about the economic context are we uh actually doing any kind of economic assessment of what is unfolding like you saw in Japan decades ago the real estate market went down and they didn't recover for decades on on a national level so as we devise policies are we thinking about uh when these leases expire what the likelihood is of defaults what the situation of financial institutions is going to be and therefore um you know that there's question about uh whether we've dodged a recession but uh that will affect uh this our scope for action one way or another so I think we just need to be aware of those things so we'll say then I'll let you CH into Ned um the we've tried to do some assessment tried to look at kind of not just we've used Uptown as a example right but we recognized but looking across we had conversations with with John and Northwood and like how what does it look like there how is that the hard part is again every building is in a little bit of a different space and um the ownerships usually are different um so kind of trying to find that one fix doesn't necessarily work I've got and I'll use this as an example I've got one potential project that is a building conversion it's not on the tax roles so if we think about a tax increment Grant or something like that like that's an easy fix but that's not the case for another building per perhaps that has been on the Tex so we're just trying to look at the different ways um in in that but the overall kind of a blanket assessment of where we're going to be has just been a little bit tough as we go around and talk to different people I mean I I think everything you're saying and and council member barari said is is entirely correct what you're trying to think through are how do we accelerate accelerate uh these conversions and the idea of enhancing the economic development recruitment process is is just get demand I mean we're just we're just trying to get more demand to solve whatever issues we have that's a that's a good thing no matter what the other element is that each of these markets is a little different Valentine University South Park those Solutions are different than the CBD Solutions where we're candidly we do have issues that we have to address around Public Safety with perceived or not that aren't necessarily as apparent in some of those other locations um but there you you you could be looking at tools that are temporary in nature that that you know if if certain conditions are met the building is more than 50% vac and whatever the criteria is and they'll all be different that that you've got different different solutions in in the Suburban locations it may be that they have conditional zonings that have they have lots of office entitlements they're never going to use now could they convert those um only only while they have a certain condition to something like retail or apartments because that's you know if we think about apartments if we could correct the the concentration there with uh residential the retail will have stabilized users next to them I mean the challenge we have here is continue to lose restaurants right because there's not enough constant demand Wednesdays are great Wednesdays at noon we're almost back right Mondays Fridays you know it's it's challenging and and some some of the retail operators just can't make it on that kind of inconsistent demand Mr Vice chair I can just C just just one second followup I think Ned that hit the Crux of what I was trying to say you said it much more elegantly um I think everyone always jumps to supply side solution Solutions and clearly that's going to have to be the case to some extent my hunch is you will go out to these other cities and you will see supply side Solutions like city of yes for Housing Opportunity or you know reimagine strategy I think our differentiator which is not only just in its approach but also what our inherent kind of unique value props are of Charlotte um going on that demand side jinning up the really putting a heavy focusing there Focus there stting with recruitment that to me could be our differentiator and I think that's well said excellent point can I go to coun Marina she hasn't spoken yet Council M Marina thank you Mr Vice chairman I just I want to kind of put a parenthesis in there uh because we have some city-owned Assets in uptown um and this is one of those reasons why we have to give a level of specificity to uh name them and protect them um as we think through this process because we have have um I I you know I don't imagine that that's something that we're going to talk about you know recreating or you know reimagining you know to some degree but I I think it's very very important as we continue to have the conversation around our arts and culture and and how we see ourselves developing from that particular standpoint um that we say the names of our assets and make sure that we are um intentional about protecting those assets and make sure that you know they're still standing at at the end of whatever we decide to do from a private sector perspective so I I just want to place that parenthesis in there um and and make sure that I feel like you know it's been you know my um I'm I'm in agreement because actually originally um I was having a conversation with my colleague here councilman Driggs um and and when he initially brought it up I was like wow that makes total sense right to make sure that we are absolutely specific we have a respons posibility to those assets so uh I just want to put that parenthesis in there and make sure that we're intentional about it I want back and just say something really quickly about the business recruitment piece of it and just encouraging you all to think differently as we kind of go into this conversation but I probe the state a little bit to understand how much are they paying attention because really the urban areas how much are they hearing it right if you're thinking the Statewide and it's it's probably not resonating as much other than the fact that of them are in rally right it's that conversation is not different than than what we're having here um but if you think about it too when we compete for out of town business an inbound business we are going against cities that are experiencing the exact same thing who probably have a bigger voice in getting more aggressive like with with the state with the other partners and things like that and so it's just one thing to keep in mind is we bring projects forward but the other thing is thinking about some of the great assets ass that we have and how do we get creative about what happens to them is there an opportunity sometimes there might be um sometimes there's not just like talking to to Northwood and the Investments that they've made to reposition Valentine um and what what does that look like and what does that mean but the other end of the spectrum is look at the ctin building it is undoubtedly in my opinion the best building office building in North Carolina and it's sitting there vacant and it it is a wonderful opportunity to either get somebody in Charlotte to grow roots and own it or to bring somebody in the challenge with the building is it's not a multi-tenant building so 700,000 plus square feet for one tenant is is is tough in this in this market but we should be looking at it and saying that's an opportunity that another city doesn't necessarily have what can we do different to get creative and I don't know the answers to those yet I don't have a predetermined outcome on that but it's just more pointing out these things where it's we're going to have to get creative on ideas what we can do council member D thank you Mr Vice chair uh just further to the kind of macroeconomic thing um when you have leases that are underwater because of market conditions and not because of mismanagement or overextension uh often the lenders don't see any real value in foreclosing because doesn't solve anything right unless they have a better idea than the current owner so what they do is renegotiate uh and uh you have like a a virtual bankruptcy type of situation and they just say okay you keep running it and this is what we will do in order to allow you to be current and I bring that up only because you have to take that into account when you're trying to evaluate what the environment is likely to be I mean for example is any anybody going to want to lend money for office uh I mean you're you're right you're getting killed on your office portfolio right so if we're making assumptions about investment uh or uh conversions or demolitions we need to recognize the money envirment is just not good right now so I hope that will be one aspect the other thing that's interesting is talking about business development competition is going to heat up because everybody's got this problem so now in addition to the job creation all the reasons we had before we're also trying to solve a problem when we recruit that means the big environment could get tougher right personally I don't think people care that much about the big actually right it's just a game they play to get some cash after they've decided where they want to go anyway but nonetheless it it is a game and uh so uh the there I think the question could arise or we should think about the question as to whether our current uh big capacity and policies the way we Define the amount of money we're able to put up need to be re-examined great commentary great conversation on the committee let me just add a couple of points if I may uh kind of reiterate some of the points one I think council member barari is spot on he talking about business Recruitment and and the demand let's create the demand uh council member dggs I like how you said we need to manage our expectation what is our really role and how we can be effective and council member Marina talking about what's important you know save our assets some of those when we look at the footprint are city-owned assets and I think you know comparing what other cities are doing is just a good Benchmark but that should not drive us I think we got to be bold on what we want to do and how we going to solve the problem and last but not least I think we all said something about safety so I look forward as we talked about the impact safety has on economic development to your point you know what is our strategy to make sure uh we can address that quickly rather than sooner than later staff I would say this and just just for mine and commit I like for you all the way in on slides 11 and 12 I think it would help me we can get 11 by 17 uh you know kind I I I I like it but I I think it it'll be helpful particularly on this as we having a conversation about our city Hospitality investment a transit public it'll be nice if we can label those so we can clearly understand decisions we're going to make an impact it can have and uh can I can I just say to that really quickly cuz want to I don't mind talking about our assets and potential Investments that we have out there but I also want to be careful that that anything that's in the orange or the red is we're not suggesting that we're picking winners or losers oh no no no and so I'm trying to kind of show the issue without calling this building or this building or this building no Trace I totally agree that's why I said we could focus on just on the blue yep what we control and what we going to vote on I think it'll be help for all of us so we can have that visual any other comments committee mayor Pro Ned we welcome you back please don't let this be the last meeting okay thank you Ned Tracy anything else I don't have anything else can we have a motion to adjourn so move so move second all those in favor let's stand up this meeting is [Music] ajour [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] good afternoon everyone and welcome to the January 8th budget governance and intergovernmental rels Char barari Vice chair Lana mayfeld Committee Member James smch Committee Member Marcus Jones city manager Sean Heath assistant city manager Danon for the city manager's office fin Matt asset Finance oh Julia Martin City manager's office Marie Harris budget office J Budget Strat budget Smith strategy budget Ryan B strategy and budget Allan strategy budget for folks joining us online r I ask you City manager's office and I see we have mayor who has also joined us virtually thank you mayor for joining us so for today's meeting uh of the committee I would like us to start with our committee's charge and process um but Mr hit would you like us to review our second item first okay all right so we will start with the second item on our agenda today and that is for preparing for our strategy session so I will turn it over to Mr Jones to give us an update and then our committee members can provide feedback uh so thank you uh Madam chair uh chair asmer and vice chair of thear I today what I'd like to do is do a bit of a framework for the uh annual uh strategy meeting I I think in the past we've called it the retreat but we don't want to consider ourselves Retreat retreating but more so moving forward and uh sometimes putting together the agenda for the annual strategy meeting is more difficult than the annual strategy meeting itself so with that say what what I'd like to do is really try to set the stage or maybe a framework of what I think could be a successful annual strategy meeting for uh the council and one of the things I think this will be the uh eighth annual strategy meeting that we've had since I've been here and I I guess I think the first time that we had a conversation with the this committee I I think it may have been Kenny Smith may have been the chair of it so that's you know been a while uh a couple of things that I I think are known in terms of trying to put together the annual strategy meeting is that it's important for the council to get away uh facilitating good conversations amongst the council members as opposed to staff talking at this the council members it's been feedback we've received over the years and uh limiting uh presentations so there can be more opportunity for for conversation I will tell you that uh we did get some great feedback from the council at the November 27th action review some of the items that came up that U you mentioned were you know a number of you were trying to figure out what is the identity of this board um you know focusing on council's work on policy development understanding how to be a successful organization achieving outcomes and then lastly hearing from outside experts on key policy areas so a couple things we we have um secured the the grin in Winston Salem uh Sunday January the 21st beginning that evening uh and in concluding Wednesday January 24th so I would say that's about all that's let's say set in stone right now and what I'd like to do is to have a conversation with you about some possibilities of areas to cover during the um annual strategy meeting so again that Sunday is really utilized for uh the council to to arrive you know have a good dinner and have a potential um social reception if you will in order order to get ready for the annual strategy meeting on that Monday what I am proposing and I don't have an agenda because I want to make sure that we have input from you about how to form this but I think at a high level this will capture some of the things that we have been discussing so reflection uh and looking to the year ahead uh working together as an effective Council and you see that's a a footnote there that we'd like to bring in some subject meta experts on that and and then what we typically do is we give you um where we ended the previous fiscal year where we are at the current fiscal year which would be FY 2024 and then give you a peak into the next two fiscal years FY 25 and FY 26 and then have a a discussion about the Council of priority setting and and I think that's that's important and what I want to do Julia we'll flip back and forth a little bit if I go to to the next slide when we start to think about your priorities they've been in place for a while those are the great neighborhoods safe communities economic development and transportation and planning and even as you go into your budget book you'll see certain performance measures associated with those so if we can flip back Julia um so again we would have a conversation around those Council priorities that you have and make sure that uh those are are still set but also what we learned over the course of the last year is that there's a a push from Council to have more precise uh performance measures so that we know that what we are doing is giving us the results that the the council desires so we would have a conversation around uh setting goals objectives and performance measures and why I say that's important because some of this uh I'm sure you're aware of it when you start to put it all together it becomes a little daunting so if we think about all of the policies that you've already approved for instance the housing Charlotte adopted in 2018 the Strategic energy action plan adopted in 2018 the violence reduction framework so there's no less than you know 10 or so policies that you've already adopted that