we can better work together is going to be what's necessary for us to tackle the topics that we have today we know in this community that people want our city to be safe we also want our city to be vibrant and able for people to move around for work we want Economic Development all of these things we want and this is the day to talk about not just the what but the how and move forward with that and it's really good the 2 minutes I think I may be into 130 right now 1 minute and 30 seconds but to say I really also want to say to the team that's working on all of this that's making it possible um there are so many good things that are going on with our people that we don't even know about so one morning I got a call from um Bloomberg foundation and um the guy says well I want to just call and let you know that you're we're going to be awarded one of the top grants in the City from the Bloomberg Foundation about sustainability a lot of that is because the team that puts together sustainability helped get that application through it's going to be impactful for three years of money that we can do things better in some of the things that are most important and I think all of our initiatives have that opportunity because that's the way Charlotte rolls okay the team helps us all be better we may get to cut the ribbons we may get to sing the Praises for these things but I know where the real work gets done and I just want you to know how much we appreciate all of each and every one of you so so with that why don't we go ahead and get the day started a sorry mayor your time's up if you could give the rest of your comments in [Laughter] clerk abely our first topic of the day is affordable housing and um oh like there is the discussion what are you talking about okay I'm not sure who's coming up Julia is it oh Rebecca okay very good now we hear from Rebecca Hefner thank you all right good morning everyone good morning so as you know uh Julia of course put together a lot of the logistics for this morning uh for the retreat especially for this morning so she sent out an email on Friday and said Rebecca you're going to be the lead off batter for strategic initiatives so I said okay I can I can bring it this is this is my sweet spot right I can I can really bring it so I was letting my younger son uh know I wasn't going to be home last night and um he's a big baseball fanatic so I I thought to myself you know this like a classic parenting mistake we make it over and over I'm going to impress my kid it's what I thought to myself with a baseball analogy so I said I said I'm you know this is what I'm doing and I'm going to be the lead off batter and he said to me yeah all you have to do Mom is get on Bas for the ven he's like uh-uh no Mom you just get on Bas so I think what he was saying was tone it down a little would you but as you know I'm passionate about affordable housing so um I'll I'll I'll do my best so um what do I do to advance just say so a clicker oh excellent all right so this isn't much of a presentation the format today of course is I'm going to just share a few highlights and then turn it over to y'all for conversation with one another um here for questions during that if needed so couple things I just want to highlight out of your pre-ad some of the things that you all have accomplished this year uh we made significant enhancements to the Housing Trust Fund really thinking about a couple of things one how do we leveraged our local Bond dollars along with other funding federal funds and arpa dollars to really maximize what we can get um through our housing Housing Development RFP so you may you may recall when you saw projects come through last Last Round And the round that that uh closes this Friday you'll see projects that have additional funding sources we're really trying to maximize the the use of our local dollars and also extend affordability terms so a couple of really important things that came out of your housing trust fund tuneup um from last year we've also uh posted the Noah RFP and recently posted the Strategic land acquisition RFP again all components of enhancing the Housing Trust Fund of course we've also Advanced um our anti-displacement efforts in partnership with um The Nest commission and you all approved some uh investments in additional programs to support anti-displacement in October and those are moving forward and um and you also of course U received a recommendation from The Nest commission um about how to support funding for anti-displacement going forward and then the last point I would make is it's not just about the number of units that are produced in in any given um round of the Housing Trust Fund but but with uh our partners and through your decisions and Investments last year we supported over 12,000 households with a variety of programs um and services that that really support resident stability neighborhood affordability and economic Mobility so we're excited about the uh objectives and goals conversation from yesterday because we've really been pushing uh as staff to think about housing as not just the production of units but what are the outcomes for our residents and what I keep saying is housing and we shouldn't ever have to make an investment that's just in a housing unit we have other resources and we have Partners we tested all of this through the staying in place pilot housing and health housing and digital inclusion housing and work Force development and of course the when we get it really right it's all of those things wrapped up together um so that's where we are focusing our efforts at the staff level to really optimize the Investments that you all are making um and uh that that's all I have I'm going to turn it over to conversation so um as we go through each strategic initiative there are a series of questions uh and one is should it continue to be a strategic initiative I think this is a no-brainer on this one but but as you go through your comments or the discussion it's really based on the series of questions like Mr Jones said uh this is a no-brainer I think most of us would agree that affordable housing should continue to be our strategic priorities um I I think we have tough decisions to make in this year's budget and we have seen increased funding request in Housing Trust Fund from The Nest commission $100 million and out of that $25 million that they're requesting for it to go to specifically toward our anti- displacement efforts um so if you could just um Mr Jones um give us your thoughts on their recommendations so that's a tough one so uh as we uh put the budget together we talked a bit yesterday about capacity so during this strategy session uh if it's the will of the council to have more resources whether it's for transportation or affordable housing we will find ways to develop that capacity for your priorities so I think regardless of what we do on affordable housing in terms of uh 50 75 100 million whatever that number is uh what I would like to see have increased focus on anti-displacement efforts that we currently don't have dedicated funding source for that it becomes very difficult when we have U anti-displacement we have seen with Lake Arbor we have seen with other rezonings that have come in front of us so I think it is critical that we continue to fund uh anti- displacement and find sort of a consistent source of revenue for that so um if I may yeah okay um you mentioned this and that and that uh I'd be interested to understand better who qualifies for our units like what is is it just an income test or uh what criteria do we use and I think that we could be more productive with these Investments if they were tied to uh the type of Workforce Development or other efforts in other words people get the benefit of the housing but they also participate in programs that help them get to the point where they don't need that assistance anymore uh how long for example do people who get into our subsidized housing typically live there do they move in and then that's it they stay there or do we have a uh requirements as to efforts they should make in order to graduate from needing that assistance uh so can you tell us a little bit about that sure so the city doesn't manage any of the affordable housing units directly and typically the the city is providing Gap funding so The Bu $4 and our money is usually lasting mhm so while we get the deed restrictions we don't always have have uh a a position to um require how the property is managed what we do what we what we do manage is the income uh uh requirements so when you approve an affordable housing investment for example there are um specific number of units at each level of Ami and so the the res the way the property is is managed is then residents are required to demonstrate that income level in order to live there and then there are uh um uh checks annually about are you maintaining that income uh has it increased and um and then the city so the property management does that and then the city also we have an asset management division that in you know ures compliance with those requirements so uh other than the partnership that we have intentionally entered into for example with the Noah Investments at places like um Lake mist or Hill Rock where there is a partnership built in to the investment so those those have community health workers on site uh um they we've partnered with Atrium health and their Workforce Development programs so we don't require that that but we have those opportunities to create more Partnerships along those lines but is there anything to say that with dream key for example we would say okay we're going to subsidize this but here's the deal these are the conditions and they would just have a program that might be different from what they do for others uh in order to meet a number of our priorities uh and not just do it the same way they might be doing it yeah we're not prohibited from that the the thing that that we would want to think carefully through is that not every uh not every person or household uh is is in the same place of Readiness when it comes to participating in Workforce Development for example and so um the the um the research based models about housing are all housing first models you get into housing and you get stabilized and then get then Empower residents to choose paths to um to participate so we would want to think carefully through that based on the models that we have in our community and what what research says is effective in terms of helping people move through those stages of economic Mobility if their incomes go up do they lose the eligibility for the the subsidy yes so the unit uh does then another unit become or do they have to move out it depends if there is a unit available in in the same place or across the portfolio of the property provider uh one of the things that we've heard consistently from from you all and are working towards is how how do we create a way for people who are displaced to have some kind of priority in terms of when new housing units come online so we've been working with the state and some of our partners around around that so last comment uh we don't have other than a number of units we have no metrics for the productivity of this that I've seen it would be interesting to see if there was a way that we could establish kind of return on investment Criterion um because we you know in these constrained environment and especially if we're talking about increasing the money further I'd really like more accountability around that investment thank you excuse me so as we talk about metrics uh just wanted to Circle back here to the conversation from yesterday regarding the safe communities um and great neighborhoods committee I did have a chance to go back through and wanted to just frame a little bit some of this discussion around housing in terms of what we have on our plan there relates to housing uh the ones that I think bubbled up to the top that really captured the essence of what was in each one of these buckets um were increased the percent of households both new and existing within the 10-minute walk or uh Transit ride to amenities basically right cuz when we think about housing and affordability the most Choice um housing is the most expensive because of where it is it's about location right um so in terms of metric specific to housing definitely um I think that that is one that we'll want to craft some some language and some monitoring around because I think that informs our housing location policy and um much of the the scoring that goes into Housing Trust fund um Etc when it comes to um preserving affordable housing stock which is another one of the metrics um or one of the goals here that I think ties directly to metrics in terms of affordable units that have been built but matching it to the Ami because we have vacancy across the city but it doesn't necessarily match the price point where we're trying to House people and so to the extent that we can get visibility as to how our dollars help um match that more I think that that would be very helpful and then the other component when it comes to Housing Trust Fund for us to go to 100 million what would be important for me is that we're investing dollars specifically into home ownership and home ownership rate I think is something that would be significant to be bubble up to our community dashboard um because we know that there are so many things that tie to the quality of life as it relates to home ownership and to the quality of our neighborhoods um so those are the the things from the metric when it comes to this conversation overall in terms of strategy absolutely I I believe that affordable housing should continue to remain one of our strategies the things that um I'd like to see us focus on this year is again housing by income and really trying to match that because I think it drives the different conversation at each level what the work needs to look like whether it's getting people um stable housing or whether it's how do we help folks increase their income um which may impact where we choose to locate folks next to employers and those kinds of things and so I definitely would oh thank you um so housing by income affordable home ownership I'd like to see us invest our dollars there and work with our intergovernmental Partners about how we can incentivize um development of for sale property rather than just for rent like our latch dollars do um land acquisition we know that we're planning major transportation initiatives so to the extent that we can acquire land and uh plan for affordab ahead of investment I think those are things that we really need to be wrapping our minds around this year can I get on can I get on the thank you okay uh thank thank you um council member Wallington has stole all my notes um and I think she we're aign in terms of what I think we need to be focusing on certainly it should contain to be a Str ini of moving forward um with an emphasis on home ownership um for sure um the down payment assistance program does that need to be modified to to reflect the rising values of homes in in the community uh are we doing enough in reference to the home repair program is there enough resources there uh are the guidelines flexible enough to really uh benefit those who want to take advantage of it I mean those things I think we really need to kind of just kind of tweak uh and make sure that we're consistent to where we're going um uh the the Housing Trust Fund right um great model I think we celebrated what 20 years two years ago something like that and we talked about really tuning it up kind of you know kicking the tires changing the oil I mean I don't think we've done that yet right and so if we can and we're coming on another round of funding so if we can use this year through the committee to really look at the the Housing Trust Fund and see what can we do differently um um to to achieve a greater impact right I think I I I think we need to do that for sure so we can do that that would be fine um and then we also talked years prior to you about the city the city on land right and I I just don't understand what where's the theistic plan uh on the outcomes from those discussions uh have we identified and these are old conversations right but hopefully there can be a a great a greater point of emphasis this year in terms of working with real estate to really getting us to understand where where the land's located and and do we have a strategy for utilization and uh Etc right so I think we're just kind of running in place with that we all say it on the campaign Trail we're going to do City on land and we don't have any results from my perspective to kind of point to this is what we've done some examples but certainly not enough throughout the city and then Innovation and housing um you know we talked in previous years about the tiny hom the container homes uh now that we have all these vacant buildings out town that should be a part of the conversation uh with economic development about how do we incentivize our work with um um developers to convert some of these um empty high rises into um housing affordable housing um Workforce housing uh Etc there's a cost associated with it for sure right but how do we begin to be a lot more Cutting Edge uh uh and and uh and and what we're thinking about doing around those things are really important and then lastly Nest commission we need support thank [Laughter] you so I'm going to try to take this to another place for a moment we this is a huge problem we own a portion of it but I would like for the staff to help us inventory the people that are also doing this work so we talk about down payment assistance and Bank of America has a whole program around down payment assistance you walk in that day and you walk out with the house I mean they do the whole thing right there in just one day but it's that program nobody talks about so in some ways we're doing our part but there are people in this community so I like an inventory of who's doing what it has been a long time since we really took a map and said who's responsible for what you know we funded a lot of money into the housing rental for women and have that initiative I don't know how much is left for them but we need a bigger picture of this on who does what and where are the gaps that we can help fill and how can we support others to do this and then I think the other part about it is the prevention metric I would like to see if we get out and instead of doing new construction is it what we need to do to prevent um displacement and what