have goals and objectives and performance measures and I won't go over that all today but we make sure we get a nice little package for you beforehand uh because what we've come to learn is that in other u high performing organizations instead of having hundreds of performance measures in instead of having I know it was some trouble sitting beside you um instead of having you know hundreds of performance measures there are uh three to five um measures per priority and then it doesn't mean that all the others go away but it's just a high focus and what we've come to learn and we took a look at some of our uh peer uh cities so I appreciate uh Ryan's work in the budget office and what we've come to find those cities that have won the highest Awards when it comes to Performance measures they have certain things they do in terms of the number they measure how they report back to their boards how they report out to the community so we'd like to get guidance from you during uh the annual strategy meeting on those day two and so if we go in here and I started here earlier but then you have these initiatives so we start off with the priorities but uh each annual strategy meeting uh you have a number of initiatives and last year you made some changes you made sure the small business minority business was elevated to a strategic initiative you made sure the digital divide was elevated to a strategic initiative and also you pull out Workforce Development as a um strategic initiative also so we want to spend if we go to the next slide that the next day talking working with you on where we are in these strategic initiatives making sure that we give you updates making sure that um we're getting feedback from you if we're on the right course or there's things some things that will drop off of this list or some things that we need to double down on and we included Mobility as a a standalone we pulled it out as a a deeper dive because we've had some conversations about that each of the strategy sessions and I think the next slide goes into some other areas that we believe that we need to take deeper Dives in a lot of conversations all day long about safety and safe Charlotte so I we would be toned deaf not to have a a stronger conversation during the annual strategy meeting there Mobility as I mentioned before you know Workforce Development something new Danielle Fraser has been working really hard um in that area both internally externally I think it should be raised to a level of of a deeper dive and uh this one uh however we handle it uh arts and culture we we are in the last year of the private public partnership with funding arts and culture so as we go build this FY 25 budget we have to have guidance from you in terms of where you think we should go um because you did have the plan that you accepted in November of 2023 the arts and culture plan and then lastly the the last day which is typically half a day we' have wrap up next uh steps but also during last year's annual strategy meeting you wanted to make sure that your direct reports myself the City attorney and the city clerk gave you a midyear performance update so I think at hopefully at 30,000 ft I've captured some of the uh most important things that Council has talked about over the course of the year not trying to bake the cake or trying to put together the agenda but making sure that we're in the you know maybe the the right uh church and maybe even the right Pew so with that said uh Madame chair that is what I'd like to put in front of the budget committee today thank you Mr Jones um I have a comment here so if you go back to the slide where we have okay so when we talk about reflection uh I think it would be important to also recognize the work that's being done in 2023 and if we can sort of have accomplishment section under each strategic priority here is what we have accomplished in 2023 based on the Strategic priority strategic priorities that city council had set in 2023 I think that will help us um dra that will help us frame our conversation for 2024 strategy but with that uh committee members uh also I'd like to welcome mayor protm Dante Anderson who joined us so thank you for joining us uh committee members any feedback on on our uh strategy session Mr Mitchell uh Madam chair thank you so I guess for me staff uh can we get a handout I I'm I'm in a huge disadvantage I don't have this handout in front of me and so that mean I got to screw my notes on so uh uh we we don't have this hand out okay [Applause] uh so to the city management point and if and if I can remember how Tuesday looks uh I do think if we so city managers so do we have let's build the safe side 10 hours on Monday 10 hours on Tuesday four hours on Wednesday or we doing a whole day on Wednesday so Council Mitchell it would be a a half a day on Wednesday but a full day Monday and Tuesday okay I think uh the strategy session last year I felt like there was uh uh not enough discussion among council members but our priorities and really having a deeper dive and so we got 24 hours to come up with our priorities I think we ought to agree that hopefully you know 14 hours of that is really Council having real deep dive conversation uh I kind of like what the chairman mentioned if you if you go back to Monday and the first part we're going to do is the reflection looking at the year ahead and then to the Chairman's point is let's look at our priorities and let's talk about success working together effective Council I I think it's helpful but I'm hoping that's not a full hour uh part of our day um you know one thing I would like us to concentrate on maybe the Norms of council and we can get through how to work effective councils what are they meeting Norm I think it will help us you know the budget Outlook is important but knowing we're going to have a budget conversation in March and April I think we have a we need to have a fine tune of time and I really think just as one person the priorities and measuring our priorities setting objective to me need to be that 14 hours of council having dialogue I don't know if it's breakout groups I don't know we did a great job last sitting at the table my feedback would be the more we talk among each other and agree that six votes we can get get around our setting goals and how we measured them we'll have a successful Retreat to me the worst Retreats we've been a part of is we get presentation to death and we just getting presentations over and over and over and it doesn't to me it doesn't lend to a successful uh Retreat from my perspective thank you madam chair thank you Mr Mitchell uh I agree with Mr Mitchell's sentiments here um where we as a group have an opportunity to discuss um can you go back to the topics I just want to make sure when we I know infrastructure is a big topic that often comes up so are we covering that under Mobility uh or 2040 plan in general but lately I have seen at least in past 6 months infrastructure topic has at least come up three to four times at every Zone meeting so having infrastructure as a topic overall uh we need to allocate some time towards it and also focus on tree canopy and um I know that has come up several times so uh if you can if we can include that as one of the topics that would be great so yes uh Madam chair uh the way we would approach it and this is great we're having this conversation we'll make sure we lift it up um is that you would get infrastructure or checkin and the tree canopy would be a part of both the 2040 plan as well as the ca okay and so U Mobility I had an opportunity to have a a brief conversation with uh council member Mitchell uh this morning and at 101 check in and and so I think it it's important to talk a little bit about Mobility so when we think about Mobility we think about um everything that comes with that it it's Transit and when we think about Transit it's buses and it's and it's rail um and it's some some of the Innovation around uh Transit options including Mobility hubs smart technology things that nature but also under Mobility think about all the work that uh Ed mckenny has been working on over the course of the last year and some of the updates when we start to think about those go 2004 not the year but the total number of projects that we have which are um roads and they are bike paths and Greenways and and street lights and vision zero so in that Mobility discussion that is also connected to infrastructure and we would love to have some guidance coming out of this annual strategy meeting about how we move forward with with that those two very important topics absolutely I uh and I think that will certainly set the tone for our budget discussion that is very important in 2024 um so thank you Mr Jones uh Miss Mayfield thank you madam chair Mr Jones when we're also having this Transportation conversation it will be great if we could get an update on the Gateway so years ago we had this very detailed conversation regarding the Mobility plan with Greyhound train bus and everything that was supposed to be created we allocated we approved to move forward with study funding was approved a update on where we are so when we're highlighting as Madam chair mentioned the winds where do we still need to work so that it that I believe can help us to know where to focus as we're thinking about priorities to get those updates that's perfect uh council member Mayfield now I'm just going to put a little B more pressure on on our team uh so I don't know pressure makes D yes yes so I I'll date myself a little bit uh there used to be this thing called the best products book that came out in August of every year and you would see the the the toys that you try to get on your Christmas list so we're trying to do something very very different this time not necessarily provid you with the best products book but um we're actually stealing from Brent and Brent did a very good job with a um retreat with the MTC but giving you a a document that normally you would we present stuff to you but give it to you beforehand you can see accomplishments you can see specific projects and you can just take out of that as we start as you start to talk as a group you will have information about C things that you brought to your attention thank you and Mr Jones I'm assuming that intergovernmental discussion and agenda items for state and federal legislative agenda would be intertwined with every single strategic initiative that we are reviewing is that correct absolutely and uh Julia if you could just go back to the big um diagram yeah so you'll see to the to the far right the well-managed government peace of equity the engagement the environment there are a lot of things that we would just give you and I just appreciate what you said Mr Mitchell you know some of the things we just need to provide for you in terms of you know where we ended the the the previous fiscal year whether we think we're on track and those are things we can get you in that volume so that you'll have that information too but yes we'll make sure that uh as we start to think about the legislative uh ask how those are woven into this also yes and and this reminds me Mr Jones as mayor at the swearing in ceremony a mayor had included in her remarks some of the metrics and performance for each one of this Focus areas and I think we need to ensure that as we discuss each one of these topics we are uh coming out of the strategy session as a group having metrics and performance goals for each one of these how many affordable housing units are we going to build uh what does it mean when we talk about corridors of opportunity in safe Charlotte how do we measure progress on that item same thing with infrastructure uh Workforce Development uh I think we need to come out of the strategy sessions with concrete numbers where we quantify the results and how do we um plan on achieving each one of those goals I think that would be very important so that we not just talking uh just 3 days without having some sort of uh uh quantifiable way to measure progress M Madam chair I appreciate that also with the thought process and again not trying to get out over my skis is that there would be some additional discussion in the committees as we start to think about these goals and objectives um because I don't want 14 hours to not be enough but to make sure that if there's at make sure are more so internal to the organization and so we need to make sure we check in with you on that but I think if we believe we're going to walk away with um performance measures that day I don't believe so but we need to get get that done I would say in the first quarter of the year I I agree and I think having Council also be part of that feedback process so yes you provide us this is what should be the performance measure I think coun Council should have an opportunity to weigh in on those performance measures whether it's by each committee or whether it's by full Council I I think that needs to be part of the process um I think I talked enough um Mr Vice chair mayor portm any feedback thank you i' just like to add I I do agree with city manager that you know these performance measures would be great to have by the end of the first quarter you know what what we typically see with boards like ourselves is that the board will have a a scorecard if you will right that is you know not a volume not a volume of an encyclopedia but literally maybe one to two pages that has these clearly identify yes we're on track don't have to spend time on that but if there's something that we are behind or lagging then identifying what is the risk mitigation um tactic that we're going to utilize to get caught up and spend time talking about how we can um focus on those areas and unblock uh spaces so that staff can do the work the work properly so I would love by the F end of the first quarter if we were to have a a scorecard and we don't have to call it a scorecard we I'm I'm I'm agnostic as to what we call it but just a one to two page overview of what our priorities are and how we are measuring them or how we plan to measure them over the next two years that will help to keep us honest right uh and make sure that we're on track okay Mr Jones are are you said do you need anything oh Miss Mayfield thank you madam chair Mr Jones I also want to add when we look at this breakdown of well-managed government Equity engagement and enforcement it will be help helpful if you do decide to move forward with some type of score card where exactly are we on Equity when we look at lgbtqia Plus when we look at women when we look at the fact that we are a growing welcoming city of multiple communities Somalia Asian African Caribbean what does equ how are we defining Equity so that we can better share that and explain it to our constituents okay I think with oh Mr M Madam chair have I may and so earlier today today um at the jobs economic council member Mari and I uh we talked about a business recruitment to uh we got a great presentation about 31% vacancy in Center City with our office product and then in the some of the corridors even Valentine Ned shared with us it's as high as 38% and so what we challenge staff was uh let's be intentional but let's create let's create a demand to solve our problem it'll be helpful um if the first brush were that if Tracy can just come back to us and say here is kind of our initial thoughts about it can we get some Buy in uh we we thought it was so critical that I think out of the five members and I think even May protim were there we all kind of weighed in and say if we don't do anything this problem going to exist to 2040 but we need to create the demand and address the so if somehow we can have those that initiative brought before us just as not to vote on but just to give trace and staff a comfort level that we think that uh she's moving in the right direction thank you madam chair thank you I think with that we'll wrap up this topic Mr Jones I hope you have everything that you need to have a successful strategy meeting um but with that we'll move on to our first agend item and that is introduction and charge for our committee so our committee has been established by the mayor as a subset of council to specifically focus on reviewing and recommending policies to fund Community priorities to optimize uses of public resources and to collaborate with other government Partners so so items uh if we can go back to the slide that we have that goes over the process for committee process can you go back to that slide okay so as you can see here on this slide items that will be referred to our committee uh this is just a reminder uh where policy items are referred to the committee either by mayor city manager or majority of majority of the council so so in addition to referral items there are several items uh that we discuss every year uh annual budget schedule budget Workshop content review a comprehensive financial report audit report and updates annual strategy session Federal and State Legislative agenda Hospitality fund review and review boards and commission's annual reports and recommendations I don't think this is new for any committee members uh except council member Tiana