how aggressive can we be or how aggressive can our partners be and then the final thing I want to say is to two things one the federal Home Loan Bank is going through an entire review of their system and they are going to be asked by the federal government to increase funding for affordable housing so we need to get in line for that we need to begin to think about who else has the money and how do we use that and the second part of it is the Mobility plan if you have a a a mo if you have a train or whatever their HUD and the transportation department will provide you access for funding to purchase for affordable housing because they too understand the difference between having a place to live but getting to a place to work so they've they've already got their program ready so what do we do it's a part of how do we combine these things and I believe that the inventory needs to be very consistent for us to see what we are leaving on the table instead of bringing new new things to the table so yeah maybe I can Pro yeah I'm I'm going to try to prevent something from getting into the manager's parking lot okay so a couple things um Mr Mitchell has been asking about the inventory of properties um we have it um we're going to launch it as early as next week and there are a number of parcels that are city-owned Sean if I get this right that would be available for affordable housing more than I think we've ever had in the past same thing with economic development and some of the um opportunities for city-owned facilities so I think that's important the other thing uh that came up was uh down payment assistance so the city has a program a couple years ago $30,000 but also if you live in a corridor you can get an additional 50 so that's $80,000 for down payment assistance maybe we're not marketing it the right way or things like that but those are the kinds of things that we have to raise up to the top to make sure people understand that they're available Miss Wilson you're doing a great job keep the keep set up uh just a quick question are we collecting any data from our affordable housing uh developers as to how many uh in terms of upward Mobility right so our family staying there for 5 years 6 years is there a plan to Upward Mobility people in our that currently need affordable housing so we' like to see some sort of plan towards upward Mobility so that it creates space for our next batch of residents we do not currently so I would like to add that to manager's parking lot if he can have that uh uh I I I think we we do need to have that as part of our metrics um because ultimately the goal we need to provide upward mobility and housing alone cannot do it oh it we need to have wraparound services with it um I when I served on in livan board uh was called Housing Authority back then we actually had Workforce Development program uh that was paired with the housing so everyone was required to work at least 30 hours a week um these are not seniors or those with special needs and I think we need to have some sort of requirement similar requirement I don't know if that do we have that no okay so I I would like to see some sort of metrics around that uh because we truly need to tackle the 30,000 backlog that we have uh in our affordable housing thank you um I do agree that uh you know livian actually shifted their Model A couple years back with the name change um to focus on up and out and I think that has a place here in our strategy I don't I don't believe holistically that needs to be uh a stamp on our strategy overall but there's a place for that here what I want to I want to make sure that you know and I've said this before but from a from a home ownership perspective I would like for us to increase and if we're talking about metrics the the number of units that we bring online this year that are for sale I would like for that to increase and I I'd like for us to set a goal I last last year I said 10% would be a a good goal to increase but um I I'd like for us to set a goal in terms of the number of units that are for sale because that's a pivot and you know we know that that that alters family's outcome and so I I would like to see that somewhere in here housing is PE is peppered throughout all of all of our um strategic priorities and we discussed it in transportation and planning yesterday and a couple of other groups did as well so I I think we make the the the funds from the Housing Trust Fund work pretty well they're but for Gap funding dollars but um I would just like for us to focus on ownership and allowing that to be a bigger part of our portfolio just um I guess for clarity we spent some time in San Antonio late last year and they have $150 million over five years for their Housing Trust Fund but they also have and I think it was 28,000 units or whatever the the number was um but they have it in categories and so whether it's home ownership or 30% Ami and below and once you hit that category that's it so when we talk about metrics I I would like to have some clarity at some point maybe not today about are there a total number of units per category that you're interested in or something that you can put a framework around us so we can make sure that we're hitting a Target that you you've identified good morning thank you so much for the opportunity to speak um so I'm listening and I'm learning so I got to listen a lot more than I run my big mouth but um I'm hearing um $330,000 and $50,000 really caught my eye and then when the mayor said that there's a down payment assistant program I'm going to speak to a group of people in my district I don't think they know anything about it um it's going to be a charge to me and all of us to make sure that we are definitely putting this information out there for our constituents the people that trust us and put us in these positions when we're out there on the campaign Trail and saying what we're going to do I want uh just to be able to deliver things authentically and to be transparent so I want to ask a couple of questions I heard $30,000 for down payment assistance then I heard another 50,000 if then a corridor of opportunity and where is this information at and how are we putting this information out there and how do we just deliver that information to the people that need it I want to say this too um with my main line of work being Beauty after the bars and me running my nonprofit organization we're looking for a home I got a grant for $450,000 and I haven't been able I've been I've been over bided three times I've seen a house that I wanted it in my district and I haven't been able to get that home because every time I go to put my bid in somebody's over bidding for the house so I bid it on one that was for 429 somebody bid at 513 they really wanted it so these opportunities are really good for the people that need them the most but how and where are we delivering information and where is it at cuz I really need to know so I can be able to put it in perspective and deliver this information and make sure people go get homes because $88,000 is a lot of money yeah I made phone print on this one in terms of our communication Sean or Rebecca sure okay so a c a couple pieces to that question um one there's a real barrier right now around home ownership that we can't control which is interest rates so even with $80,000 there's a challenge the other barrier is uh Supply what's available so one of the one of the recommendations of the nest commission for example the acquisition rehab resale program putting more money towards the city funding the acquisition of properties which can then be uh offered for as home ownership and I I'll just I'll say Miss Mayfield ex excellent idea many years ago and um and then on the communications piece um we we rely on our on a network of Partners primarily around Communications I mean we do we do our typical um you know uh uh Communications with email and social media but to get to the people who need the information most we really rely a lot on our partners so for example dream key administers our house Charlotte program so we work a lot with dream key to get the word out uh uh our our partn of our realtor Community uh and our financial partners are some of the most important relationships we have to get this information out as well and then also we've added paying attention to this issue added this year if you go on for example examp Le Zillow and you're searching for something there's a button that says you are there down payment assistance programs available ours shows up on there now so there are some ways that we're really trying to be thoughtful and intentional about how to get the information out and then of course we rely um heavily on our network of neighborhood leaders and neighborhood organizations to share this kind of information in their communities I haven't spoken much I got a lot of minutes left but okay um I'm learning so I need to ask questions so how do I put this information out there when someone wants information from me I understand the partners but I am one of the members that was elected so I want to be able to deliver information when people ask me for the information so amem I just to recap what you said to me cuz I take very good notes or is there great or even better we'll equip you with information um printed collateral uh digital information that you can share with your constituents okay I'm going be looking for that when so we have we have a um group our neighborhood engagement Services team um each each district has a neighborhood liaison and um and then our atlarge members um also have an assignment so in addition to your constituent Services support you have a neighborhood liaison who helps um work in with the neighborhood leaders in your district and that person can also provide this kind of information to you well thank you so much you're doing a great job so I play uh softball you just steal on first base though have I'm I'm going hit you in though I'm I'm g hit you in girl I mean I'm GNA just say let's see I think I think it's Rachel that we're relying on to hit to knock me home right so yeah okay this is this is a great topic there's a lot of energy around it we have two more comments or questions and then we're going to have to go to the next topic so we can stay on track so we have char and then Mitchell yes I'm I'm prepared to charge the mound I believe no I I think what I would humbly ask as a type D as we all learned yesterday to my other letters out there um would humbly ask humbly humbly that's how that's what it said I was supposed to say using up my time right now I would humbly ask that as we approach this we've done a lot of work in the last six years a lot of people have worked hard but I think as we look back on it we probably haven't made the impact we all would have hoped to so as we look forward I think we need to look towards what scales what makes the biggest impact in this problem that we all know exists and we want to help solve for and you know when I look at a topic we have really not looked at at all it makes such a bigger difference in this space which is the zoning and permitting processes and we all get pinged on zoning stuff um but for those of you I'm assuming many of you do are there to help with the permitting process it is long it is painful it is slow and all of those things cost money so at a quick search out there I saw roughly in last year 2023 20,000 new units uh of housing market rate anything were built in Charlotte about 12,000 single family 8,000 multif family if you take an average cost of that being $300,000 just for rough math for illustrative purposes that's $6 billion of capital that's invested in our community all the experts say that they say over 30% of overhead is in the red tape of everything that's built from zoning and permitting that's a that's a an accepted uh figure that means last year year alone the cost was $1.8 billion that goes straight away to make housing less affordable and if you calculate that over the last sixe period where we've spent what 150 million a record-breaking number on affordable housing that's 10.8 billion that we didn't even look at and if we could shave that off by 10% we're talking about a billion dollars that goes straight to affordability so there's a lot of assumptions in what I'm saying there but you know it's reasonable to think that's possible and that math works and we haven't spent the time so when we go back to the metrics and the things that I hope we leave here with I hope one of them is we take a laser focus towards time of average permit uh you know process dollar amount assumptions that show what zoning and the red tape is costing an overhead so that we're managing to that we're holding staff accountable we're creating new processes if we want to make a massive difference there there's still things that won't get solve like under 30% Ami and we'll have to look at that in a different way but this will solve a huge amount to where the puck is going to [Music] be uh thank you uh bring us home councilman Brown said it B so I'm going bring you home you sa and third you about to Ste home so just a couple things I think one just information if we can show the breakdown of those 12,000 units 30% 60% 80% Ami I think it'll be helpful as we try to measure that how close are we to our Target or or or how far do we need to go secondly I want to thank the staff and and and the city manager for doing that inventory list I think you have heard even from council member Brown there's a need of city-owned property and then there's opportunity for us for city- owned buildings to make sure we useing those uh for opportunity thirdly I I would like to say and and city manager touched on it we need to be very clear on measuring if we say home ownership what category are we going to focus on for home ownership is it 6% is it 80% or uh 100% Ami so I want us to be very clear the last challenge for all of us and I would say counsel is still nimi and somehow we need to control the narrative that affordable housing is great for the entire city of Charlotte and so when we have the situation of nimi you know we need to be prepared because we know going in how some neighborhoods would feel so great job let's continue to make it a uh a strategic uh priority for this Council thank you com across the home PL girl thank you Rachel I mean Rebecca great job I want I want to introduce uh Monica Holmes Rebecca great job nice job Rachel Monica will cover a quarter of opportunity and the 2040 plan udio thank you yes so I'm going to be wearing two hats today so I'm Monica Holmes I think I know all of you but if not is very nice to meet you um I will start off with corridors of opportunity uh which I've been leading that program for the city with a really wonderful team and then I'll transition to the 2040 plan Udo after we have that discussion so we'll kind of break it into two parts so um today corridors of opportunity we've gotten a lot of things done so I want to take 30 seconds to just Mark some of those uh accomplishments over the past couple years uh We've really been focused on it and then I want to really look forward to what's going to happen in the next uh 202 for in this year so we have built a Communications machine and a lot of that work uh is in partnership with our Communications Department we've launched a newsletter we've had over a million and a half Impressions wfae did a whole year in focus on the corridors of opportunity program I think that has built energy and awareness around the program and is really one of our big successes to show kind of the work that we're doing and that we're continually investing we finished up all of the playbooks so we actually the freedom Wilkinson draft is about to hit the streets so that is the uh last Playbook we'll actually come back and start some work in VES for to put together a strategic document for that um over the next year and while I'm on that topic we'll also be looking forward to doing what I call road maps in the corridors that we don't have them so to pause on that for a second we have playbooks which is everything the community prioritizes and the city prioritizes they range in implementation items from 60 to 150 depending on the corridor that's a lot of things right that takes years and years and years to implement what we have been actively doing is going back and doing a road map which is these are the 10 things we are actively progressing and working on right now that the city is leading so we have those for a couple corridors will be this year focusing on expanding them we are also highly focused on leveraging federal dollars in regards to infrastructure and programs so we are about a fifth maybe a little over a fifth of the way to our big audacious goal of $100 million of federal investment in corridors and we have outstanding um we are currently in progress of working on an application for about 15 million more uh we have an application out that's of several million dollars more um and we're actively working on a very large application that's to the tune of about4 to $50 million so we're in progress that's the good news we just need to again hit that home run and get it done um and bring those dollars home so that's going to be a huge Focus over the course of this next year and I think it ties nicely to the topics that you'll look at later today too um we also have been highly focused on how we measure success that was a topic we've talked about a lot over the last year we've really been honing in how do we isolate what we are doing as the city uh what other partners are doing great Partners like the United Way the KN Foundation Lis leading on opportunity what are they doing and how do we see what that impact is I'm really excited uh to let you know that we're working on a partnership with United Way where we will together evaluate and do a pilot in one Corridor a deep dive that includes a thorough survey um it'll be statistically accurate uh we're working with people way smarter than me with their doctorates in research and science to understand the impact of our investments across the board so that will be a focus in this coming year within corridors um just a couple other highlights before I read off these discussion questions and uh to kind of get your thinking going on what the next year may look like um I just want to hit some of the things that we launched last year that you're going to see coming out of the ground this year that's the business opportunity Hub so you'll see those uh in all six corridors kind of come to life um you'll see the ebike