Brown who is also a Committee Member but as we are gearing up for a new year uh I would just like to take a moment to highlight great work that's been done by this Committee in 2023 so let's go over some of those accomplishments here um so if you can go perfect next slide okay so these are some of the accomplishments I don't need to read read out loud um but I think every single one of us were part of this committee including Miss Anderson so great job committee um with that I don't have anything else to add unless anyone has any specific questions on introduction and charge for our committee okay so let's move on to the last item that we have in front of us which is Federal and State Legislative update uh Mr Fenton if you can walk us through that thank you madam chair members of the committee for the record on data Fenton the city's intergovernmental relations manager I'm glad to be here with you today to kick off the 2024 legislative agenda process uh just a brief overview we'll be going over what our agendas what you can face this year both the Congress and general assembly then we have the staff proposed legislative issues and then of course we have our ubiquitous legislative calendar uh in the presentation uh legislative agendas are basically a way for the mayor and Council to communicate their 2024 Federal and State Legislative goals and I think picking up on what Madam chair said earlier the goals are based upon City council's strategic priorities we try to look for things that uh issues that may be uh uh doable in the current economic and political climate and these things need to be acable through legislation budgets that is state or federal budgets and Grant request this year and one thing we always take a look at Do no harm that's sort of uh one of the first rules of this line of work you don't want to put something in there that might prove injurious to the city at some point and then we also work with a variety of Partners uh not just the ne County and the towns but also with the regional business Alliance and a variety of Statewide and Nationwide groups there's probably a lot more groups that we work with that are listed on this slide next slide and this is the um sort of the process as as we play out this year as we envision it start today we'll present the uh Department proposed issues to the committee and then February 5th is when we'd be looking for the committee to adopt uh proposed legislative agendas for the consideration of council and then um then on February 12th there would be uh an action review item where staff would present the items and then we would look for adoption on February 26 uh which is the last uh business meeting in February uh just in case uh you know this this might look like sort of a short process but we have a date this year March 11th to the 13th was on the bottom left that's when the national league of cities meets in DC and when we typically go to meet with our federal delegation members and we would need to have the agendas approved at least two weeks before that so we can get ready for those briefings and then of course we'd also have a state delegation briefing that we're targeting uh the first half of April for and the reason uh those particular at particular time frame for the state is because General Assembly goes back into session on April 24th next slide please and then the uh one thing about the legislative sessions this year we we face this particular type of session this year U every four years of course it's a presidential election year 13d of the US Senate's up for election all of the members of Congress are up for election and that all the governor Council of state and general assembly offices are up along with the mberg county commissions so when you go to vote in November it's going to be a pretty long ballot I would guess uh the Congress uh convened today uh actually the Senate started today and the house will come into work tomorrow and for the week we plan to be in DC for the national league of cities both houses of Congress will be in session one thing about their schedule this year they're going to have more frequent uh District in instate work periods this year in some cases they may be longer than usual and of course as I said before the short session General Assembly starts on April 24th uh they tend to try to get out by July 4th so it's pretty much a Sprint to the finish in the short session and there are some build filing restrictions in place for example this is not the best year to ask for something brand new uh that requires um uh legislative approval next slide please uh the US Congress um I'm sorry did I I the RO okay never mind I'm sorry um new policy proposals are likely to be considered in Congress during a presidential election year and even right now the House of Representatives last year they chose oversight of the administration as one of their main topics and they've been working on that of course right now the House and Senate do have some profound differences in how they view uh the federal budget for fiscal year 24 this past weekend they did announce or actually yesterday the leadership of the sen in the house announced they had reached an agreement on Topline figures for the budget and what that how that would divided be divided between defense and non-defense issues but of course now that's that's a that's that's a big that's a big thing they needed to do but now they had to come back and actually prepare U area budgets 12 different area budgets that uh meet that criteria so uh and we are looking at again about two weeks I think it's uh January 19th or actually the end of next week uh when four of the budget bills the continuing resolutions for before the budget bills expire then the others expire in early February so they're going to have to work real hard to get a budget done by either the 19th of this month or by the I think it's the 2nd of February and then uh in a Twist what we saw this year this past year with the budgets that were passing by the house they were considering there were deep reductions to many programs that are important to the city whether it's for transportation or some Aviation uh Public Safety environmental um and even even Housing Programs so um that that's an issue even though they may get a budget for fiscal year 24 but before this Congress leaves at the end of this year they're going to have to pass a budget for fiscal year 20 so those same issues could come to the four so we have a we have a lot at stake this year mron on this specific item where we are seeing potential reductions do we have um Quan quantifiable impact as to what we are looking at at the local level especially from some of these programs that we have that we get funding for the federal from the federal government do we know what would be the impact no not yet not yet um the um they um provided the big details but we were trying to look for specific programs that uh where the money would be coming down to the city to use like in the transit area public transportation receives quite a few federal dollars for operations and maintenance but others are are are aimed at competitive Grant programs that we've been very active in in trying to go after so uh it's a mixed bag but in terms of of our impacts on our operating budget we don't have anything like that for you at this time okay thank you oh also I want to introduce our Committee Member Miss Brown ccil member Brown just joined us next slide please and then we have some general assembly issues again uh new policy proposals are not likely to be considered this year but there is some legislation from from last year that we're watching and and at least uh the uh members of the committee from last time probably remember uh seeing a lot of these labels up there under the under the carryover legislation and it has to do there's stuff to have to do with housing with planting uh with environmental and uh things like that so we're still watching those those are the things that were not resolved last year and uh we tend to again engage with the the sponsors of this legis ation to to make sure that we achieve a varable outcome to the city uh next slide and then we're going to get into the department proposed legislative issues and we put these into three broad categories um one is that you have an infrastructure um category second that you have an economic development category and in a third is community and we have the labels for each one but let's turn turn to the next page uh we could talk about start talking about mobility and again this is uh I guess somewhat similar to last year's position uh there have been some modifications made to it of course and uh Advanced Solutions Mobility needs including the implementation of smart policies that Advance nextg personal commercial Mobility systems and working conjunction of course with our stakeholders like legislators state and federal agencies Etc and then under uh for our federal focus on that area we would be uh looking at supporting the federal resources available for the buildout of the Strategic Mobility plan whether that's the capital investment grant program it could be the rage program and and even some of the rail programs that we try to utilize uh and then we also have in there support Federal resources to uh uh support Freight and passenger rail initiatives and on the other side the state folks Focus uh uh essentially would be the authority to enable the buildout of the Strategic Mobility plan I.E what we've been looking at for the past three years next slide please Aviation uh very very similar to last year strengthen the foundation the Charlotte Douglas for future success it's a it's a very successful airport right now but you know you still have to work to always uh make something better and the Federal Focus we would still uh focus on trying to get the letter of intent to build the fourth parallel Runway and then also other additional resources for Aviation there there's an there are a couple Grant programs in there that we would be watching and uh provide substantial funding each year to the airport on the state side continue supporting the North Carolina airport Improvement program this program was just uh enacted about five years ago I think and um it provides uh U about $100 million a year for the nine commercial service airports in the state of which Charlotte Douglas receives about a third of that funding and that's a lot a lot of that formula is due to the economic impact of the airports upon their regions next slide up for Mobility uh this is a new position although it is not a new strategic priority for you and we have been working on this in uh in in various ways anyways uh I remember the last meeting I think the committee had in October you received a presentation on the uh federal grants that have been awarded to the city in this year or last year I should say and quite a few of those really fell under the category of quarters of opportunity so we're looking at a lot of different things there we'd be looking again at uh the economic development the Workforce Development other programs that grow the economy attract Talent reduce unemployment poverty rates and enable people to generate long-term wealth and again under the federal Focus we'd be looking at the corridors of opportunity and then and then look at other opportunities there may be for economic and Workforce Development initiatives in our area uh the state Focus uh you a support for the state Economic Development programs especially the job and development investment grant that uh we have been awarded several of those over for the last several years and also look at the possibility of accessing pass through Workforce Development funding that's administered by the state uh a lot of the federal programs uh will send money down to the States to administer and uh depending on the state you may have uh some competitive Grant programs or may be distributed by formula but we would try to see if there's anything else that we could do in that area next slide please digital inclusion and this is a lot like what we've had before um on the uh Federal side uh the focus would be on uh to try to get the federal resources to be appropriately funded to to U uh totally fund the federal affordable connectivity program this is the program that allows uh low-income households to uh get a subsidy to access the internet and um the program is has been so successful it's oversubscribed they're going to run out of money probably in April of this year about 2 and 1/2 years into the into the um bipartisan infrastructure law so that's certainly you don't want to be have to face running out of money but it just shows that there is a tremendous need out there on the state side uh the state has been doing some digital inclusion uh efforts including uh trying to get Broadband extended to rural areas which is a a very good thing for Charlotte even though might go to the broad to the rural areas that still helps helps us out and then also there is some federal funding provisional inclusion that's administered by the state and there could be opportunities to access it at some point next slide please immigration uh this is I think it's just about the same as our previous position uh the same support line for immigration policies and strengthen our economy and work course immigrate families and communities and then we have in there the H1B visas uh the pathways to citizenship and Refugee resettlement resources of course right now the Congress is talking about a broader immigration package might um it's a it's always going to be a tough issue for various reasons but um certainly I think they're still working on it Senator TS was part of that working group of four Senators next slide please then moving down to your community area you have public safety and very similar to last year's position but at the federal level we would be supporting the resources that are available for fire and police services and then at the state level uh we do have some carryover legislation from last year uh that have to do with u uh Public Safety and then we have U act excess or pass through funding that goes to the state federal government that we may be able to um access at some point and then under the next slide environment this is a combination of Charlotte water storm water and sustainability and resiliency for the most part it doesn't always break down easily among those lines but that's that's where their main focus is and there's a lot of federal resources for environmental programs some of them are facing budget reductions for the house and um a lot of those were enacted by the bipartisan structure law so we thought it was a good idea to get out here to show our support for those and then there's a couple other programs um well actually one other program that was created was the uh low-income household water assistance program during the pandemic and this helped people pay their utility bills or their water bills Wastewater bills and there still is a need for it even though the pandemic is officially over there are still quite a few people who do have trouble paying and then um and then there's a propos post lead service line replacement regulation that's been put out by the Biden Administration and uh this would involve the water utilities around the country having to replace the service lines between the meters in the house if those service lines had Le in them and that's that's not something that Charlotte water is really set up to do and it would be an additional expense compared to what we're doing now so um there would have to be additional funding for that so this is probably a good time to bring it up with our delegation then of course environmental justice issues the uh the sustainability uh issues that were uh enacted a few years ago uh environmental justice was a large part that is trying to advance environmental justice and certainly have that would have that in there one other issue I'd like to bring up um under the federal and even the state focus in this case is um is the forever chemical called past I know the first two letters stand for poly floral and uh I won't go through try to go through the other the other two words but anyways um again they're called Forever chemicals and there seems to be some uh some uh misalignment between the federal and state definitions of it or you see that every once in a while there would probably be a need to have consistent definitions between the federal and state governments uh and then on the state side uh there is past through funding we can access like the revolving loans that Charlotte water and storm water will receive from time to time and then we have some carryover legislation we're working on as well and then the next page uh housing uh this is this is a new position on the federal level we had a housing position in last year's State agenda and essentially we we try to uh on the federal side uh try to secure Federal re resources for housing and in fact quite a few the Housing Programs we had listed um are are that that are face budget reductions in the house are ones that we access and in fact one of the programs um there's going to be