pilot we launched that in the North Graham North Trion Corridor in December that's a public private partnership really it's a public private nonprofit uh partnership with dream key as our partner um so you'll see that continue to expand in the coming year as well um and again just some of the infrastructure projects coming to life the album cultural Trail will be uh doing more thorough planning on that getting more dollars and cents so that we can continue to pursue the federal dollars in that Corridor so just a couple um highlights things that we've kicked off launched in 2023 will be big focuses in 2024 and I just am going to close with a few discussion questions what challenges or opportunities do you see in the year ahead are there any major goals the council wants to achieve in the next year within corridors of opportunity and should this continue to be a strategic initiative moving forward thank you [Music] recogniz hello but thank you um first I want to thank the manager and the staff and the council um I think this is a perfect example of making a district issue a city priority I mean this thing started in on B for road and it expanded throughout the city and I'm not sure people really understand the the significance and the importance of the biz hubs that's now located on each quarter um standed up by a nonprofit organization providing um resources and services to those people in those communities that's huge um and and it's it's really commendable how we kind of build this thing together and so I'm really really supportive of this this is um certainly should be a strategic initiative that we continue to move forward uh I like the way that we are pivoting from I think we talked about it not being on the grid for for funding but there there appears to be a strategy for um um other governmental funding to to continue to support the work I think that's really really important I I think it's really important that we continue to U merge and marry the work with housing uh and what um Victoria is doing in terms of Public Safety and housing and the recommendations of the nest commission which again impact these quarters I think that's critically important uh and the Partnerships that we're making um that the city again is not pending just our dollars into I think we Contin we continually need to lean into working with the corporate Community to provide additional resources as well as well as beginning to and and the small businesses on the quarter um I'm still I think that's a a place for opportunities to really lean in even more uh to um begin to um stand them up a little bit stronger and a a lot more U focused in terms of being very intentional about how we work with some of the small businesses on the quarter but this is this is really I think a flagship Pro program got a call I guess about two weeks ago from a guy in U Atlanta ask say the questions about tell me more about this quarters of opportunities I see your names on it can you please share what you guys are doing and I I told I sh I'll share with them at a cost right um but I I think people are now watching what we're doing it's a whole of government approach every department is touching this thing uh and I think it's really um um good work good Staffing lot of problem solving along the way um we're not getting everything right with it but we're like 95% Hing the ball going back to the baseball analogy right our our winning percentages are really really great on this thing but uh continues to to do more work on it well now that we got it fixed wow good morning thank you for the information question for you you stated that we're looking at a new Corridor investment are here's the question are we going back to one of our initial corridors or are we saying with that new Corridor investment where we're getting ready to look at things and you have people smarter than you and we have experts coming around are we identifying a new Corridor or are we going back to one of our original corridors to see how we have done M and how we're gr Bay for Road it took a minute but they figured it out as far as Community engagement not just Academia coming in and saying hey this is what's great for your community with Jatan with chatata and so many others you have it coming out the ground and it's much more organic off of Freedom Drive Wilkerson the corridors of opportunity has not necessarily created opportunities for the community as was once thought that it could be one of our honestly biggest failures was a minority owned business that was over there that faced obstacles left and right and we weren't there to help so if we're going to put an investment of new eyes and new ideas I don't want that to be in yet another area I think we will be much more beneficial if we go back to the beginning at one of our areas and make sure that they're shorted up so has a area of town been identified for what you were just sharing about what I was sharing about with the United Way is just evaluating the work so we will look at the we will not add another Corridor currently out of that portfolio as part of that it's really saying um where have we had investment and what's the impact of that investment and let's do a deep dive into that Corridor to understand our impact so we have not yet selected with United Way which Corridor we're going to Pilot basically me measure the success of the program so that's one the second I just want to address really the freedom Wilkinson piece because we just are starting to really kickoff implementation there and so we've been working with the community to kind of make sure that message is very clear that that we are just in an starting an implementation phase there really the business opportunity Hub was Ground Zero step one and so there's a lot of work to be done there and I want to be really transparent that there's no there is no um assumption that we're done there I mean we're just really getting started so for further clarification and Mr manager it's really for the direction of you and your team we created corridors of opportunity investment came in in certain corridors other areas we created a Playbook or started the conversation of a Playbook they didn't necessarily align as far as what support was created for the community in Tangent with we're promoting a corridor and here's what you need to step in I would just like to have a suggestion and a thought that when you're looking at the area don't just look at the areas of success look at the areas of opportunity because some of our areas have not seen as much growth under our Corridor we will have a much we would have a better picture and a more detailed picture if we're looking at both where we still have opportunity or where we see unintended consequences as well as where we've seen success so that we can try to figure out that middle of what needs to be created to fill in if that makes sense so this was intentional in Moni maybe a year or two off because of funding constraints we started two playbooks at a time so over a threeyear period so while Mr Graham has a lot of success he was the first one so there are some that the ink hasn't really dried on the Playbook yet and so they're going to be a little bit behind so a little I guess patience maybe to trauma word with with um building on those playbooks the other thing I mentioned a little bit yesterday later today we're going to talk about these strategic investment areas okay so there's 16 of those and it's not like their new corridors but think about 16 areas throughout the entire city where there's going to be investment not just in infrastructure but in these community area planning process if I got that right Allison There's an opportunity for citizen engagement input into what we do in those 16 additional areas thank you thank you thank you so thank you for the presentation Monica thank you for the work of the team um certainly Corridor opportunity is one that um I'm particularly fond of uh giving our work with the West Boulevard neighborhood um Coalition in our Corridor Playbook years ago um couple of things as I'm glad to hear the United Way connection I know that we all met and have been meeting ongoing with their neighborhood Champions and what I see in the next round of corridors of opportunity or in our next phase we've done a great job of identifying the place-based investments in terms of Transportation infrastructure things like that um I'm happy to see and I hope that we continue this year to focus on the people focused investment um because we want to make sure that as these neighborhoods become more attractive that the people who are in them get to be a part of that growth and mobility and so um to the extent that we're connecting to the neighbors and whether that's providing more information about our our um city programs as was discussed before or that's connecting people to Workforce Development and Business Development uh programs I really really want to see us dig in there um because there is a difference between the corridors who started out um very community-led Community Driven like pulling on um council's coils that hey we want to do something versus we've identified this from a very database standpoint we know where the quarters are and then we as the city kind of initiating that work um I want to make sure that we play our role as support to what the community is driving so where there are needs to really invest in capacity development I want us to do that in um so that ultimately it's the communities that are driving that and we are one of several public sector Partners um and my hope is that as we move through this evaluation process not only do we set up this process for evaluation but we also create a structure with our United Way neighborhood champions for ongoing communication they should function in my mind like another one of our community input groups or our board and commission that's tied to the um housing safety and Community Committee uh so I'd like to offer that up to our committee and to the council for further discussion um I also Echo the comments around investing in businesses in our corridors I'm very happy to see the business hubs and I want to make sure that as we think about not only equipping our people in the corridors with jobs but we're also really seriously helping folks get their businesses going not I know that we've got several programs at different tiers of business but that that very first I want to go from widget maker to widget maker business owner that's the piece where I think our corridors of opportunity residents really could use uh some assistance there so I'd like to see us do that um as well as start to okay as well as start to make those um connections between education and economic Mobility because we've got plenty schools in our corridors that really need support so I'd like to see those connections because we also know there's going to be ties there to our safety work as well um the the question that I have is as we think about capital I noticed yesterday that our set aside for quarters of opportunity goes away after fiscal year I think it was 24 um what what is the plan for how we continue to invest in this work or what does that look like yes so initially we used about all the capacity that we could in each of the bond Cycles as it related to um the infrastructure piece of corridor's opportunity opportunity as we review the bond going forward again I'm sure that those zeros will become some numbers as we have more resources to to utilize okay I think it's on now um thank you you know I I I can't think of a better program that we have to holistically across the board I corridors is just a tremendous program that's Grassroots oriented connected to the community listening to what the community wants and we are investing dollars but more importantly the the additional dollars that are are secured from a private and federal perspective really add Dimension to this program and I can tell you the constituents in district one in the Sugar Creek Corridor they can feel the effects of what has been done right and um and the the North Graham corridors just really kicking off implementation but the neighborhood is excited about it so as I mentioned yesterday Mr Jones I I noticed that we have that drop off of investment but the our budget budgets do reflect priorities and so as we think about these out years we do have to have some reflection of corridors in our budget because I think that that just underscores how truly important it is um and the other piece I want to say is you know you can see these the effects some of the effects of what we're doing will be will have a longer run Runway and some will have some more immediate impacts and not having that hotel the economy in I can't tell you how many calls I've gotten about that like just the fact that it's not there anymore um let alone what's going to come in its stead which is home ownership opportunities um but consu are having very visceral reactions to what we're doing in the Creek Corridor so I want to say Kudos I want to take the model that you you've developed Monica with uh the the comms plan I think we need to tell our story better we have other great things that we're doing in the community that we don't tell the story about so I would like to take your modotto of comms from a comms perspective and put that on other great stories that we have and get it out so the community understands what we're doing [Music] so I'd like to offer a different perspective um district 7 is not part of the corridors process uh we need to understand that uh the government economy in mecklinburg is a uh among other things a large wealth redistribution process so for example the amount of spend in the schools is about a third in uh South Charlotte um and uh not part of the corridors not really uh beneficiaries so it would be I think a good idea and this is not a political statement but I would just say it's a good idea that there will be a a sort of surplus of payments from middle class and affluent neighborhoods to fund a lot of other efforts but when you reach a certain point and I've been going on about this for a long time where you can't get a sidewalk in a place where there's a school bus stop and the kids are standing at the edge of the road waiting for a bus while the cars go flying by in the dark uh people start to get pissed off so what I'm saying is if we could be a little more focused on that redistribution aspect identify where the money's come where we're spending it I think M Molina you made the point about let's be more aware of how we're spending the money and if you meet a minimum level of requirements in those Source neighborhoods you know it'll be fine it'll be fine people that pay $5,000 and $10,000 tax bills accept the fact that they don't have the same kind of police presence because they don't need the same kind of police presence but nonetheless there is a subsidy that is coming from certain parts of the city to fund a lot of this activity and if you don't meet the minimum requirements of those parts of the city you start to have uh tension so this is a sustainability argument you should like that right that's the word youall like so um this is but seriously this this is about a a certain kind of social harmony where everybody is on board with what we're doing instead of one group feeling disenfranchised or uh taxation without representation that kind of argument so if there's some way that we can actually demonstrate uh what that looks like what that picture looks like on where we're collecting the money where we're spending the money so that we can make the case to the net cond donors in this process that uh it's a Equitable you know it's a reasonable proposition nobody expects from the higher income neighborhoods that they're going to see the same amount of money coming back but you need to kind of defend the the amount of transfer that's taking place thank you so to change course here in terms of uh corers of oper opportunities um I often hear from work I I often hear from mothers that child care is one of the huge barriers and as a mother I I actually can understand that more than ever before I can relate to that um in corridors of opportunities as we are looking at investing in our small businesses entrepreneurships bringing more jobs Workforce Development initiatives have we looked at working with with our partners to really address child care because child care not just in terms of cost but also availability and access they're both issues and I think we do need to work on that can I just make one comment um leading on opportunity has been taking and Tanya who's here has been taking a strong lead in organizing that topic specifically and there have have been several working meetings that our team has been sitting in and I know Danielle has as well on understanding what the city's role is in that and what are the things that we control and what are the things other partners are doing so yeah they're all involved in that yeah the count excuse me the county and there's a a good group of Partners kind of having that child care discussion so I'm by no means the expert on it but I just want you to be aware that there are conversations happening and some of those people are here so so I think that needs to be part of our overall um message as we are meeting residents in our corridors of opportunities uh with the resources um because I often hear from residents that um there are Workforce Development opportunities but if Mother cannot doesn't have child care services they can't attend Workforce training opportunity or other small business business or entrepreneurship sessions I think we we really need to address that I that's not really in our willhouse I I get it it's really where we have to collaborate with County and other nonprofits uh but it needs to be part of our Outreach so if we can get those resources out in our communities as we are doing Outreach I think that will certainly help get the message out can they have may I um I think Miss asme dimple's do understand this in a great way so I think we ought to start a parking lot item for collaborations with the county and the people that help us do this work and put these specifics down so that we have a list of what do we think is most important so I I would hope and suggest that we I don't know where the list behind me behind me so on the parking lot for Council discussion is the meinberg collaboration with meinberg County and at child care and those housing issues that we talk about and and start working through that push this thing um