a believe a resolution on tonight's uh uh meeting agenda uh to accept uh funding for leadline service replacement and that's both a housing and an environmental issue of course but to just give you an idea there in that program in particular the leadline service replacement that's under the Housing and Urban Development Department would be uh reduced in some measure under the house proposal and then we have um housing vouchers um we've heard a lot about employer or uh landlords not accepting vouchers and of course you have your own policy in place that that um that landlords the case of City assistants would have to consider applicants with it but there's still a um there still is an issue Nationwide um the uh regulations for administering housing vouchers can be burdensome for some landlords so U there really needs to be a look at that probably at the very least an internal look by the Department of Housing and Urban Development at that program and then of course we also have uh the pass through housing tax credits that the city secures in the state for uh a housing and then we have some uh carryover legislation for 2023 as well to focus SP so uh with that next slide please uh before I get to the calendar just let me say that um uh these several issues are brought up to you um we're not asking for yall to vote on them today but uh uh we would bring these back up at the February meeting of the committee and this is the calendar uh for the next few months at least leas and we I believe that yes the next count the me next meeting of this committee is on February 5th and that's when we will be looking for action and then we have action review on the 12th of February 26 is adoption along with our briefings and then uh short session starts in April and with that Madam shair be GL stand any questionss Miss Mayfield thank you madam chair Dana when we look at the housing slide specifically is that include the discussion of The Proposal that congresswoman Adams and Jackson submitted as far as I believe the legislative language was around investors because we're seeing so many investors buying single family where they propose one once you hit 75 units $10,000 must go to a trust and trust fund for every unit over right did that get has that moved anywhere or is that dead in the water yeah the legislation itself is has not moved anywhere we don't foresee that moving in the house because of the uh the Republican LED Congress for one uh but also there there's a lot of other members who who uh may not be in favor of that type of legislation Democratic members in addition to Republican members so I don't see that going through but in terms of your original question about that relate to this it could we would actually want to bring an issue like that to the committee probably in order to see whether you would want to uh support that legislation or not so I think it will be helpful to break down the details of it so that we can Madam chair discuss it as a committee to see if that is something something that we may want to add on our list we know right now pretty much is a dead season but as we move forward in the year in support of the leg legislation for when we go up for National League of cities in Washington to discuss if that's a part of the conversation that we would like to add in support of that being proposed regarding the carryover legislation at some point it will be helpful whether that's in an email that comes to us more detail only thing you mentioned really was Public Safety so we'll be helpful to know what are the carryover legislation from 2023 that directly applies to what we have been working towards cuz I know Madam chair we had last year was difficult would only been one year we had intentions of creating stronger relationships with a number of us committing to go to righ to build those Rel relationships so I guess it would be now getting that back on the table to look at those opportunities as well but getting a breakdown of what the carryover is I think could be very helpful I I have a list of those and I would be glad to with summaries of the email thank you so much mam I think that's that's very timely that Miss mayf council member Mayfield brought that up so as we prepare if you look at our legislative calendar in March um as many of us who can attend uh this sessions I think that will help us um March we have NLC conference in Washington DC and that's usually the time when we talk to our legislators we talk to our Congressional Delegation as well as Federal delegation is would that be the same time frame we will plan those conversations yeah that would be 11 to to meet each yes so I think it would be important from the relationship perspective uh to attend March 11th to 13th and April for our state to bring up some of these key issues that are important to our city um Mr Fenton under infrastructure or Mobility I did not see that6 to8 million infrastructure funding that we had lost um in previous years I know we had tried to restore that amount back but we haven't been successful but I believe we do need to ask for that again uh at least in next uh Federal and State Legislative agenda uh we did have that in last year's agenda uh and I I still don't get that restored but if we can have any insight into the process uh from our law-based team as to how we can get that restored uh that would be very helpful because I know that funding we use that for payments and we get a lot of those requests where uh we many of our city streets or roads needs to be paved and there is very little that we can do so that funding will at least help us address some of the backlog that we have um any Miss Anderson thank you madam chair um thank you for this uh overview it's very helpful I just have a small comment um i' I'd love for us to include language around Workforce Readiness in the digital inclusion slide so you know in that language that you have up top around you know what what the real focuses here I see the Commerce and education uh but it is critically important to have access to highspeed Internet as it relates to Workforce Readiness and I see the the language for Workforce Readiness under the upward mobility and completely agree with that but it would be great to have it as a part of uh the the rubric for digital inclusion I think I see where you're coming at uh I think the last part of that sentence reads can access digital opportunities for Commerce and education that's where you'd be looking for Workforce R needs to be put corre inserted correct that's okay with the committee I think we can yeah I I think that is important actually that was part of our uh strategic priorities in 2023 where Council which I mean full Council decided to include that as one of our strategic priorities so I'm glad that council member Anderson brought that up so uh Mr Mitchell thank you madam chair Dana as always thank you for doing a great job uh couple of questions and I I think I I have uh just information I think we need for January 21st um Holland Knight is our federal lobbyist and then who's our state lobbyist for us uh right now technically we do not have a state lobbyist the lobbying team from kts strategies left kts strategies in December and they form their own firm and so in order for us to contract with them we'll need to um uh get a contract approved and we're trying to work that through the process right now wow okay did not expect that answer I was going to try to follow to say when would the contracts expire but see like one oh I I I will tell you that right now is that um uh the federal contract expires at the end end of 2024 okay there are two one-year renewals uh that the city manager can exercise okay and we had the same um uh setup with with kts strategies and I I would say basically keep those uh dates uh like they are in anything that's new okay that so uh Madam chair of a May then I have a couple of just quick uh Dan I think we need to schedule if we can go to the slide with the legislative calendar I do think it'd be helpful for us to schedule a time we meet with a mechur delegation and we can do this quicker than later because I remember it it got to one point we met on a Friday at 3:00 and I don't think we had a good turnout so if you can provide some feedback when do you think it' be helpful to meet with our delegation prior to them leaving April 24th in between when we adopt everything February 26th m but uh I think meeting with them letting them understand and building that relationship can be helpful uh for us uh the other thing I think Danel you've done in the past I think it' be helpful you've given us a list of the Committees and so we kind of understand who's on the transportation committee who's on the housing Committee in Raleigh and so as Madam chair said when we start meeting we get to know our peers and what committee and representative we really need to focus on to push some of our agendas through uh the big the big living Dana is I do think in the retreat we really got to have a conversation um is it best for for uh The Authority for gim s in 2024 or 2025 uh for that um sales tax for Transit funding uh I think we all have struggle how do we be a relationship and what's the pathway to be successful I just think it January 21st we got have honest conversation about our Mobility plan but more importantly how we going to fund it and I think until we do that I think you know we got to give the citizen confidence that we have the plan but more importantly at the end of the day uh here's the funds that would match it and if they doing a short session this year I just you know you got a better feel as a likelihood that it would even get on the agenda because I think one of your slid say do the short session they're not going to take up any new bills so we looking at 2020 just I I don't consider that a new issue because we brought it up now for this would be the fourth year speaking of the specific plans before that we've been talking about Transportation with the general assembly since before I arrived here okay it's been on just about every I can't think of a legislative agenda that that hasn't been on okay might have been in a different form like one separately for Transit but okay thank you well if you can just help us part of our discussion in Janu January 21st I think it'll be glad it be good for Council just to know the likelihood that we can get support right okay thank you madam chair thank you Mr Mitchell um Mobility topic has it's never an easy topic and I know that we as the committee had discussed a strategy and I hope that as we move forward to our Strate our Retreat we will come up with some sort of strategy uh that this committee will actually take a lead on on how do we um potentially address this with state legislators uh because I do think we need a strategy in um maybe a different strategy than what we have had in the past mhm and with that anything else on Federal and State Legislative agenda yes if not now we will give you 25 minutes back right so good job committee oh do I have a motion to adjourn so Mo I can do motion all in favor please raise your hand kts thank you [Music] KT [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] time [Music] [Music] [Music] oh get I don't really need I don't [Music] need [Music] just k [Music] [Music] car [Music] the [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] where [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] w [Music] [Music] p [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] gentlemen thank you for joining us for the housing safety and Community committee meeting I'm your chair Victoria watlington and if we're good to start then we'll go ahead and begin with introductions uh we'll begin here on the left with attorney Jessica battle good afternoon Jessica battle at the city attorney's office thank you ma'am good afternoon Dave Robinson cmpd SE ask you ass city council Committee Member Lana Mayfield Committee Member Vice chair good afternoon dimple AA committee chair Ed Dr city council district 7 Dante Anderson mayor Pro Harold Thompson hous in the neighborhood services thank you so much um oh Gil wcome housing and Neighborhood Services thank you ma'am we've got a couple items on the agenda for today our first meeting of the year uh first we're going to do a little bit of level setting just to introduce uh we've got a couple of uh adjustments to our committee uh so we'll cover that very quickly and then we'll move on to the review of the city ordinances firstly I would like to welcome council member ashir back to this committee I know that you have been a former member in uh previous iterations so thank you for joining us if there's anything you just like to uh acknowledge initially well I'm excited uh to be working with you all and uh being part of the housing and Safety Committee thank you ma'am uh we also have an additional is there anyone online okay I didn't want to acknowledge anyone that was on okay got it uh thank you mayor La for joining us okay so housing safety and Community Committee just to remind everyone we are um here to review and recommend policies to provide for safe and affordable housing engage the community increase safety and promote equity and we see that housing safety and Community fall into those areas um given that we have boards that are aligned to our particular committee this year just like with several of the other committees we want to be a little bit connected to these uh advisory boards and commissions because they are aligned to our mission and we want to make sure that we are utilizing them to the best of our ability um so you can see here the list there's a host of them I won't read through them but there are several opportunities if you're listing at home to get involved in um topics that are important to the housing safety and Community Committee Focus just as a quick review I don't think we've got anyone in here that does not um already know this process but just so folks know how does work come to that referral can come from the mayor the city manager or majority a full councel and those are taken up in committee based on priority the committee will work through those there is a um expectation that whatever comes to committee gets moved out within three meetings and we often um um revisit some ongoing items so those may not require action necessarily but will come back to committee for um feedback uh after something passed through committee and it comes through and we vote on a recommendation it then goes to full Council um after which that the council is then free to deliberate and then ultimately vote at a future meeting on whatever policy changes are um initiated coming out of the committee and that happens at the at a future business meeting so that is the committee process our committee consists of five members um we had a a great year last year in 2023 you can see here we were able to get a couple of things done um as it related to housing specifically um as well as support um our Grassroots organizations through our arpa funding um we had a year-long body of work with anti-displacement um and you'll see that that's ongoing as that committee continues to that Nest commission continues to provide recommendations you'll see them come here periodically uh where we are looking at policy and program goals to address uh displacement in our community um also we were able to support affordable housing development both by uh looking at our Housing Trust Fund grants and also looking at how we can improve development fee reimbursement schedules for uh our developers because we know that if we can build cheaper then we can sell cheaper um next slide our current committee referrals as I me mentioned the anti-displacement which is ongoing we'll continue to look at existing and relevant City anti-displacement policies um and consider new ways to protect vulnerable communities from displacement we are also going to today discuss our city of Charlotte Code of ordinances which is something that's been on our docket for some time and we discussed at the end of last year returning to this um and reviewing recommendations and possibly taking action today as it relates to those code of ordinances and then we will continue to review the work that's been uh completed by our assigned boards and commissions set up yes all right so we can move then on if anyone has any questions in regards to this we can cover that real quickly but before I do I just want to pause and recognize council member Brown um has entered the meeting as well welcome to the housing and safety and Community commit committee and we and we will move to the next item then review of city code of ordinances and I'll turn it over to Sean Heath thank you chair W lingon I appreciate it we can go and pull up the slides Sean Heath assistant city manager as council member watlington mentioned this particular topic came to the committee from a referral from the mayor in late August and we can jump to slide two on the agenda so what we'll do today and and certain pieces here we're going to try to cover very quickly because it's a bit of a recap of what was introduced in October other pieces we're going to spend more time on uh first we're going to talk about the scope of the policy referral uh which is an important point today to talk about what it is and what it isn't we'll give a quick recap of the October committee discussion uh then we'll hand it over to deputy chief Robinson to provide a briefing on cmpd ordinance enforcement in general terms and then also the eight specific specific ordinances that were recommended to have the criminal penalty restored and which is consistent with the memo from Chief Jennings which was sent to Council on December 5th of 2023 I'll then close out the briefing with a bit of a preview of some of the quote unquote non- enforcement related strategies that we're embarking on in parallel to the enforcement related work so that's the agenda for the discussion next slide please uh one moment I'm sorry uh I'm sorry Sean I neglected to mention one thing just as we te up this conversation I know that there's been a lot of discussion and activity in the last week or two uh in response to some of the events that we've seen um Uptown and in other parts of our city as it relates to uh youth uh crime and and acts of violence I do want to make sure that while the focus of this particular conversation is specific to the city ordinances I do want to make sure that everybody is clear and understands that we have um initiated efforts towards addressing um addressing crime in our city uh there's more to come on that we anticipate having a more in-depth discussion and priority setting process during our annual Retreat um I have met with several of uh my colleagues as well as external stakeholders and the city manager and staff um and we'll be getting together between now and the annual Retreat to be able to bring back to you a broader framework um for uh discussion and ultimately hopefully adoption by Council um but that will cover a much more Broad approach to um our um crime reduction strategies which will be an extension of our safe Charlotte work that is active right now so I just want to make sure that we set that um set that Foundation as we go into this conversation that both of these are absolutely important pieces of work and certainly we are addressing uh we are addressing the broader scope of the work uh as well so thank you chair W lington so the policy question in the committee charge here was cut and paste directly from the referral and rather than me ramble on for two minutes and try to summarize the referral itself let me just take 60 seconds to read this to you I think it's important that we're all grounded in in what the scope of the referral was first on the policy question what effective strategies can the city employ to collaborate with meinberg County United Way and Charlotte Center City Partners to holistically address perceived safety concerns in Center City and surrounding areas what are Community concerns and feedback related to our unhoused population are there updates or revisions to the city code of ordinances that are currently enforced only by civil penalties but legally have the option for criminal enforcement that should be considered to better help our neighborhoods and businesses across the city to thrive how can these strategies take into account the needs of our unhoused population while optimizing Public Safety resources committee charge conduct a comprehensive review including a listening session for residents business owners and or nonprofit profit organizations of the existing concerns calls for service data and available resources work with Charlotte Center City Partners United Way housing and Neighborhood Services Department cmpd city attorney's office and meinberg County to examine the impact of potential Solutions on the unhoused population the allocation of Public Safety resources and service providers proposed for consideration of full city council any recommended strategies and or revisions to the city code that would align with the concerns and best interests of the various stakeholders so just three quick context setting points that I wanted to make as it related to the referral itself first is just to underscore the Genesis for this referral is community concerns that were bubbling in 2023 associated with certain behaviors that were being observed Uptown uh just to be graphic public urination and defecation in particular was one in our parks and elsewhere uh also challenges related to individuals that were drinking o drinking open openly in public public parks and elsewhere in the center city you may recall in the August time frame there members of the community that came to a public forum to voice some of these concerns based on their firsthand experience second while the while the referral makes reference multiple references to the unhoused population I just wanted to underscore and I hope what's obvious in the remarks that I make today and the remarks that deputy chief Robinson makes today the the recommendations here are not intended to are not designed to quote unquote Criminal ize homelessness there's a lot of work reflected here today associated with human services access to housing for the unhoused population Street Outreach while we'll focus primarily on the enforcement piece today we will provide a little bit of perspective on those other non- enforcement related strategies that we are equally motivated to advance and the third point just to piggyback on council member watlington reference here this particular referral was not designed to sus out recommended strategies associated with violent crime crime um clearly there's there will be an emphasis on that in 2024 by the mayor and Council and city manager but that's not what this referral was designed to do next slide please as I mentioned before it's been over 90 days since this committee discussed this topic we had two holidays we have two new committee members uh there was a 50-minute discussion in October I thought it would be meaningful to spend 60 seconds recapping the discussion in in October first uh just as a reminder uh city council did not decriminalize ordinances this was really driven by an action taken by the North Carolina General Assembly session law 20 221-3800 was enacted by the general assembly in SE general assembly in September of 2021 there was a 29-page Criminal Justice Reform Bill with one particular provision whereby most violations of local ordinances were de criminalized so in late 2021 early 2022 the city attorney's office uh LED an exhaustive effort with cmpd and other departments to evaluate which ordinances that were decriminalized uh warranted consideration to have the criminal penalty restored so all of that analysis culminated in DEC a decision by City Council in late March of 2022 to rec criminalize certain ordinances deputy chief Robinson Robinson's slides today will provide you some perspective on what those ordinances were at the time uh we spent a bit of time talking about cmpd's General approach to ordinance enforcement and and deputy chief Robinson will reshare that information today we obviously talked about the referral itself uh in October we discuss key themes from the public listening session which was required by the referral we worked with Charlotte Center City Partners to host a public listening session in late September uh there were a couple city council members that had an opportunity to participate in that session session we had about 100 members of the public show up it was a very constructive dialogue uh key themes uh I would distill it into a few key themes from the public one is General perception that quality of life and Public Safety in the center city has deteriorated over the last few years uh very strong majority of the participants were of the belief that restoring criminal penalty options for these ordinances such as public urination defecation open container uh was the right thing to do for the city uh third um interestingly also a recognition that Holistic Solutions were necessary the members of the public that feel very passionate about this issue and feel that ordinance enforcement can be an important piece of the solution we're quick to recognize that Holistic Solutions are really necessary to get at the root causes the underlying conditions that are kind of driving some of this behavior and I might be adding it forth here but another recurring theme was a recognition by the residents that these particular uh indecent behaviors if you will are not committed solely by members of the unhoused population so in no way we they suggesting in no way am I suggesting ordinances that were put on the table for discussion um and there was some discussion But ultimately the committee unanimously passed a motion in that session for staff and cmpd to work on a quote unquote comprehensive list of ordinances that should be considered that are Germain to this policy referral which is included in deputy chief Robinson's presentation today along with any additional historical data and Analysis that could be beneficial for the committee and which there is data in the appendix which is available if needed today next slide please so while as I mentioned before today's discussion is very focused on the enforcement angle we understand that enforcement alone is not a full solution this slide is really just a very simple depiction of how we would see the intersection Point among quality of life considerations and concerns in uptown Charlotte the needs of the center city unhoused population and the needs of the center city house population because ultimately that's what we're trying to do here is find a suite of solutions that are meeting the needs of a number of stakeholders so we won't have the luxury of doing a deep dive on a lot of this today but it's really important I believe to be framed like this before we do dive into the enforcement angle so very quickly moving from left to right as we're thinking about this balance balancing of Interest across unhoused population and the house population on the Human Services side you know this to me is where there's a heavy dose of humanity built into the approach so it's not just what are the ways that we can penalize the UNH housee population this is what are the ways that we can support the unhoused population so if you think about Street Outreach teams uh Street Outreach these are nonprofit organizations in this community and elsewhere that literally bring social work and case management to the streets um because because as we know it can be very difficult to engage the unhoused population it takes time to cultivate relationships so um after deputy chief Robinson speaks I will share some information with you about actions we are taking now in order to ramp up the street Outreach that's happening in the center city that you're also familiar with some Innovative approaches that cnpd has embarked upon embarked upon over the last couple years including the cares team and also the community policing crisis response team which both working together in a complimentary fashion are focused on how do you leverage non-sworn resources to complement cnpd resources as it relates to engaging members of the public that are either homeless or facing some sort of Crisis related to behavioral uh behavioral crisis Andor issues with uh substance use etc etc I've made reference here to the behavioral health diversion team which is run by meinberg County uh a to make you aware that they do have a few folks these are clinicians that really have the sole objective of how do you divert individuals from the criminal justice system into the mental health system when that's that's the path that they need to go in order to really address their underlying challenges so I wanted to make you aware that that exists today but also as a way to underscore that this ecosystem of things that are necessary to address these really challenging societal problems requires much more than just the city of Charlotte this requires Partnerships with the county Partnerships with the local nonprofit organizations we can't do this by ourselves uh moving to the middle here with housing options as we're aware uh traditional affordable housing Solutions aren't necessarily going to provide the kind of solutions that you need with the unhoused population which is why we've made reference here to low barrier Emergency Shelters transitional housing so you could think of that as temporary subsidized housing so to speak and then permanent Supportive Housing each of those are areas that we as a city have invested in in the past few years both with Federal stimulus funds and with some of our recurring Federal allocations more work needs to be done um and that's another area that I'll comment on briefly after deputy chief Robinson's remarks so finally enforcement tools which is where we are focusing the discussion on today but wanted that to be in the context of some of the other things that we're up to um let me leave it at that and we can jump to slide six and I'll hand it over to deputy chief Robinson thank you thank you uh SE and I appreciate that and it's always a pleasure to be back amongst this committee happy to be uh here with you today discussing from our standpoint as well as um what we can do to help in this problem in this situation our orance enforcement uh strategy and how we look toward uh more formidable and meaningful Holistic Solutions uh as Sean has said and if I take you to slide number seven please you can see that in March and April of 202 22 uh council at the time restored criminal enforcement as an option for certain city ordinances summarized in this table and what you'll see uh pretty not not innocuous by any means but you you see the uh things talking about camping carnivals bonfires noise shooting in the city limits uh weapons things like that what we found is that when we look at the day-to-day for what our officers are faced with uh this doesn't necessarily Encompass uh what they uh could use now if you look at slide number eight the way that we focus our efforts for the men and women who uh wear the uniform and are out on the street engaging with the public is that we clearly would rather have compliance that's just the bottom line and as I shared with members of this committee uh prior to uh today when we were here just a couple of months ago uh we want compliance and if compliance doesn't happen just by saying saying hey how's it going you know a verbal warning uh and then a written citation and then an arrest so we don't look to go from zero to arrest like that for no reason or without a conversation or uh when it comes to these ordinance is because typically when we're engaging with people uh in this Behavior if we say hey uh knock it off and head on down the way um typically that does happen the arrest piece gives us another uh leverage uh item if you will for our officers to be more effective uh in gaining that compliance uh without having to make the arrest next slide please so our enforcement after the ordinance were decriminalized from a compliance verbal warning and then we were able to write a written civil citation usually $50 for the offense and as you know from sharing with members of this committee before that's often times difficult to enforce or to collect on didn't really have much of a of a hook in in getting that behavior to change uh not written often uh civil penalty is subject I mean imagine that and I want to be clear on the fact that we're not just handing out uh tickets to people who may or may not be in the position to do that and typically it didn't change anyone's Behavior it didn't give us any real option or teeth to address that next slide please so the benefits of this from a compliance standpoint I hate to keep saying that word over and over that's that's what we want we want to have an additional tool on the tool belt uh if if if passed but we just want it to be a deterrent and to to change the behavior that we see that is in our mind um it it's difficult if if if if people look at a situation like uh that we see often uh without being able to really help uh remove some somebody from a negative situation it's difficult to change that behavior and again we we look towards options that uh align with resource allocation for that that person who is experiencing whatever that crisis is and so I think just giving another option with uh having that opportunity if you will to uh discuss hey you know now you know from an arrest standpoint uh that does tend to change people's behavior as we've talked about before next slide please so uh and again I want to make it clear that that we serve at the pleasure of the community in which we operate and uh policing is defined by what the community defines as appropriate and from what we have talked with people about seen evidence of talked with this committee about um and in with City staff uh the chief uh has recommended their ordinance for rec criminalization as you see if you look at the memo uh dated December the 5th uh from Chief Jennings Dem Marcus uh city manager Marcus Jones it talks about U the particular ordinances that we feel would be effective towards uh changing behavior from a compliance standpoint obviously the beer and wine the unauthorized