good morning everyone um I I just specifically speaking to the corridors of opportunity um last year I had the rare honor to represent us on a panel for the national league of cities discussing the corridors of opportunity um and on a higher level what I was discussing was the mayor's racial Equity initiative because the conversation um the composition of the conversation was about leveraging municipal bonds for racial Equity right and what I learned in that experience was despite the fact that we're monitoring this brand new idea we're really adding to this idea incrementally we are mounds ahead of other places the amount of questions and interest that I received from our colleagues that are um proximate some of them and some of them far away was astounding right um and and I came home really proud of the work that we were doing despite some of the things that we're you know continuing to to add and subtract from this from this project um I the one thing that I've noticed when we disc and not us I'm not picking on us because we use words and and they you know we I understand what they mean but a lot of the times we dehumanize the experience of someone in that Corridor as a them and not an us so I I want I want to paint a picture for a second Alamar road is a corridor I can walk to Alamar Road and I've lived there for 13 years I have a master's degree I speak three languages I rais my children there um my children's home school is a d-rated school both of them um so but there are mes there do you understand what I'm saying and and to make it real right so that people start to really humanize and and I chose to be there I left sh Charlotte and you know moved to East Charlotte because the homes my house is older than me we're one though she's like my big sister um you know the the vegetation the there were just so many gifts right on that side of town my house was literally a fraction of the price do you understand what I'm saying it was a it was a it was an actual choice right and so I think we have to start challenging ing ourselves to not dehumanize the experience of need because first of all the face of need is changing right you got real people who go to work every day and and sometimes I resent the idea of how we paint the people in need most of the people who are in need go to work every single day they're not people who are like you know just sitting on their keyer not doing anything right so I mean as as we continue to go through this process um really really enveloping the idea that we are a community really enveloping the idea that we belong to a membership and that membership is Charlotte and understanding the value of who she is and and how we continue to add to that you know platform exponentially and and what was perspective for me and I'm going to end here what was perspective for me was really to step outside of ourselves and see how other people saw us from the outside they were like Charlotte is great and I'm like you know dealing with our issues and things like that but um I I just want to sit that home while while we work through this thank you thank you thank you last comment thank you on my time I know he's on the time manager between council member Molina and councilman DS I agree that we need to look at who who has helped to fund development throughout our city what I want to make sure that you include in that is our areas that have seen displacement because we have paid a lot and now a lot of those same areas now have 100 th000 have six S8 $100,000 million doll homes that are right next door or right across from a home that was purchased for $35 to $70,000 so they has been a wealth shift predominantly and overwhelmingly in areas of our city where it seemed like we put a lot of investment the challenge is those Investments didn't necessarily help the people who were living there so a number of those people have now been displaced so we're seeing money shifting especially once we realign districts so it will be helpful to get a full view of not just oh these more wealthier areas have contributed no contribution have come from all over because we have quite a few of tax base that came from Southwest Charlotte and West part of Charlotte and even out by Whitewater where we have working class people that have contributed a lot but not necessarily benefited so I just want to make sure we get a full picture of where money investment has come in from community and where we have placed it back out into community and that snapshot of then and now cuz now some of those communities look very different thank you good thank you uh we'll end our comments and questions here unless there any final comments from the mayor or manager around this thank you Monica okay so gosh what did I do okay um so Switching gears uh I'm putting on my planning department hat now so uh I'm going to give you an overview of the 2040 plan and the Udo and our area planning process and Alignment resoning process so to frame the conversation I just want to point out that all of the work that is currently ongoing in these large initiatives is built on the foundation of the 2040 plan that was adopted a couple years ago so if we if we could give Monica our attention please thank you and limit the side conversations so the foundation of that work are the 10 priorities and 10 goals that came out of that plan several of which you uh prioritized yesterday when talking about metrics so to give you a review of 2023 and where we're going in 2024 is we are in the middle about halfway through a 2-year community area planning process which is really to get into those details of programs projects and Partnerships into the 14 uh area planning geographies so those were set in the 20 240 plan and now we're really in the details of getting down into the community needs Community priorities so year one was really spent focusing on those needs and priorities that was phase one phase two which just wrapped up is understanding the land use implications of those priorities through the equity framework and then phase three through five will be in the next year which is really focusing on like I just mentioned the programs projects Partnerships that need to come to Bear to make these community area plans really the community's vision and help realize that Vision so we over the past year have done over 40 workshops three in each geography we've had hundreds of comments uh hundreds of participants uh over a th Library hours and uh story map YouTube views to kind of get the word out there about this process so this process will culminate in those adopted area plans uh which will then serve as the framework and tool for communities to use and to go back to and reference to really check themselves how are we measuring how are we getting things done so the companion to that area planning process is the alignment resoning so you have the recommendations you have the land use recommendations what the community wants to see happen the companion piece to that is the zoning to make it happen through the legal process and the entitlement so that process will kick off with a lot of Education around it it's complicated there's a lot of legal ease and honestly a lot of people do not understand what the difference is between what you want to happen and what can actually happen so we'll be focused on the education around the alignment resoning this spring with the map coming out uh to follow and then running that through the process of adoption and really getting into the fine details of uh aligning the community's vision with the actual entitlements so that's our look forward uh I will pause there we also just before I pause um one more note is that uh the things that you'll hear around the Strategic investment areas this afternoon I just want to acknowledge that how the puzzle pieces fit together between area planning alignment res zing in those Strategic investment areas is really critical we have ongoing conversations for how those work and how they can be complimentary to each other so that the infrastructure meets the growth from the land use side and that we're really thinking comprehensively about those two together uh so with that what challenges or opportunities do you see in this 2040 plan area planning and Alignment resoning in the next year are there any major goals that you want to achieve in this calendar year uh and in this fiscal year and then should we continue to make this a strategic initiative moving forward I know that was part of the conversation um yesterday as well I think first it's important to acknowledge the heroic work of uh Allison and the planning staff uh it's been amazing uh this is a huge undertaking and uh it's bumpy it was going to be but I think uh it's important for all of us to appreciate the significance of the community this area planning process and the alignment because this is what brings what was what I would call a fuzzy picture of the Udo into focus and now we're going down to a level of detail and we're resolving a lot of issues that people still had as a result of the first cut the broad sweep of the uh the area the plan map and uh those initial steps so uh pretty critical uh challenges uh is precisely to make sure that we do uh address like right now we see infrastructure overload you know are we are we uh properly acknowledging the impact on infrastructure as a result of a lot of developments going on um and I think when you seek Community input I I'm always a little skeptical about the participation in some of these groups it's so limited the people in question have agendas so we're challenged to know it's up to us I think to know our constituents and to make sure that there's a broader base of feedback from what can be derived only from those meetings um major goals let's get this done on time uh so you know are we still on schedule for the two-year Horizon that we intended and personally I would be interested to understand a little better what this uh the community area planning process is doing like we've been told it's going on it's going on it's going to finish at such and such a time and then something is going to come back to us it would be good to know on an interim basis what kind of uh things are taking shape as a result of it so that we can respond to them and then provide that feedback I was talking about I don't think there's much question about should it continue to be a strategic initiative we don't have any choice so that's not really a relevant question but uh if we could get that uh continuing and more informative feedback about how it's taking shape that would be helpful yeah for me I think just for takeaways and what we're doing I think there's three main parts at hit on one the infrastructure as we leave here my hope is that we leave with you know the top 30 or so metrics and the objectives that we're going to manage towards right this I think is clearly one of them and so the infrastructure question while we talked a little bit about yesterday it's critically important here because it's not just about I keep calling it backlog of infrastructure that's not the right words because we don't have the policy that sets the minimum standards so it's I'm just going to refer to it as the need the infrastructure need across this community and then we'll set policies and know what the backlog is it's just doing that on its own in a snapshot today is complicated but then doing it also with the lens of what growth through the Udo did we overlay on the city and therefore by right it can go to here and the infrastructure needs go to here so we actually need a today View and then a post Udo by Right View so that we have the same need-based assessment that we set our policies on for infrastructure so we know where the bar is and as we're prioritizing so that's number one uh I think number two the community area planning process is vitally critical and I I don't think that we exactly know I I'm not discounting all the work and everything I don't think we exactly know how it's going to go or what we really truly need out of folks because I think what what I've been telling my folks is to things things figure out work with staff work with your community and figure out what your infrastructure needs are around there so that you can overlay it and make sure it's part of this this community area planning Vision that makes its way up to us and then look at all of those parcels and where they're headed and look at the intended uses because this is your shot to figure that out so to me that's what I've been saying but I I mean I'm unsure that we really we have to get the most out of this this is the one time they're all going to be paying attention level they haven't before cuz the next time they're paying attention is when someone reses something next to them and we'll just never have as much attention as when that happens but we're starting to see it so that's two and then three is the the process after all that and the measure to get us from here to there you know there's there's just so much stuff under the hood of this that is being figured out by staff right now real time between departments and I think we need a measurement at a at the highest level that's simple that it's like that we can look at overall that shows us okay this is this is where the bottlenecks are slowing things down we need a simple way to see it that then connects to a more complex way that staff is managing it so we know the backlog of all of the unresolved issues between departments between you know how are we going to do this or that because a lot of it is now coded in there but a lot of it isn't figured out on how staff makes a decision here or there so I think looking at that and then having a measure for looking at how the how the in the um uh not translation but uh what's the second one alignment in the alignment process what percentage of parcels are not through it and then what where where is their backlash from the community so at a whole bucket we know if it's 100% unresolved and then 0% resolve 0% like like contested we need to be able to at a board level to be able to um know how that's going and tracking because I think that this is going to be a huge huge uh uh set of push back and and friction that we're going to be going into as we've already started to see Rise that's Al you're Allison right Monica Allison's right back here okay Monica great job this morning Allison and the planet St thank you so much as I'm coming in new I'm I'm the rookie to the poliy and learning all this stuff but as I sit here and listen I take notes the 2040 plan the Udo the the playbooks and West Boulevard corridors of opportunity growth Mobility all this stuff concisely put into this book it's a lot it's a lot for me so I know it has to be a lot for you guys just trying to learn it so I can actually implement it and put it into play as I go out in the community every day and tell people realistically what we can and cannot do and what I'm hearing from people is that they never knew you know just the people that I'm speaking to I know Lana does a phenomenal job in the community has a great relationship as she was in District 3 the longest but I'm saying for me my footprints to listen to you and um the way you deliver this information of course I know we get to meet with you and set up the opportunities to meet I just want to say thank you to all of you guys okay I know I haven't met with everybody you don't know my style but I just want to actually be able to deliver this simplify this to the people that need it the most I know we're working on a lot of different things there's a lot of opportunities we still have a lot to do but from what I'm hearing there's a lot that has been done and so that's a piece I like to focus on what we've done and then add on to what we can do and deliver that to the constituents and the people in the community that say Hey you guys are not doing anything well actually we are but maybe you don't know how it's been done and where it's been done at so that's the piece that I always want to focus on we're doing things this is what has been done but maybe you didn't know we were doing that so I just want to say thank you to you guys it's a lot and it gets frustrated but I do want to say thank you and and because we got a lot of D's in here there's a lot of smart people okay lot of smart people but I also want to acknowledge that even with being smart if you are the smartest person in the room you might want to go in another room I've always learned that so I just want to make sure that I'm delivering the information I'm receiving it as I'm learning and then give the feedback in real time so thank you so much okay please let us we'll we're happy to sit down and talk through any I like wow this is a lot but I'm going to get it together but thank you so much okay on Monica thank you for all the work that you all do like council member Brown said I I don't think we say thank you enough to our staff for the great work that they all do um couple of questions on um on Udo uh with our udio and increased density we often get questions about what are we doing on infrastructure side especially from District 3 District 4 um and I know one of the items that I had highlighted that council member Brown uh Tiana and I had highlighted is the matric on infrastructure Investments and measuring that in our uh existing areas that are that are developing at such a fast pace so sidewalks Water Street lighting um I mean I I have been advocating for street lights on WT Harris Road all the way from Old Concord to Plaza and I think we have gotten up to a certain point and still we have miles to go so that just shows that it takes number of years just to get street lights in less than half a mile uh that just shows the amount of Gap that we have in our infrastructure Investments so um I I I agree with some of the points that Mr Dres had made earlier that Udo uh needs to be our continues to be our one of our strategic priorities but I think we do need to measure our infrastructure Investments and um I look forward to having that discussion as part of our budget uh and how do we tackle increased investment especially Vision zero and how we tackle those High injury networks CU I think that needs to be prioritized uh so I don't know what the what the ask would be uh if you were to let's say if you look at all our high injury networks what is the ask we we don't have that so I think if we can get that as part of our reports um and I know ad is going to do some reporting or presentation on this later today but it might be part of his presentation but having that information ahead of our um budget session when we discuss this when we discuss this would be very important so that we can really put some context around it so if you put 50 million what does it get us maybe 10 miles of sidewalks and that's not even that's not enough um so I'm I'm looking forward to just really having deeper dive in that thanks I think dple has made a great point I can see the manager writing everything that we've talked about and at some point it has to have a cost and it has to have some assessment of value and I think that that's what's we are all we should put all of this on the table so that we can have had this discussion but I wanted to go back to the udio I think there are two things that I heard Ed and T say it's the interim reporting not just to us but to keep people as much of know who the leaders are in these various plans and sit down with them on an interim basis so that they can communicate I know that we can't all be out there but I I really think that this might need a special dashboard for the council um and that dashboard could be used to provide information to people that are participating in the process so dashboard may not be the word but when we start talking about you know these Parcels when you get down to the parcel level and what is my parcel what do you want next door to you are you going to do something in your backyard all of these things we need to respect the neighborhood leaders and provide them the same information that we have and where we're going so I I hope that we will do more interim on this and in a way that all of us agree to make some decisions that we can move forward on the plan thank you all all right so I think I'm clean up because I'm the fourth presentation so I think that means I get to swing really hard all right uh so Sarah Hazel Chief sustainability and resiliency officer I'm really glad to be here this morning what I'm going to do is just touch on a couple highlights some of which I had a chance to share with the tpd committee a couple weeks ago um and then talk a little bit about what we're going to do moving forward so I know we're under a time constraint so I'll be brief and then open it up for some discussion um so uh pretty exciting uh way for us to continue to measure our efforts is the fact that we do some reporting to to the CDP that's a global reporting agency and um that agency looks at different local governments how they're doing with their climate action initiatives and their efforts to uh support sustainability and so for the second year in a row we were we were very thrilled to receive an A minus I share that with you to just highlight that since the Strategic energy action plan was adopted in 2018 we've laid a really strong Foundation you've really laid a strong Foundation um with the work and the Investments and um for the second year in a row we were recognized for that with an A minus score uh I'll I'll touch on a few things from this past year uh we've worked with some of our private Partners to stand up a program called power down the crown so as we continue to work on our Energy Efficiency in our own buildings um we worked with Partners out in the community people like Honeywell noon CPCC UNCC Charlotte to work on reducing their energy use intensity in their buildings and so that was a program just last year that was launched that we really excited about that helps to amplify the efforts um towards our goal to be a low carbon City in 2050 um a couple things in terms of the progress on our own infrastructure because I know that's been you know a big topic of conversation um we just uh turned on the biggest EV infrastructure project that we had as a city which is the Government Center Parking Deck with 50 ports the bottom uh yeah really exciting stuff so you can see it from um you know your your offices probably um but what we now have is the opportunity for the bottom part of the deck to be open to the public more adaa accessibility so an alignment of a lot of City council's goals with that project um and an opportunity to advance electrification of our Fleet in an even bigger way so um I think in your in your glossy you'll see that we have 109 electric vehicles since that number um was was uh published we now have 12 so the supply chain is beginning to free up and we're seeing some of the Investments That Council has made over the past couple budget Cycles come to fruition with some of the electric vehicles that we're getting we got our first e Transit van and Tesla for um for cmpd but all that is is to say that um we continue to advance our efforts in the clean energy space both as a municipality and then working with Partners in the community um to advance becoming a low carbon City and so the biggest uh update I think that um that is important to know for this year is that we'll be doing a refresh of the Strategic energy action plan it's been 5 years so it's really an opportunity to to look at the CF to build on the great work that's been done and to update it in alignment with the latest climate science in alignment with your additional priorities many of which you've talked about over the past 48 Hours um and to make sure that things like the comprehensive plan like the Strategic Mobility plan that um are embedded and the way that we do work also are embedded and aligned with the Strategic energy action plan which we know they are um specifically when we're talking about mode shift and becoming a low low carbon City by 2050 and so um with that I think well 2030 we want to be zero carbon in our Fleet and buildings and then by 2050 the goals that you have is to are to become a low carbon City and so then um as we look at the discussion questions I think what could be particularly valuable is understanding as we embark on this update of our strategic energy action plan what policy areas and objectives are the most important to emphasize or align with the plan so um I noted a couple uh you know we we uh with your investment in uh partnership with Duke Energy we're working on a low-income high energy use pilot so there are these alignments and intersections between housing between Transit um and and it's it would be critical to know where you see gaps or where you see points of emphasis that we can really embed into the update of the Strategic energy action plan and then um the final two questions which uh are what challenges and opportunities do you see in the year ahead and should this continue to be a strategic initiative thank you Sarah as we move to questions I do want to uh point back to our working agreements and ask that you honor them um why watch the use of your technology please and also the side conversations so that we can be respectful of our guests and give them our attention thank you and so we have uh dimple Lana and then I think Ed and then Dante and the mayor okay um well this needs to this continues to need needs to be one of our strategic priorities uh we adopted this back in 2018 unanimously and I I feel very strongly we need to continue to forge ahead to meet our 2030 goals to go carbon free by 2030 um when we talk about cab it's also a question of equity because climate change disproportionately impacts black and brown communities um there is studies after studies if you look at clean air Carolina's report that shows uh how how uh air in the historic West End area has impacted communities for Generations so this really addresses the carbon pollution and we need to make uh uh continued strategic investments in our budget to Electrify our Fleet to make increased investments in our energy generation uh so that we can meet our 2030 goal um what I would like U also I'd like to thank Sarah um uh really she has done a great job with the very uh with what two people team or three I have three yeah three I think that's tremendous that speaks volume to uh great team that we have and we are leader in sustainability we don't often talk about it CU our goals are just so ambitious um but we made bold goals and I think we can attain them um I would like to see as we discuss our budget increase investments in our CF goals um also tree canopy if you look at those two pictures the one that that you cannot see is at the bottom you can clearly see trees trees are it's it's our reach asset that not a lot of cities can claim and I think we need to do more to preserve and protect our tree canopy um so I would like to see in manager uh um parking lot there uh we are still waiting on recommendations on tree canopy and I think that's been pending for several months now I would like to see getting recommendations on how we attain 50 by 50 goals so on tree canopy recommendations oh I mean sorry tree ordinance um so I know that was a topic of discussion several months ago and I know council member Johnson had brought that up uh several times with certain rezonings but I think we need to have a comprehensive look at that uh so I look forward to having a deeper dive on recommendations on policies uh from planning staff specifically Allison uh and the great work that Allison team Porter and the entire team is doing um and uh okay and then obviously the D dashboard I think we need to continue to enhance the public facing dashboard I know we have gotten some feedback on that from various stakeholders so if you can continue to address those that would be great but that's all great work team thanks so um for the parking lot don't we have a plan in place related to the 50x50 question yeah yeah Allison can probably speak best to it if you will and engagement so last we had discussion on this Mr Jones we were waiting on recommendations from Allison and her team and that's uh we had a discussion on this just not too long ago we are okay so that's when we'll see recommendations from your team okay so I think that's what we I'm I'm looking forward to thanks and I'll just add that that's another example of a a plan that we want to make sure is aligned with our strategic energy action plan um obviously trees carbon sinks and also support you know using less energy when you have a beautiful tree canopy so that's an alignment opportunity yes thank you thank you for the presentation you all are doing an amazing job you know I'm always going to ask a very similar question one for you Mr manager why does cmpd need a Tesla help me understand that we can put that in the parking lot that one can go in that parking lot but I'm trying to understand the purpose you need go that up there go add that up there right as you coming in so I'm I need to understand why the first Tesla is slated for Charlotte mber Police Department also we're still having conversations Across the Nation with EV batteries a number of them are making their way right go to that other door go to that other one so [Laughter] a number of the batteries are making their way into land fields we can they make it all the way from Charlotte to here on one charge you came the right time and none of this is counting against my time look across the nation we know that no fire department has figured out the chemicals to put out a eie battery related fire that vehicle must burn down where it is because there is no product that's putting them out as recently as two weeks ago we're in our winter Chicago of course has a very different winter a number of EBS the batteries F they were in subzero temperatures the most we get is probably what 12 to 19 where our temperatures will be low but there's impacts where even with the charging stations because of the certain levels of cold so as we're moving towards this idea of being environmentally friendly somewhere along the line we must also bring the experts to the table to talk about environment environmentally friendly to who where are these resources we're looking at the impact of the Congo we're looking at the impact Across the Nation of where these land Fields where these batteries are going back in 2020 there was Federal legislation that was created around $150 million dollars or so to do a study to look at the impact of trying to recycle the lithium and the batteries to try to make the batteries more conducive to be recycled and not end up in the land fields we haven't gotten any of that information none of that has been presented so that we are actually when we're going to the community and saying this is a good thing and we are talking about the environmental impacts whether that environmental impact is through air remember we talked about a data center there's environmental impacts with that with the humming that would be helpful to have that information brought to us as well so it just doesn't look like we're selling you that this is the great thing without talking about the not even what ifs here is what has happened and here is where the city of Charlotte is already looking to take steps cuz they was laughing through my time so you talking through your time police officer so but understanding that true picture of the impact as we go in this direction but on that parking lot that Tesla going up there for cmpd but also thinking about when we're saying this is the thing and even in our mixed income housing to say the trade off is you're going to provide X number of EB Chargers who the hell can afford to buy an electric vehicle that's a different Target of individual yes we want mixed income but let's just think about is that the tradeoff that's going to benefit the need that we have in community versus a station a charge of station being in that 10minute walk vers is actually on in that parking lot when something else could benefit the community like give me three more units council member may feel respectfully we do need to move on as we're running uh behind time Ed next thank you so um the environment is a occasionally very controversial topic sometimes with political overtones and there are some proposals that would create an enormous economic burden and not produce much benefit for that reason I'm especially grateful for our seap I think this is a an accountable actionable plan uh it identifies us as a leader in this space and Charlotte benefits from that regardless of politics or anything else in terms of Economic Development even it it contributes to the image of our city as a sort of happening and Forward Thinking place so grateful for the plan definitely should continue to be a strategic initiative I would highlight our agreement with Duke Energy on solar that we just entered into very Innovative and big right it gets us uh a large portion of the way towards our goal for 2030 we need to study the buses uh the conversation around the buses has been how do we transition to environmentally friendlier buses given the technology of the buses and whether or not they have for example if they're all electric the ability to go an entire route uh we had some controversy about buying hybrid buses because we really couldn't have uh electric buses serve all of the roots so I think that's an area where we need to continue to work uh I agree about the trees uh I think in my mind at least our position on trees is not well articulated yet uh uh personally I think the growth we expect is going to make it extremely difficult for us actually to have a 50% canopy and we need to have a realistic goal an accountable goal that we're working toward and not keep talking about 50% and then fail to get there and have no way of measuring you know what we might have done my question is uh the low carbon City thing um I I'm wondering what our ability is to influence the the carbon generation uh in the city you know what Authority we have by ordinance and so on and what goal have we set for low carbon what does that actually mean I think there was a description of what it means but can we say after five years how we're doing in terms of having the private sector move in that direction and you know as a result of our initiatives so do we have that information so um a couple of the things that I didn't highlight so first I don't know how I forgot to talk about the fact that that yall made such a big uh commitment with the Duke Energy program so I just want to make sure that that is um highlighted we have on our dashboard um our Baseline 2015 carbon emissions per capita uh in sh the Charlotte Community and we have the 2019 numbers and so you can see a decrease per capita and so you know th that's those num don't move fast um and you it's hard to identify you know a project that moved the needle on CommunityWide emissions but they are per capita going down from 2015 to 2019 and we'll be looking at that at that again through the next CF update but things like using smart growth principles that are embedded in your comprehensive plan 10-minute neighborhoods more access to to Transit the conversations that you have been having over the last 24 40 hours that really moves the needle on CommunityWide emissions and then just to speak to your questions and programs that you know at this point we're still working to um pilot like EV car share opportunities so people don't need to have an EV but can have access to clean driving those at scale those types of things can move the needle so we do have data it's on the dashboard and we'll continue to look at that but it's going to come in the form of Partnerships and also some of the ordinances um where we have influence like um supporting you know the development of um infrastructure that's sustainable um but there are some tools that we don't have and and that's where some of the Partnerships really come into place very nice work thank you thank you uh I think of course for many of the reasons that my colleague stated that the ca needs to continue to be a strategic initiative moving forward um I actually think one of the largest things that we could do to impact our goals here is to crystallize our plan on mobility and to ensure that we have we're building a micr modal Transportation Network work right I I think that's one of the biggest things we can do to impact this but specifically on that first question around you know what policy areas and objectives are important I feel like we're doing a you're doing a great job on the macro objectives I think we need to double click and go down to those micro objectives because that's what's really going collectively if we can get to that micro level um in aggregate that's really going to help us get to that overall goal so things like low income high energy homes trying to pair down there but it's going to be the aggregate of those types of initiatives so as you think about what we're doing this year that's where I'd like for us continue to do what we're