persons and parking lots trespassing on Motor Vehicles loing for the purposes of engaging in drug rated activity there are if you look at the arrows to the right there are there's further workup that has to be done with these not just just to throw it back out there as it was but to be more thoughtful on how um how that applies obviously 1582 and 83 uh as as written U and then if you look at 14282 and how that conflicts with 1515 um there were several that were not recommended for rec criminalization uh and and we'll get to that in just one minute if you would uh please head to the next slide 12 so and this is you show I apologize no that's okay so just one final slide from me and then we'll we'll talk about uh turning things back over to the committee on the non- enforcement strategies I mentioned that there are a couple things that we're advancing now based on resources we have available so kind of living within our means um one of which we're Contracting with hearts for the invisible which is a Charlotte B nonprofit it's run by Jessica lewitz and she does Street Outreach and I mentioned before Street Outreach is you know literally taking a lot of this work to the unhoused population we will have her focused really primarily on the center city um not because these issues don't exist across the city or across the county we recognize they do but but clearly there's a concentration of the issue in uptown so this would be the starting point this would we've heard feedback from Council about looking for opportunities to collaborate with meinberg County this is an area of collaboration meberg county has already stepped forward uh working with working with hearts for the invisible um having them ramp up their street Outreach a bit having them develop a really a strategy around Street Outreach in the county so our work will not be redundant with but it will be complimentary to what meinberg county has already started with hearts for the invisible we are also moving forward with rental subsidies and Supportive Services that would be devoted to 10 clients referred to referred to this program from the center city on house population through the through some federal allocations that we receive on an annual basis we do tenant-based rental assistance year-over-year that that's not a new thing for us and in fact this year we have more resources available to do even more tenant-based real um rental assistance than is typical what will be different here is the idea of e mar or designating some of it specifically related to this population because if if there's a secret sauce here uh part of it is connecting these pieces across the Continuum because Street Outreach and isolation is helpful but it needs to be connected to uh temporary housing or Supportive Services or permanent Supportive Housing and the like so this is a albeit modest step in that direction it is a step in that direction and with resources we have available we think it's the right step in terms of future activity as we look around the bend and start planning for fiscal year 25 a few things I wanted to make you aware of first this first item is just on the drawing board we haven't identified a specific solution but we've had conversations with the county and some other stakeholders and this would be the notion of having a co-investment with the county and potentially other partners around a hotel motel conversion that would have a low barrier non- congregate shelter targeting the unhoused population um we've had a lot of whiteboard sessions with our Community Partners so United Way meinberg County roof above salvation Army Etc and this has emerged as as a potentially very meaningful strategy so we have non-congregate shelters in the city of Charlotte certainly uh but there's a need for more and in particular here uh where there seems to be a lot of energy is on the idea of having some Services devoted specifically to individuals with severe mental health issues um Andor addiction challenges so that would be part of this strategy that we're in the very early stages of working on uh second I I never want to lose an opportunity to remind committee and Council about a home for all so this of course is the broad-based strategy focused on housing and homelessness in mecklinburg County meinberg County the city of Charlotte uh you know the entire ecosystem uh in various ways is is working on this broad initiative uh Council was supportive of us at the staff level kind of stepping into this work in fy2 24 and we will be looking for ways to support this work in fy2 uh in particular there'll be an emphasis on prevention measures so for example a number of council members have asked about are there ways for us as a community not just the city of Charlotte to do more around emergency rental assistance we had a lot of emergency rental assistance available through Federal stimulus funds all of those funds have been depleted uh we can't replace that level of funding that was an enormous level of funding but could there be a way for a coalition of the willing to come together to provide some very targeted emergency rental assistance on a year-over-year basis so that's one area another focuses on property provider Recruitment and Retention this gets back to work that committee and Council probed into over the last couple years related to source of income protection for example what are things that could be done to build a larger Bullpen of local property providers that are ready willing and able to accept individuals in the community that have housing vouchers of rental subsidies of sub of some sort so some of that work isn't necessarily directly relevant to the unhoused population in Center City uh but didn't want to lose sight of that as part of our kind of like overarching strategy in this area and then finally just to continue to demonstrate the left hand and the right hand are are communicating with each other in October we talked about this notion of three pillars as it relates to work that we're at the staff level trying to advance in uptown with with Tracy Dodson and her team thinking about Economic Development and vacancy rates for commercial buildings Uptown which for those of you in that committee meeting earlier today you heard an update on that um seed out and solid waste Sur services are also focused on the public realm and some physical infrastructure which is mentioned here in the last bullet point in terms of taking an inventory of infrastructure like bus shelters benches etc etc and evaluating what's what's the right step forward for those assets on TR Street in particular and then the last thing i' would mention which isn't on this slide is we're having a lot of conversations with Community Partners about how what are some things we could consider to increase the access to public restrooms in the center city so if you think about it right now it's fairly limited access access probably less access than there was preco when you know more I think uh commercial businesses were receptive to individuals using the restrooms uh there is some restroom capacity at R buen park there is some capacity at First Ward Park there's some capacity at the CTC but it's fairly Limited in terms of the number of restrooms and the hours of operation so we're having conversations with meinberg County Parks and Rec I I can't really share anything specific today that anybody has agreed to but it is most definitive on our radar that that as a community we have a need for more public restroom access and that could come in the form of Greater Maintenance Cleaning and security Personnel at existing restrooms or to come in the form of new designs which have been developed in other rooms that are meant to mitigate challenges associated with arson and vandalism and squatting etc etc so we're still in the exploratory phase on that but wanted to make you aware next and final slide please so uh we'll turn things back back over to the committee for discussion uh just one reminder here at point two uh on the slide which is depending on what direction committee were to go today and ultimately Council if there is at any point a decis decision to advance certain ordinance to have criminal penalties restored s sp300 requires that that be a two-step process it it's very consistent with the council Norm anyways which is to come in with an action review discussion and then at a subsequent council meeting have a vote but I just wanted to make the point here that that is in fact a procedural requirement of s sp300 to have it split up into that two-part process so that that concludes the formal briefing chair Watling turn it back over to you thank you Sean um I will I just want to add uh we did receive a letter before I open up the floor for discussion I did want to highlight to the committee members and those listening that we did receive a memo um from the Charlotte Center City Partners who is one of our key um Partners here in the center city who's tasked with ensuring the vibrancy of Uptown and surrounding areas and they did Issue a letter um in support of reinstating these ordinances but what I wanted to make sure that folks heard here is that it did come with a couple of recommendations um the first being supporting a home for all which you mentioned and the expansion of the car's team which feels like it's in within um um scope of what we've been discussing they also mentioned business and residential engagement which is ongoing um and then finally a relaunch of the real change education program to raise awareness um with businesses and residents and visitors to understand exactly what these these ordinance reinstatements mean so I just wanted to lift that up we did receive that from um Michael Smith earlier today and I wanted to give you an opportunity to speak to any of that um if you so chose if not that's fine there's anything additional that I add I mean hearing that now it sounds very consistent with the types of things that we're suggesting we be be Advanced uh with that I will entertain a motion one way or the other on this particular one I'll recognize council member as mayor thank you Madame chairwoman watlington and this is very helpful because this is one of my first committee meetings for housing and safety this is a new committee assignment for me um I I appreciate sort of an overview and this effort has been underway for almost a year now I mean this committee has been working on this for um almost 8 to nine months now I remember 4or residents that came and spoke at one of our public forums and that was months ago I appreciate your patience um I I understand that the timing can be frustrating um in terms of it has taken us so long uh but I think this is way overdue um and um certainly the committee has been working on a comprehensive solution where we are not just addressing the enforcement because if we just address the enforcement the issue will come back to us week or two months down the road and we'll be working on that I think having um having a comprehensive approach Where We Are also looking at mental health support housing support ensuring that we are able to connect people to Services it's truly comprehensive I will certainly be supporting it I'll make a motion for us to recommend criminal enforcement for certain ordinances so that gives our cmpd a tools that they need to keep our residents safe but more importantly I I remember where one of the speakers I talked about taking their little one or granddaughter to the Discovery Place where they saw someone defecating right in front of the museum and I have been in a similar situation with my daughter uh when I used to take her to the music class at imagin on I have seen a similar situation so this is not just about safety this is a public health issue this is about ensuring that we are doing everything in our power to keep our residents safe um and keeping them in good health so um also I think there uh we need to clarify some of the misconceptions about this because i' I've often heard that uh we are criminalizing by implementing this poverty it is not and I'm glad that Mr Heath in his uh open opening remarks he talks about this is not about criminalizing poverty this is actually helps us and gives us the tool that cmpd needs to connect people with services to get them mental health support get them Housing Shelter uh and uh I appreciate the work that task force has done especially the stakeholders businesses forth residents as well as just this committee over past year um I would like to see public restroom options sooner rather than later CU that often comes up in my communication conversations with our residents um because with the main library where um that option is no longer available I think that really creates an urgent need for having public restrooms I think that's also important that we address that um sooner with a sense of urgency and um as a chair of the budget government governance and intergovernmental committee uh I would like us to also work and collaborate with the county um to figure out intergovernmental approach to some of these Key Resources because when it comes to updown safety or just anywhere safety issue or public health I think it's a responsibility of all agencies working together so by taking an action today we are doing our part uh but I think we need to take a step further to truly create intergovernmental approach to this and I I appreciate cmpd's uh leadership um I have read cmpd Chief's mammo that was sent a couple of weeks ago uh I appreciate what you are doing um you know it can be difficult at times where our police officers are having to not just work on addressing crime but also really they are Ser many times they're being asked to do do um sort of Social Work a social worker job where they are actually connecting residents to really see where we are having nonprofits take on that responsibility so that doesn't fall always on cmpd I think that's great um so I really hope my colleagues at the committee level will uh support this I think this is very important uh to keep our residents safe and healthy in uptown and and just anywhere in the city because I've also seen that in East Charlotte when I talked to council member Molina that was an issue in one of the shopping centers so this is not just about Uptown I think it's the entire city so uh I have I have put the motion forward and um I hope my colleagues support it thank you madam chair thank you council member asir for the sake of conversation so that we can continue the conversation I will second motion so that we can open it up for discussion thank you um CC member Johnson thank you madam chair um bottom line in my opinion this is criminalizing poverty and homeless we we've been listening to the presentation for the last 30 minutes and and I wish I had a dollar for every time the word unhoused was used this will affect our homeless um citizens at a disproportionate level and and we know this just because we say that we're not criminalizing homelessness that's exactly what this is doing I appreciate all of the services I truly do they're important they're necessary I I don't know if you all know I have a pure support organization I provide services to the homeless I've been in re-entry for the last 10 years I know how hard it is once someone has a criminal record we are compounding the problem there are many residents in the hotels right now now the the reason that they're not able to get housing is because of a criminal background so I I think these if we go back to the slide before this with the um Solutions I think these non- enforcement strategies are wonderful and I think that the city we should work with the county I think a a more appropriate referral might have been the intergo intergovernmental uh Relations Committee because this is a county issue so when these calls are made uh maybe the community health workers from the county could come out and and engage with these folks you know um Medicaid expansion was halted in this state for 12 years and so people were denied people with mental health issues and substance abuse were denied treatment for 12 years when they might have gotten it it was just approved last month let's give it a chance to work let's let's when when when when you know if someone's having one of these episodes or doing something like this and and someone's called let's bring in those community health workers to connect with the sore worker and help them apply for benefit but to take them to jail and and and compound their criminal record and compound the barrier of them not getting housing is is is is is counterproductive in my opinion I'm looking at the CMP data jurisdiction W wide if you look at the number um the the highest offenses are homeless people the total there's 1193 there's Ling for money 143 um the numbers this will affect our homeless population and to say that it's not is I think it's misleading our our our public you you've heard the presentation and unhoused was used numerous times I Wish I Had It Again a a dollar for every time they said it so I I think that um as a council uh this does need to be addressed for the the the quality of life for our Uptown residents however let's utilize