doing at the ma macro level continue to do that the Duke Energy program was a excellent program that wasn't receiv well on Council about 12 months ago and um you went back sharp in the pin opportunity presented itself and we were able to get that P and that helps us get towards the goal so um I just would like to see the the micro initiatives that you can come back perhaps with an update and let us know how that would impact and and how we can help you but great job overall thank you thank you sorry one request and that's to put on our parking lot list for the connection of how we do our affordable housing with heating appliances that are available at a discount cost under the president's plan for um both appliances inside of the house and heat pumps that are more energy efficient so aligning some of working with our partners we ought to align to take advantage of what we can do now um to help people with their energy plus it saves them money and you know this whole idea of how do we build with um you know within mind the house being energy efficient and it's kitchen and all of these things you talk about the cost of housing I think we can do something there but that's just the an to your list and mberg county has a program too called Le app refunded right so we'll add that as well thank you all right if there are no more questions thank you so much Sarah [Applause] thank team we're going to uh make an adjustment to the agenda uh quickly now and move to our safety conversation Chief Jennings is here so we'll move to our safety conversation and then um come back to that we we have the we have okay and we if we could uh take a five minute break thank you and return in 5 minutes we'll start with the safety discussion thank you five [Music] minutes [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] we [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] he um I'm not supposed to start yet am I this is this where yeah this is get my good side engaging discussions this morning we're excited to to welcome Chief Jennings to begin the presentation on safety if we can have all council members in seats we're going to go ahead and get started we're trying to be respectful of our time and your time today as well thank you thank you so much I appreciate it thank you Madame mayor members of council uh Mr manager appreciate it it's honor to be here today I think I've had more questions about Teslas than anything so far so I'm sure that'll come up um this is much nicer setting than what we have in Charlotte but uh it's glad I'm glad to be here and I want to talk about uh some of the end ofe report that we have very briefly uh but what I plan on covering today is our community services and engagement within cmpd uh we'll hit briefly on some uh end of year crime data which you all should have um in front of you as well arrest breakdown and juvenile crime which has been a Hot Topic not just within cmpd but across the state and then also what we are doing looking forward moving forward and also then be able to have an opportunity to answer any questions and to um have any discussions that you'd like to have so first of all um on community engagement always had a lot great deal of pride in what we have been able to accomplish within cmpd over the years we have taken a lot of initiatives with our uh particularly our youth programs that we have gone out and uh if you remember for those who were here in 2020 uh in discussion of how we are able to do a lot of our youth programs is through a lot of grant funding and private funding uh that does not necessarily come out of the general budget and we've had had a lot great deal of success and just to touch on a few uh with ours we have 13 total programs with about 8 13 uh participants mainly youth um programs that we have we have our youth and Vision Academy uh we have our diversion program police activities League our Reach Academy Reach Out academy uh impact and we have our Cadets that are middle and high school uh for middle and high school students as well well and as we are always looking at ways that we can improve how we are having Outreach with our particularly our youth uh one thing that we did pilot last year is a um program called Fifth Element youth Outreach and what that is is a tailored response to youth who we see that are going down the wrong path that we are able to grab a hold of and uh basically Mentor that individual with our police officers we take them to events we are visiting their residents we're making sure that they're giving uh job opportunities uh we piloted that last year with five um five students and this year we hope to have about 13 candidates that we have in the in the hopper for 2024 and just to go over crime stats last year um last year our Police Department received one over 1 million 911 calls for service and we had over 530,000 uh police interactions with with our Citizens Community Based on uh not not all based on the cost for service but uh 534,906 crime total we were flat for violent crime and just a caveat to that our violent crime the last two years has seen uh respectively a 7% decrease and a 5% decrease so have being coming out flat this year certainly is is is should be a respectable number for us as well property crime was up 177% and I say that because um there is a a deeper issue that comes with our property crimes and that deals with our automobile thefts automobile thefts we had 8,032 Vehicles stolen last year 8,032 that is a huge increase from what we've seen in years past and I'll tell you uh as we go into further discussion that the automobile thefts had a great deal to do with the Kia Hyundai challenge uh with juveniles and our juveniles are responsible for a great deal of those Auto thefts uh and also larsy forato that we've seen uh across our community as well the as a matter of fact uh we'll talk more about the Kia Hyundai Challenge and and the thefts that that we've seen across the country not just here in Charlotte uh but we certainly were not immune to uh to the effects of that where there were a lot of Kia and hundes they were being stolen last year um so our juvenile arrests last year totaled 3,6 that is a 34% increase and what we've seen in uh seen in 2022 so for 2023 uh our total arrest was 5 thou or 15, 343 and 11,614 people accounted for those 15,000 over 15,000 arrest even a more telling number is that there were 700 more repeat juvenile offenders in 2023 compared to 2022 that means there were 700 juveniles that were that offended more than one time and I say offended that means that we caught them more than one time uh in 2023 than we did in 2022 our repeat adult arrests are up 7% but our repeat juvenile arrests were up 62% total and also uh just to throw a little extra on top of that 5,15 juveniles were listed as suspects in crime in 2023 and that's a 21% increase in 2022 so as we move forward my priorities are going to be pretty clear for 2024 we're going to continue to work on violent crime and reduction efforts and I've always said uh that crime is more of a management thing for us uh and we talk about F fighting uh fighting crime and violent crime uh if we we just need to make sure that we are managing it and handling it the most appropriate way that that we're able to I don't think until we have zero crime uh violent crime that's when it's not going to be acceptable but uh that's also a very lofty goal there so uh reducing automobile property crime this is kind of a new one this year because we have seen uh a lot of the relationship that comes with the automobile property crime such as uh auto theft and Lars forato and how that relates to violent crime that we're dealing with as well whether you're stealing a gun out of a out of a um vehicle or you're stealing a car and uh running from uh running from the police or driving recklessly uh and end up killing somebody it certainly is uh something that goes into we that plays a little bit more into just the crime itself and we're going to continue our recruitment retention efforts uh we are looking some positive things for Recruitment and Retention uh we are seeing applications go up uh quite a bit and we're seeing hiring go up quite a bit so very proud of that and we hope to continue that Trend and we'll be able to uh make way towards closing the gap on our vacancies that we have and we are doing that now we're going to continue to to do that and then also continue our customer experience um training that we are uh that we have been doing since 20121 uh that was implemented uh for those of you who remember our customer service training and cmpd serves I think that's important for us to continue to build relationships within the community uh and that we are continuously not only knowing how to treat people in a positive Light Within um externally but Al internally so that's very important for us uh but we do know there's a lot of work ahead and uh I'm going to stop talking because I know there's probably a lot of questions that we can hopefully I'll be able to answer and and we can have a lot some good uh constructive conversation here so thank you thank you for the update Chief Jennings about a very important topic we recognize council member Ram thank you watlington Lana Ed and tan thank you I I I really don't have a question for the chief we've met several times in the past two weeks I've had the opportunity also uh to have conversation with the district attorney as well as other community stakeholders and so these comments are really for my colleagues um specifically into the the members of the public um I'm really concerned um uh about what's happening in our community uh and I acknowledge um that there are issues and problems that we have to address uh cmpd is doing their job um their job is law enforcement and they've arrested over 15,000 folks last year uh the district attorney is dedicated to prosecute Those who commit crimes in our city and I think the message is that if you commit a crime in Char that you will be arrested and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law no matter how old you are Black White young old Rich poor our community will will be safe um the the stat speaks for the themselves um 14% increase overall 15 19% property um car thefts youth offenders which is the St 34% um Uptown which is has decrease but if you don't feel safe You're Not Safe And so there's a perception that safety is a uh an issue in uptown Charlotte especially in light of what happened on New Year's Eve I I think we need to get a thoughtful response as a council as a whole uh to these issues um and we need to bring the community along with us um those who represent uh Faith B organizations and nonprofit organizations certainly government plays a role uh local government uh County government certainly our school system um and our gradu organizations many of whom we find through our budget to provide Hands-On grassroot boots in the ground support like our attor the violence programs mes place um a block love Charlotte who works with our unhoused population all contributing uh to some of the impact that we're seeing overall within now City I think we all know the blocking and tackling that we have to do which is you know access to educational opportunities Community programming family support we can't arrest all parents those who are negligent should be but there are also parents out there pleading making for help with their kids I think we need to be mindful of that youthful employment opportunities and and activities um a juvenile system Statewide that's effective and efficient right uh that serves the purpose of not only our youth here in mcburg County but but Statewide and certainly mental health support all those things we can do a better job leaning into to support which I think is the problem which is youth offenders in our our community certainly I'm just one man with one opinion and I would leave it up to my colleague um um council member Wallington and her committee to really help me and and help this community kind to focus on where we should go what are we solving for what are we trying to do to really um um uh put programs are structure in place that makes sense that the council collectively as a whole can can buy into I think we demonstrated two years ago through the safe Charlotte program where we came together in a short period of time and and made some meaningful impact bringing the community along with us right asking the tough questions and over the last two weeks I've had a number of community meetings individual meetings everyone wants to lean in and support and work with us so I don't think her committee will have a hard time uh identifying resources to help us kind of problem solve as we move forward uh certainly there may or may not be items that we need from the general assembly um I believe through our legislative agenda uh collectively as a council we can decide what's most important to us collectively uh as we try to frame and and do the work together and so I I just hope that you know one you know obviously I'm very interested in uh in this topic many of you who were paying attention at the swearing in uh notice that I I made mention of it of Youth offenders and violent crime and gave council member thank you give me give me one more minute uh and made mention of this I think this is where we really need to kind of talk a little bit about this where we when I gave two examples of incidents of kids who killed themselves literally with guns and there been at least 10 kids and now we had this discussion around safe Charlotte and violence reduction um it is I don't see page numbers at the bottom of here but it's in your community safety tab oh the um yep your bonder there's a tab entitled Community safety in the binder thank you yeah there should be right behind you council member won please continue sure yeah so um as we're thinking about what where are we now we we understand the state of the the numbers but there's an opportunity to look deeper into what's going on here um which I hope that we would do and what I would suggest that we do um as part of our committee work this year um when we think about some of the work that started last year with Uptown quality of life and how some of those items have since come back to us and we are currently deliberating about uh ordinances and reinstatement of such ordinances that is really part of a broader conversation um so we're thinking about this conversation three buckets if you will we're looking at Uptown quality of life and the public realm we're looking at how that relates to Uptown vitality and our overall region Economic Development and then we're also looking at crime overall specifically um um youth crime or crimes involving juveniles um so as we think about that those are the the three areas that we'd like to focus on or contribute to within our um committee so we're thinking of this as a Continuum right so the city we've got cmds we've got um great neighborhoods we've got a focus on safe communities so that's a reason why obviously we're having this conversation here um that said certainly we understand that there's a spectrum of work that goes from city responsibility to uh where our primary responsib ability lies versus where the city has secondary responsibility to everywhere from things like law enforcement that firmly sits within the city up through the built environment economic Mobility over to things like homelessness and mental health and the judicial system which obviously we would have secondary responsibility behind our uh our partners intergovernmental and so we certainly are not seeking to drive the entire process in every one of those Realms but our attempt is to identify the full spectrum of what's involved so that we can identify key partners and we believe that we've done that to a large extent um we would like to continue the same kind of structure that we had with uh safe Charlotte in 2020 where we create an ad hop type of working group that's comprised of our Council and our committee specifically City staff um individuals from the justice system as well as a number of Partners in the community including uh CMS for sure our district attorney's office who have been great Partners our Judicial System uh the office of violence prevention from meinberg County I do want to call that out specifically because the office of violence prevention is a tremendous asset and resource that does not sit within the city um but stands ready willing and able to um to allow us to join the fight um in in reducing crime in our city one thing in particular that I think is um unique if you will about this approach is that we're going to be engaging our universities to really really understand what the data looks like who are we seeing that ends up within our justice system continually what are some um database methods what programs are we using that we need to evaluate to make sure that they're effective so we really want to make sure that we bring that database approach to the conversation as well um one of the things I know that council member Brown you brought up that I absolutely agree with is ensuring that parental involvement is something that or parental engagement is a part of the framework because at the end of the day we are a community and it starts at home and each one of us within our individual neighborhoods has responsibility to our family members uh to ensure that that we are creating a network of Engagement there so absolutely uh to the extent that we can engage the parents as neighbors and also through the CMS system we definitely want to do that as well so we'll be looking yep so we'll and I'm just Fring the conversation so um certainly consider this part of the presentation um as we think about areas of focus and how we want to go about doing this we're looking at again different parts of the work there's enforcement which we've discussed there's prevention diversion and intervention so as we pull together a response please understand as uh council member Graham mentioned that it's not one or the other it's all of these components and we've got to look at it holistically um to that end when we think about next steps certainly we're not going to solve crime overnight we're not going to look up tomorrow and say oh there is no more crime in Charlotte at all but what we do need to consider is what can we manage in the short term as people come to Uptown how do we work with Center City partners and some of our uh business Community to ensure that when we when there are special events Uptown that there is appropriate resourcing so that when folks come in they can have a pleasurable experience those are some of the things that are shortterm but when it comes to longterm we know that there may be policy changes there may be things that we've got to put on the legislative agenda uh that we need to go to that we need to go to DC and advocate for so all of those components certainly will be a part of this framework but the first step is getting aligned as a council today on how we go about that work um the details of it of course will come through the uh housing safety and Community Committee uh ongoing and we'll continue to work with that ad hoc group and certainly interested council members as as you so choose um but today just really wanted to lay the ground work for this framework consider it an extension of the work that we began uh several years ago and um happy to happy to take on anybody else's additional ads or um suggestions thank you and thank you for walking through the framework it has been provided as a part of the pread so hopefully you all are familiar with the details of such I think there's a lot of obviously passion and warranted passion around this uh topic so I do want to ask that the remaining comments come in the uh form of a question about the framework that's been laid out there's a lot of work to be done here outside around this work that will happen outside of this room so we won't solve everything in this room there's a lot of pring collaboration uh research Etc to be done to get to the final answer that won't happen here today and so as you as you think about framing your comments uh we have the the benefit of having the chief here so if there's a question for him I think this is a Time opportunity to ask a question of him and some of the recommendations that you may have um should happen actually in committee or in your working group or refer to council to actually get a lot of that done so recommendation if there are certainly there are statements that are top of mine please be there but just be respectful with your 2 minutes so we can get back on agenda and the main point here is that it will not be solved this room today so let's keep our points our points on 2 minutes uh questions while we have the the uh Chief here and U move on with this discussion now we'll recognize U Lana thank you and Tiana and dimple excuse me Chief thank you for the presentation this Fifth Element youth outreach program you identified that we had five youth in rooll two of them graduated what happened to the other three the other three either dro dropped out or did not complete the program uh so uh again it was a pilot that we're that we wanted to test out I think it has some good merit with a bigger sample if we can go into a bigger sample for 2024 uh and then we can do another evaluation This was um this was something that we started in 2023 uh and like the I like the concept of it and the Hands-On approach uh it can be very Manpower intensive because you do put such a great deal of attention uh to each individual uh young person that goes into the program uh but I I I think we need a bigger sample to be able to truly evaluate the effectiveness so what I would like Mr manager as your as our team are working with alongside cmpd I would like for us to take into consideration is that this not a numbers game so creating a bigger Sample versus identifying okay why do we lose those two certainly if were those three cuz cuz if we started out with five and we weren't able to keep all five engaged yes there's still some type of Disconnect whether it's challenges at home at school whatever it is to trate truly create something successful versus just increasing the number to try to balance it out also just as Dr Wallington mentioned when we talk about Uptown resourcing with this Fifth Element youth Outreach we might have the possibility and with a of the other programs I would like to know if there's a consideration of us thinking about how do we involve our youth in uptown so we see a lot of the challenges that are happening we're of a different time period we grew up at a time where parking wreck was free you had programming and parking wreck that was free we pay taxes for it but that is not the case today so there's a disconnect for what programs are available for young people between eight and 19 for them to do where they're actually engaged and it does not cost them anything so there might I don't it would be helpful for the extended parking lot to give us some of these things outside of just telling me the police academy the Reach Academy to reach out what are the what are you doing in there so that Council can be utilized to get some of this information out to people but I really want to encourage that we not make it a numbers game but a impact to Youth and figure out why we have the disconnect because you mentioned earlier in the year or someone from the team a number of these youth that are coming before us are first-time offenders so they wouldn't even have been on our radar as someone that might be having a problem so it will be helpful to also know how you all identifying the possibilities there and that can be the followup to Committee just to get a better idea of okay three out of drop out or whatever happened help us understand how we lost them certainly and and to your point also firsttime offenders um you know our our concentration is not necessarily on the first time offenders yeah you saw 700 are repeat offenders this year 700 more and and that where I think the focus needs to be and that's what the Fifth Element tries to do as well are who are those that are the most and it's timec consuming so the people the kids that are dropping out because it is a big commitment um they may they may not be prepared for that commitment so thank you Ed thank you uh Chief uh we really appreciate you and your officers uh you've been through some difficult years now nationally and locally and your guys have been professional um and really deserve our respect thank you um I I want to point out safe Charlotte and a lot of the things that we've done in the past years don't appear to be working right we're up 14% this here this is not where we wanted to be when we went through those past exercises um we know that there are problems with the courts and the da uh and that persists so there sort of round trip uptown and back makes it hard to enforce things so I think we need to continue all of our community efforts and try to intervene early and prevent the situation where a crime is being committed uh particularly by repeat offenders who seem to be able to act with impunity um but in my mind that means that we have to take some uh pretty dramatic action I think the community is looking to us right now in view of the recent rise the relatively really uh dramatic rise recently in kind of perception of crime and lawlessness the fear that people feel on the streets of all denominations right I mean uh I I I've spoken to people who said uh that they lived in certain communities and were afraid to go out so um what it comes down to in my mind though is that we have to step up deterrence and the reason that could be difficult for this council is there is a tension between deterrence uh proactive policing and the rights of members of the community the perception of targeting or minority I'm being very plain here but if we don't allow the police to do their jobs because we're being overly protective of certain people then we're going to get what we've got so uh I think that for one we we should come up with some pretty dramatic action uh and we should be prepared uh when we have failed to to steer somebody away from Criminal action we should be prepared to to deal with those situations more forcefully Chief my question to you is uh you've described here what's going on it's kind of an ongoing report is there anything that you can point out to that you could get from us that would enable you that's different uh in light of the recent developments it would enable you to combat this rise that we've seen certainly and um you you you we talk about about the 14% increase in crime overall um it's driven by the automobile theft and youth that are stealing these cars if you take if you take our increase in automobile thefts and just make that flat then we're talking about a very insignificant uh crime increase in Charlotte last year but juvenile crime juvenile crime so I had a very uh Governor Cooper and the um um director of Public Safety uh Eddie Buffalo were kind enough that they visited uh cmpd yesterday had a very productive conversation and we talked about just that when we raised the age four years ago from 16 to 18 regardless of what you think about that there were no resources that went along with that so we don't have uh I I I'm pretty sure the governor was aware but there's no Juvenile Detention Center in charlot and uh that is almost uh hard to think of that and and my answer is not saying that we need more places to lock juveniles up or to to detain uh juveniles but the resources with DJJ and uh everything that comes along with it to give that that to these young people so that they don't go back and reoffend uh is is absolutely um something that we need to do and I would it would scare me to death in the community to hear that number that 17 or 700 more juveniles were repeat offenders this in 2023 than they were in 2022 and and that's very concerning because that number is only going to continue to grow unless we can do something different when it comes to these young people so my point is let's think about what new action what we what can we do different because of that fact which is a was a departure from before thank you appreciate you Chief yes thank you Deana yeah hey chief thank you so much for your data your information your sheets I listen to my colleagues and a lot of time I cringe I think people forget that I was once a a young person that went down this path and I do consider myself an expert in this area there's been a lot of work that's been done and people will say all over again and again if you have not lived this life or you haven't come from this environment and I'm very passionate about it it just so happened I landed on the council unanimously one every District so people want to see something uh different I've asked to meet with you I actually was handpicked by Governor Ro Cooper for the racket to work on the women in incarceration work group with srcc so I was considered to be an expert these numbers are they are alarming and when um I spoke with Gary and he told me that the juveniles were leaving I had a fit cuz I was one of the ones working with them but it's not a whole lot you can do if the resources are not there I look at it from a different approach you guys have a very very hard job to do I couldn't do it they wouldn't let me do it anyway because of my background but I think I probably would be a good officer honestly I'm very serious about that but we have to make sure that when we make these decisions about our juvenile that they are in the room you can't make a decision for someone that continues to get in trouble continue to go down the wrong path that may not even have parents at home I did I made bad decisions cuz my mom was a single mom and had to walk to work and she had to work long hours and she was feeding us and taking care of us off Kentucky Fried Chicken salary and that's on the corner of West Boulevard and remont Road that's now um what's that place on the corner can somebody help me out that's Nicks it's now Nicks but it was Kentucky Fried Chicken and so when you start talking about parents maybe they don't even have parents at home parents might be on drugs in abusive relationships like mine was we really have to have the juveniles in the room it's easy for all of us in here that think we're D the mind that think we know everything we don't and so for this particular subject when you make decisions about youth you cannot do it without them in the room you have to ask them they are the experts get mad all you want to I hear the grunts or whatever I don't care when you talk about our youth and them offending downtown it's just not downtown Charlotte it's all over the city of Charlotte Steel Creek they're doing it in Steel Creek they're doing it on West buo baby for RO it's just not about Uptown downtown Charlotte it's the city collectively so for the third time I've asked to meet someone took notes and said they want to meet please hear me out and and hear what I what I have you know what my we have a meeting on the schedule don't we I don't see it I didn't see it but I know I'm working with Dr Victoria won I don't have all the answers but I do have some of them and I think if we just listen and bring those youth in the room like the programs that you have a lot of the youth don't even know the programs exist I'm in Southwest Middle School and that is a title one school and it's in Steel Creek and those children all colors white black Chinese Puerto Rican Hispanic every body those children are being affected so I just want to say it's not just black kids certain yes I'm passionate about who I am but I love all people and all children so they're all being affected yeah and let me let me just say this as as proud as I am of all of our programs and youth programs and the things that we try to accomplish that's not that should not be our role it should not fall on the police department to rehabilitate kids uh but we do have resources to be able to do it we see programs that that we are able to um get funding for and to try and help as many kids I'd rather spend effort on the programs than to continue to have to see these kids over and over and over again in the court system Chief again I said you guys are doing a measurable work I can't even imagine what your dayto day is but imagine what ours is out in the community as well when people saying the kids did what they did uptown Charlotte or they're robbing they're still in there in cars but what are we doing to combat that are we actually in school CU we we're not a part of the school board but there's not saying that we can't work with the grad organizations and put them in the school and be viable and be be uh get the data the empirical data and make sure that we're keeping a track it's not your job but you you got to be a part of the solution because if not then you're part of the problem absolutely okay thank you simple Chief uh I I want to thank you and your entire team for the great work that you are doing in addressing our violent crime uh addressing our recruitment certainly numbers are looking good from the recruitment perspective um so from the budget perspective I'd like to see what are the things this Council can do to help uh with the priorities that you outlined um and also uh there are two two questions I have one is for the budget and second is for intergovernmental committee you clearly laid out that there needs to be funding uh at the state level I would like to see as part of our State Legislative agenda that we Champion some of these items that Chief has just mentioned so if you can get a list of all the items that you'd like us to Champion at the state state level along with our budget that's that Council has authority to do um I I would like to get that list thank you council member you're trying to make the city manager mad at me if I I have a long budget list that I'll give them tomorrow so no and and in all seriousness um we are talking about really closing that Gap in on our vacancy rate uh hopefully by the end of this year uh you will see that down to almost zero uh at the same point um based on studies across the country and and the the um what we are needing within our agency we are allocated a little over 1,900 sworn positions uh that should be about 2400 sworn positions uh and I know that doesn't happen overnight uh but uh over time that I think gradually we need to really look at uh building the allocations for for the police force and uh but we can't do that unless we can feel the vacancies that we have uh thank you and I I'd like to just mention one more thing you know Chief Jennings I really like your candid remarks um thank you yeah you just laid it out there and I think we need more of that because Public Safety is an issue uh Charlotte is a safe City but the perception is that there are many parts of our City that are not safe and um we need to do everything that we can to address that it's not just Uptown as Tia said it's there are many parts of our city where residents do not feel safe and and that is an issue that we truly need to tackle and put our resources behind uh alternative to violence is a great program and I'm glad that we are expanding expanding that program in other corridors but that's just one part part of the solution there needs to be enforcement there is State funding involved there is we need to have make sure the da gets more funding um so it's a multifaceted solution but I think um we we do need to address that through our intergovernmental Relations Committee as part of our federal and state legislative agenda thanks thank you for saying that da funding is critical da the RDA system needs a lot more than what they're getting right now okay uh Dante and then we'll go back to Tiana final comments thank you Chief thank you for the uh presentation and the information um I I agree that if we can just have a singular focus on one or two of these large numbers vehicle theft is up 120% right and so if we were to attack that and continue to do the good work that that that you all are doing that overall crime number of 14% would drop dramatically and uh certainly the laser focus that you've had in the Uptown area I I share Uptown with Mr Graham and um with operation heartbeat and everything else that's gone on to see a decrease in crime in that area by 7% is is indicative of you know when we put a light on an issue and we focus on it we'll we'll have we'll get some results that we need so um I think if we have a singular Focus this year uh that would be great I just want to make sure you know when we talk about our state and federal legislative slate I want to make sure that we are cleare eyed about what we're asking and um and we have an ad hoc committee that's we've been meeting many times to focus on this and it's indicative of the the work that's in the binder and and uh Miss watlington and her committee is going to continue to focus on this but I I want to make sure that when we when we have a ask we have a specific ask that's going to fit into an overall plan um that we can take action to so um I think