these non- enforcement strategies uh let's work with the county and bring in someone to provide case management another thing I think is important for our our Council to recognize is in that Senate Bill 300 there's a a a line that says if they can if an individual may not be found responsible are guilty of a local ordinance if when tried for that violation the person produces proof of compliance with the local ordinance through any of the following and that's mental health or substance use treatment so these cases are going many of them are may even be dismissed do we really want our officers wasting their time to to arrest for for cases that are ultimately going to be dismissed I think our off I I think our officers have a lot more a lot more important or or bigger fish to fry in our city so I won't be supporting this um I see it as criminalizing homelessness criminalizing poverty um and and I just I think we should allow these non- enforcement strategies to work you know Mr Heath talked about the things we're going to do and we're going to do and we're going to do let's do some of those things see if they work and then revisit it thank you thank you Miss Johnson um Vice chair Mayfield thank you madam chair so Mr E question for you when we're looking at and I believe we're on the right slide that I need when we're looking here the potential of how do we address public restrooms what studies are we looking at cuz Philadelphia started a study back in 2019 and they ran from they drove basically from Hoboken Hoboken New Jersey throughout what they identified as for every 100,000 people they found maybe four public restrooms they're looking they've increased that they looking at the model that Iceland Iceland CU homelessness is an issue throughout the world not just in this nation and access to restrooms is a human right and a basic necessity so I basically for every 100,000 people they've identify 53 public restrooms that are available so what studies or which pure city are we looking at when we're having this conversation I don't have a direct answer I I do have a database that was shared with me within the last week or so that identifies for cities in the United States and I think across the world what do the per capita public restroom look like and how does Charlotte compare so uh I'll have to take that as a homework assignment I mean the work that we are doing has been really through conversation with Community Partners and we're essentially developing an inventory of what are the possible solutions and I will say to you that almost without exception each solution has pros and cons actually I will say there there they all have pros and cons so we're we're considering portons uh we've received a lot of feedback that portons can posee some significant challenges uh we're considering the opportunity to support there are at least two entities in the city of Charlotte that provide mobile access to integrated restrooms showers and laundry facilities um neither the Porton nor the mobile restroom scenarios are necessarily long-term fixes as I mentioned before we're also in conversation with Parks and Rec about what would it take from a resource perspective in order to have uh more availability associated with cleaning Mak maintenance and security for the existing restrooms and then as as I mentioned before we're looking at some specific designs one of which is called the Portland Lou spelled l o based in Portland Oregon and it's it's a rather expensive solution for a standalone restroom but it's been specifically designed to mitigate challenges associated with vandalism arson squatting drug use etc etc so uh we're not far enough along where we have a recommendation yet but I just I wanted the committee to be aware that we've received feedback from many stakeholders that have suggested if Council Council were to move forward with the ordinance related in particular to public urination defecation that these stakeholders would have an expectation that in tandem with that something meaningful be done to increase the access to public restrooms in the center city so here's part of what I've heard from my colleague a lot of this is the what if versus in this presentation we haven't actually identify this has is what has been implemented except for our cmpd numbers and when we look at those numbers unfortunately anyone looking at these numbers these numbers do feel like they are geared towards our community who is the most in need now another reality is that when we have concerts when we have events a number of this junker disorderly is from people who have the financial well-being and means because you just chose to go out and you don't know how to hold your alcohol so therefore you have overindulged and now you're out in the community and you're creating a lot of unnecessary chaos but there's not a clear way to separate the two in that conversation when we look at at these numbers by and of course you can't say have wealth don't have wealth have money but this was Associated during a Panthers event during a concert during whatever it was that was happening that would be a Tracker that would help to a little bit to identify where we're seeing these challenges you also know I had a concern even though my colleagues moveed forward with the idea of a social District in one part of our city Center City Partners wasn't even a part of that conversation we're already having challenges but opposed to us looking at what's already happening on the ground number of them threw their hands up like yeah that's a great idea to walk around and get a drink and take it from spot to spot we're going to have the same conversation over there later when we haven't addressed this so even though we're having this conversation of these recommendations the non- enforcement strategies by not having some that could have been implemented even in the last 3 4 months or in the last 6 months when we saw the uptick in Center City and having that data before us today would have been very helpful I'm of the thought process bet based strictly on the information and my understanding of the information to possibly support us moving forward at the end of the day I don't even know if we have full if we how it's going to go based on committee because you have to have so many votes but there are some very specific questions that were not answered in this presentation that we've been in for 40 minutes that should have at least shown where you all have done some of this versus giving me a PowerPoint that says well we're going to attempt to to do X and showing me that overwhelmingly the numbers of arrest so for the open container public drinking I can make my assumption and say this is event related it would have been helpful to say the weekend or if it was an event when this was happening because just looking at it begging panhandling we have it all over the city you have it on the highways you have it out Brookshire it is everywhere that's a load number that highest number is this open container and it's public drinking and even at that those are numbers from 2018 2019 we also know from because of that revolving door within the D DA's office so it is helpful that Chief Jennings along with da Merryweather and others went up and was able to lobby but that would have been helpful to have those numbers in here that since September October when we were able to have support from Raleigh to reinstitute and for mainly for the magistrates to lose some of their Authority and for certain offenses to go straight to judges to have those numbers in here and say what that impact has been I can hear the concern and I can see why there would be concern regarding how I impact it but for me I'm also concerned about those who are not UNH house who come in and visit our city for a weekend and all the things that they do that contribut contribute negatively to our city what do we have in place to address that I would also like to encourage that what next step is not is to bring a presentation to us of here's all the things that us and the stakeholder group have identified without having conversations with us along the way cuz I just gave a simple example that consisted of a two-minute Google search of what cities are already doing first of all we need to look at cities that are comparable to ours and size as well as ability because we are a council manager former government we are not a strong May believe it or not it is not a strong May for of government in this city so there are some things that other cities that can be done that we don't have necessarily the ability to do so giving me a this is what they did tamper doesn't really help me because they have a different form of government so it will be helpful of loaned away cuz from again correct me from wrong the understanding is if we were to move this out today there are still two more steps according to the North Carolina General Assembly that we need to go to that has more public input in this process what I'm asking in addition to that is that you keep committing a breast along the way so that we're not presented with here's our recommendations and then I have to take 10 minutes to shoot holes to the majority of them I don't want to have to do that extra work so I'm asking on front end in this committee but for me for us to move the conversation forward we have a motion so after my colleagues if there's additional questions when the chair is ready to call for a motion then I will be prepared to make one as far as y or name m and follow s you s me thank you madam chair Dr Wall for me um I'm the newest member of council but it's no secret that I'm formally incarcerated or if it is a secret let me share that with you now I am formally incarcerated I've been home for decades I've been doing this work for decades I consider myself the expert I have a great relationship with cmpd as well as a great relationship with the meinberg county sheriff department and I do this work extensively product of my work is a young lady sitting over there who's my mentor who started out at s Middle School who was getting excluded every day throwing things um you know just some things that could have had her arrested but now she's an honor student at been at College it's no secret that is near and dear to my heart can I do this work and not be biased absolutely but I have to see harm reduction I um met with Sean in advance on this work um what we were going to do today it's my first time here my first time really seeing it to look at it to get it in detail to me uh mental health is a big deal if it were not for um you know some of the resources that I had in my family I probably you know I contemplated suicide you you don't to a person yes I've been able to bounce back it's only because of the support in the community and it made me do um my nonprofit um to do this type of work um I work with the Department of Justice I am a member of the National Council for incarcerated informed incarcerated women and girls a member of Ford Justice any organization on the national platform that does his work they will they will really um this would be something that they would not support with me I have a for uh constituents stakeholders and everybody in whole for me to make a conscience decisions and to be fair and effective I would have to see some more data um the data that I'm particularly looking for is to show that it's just not the people um that have mental challenges in the community I'm also a certified community healthcare worker as well as a peer support specialist I'm on my fourth year in criminal justice and social work at John C Smith with a 4.0 what I would like to see is um us bringing to the table the people that this has affected the most if they're going to be um if we're going to create this framework for us to move forward and make sure that the city center is safe and that the stakeholders have a concern you have to include everybody and everybody has to be at the table and so I I would have to what what what I heard today and in front of me um councilwoman Johnson is going to be the closest to what I'm going to support on this subject I today I wouldn't be able to support moving forward with uh to me what I call criminalizing mental health and I would like to see more harm reduction I would like to be proactive I like to see things put in place saying what we can do what it looks like if it's done nothing has been done to show that that data is going to be measured and that we'll be able to uh make this work for everybody uh it's no secret that if you have not walked in the path of someone who has been incarcerated if you have not dealt with someone who has those mental challenges and those capacities what I see a lot here is compliance and we all know that when compliance doesn't go the way that it should half fast it escalates and what it can turn into so I honestly I don't like the word compliance at all um I know the officer was big on compliance I'm big on harm reduction and mental health um Services as well so we all have our passion as you wearing that uniform I love uh what you do I want our officers to be safe but I also have a duty my full duty is for the constituents of this community that put me in this position that's it and that's all I'm just here to serve and be the best Council woman that I can possibly be with the information that I have it just so happen to be that you're you're talking about a subject that's very sensitive and dear to me in the work that I do outside of city council um but I would like to see the scales balanc and right now they're unbalanced on this particular measure today so I'm not going to be long and drawn out that's all I have right now thank you thank you madam chair um you know I was at the listening session when C City Partners did the listening session of town and what Sean laid out was exactly what um you know the constituents have have communicated it it really and truly is among other things a quality of life issue for the residents who call Uptown home and it also is a um it's an issue from our tourism perspective as we think about the the U tourism dollars that come into our community from Thursday to Sunday for all of the events that occur in the Uptown area it can be a deterrent for for individuals to want to come and visit us from the region and outside of the region right and so you we have to accept that this is an issue and it's a it's other things as well right so there's a variety of different there's some added Dimensions here it's not just a singular issue um I I I do believe Sean that the the public restrooms in taking the public restrooms offline from the library is a direct um effect of what's going on and some of the numbers that we're saying and some of the behaviors and I've spoken to to MK who runs our our library system around how they're thinking about the unhoused interacting with the new library that comes online but I think there needs to be a more robust conversation that's um that that cuts um horizontally across the different forms of government in Charlotte in conjunction with the library system to think about how they could really be a safe place in space um for the unhoused as we've seen that aspect of um our constituents grow up toown so I I think that's important I also think you know there's some mention around you know looking at what other cities do as it relates to this and I agree but I want to just make sure that we're looking at cities that are similar to our population base but also our density right um because whether it's an international City or or one of our Pure pure cities here the density issue is the challenge as you look at you know restrooms online per per uh capita and so I there lots of great examples out there Sean I know you already know that I have the chief's um memo here and had been reviewing it over the last several days and on slide 11 where we uh talk about um bringing online these these um bringing back online these eight ordinances is there's a there's a note and inside the memo there's some specific notes around three ordinances that need um well the that the chief is calling for more directive language right that would um put up more um guard rails around what this specifically means and I I firmly believe that we need to this committee needs and Council needs to see um some reflection of that l language before um you go forward with an action that says yes we want to bring this online right so it it it would be it would be nice to have some level of draft of of that language and how it will shape and inform you know um these ordinances these three specific ordinances that need additional detail I also think that in this um on slide 11 the ordinances like 1523 for example that relates to Ling it it relates to a specific activity um connected to lering drug related activity and things of that nature but then when you when I look at the data the CMP data that's laid out on slides 17 and 18 you know those Ling numbers are related to money and alcohol so I I don't see a direct correlation with that ordinance to what we're tracking maybe there is um but I I would just like to see the the the detailed language that we would offer up as uh the new language for 1523 for example uh before we bring it online I I do believe that uh as a council we have to acknowledge that this is an issue and as I mentioned it's a multi-dimensional issue and uh and we need to make some steps steps to address it but I I just want to make sure that we do the work upfront as it relates to the language and and have a a a clear understanding of how we would bring these ordinances back online um before effectively saying yes let's bring them back online thank you thank you Mr drigs thank you madam chair just to make clear I'm not a member of the committee so I'm speaking as visitor uh I listen to the discussion and consider these issues and it sounds to me a little bit as if in the minds of some people we are talking about making a choice between enforcement and non- enforcement which we are not right so I regard the idea of Rec criminalizing these things as a last resort uh option and I don't think anybody could accuse this Council of being insensitive to the plight of people who are homeless or have been in the system this Council uh in fact I can tell you there a lot of people out there that feel very differently and and so uh I.E they think that that's where a lot of our attention goes so uh you know to say we are criminalizing by doing this or would be uh we are talking about criminalizing certain behaviors not certain people and as a last resort so we have a robust process for non- enforcement we have the verbal warnings but at the end of the day if the officers do not have some sort of action that they are able to take to require that people stop doing these things then the message we are sending to the rest of the community is that this Council believes it's okay that the average person in the street is required to be exposed to some of these things and their children are uh and so I I really think we have a duty of care that extends to protecting the larger population that finds it difficult to run up against these things particularly when in the company of their children walking around Uptown and the only thing that criminalizing says is we will continue to pursue vigorously our non- enforcement options the officers have always been restrained anyway the officers will make every effort to try to discourage some of these really objectionable behaviors uh before resorting to the arrest but if they don't have the possibility of invoking a criminal statute they're just ignored and then the right the rest of the public looks at them and says hey why aren't you doing something and so it reflects on them and therefore I accept that remarks have been made I I I accept them about okay more work or I want data I want to see this and I want to see that but at the end of the day I don't think the bottom line for this Council should be that we at the end we think it's acceptable for the these behaviors to take place so however we do it we have got to have one last line of defense that says no this is not happening thank you uh thank you Mr drigs um I know we got one more uh comment from the committee but I did want to just jump in and offer my thoughts as well what I'm hearing from folks is that it seems pretty clear that everybody around here would like a holistic approach and what I've heard shared from um staff and what I've heard shared from some of our external Partners is that that is definitely the idea is that not only do we want to um address some of these broader uh issues we also want to make sure that we are protecting the broader public interest as well not only for visitors but for residents for businesses for employees as well um I personally wholeheartedly agree with that what the reason that people continue to move here is because it's a place that Charlotte is a place that people want to live live um and part of that is feeling safe um on the streets and as I look at the ordinances I think several of the members of the committee have already mentioned um that none of these are inherently attributed to unhoused populations um at the end of the day these are behaviors now I absolutely agree that I want to see um more of a plan around public restrooms which I think has been said several times so that one AB absolutely clear um the rest of these though are not necessarily choices that one has to make because they are unhoused so I think we got to separate this this conversation um and because of that I do look forward to supporting moving forward with this with the um with the caveats that have already been mentioned in terms of wanting to get more information about what the specific plans will be around the public restrooms wanting to really understand uh these this data and who who and how are people being impacted based on the data that we impacting our unhoused population on particular ones again I think that we we we have a sense of that um and then also I want to make sure that as we move forward we're considering how this work supports the broader work of um of improving the quality of life for our residents so um those are my comments before we move to the vote I believe that council member Johnson did have something additional that she wanted to share we are at 11 minutes past the hour um so we'll we'll give folks one more round if they need it and then we'll go ahead and take action Miss Johnson thank you Dr watlington I also just want to add it's not just the unhoused it's it's as uh council member Brown said it's the mental health component so I would say you know 90 95% of those incarcerated especially or homeless have um history of mental health and when I say 95% I can speak from my position in re-entry having a re-entry house how many of those individuals had a history of mental health so I think we really need to take that into effect and I want to ask Sean if you could just explain the Senate Bill 300 because I read I skimmed over it but I want Council to understand the language in Senate bill or maybe Jessica maybe that's something for you to read the um the Senate Bill 300 and the language um regarding the dismissal of the charge if a person is um un unemployed or uh seeking mental health treatment so can you give us some information on that good afternoon yes council member Johnson I'd be glad to I don't have the full Senate Bill 300 in front of me but but it does allow for certain defenses for people charged with violating city ordinances um in some of our criminal statutes in North Carolina do allow for that as well but it would allow anyone who is charged um with any of these particular matters I believe within a certain amount of days they would need to present evidence that they have a mental health concern and that they are seeking treatment of that as a defense um if you look at other more egregious serious or more egregious criminal matters excuse me we've seen people talk about mental health defenses as it relates to their intent to commit a crime and I believe that's what Senate Bill 300 goes to address as it relates to those defenses that are allowed the Senate Bill also does have some restrictions as to if the person has also not committed a secondary offense of one of these ordinances that would be a defense as well to have those charges dismissed um obviously the District Attorney's office would handle Those portions not so much seeing PD Officers taking evidence of treatment or otherwise out when they are encountering these folks but that would be evidence that would be put on the record to be dismissed and certainly mental health concerns whether it is a formerly incarcerated person an unhoused person or someone who showed up in Charlotte as a tourist they could present those documents and certainly that would be a defense for the District Attorney's office to consider to dismiss prior to trial or for a judge to use to dismiss um during a misdemeanor trial okay so thank thank you so much so and so that's just another thing that I'm saying is is to look out for our officers as as well we have a limited resources we are under staffed as far as police officers so I would just say from a council perspective you know these these ordinances already are going to disproportionately affect our most vulnerable citizens those who are homeless those who are suffering from mental health I I suggest that we implement these um non um non what is it non-criminal enforcement tactics work with the county um make sure we're calling folks out to get the people to help them and not to harm them giving arresting them only harms them more because if they're it makes it difficult for housing we need to treat the root cause um and that's what I would say and another thing I just want to address council member ashme said that we're doing all that we can do and I just want to ask are any public buildings is this building open to the public for individuals to use the bathroom I remember after covid the public pushed and asked us to open up a cat's uh location for a re-entry Center that was turned down there's there's restrooms in in in that facility or so we're not doing all that we can do to to address this problem from a city perspective we need to do more before we harm these individuals by giving them more of a criminal record because it's the the impact of the re-entry is just it's lifelong council member Brown said that she's been home TW over 20 years doing great work and she still has to check that box I've been working in this field I'm we need to do more population individuals with mental health is not the the uh the best way to go about it thank you I just wanted to for clarity to answer that question about this building being open to the public it is my understanding that this building is in fact open to the public we're outside of a state of emergency so just so folks are clear wait say that again yeah this building's open to the public so individuals who are homeless could come in here and use the bathroom anybody can come in here and use the bathro okay okay any okay okay thank you Dr won is it open 24 hours today um oh I didn't know I just okay the issue the 24 hours yeah that's the issue thank you Dr wton and Madam chair um so I did want to um you know I spend my life doing this work and um I'm an expert on SB um 300 was we dissected inside and out I will close with this um the collateral consequences that a person that is previously incarcerated and and let's be clear there are a lot of people that are incarcerated that shouldn't be I want to be specific I don't have an innocent story white CER crime you know I live my life um sharing my story as a educational tool for others not to go down that path because once you do you pretty much are screwed it has taking me forever to get my life together and and still today if I wanted to go out and rent as a city council member I want everybody to hear this and for the record if I wanted to rent an apartment I still have to check the box okay have you ever been convicted of a crime so if I didn't have a backup plan and I needed to rent then I couldn't be rent I I wouldn't be able to rent so I could be homeless I'm going to go back to um no matter what we do until we get to understand the effects of mental health um sending people down where Sheriff Gary mcfaden is they're they're overpopulated already they have more than enough problems down there I know because I'm in that jail once a week uh educating the women I I would say that um we have got to find a way to be more um inclusive when it comes to restorative justice and uh reimagining what our communities could look like without um and I know Ed is my colleague I want to you know councilman Ed who I I really respect a lot um for his expertise and his knowledge but this is an area for me that is plain and simple the amount of resources department of social services more not you you have to bring the nonprofit entities to this table and keep them here and make sure that the work is being done um that the the boots are on the ground and we can clean up City Center everybody wants to walk downtown and be safe but we want to walk on West Boulevard and be safe too we want to walk on uh WT Harrison be that we have another uh discussion be able to discuss this at another date but we have got to me remember that there's more to our quality of life in cities in Charlotte you know we we got to make sure that when we put as much Focus um on City Center in uptown downtown whichever one you prefer I'm I'm born and raised here is downtown to me that's neither here nor there um we want to make sure that the entire city and the people that put their line their life on the line and leave their families every day are safe and we have got to come back to community and making sure that we involve them and I and I just don't see that we're doing that I I have to be honest I just don't see that we're doing that and so if we don't involve the experts who we are making these decisions for then we're going to continue to fail it's proven time and time again I have the data to support that so that's what I'm going to end with um Dr wallon and Madam chair I'll give it back to you m chair yes if I may make add to a brief comment I know a lot of our members at the board we thank you all as always for all of your input I did just want to make sure I emphasize that if any or all of the matter when officers encounter a particular person they obviously have the discretion to give a verbal warning um they have discretion to write a citation or an arrest so I just wanted to make the board aware that if it were to be voted that any or all of these ordinances were re criminalized there is the option that whether a person is formally incarcerated unhoused has a mental health concern they could still get citation and officers would have the discretion to make an actual arrest and take them to the magistrate so I didn't want anyone to think that meant automatic arrest as part of enforcement but citations would still be available Dr Waton yes ma'am I'm this is going to be the last comment we're going to so I don't have enough information there's too much red tape in what is for me um to say yes to move forward I know that the committee has been working on it for a long time but I haven't and I've only been in Council for 4 weeks so so I would need to uh really dissect and looked at this more I don't know what my colleague's decision would be today but my decision would be no thank you ma'am all right um have a clarification I just wanted a clarification on what she said um if if I could get clarification on what just what the attorney just said so in looking at the slide it looks like if it when it was decriminalized uh officers were able to write citations then also so the difference I it feels it looked like according to that slide in criminalizing versus decriminalizing the difference was the ability to arrest so right now officers are able to write a civil Citation for that civil fine that's the $50 fine that's truly I compare it to forgive me um like a simple parking ticket here's your parking ticket pay your fine but there are also criminal citations that you would get for like a speeding ticket here's your Citation for your speeding ticket come to court see the judge Maybe ask for reduction and pay that's an option with these ordinances versus actual arrest so there would be a civil Citation for the $50 fine there would could be a criminal citation to site someone with a criminal offense or a full out arrest to charge someone with the criminal and when those criminal citations are given are they mailed the court date is that what happen the court date is put on the citation as part of what you're are charged with the courtroom in the time and date okay thank you thank you all right um on the floor that's been properly second um I would that we Dr won is speaking you guys thank you uh there's a motion on the floor there's a second to recommend that we move forward with criminal enforcement for the certain ordinances that were reflected on slide 11 to move to the full Council for additional deliberation ahead of a vote I'm all those in favor please raise your hand one two three and all those opposed one two thank you uh that um carries yes ma' we we'll take final comments from the group we've got a couple of minutes okay we've got a couple of minutes so we'll we'll start at the end uh Miss Brown if you'd like and then we'll just move forward Brown doesn't have any further comments I made myself crystal clear on how I feel about this subject Miss asir thank you madam chairwoman um I just want our committee members to know that our work doesn't end here um council member Brown is correct this requires further collaboration with nonprofits um and other partners so we'll continue that and hopefully we can bring this up as our intergovernmental relations topic that council member Brown serves on that committee so hopefully we can address that more comprehensively in that committee so thank you Vice chair no ma'am M Johnson okay all right thank y'all so much I'll entertain a motion to adjourn move toj second all in favor I'll see yall [Music] soon [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] 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