that's important you know these numbers that you have on Slide Five around the uh 2023 arrest information there's a clear need um for for our young people and as was mentioned earlier we're not going to solve it by ourselves there's so many there's so many uh great evidence-based programs out there we have Community Partners like uh the Urban League that has a save our sons program that is not being implemented here there it's just fertile ground for us to curate these programs and then communicate that so that um constituents know what's available and um and how to take action on them so I just want to commend you for the results that we've gotten withstanding this vehicle theft right um and I also you know when you look at these numbers here on uh slide nine and you have the auto theft stats you have a little over 8,000 um Auto thefts but then a little less than 4,000 recovered so they're F 50% of those cars are not recoverable I I'm wondering where they're at I'm wondering if if if that is indicative of local activity or something that's going on in a in a larger region in the Southeast region it is and and we we've actually uh have a really good case that was uh that was was solved nationally where some of these were being shipped out to um other locations they were being stripped uh and as we speak today speaking of auto theft we're currently meeting with the Hyundai uh manufacturers in Charlotte uh because the the issue with those Auto thefts is because of the ease of them to be stolen uh and uh we are meeting with them and I know some uh other Chiefs some of my colleagues across the country have even gone so far as to initiate lawsuits towards the auto dealerships because they will not fix the the issue uh and so I think it's productive and it's a very good sign that they're meeting with us and having these discussions to try and curb that excellent and my last comment that I'll make is around the numbers that you have on slide eight page eight around the guns that have gotten off the street and U that's been it's gone up by 10% but I know that a lot of the the crime that's done with guns with with the youth Che are from stolen guns and I'd like to see us be more stringent around uh legal gun owners and how they are responsible for the guns that they legally own and storing them properly if a gun is stolen from a car and it's just sitting on the passenger seat or just slid underneath the seat I think there needs to be some ramification you know you have to go through a process to have a concealed carry um the things you have to do you're educated on that and yet these guns are being stolen from Cars every single day because they're not properly stored certainly and that is a challenge for us and we try to do that through education and compliance uh I don't want to deter someone from reporting their gun stolen because they fear that they would get in trouble because it was stolen so that's that's the fine line that we have to walk there thank you thank you okay thank you we'll recognize uh Tiana then tar all right so thank you again Chief I want to go and I want to thank I'm been I've been orted to the safety and housing committee I'm very excited about that and to be working with our chair Dr weton and our vice chair Lana Mayfield because they both are very familiar with District 3 they come from there previously before me I like to ask you about recruitment cuz I like to come with Solutions okay so I consider my myself an expert in this area and I we can get into to what expert means in that in that subject but I am one okay for this area when we talk about recruitment I would like to see our young people um and and what it looks like for them to come in Recruitment and to feel safe again to represent our Public Safety officers and um to get in the community and to be engaged so what I like that you presented today cuz I'm really tough on like language and um you know I teach language on on how we're to be received and I crinch at certain Lang at certain language but I know in the law enfor in law enforcement field they still use offender and certain words that I really just make my skin cringe but I can deal with it for the sake of policy and what we have to do um I'm matur enough to know that we just have to hear that language sometime although in a perfect world I wish we didn't have to hear that language so when we talk about um like this phenomenal lady that's coming here today and she's done this Consulting for us and we have rules of engagement and we're supposed to follow those um it's the same thing with detering away from things that are not working in our community if we've been doing something for so long and it's not working we really really got to dig deep and see if there's something else that we can do uh the youth crime going up let's see I saw those numbers cuz this handout is perfect it's wonderful colorful I know it costs money whoever put it together the the 2023 arrest information to see the arrest go up by 36 34% for our juveniles that break my heart it really does it really put tears in my eye because I know that there is a disconnect with our youth because I speak with them on a regular basis we can't say that we're going to arrest those parents some of them do need to be arrested okay let's just be flat out honest they know what's going on the children leave out of the house there's no control but what about the ones that are at home by themselves that don't have any parents there's no role model there's no figure so with these community services and engagements that you have I like us I like to see and I would like to work with you to see how we could Implement what it looks like to be recruited for them once they graduate high school what that looks like for them to come in I got to be 21 to be officer right yes 21 to be officer what that looks like after they turn 21 is there some type of program that we can put in place maybe going the parking lot I'm sure but for them to get involved and to become the officers that we used to see when I was growing up and that's in the community you have great officers and a lot of officers are involved in doing great things but I'm going to share with you these programs I didn't know about them I didn't hear about them at Southwest Middle School so how can we just get the literature out the information and educate the people the parents the caregivers people like myself the volunteers council members that care about our youth council member because they are truly our future and making sure that we can get them involved in these programs that's what I would like to see and once again thank you for everything that you do I'm just very passionate about this area Okay certainly thank you recogniz Tark thanks yeah I just TR in with two quick things and I'd say that the last two days and this conversation is uh I I think a really big thing and I I think 90% of everything that's been said there's unified head shaking which is I think a really important thing of everyone supporting each other's ideas and doing it together so uh very excited about that I just mentioned um the takeaway uh for us as a council in the metric discussion like we've been having you know what are we going to set our goals what are we going to measure them by how are we going to be involved and I think what we've heard loud and clear from everybody is kind of the the triple bifurcated lens of property crime repeat offenders and youth is both would have a huge impact and is something that is focused enough that it hits a lot of the things we need here so we need to continue with this will be a huge success if we take that agreement and common understanding and turn it into the metrics that will drive the next steps so we don't lose the Steam and that through Victoria's committee I think will be great and as we compile that concise and mutually agreed upon legislative agenda coming out of temples committee I think we have the the the out the outlets to do it the will to do it now it's how do we get from here to there so very excited about that and then the second last thing um just for you Chief um I I believe that you guys for the most part are there's not that much more to ask of you it's it's the rotating door of your officers who say I picked that person up yesterday and so when we get focused on this um I think a lot of the work's going to be outside of there but there's one thing I'd ask you you to consider uh in your second priority of four for this year is expanding that auto um thefts to property crime and the reason I say that is we get bogged down sometimes looking at percentages one way or another and it's dangerous because it doesn't tell a complex story whether it's down or up 10% when you look at the numbers and the bottom line is 8,000 Auto thefts is wild it's a wild number and we should all be um worried about it but that sits at top 30,000 other property crimes and whether it's near neutral or not that touches I mean no homicide or or uh anything like that a violent crime is acceptable but it touches such a smaller number of people I believe this perception issue that we've been talking about is a reality because 30,000 people not relating to their automobiles have had property crimes affect their lives and their neighbors lives so if there was a way to expand that and again staying your focus on automobiles but expand your objective to be all of the property crimes and not at a percentage but through math and everything else we're doing what's a number where can we reasonably get in a year and another year that'd be a big one I think yeah certainly and if you you look at it there's a 12% increase in burglaries last year so certainly a concern as well thank you tar Elina thank you uh first I want to say uh Chief Jennings um thank you for your service to our community um you and your officers um you know the one thing that I've enjoyed since being elected is you know getting to know the officers that serve our community um and and the one thing that I want to actually bring and not the labor any points because again I I agree you know just most recently with some of what my colleague um council member barari said about you know we all have a lot of ideas um and I think you know for another time another space we're going to you know through um council member um watlington um you know committee have deeper conversations but one thing that I I um remember specifically that I done um was right after getting elected um I went and I hope you don't mind this but I actually arranged I don't know if you know about this but I arranged a meeting with the captain from the East Charlotte precincts so that was Eastway what yes sorry um yeah no that was East way of Hickory Grove and Independence and and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them uh they were very gracious with their time they you know really I mean I've gone on a ride along I've done several different things to really get to know them and and understand how they serve Eve Charlotte some of the you know issues that they deal with um in the East Charlotte Community specifically and there were few things that they brought to my attention and uh Mr manager I you know don't want to overstep my boundaries with you because you know I I you know I love to go through you so I don't I don't ever want you to feel like that I'm kind of superseding that relationship but you know getting to know the constituency and you know the community members means a lot to me um but I'm really interested in having some of their concerns lifted up because in 2022 I remember the captain of e of of Independence telling me about the stolen gun issue and he told me he said you know council member Molina we got a lot of stolen guns on the street and it's because you know gun owners are leaving their guns and their vehicles and I wonder as a council what can we do like I said there is a lot more information but I feel like kind of collecting that from our captains who you know know the pulse of their precincts who bubble that up to you but I'm really interested in understanding kind of the granular pieces of that puzzle you know and I can't speak for my colleagues I'm sure they probably would be too um just so that we can decide how from a policymaking perspective we could be great Partners in trying to create some of these Solutions so um like I said a lot of what was already said is some of what I agree with so I don't want to belabor any points but I I really want to lift that up to you specifically and see if there's any interest in in that yeah our stolen guns the last two years I've I've usually highlighted the fact of how many guns we have recovered off the streets and it's gone up every year and no different this year it's up again uh but it's almost like a broken record at this point I do have to fact check real quick I said 12% increase in burglaries that's commercial burglaries a residential burglaries are down 2% so very good home yeah that's where the home yeah home down 2% on the residential uh and the commercial which is businesses uh they're they're the ones that's up 12% so awesome thank you for the clarification yes we have a final question from council member Mayfield thank you Chief follow up to the conversation I didn't hear you mention that your department is working with the license and theft Bureau which is through DMV of which that is their whole purpose is to help with vehicle because you stated that you we identified basically a ring and that things are going out of town but I didn't hear you state do we have a relationship and are you working with the licens and theft Bureau we do that actually came up with the um conversation with the governor and also I met with um uh them in in uh at a conference last week uh that in reference that they're trying to initiate a uh well I don't want to give to they're trying to initiate something that would help with the stolen vehicle issue uh particularly but uh the state is such a large Charlotte the city of Charlotte is obviously the uh has requires a great deal of resources and I know some of the rural uh cities that um that need help as well so uh we're going to see what kind of left over and and you know what kind of assistance they need in other areas but they do want to have that focus in Charlotte and I think we're going to be able to do that so okay so for clarification we have not previously worked with the Department through the state that handles this we're talking about possibly creating a relationship yeah well you're talking about for stolen vehicles specifically the licens and theft Bureau which is through dmbb that has been there for a while have we worked with them or are we talking about possibly working with them in the future I I I can't answer the past have we worked with them I don't know that for certainly so but uh but I do know that what we have the conversation has started as far as what we can do uh down the road so no it I guess we can get that back to you and let you know exactly if we have but I don't know if any programs within cmpd that have been directly related to the license and the bureau with working with them so so Council M mme as chair of which we're all on BG I think it would be helpful when we're talking about the legislative conversation because we have some relationships that are already out there and just like it's been mentioned and the and council member Brown mentioned it with a clear Spotlight if we're doing the work that we're doing isn't achieving of results the other part of that is if we got relationships out there that we're not utilizing then that is a opportunity that we should step into because there's a whole Bureau through dmbb that helps with this and if we're not utilizing that as one of the largest cities within yeah North Carolina There's an opportunity that we might be missing and we could probably check into that and so parking lot thank you CH yeah thank you thank you so much uh we thank you for the discussion glad Council and chief Jennings thank you for being here bring your team up information thank you yall have never applauded for me before so that's awesome that's awesome okay I I do want to recognize uh who's here with me today um our police attorney Jessica battle is here with us uh my executive officer major Brad cotch deputy chief Dave Robinson um our public Affair oh wow the day look good I wasn't expecting that he's once again out of uniform our public affairs director uh Sandra deila and with me as a guest is Deputy Chief Dereck Elmore from Phoenix uh Arizona he is here following me this this week because at some point I'm sure he will be a major city police chief somewhere so awesome thank you so much welcome to a world class City sir you brought them here thank you all so much uh and again thank you for the discussion we're going to uh break for lunch now but what I'd like to ask is that we allow the council members to go it's a working lunch again today [Laughter] trick so yes yes so I would like the council members to please go first and get your lunch grab your lunch and come back in let's take about 10 minutes to do that 10 to 15 minutes to come back in no no working lunch working lunch thank [Music] you [Music] n [Music] la [Music] [Music] a 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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good afternoon thank you for a great productive informative morning it's been great discussion on some important topics so far we appreciate that uh to carry on our afternoon we've got a good deal of um information schedule for the afternoon and I want to just make a quick note on the changes in the agenda so everybody's on the same page we're going to uh continue with the Mobil discussion now so continue with the agenda is planned we'll go to the mo mobility discussion now um Marcus is going to kick us off and then Ed will go into the blueprint our local blueprint followed by panel discussion and then we'll go back to discussion Council discussion okay after that we will go back to our staff check-ins and continue with the digital divide small minority businesses arts and culture hire Charlotte and Workforce Development um I believe that the closed session will be moved to tomorrow is that right Marcus or you would keep it you're going to try to keep it today okay so we're scheduled right now to end the planned agenda at 5:00 today so again a lot of information to um cover and we appreciate the council um abiding by the working agreements we'll use these as our established protocols for the day so I remind you to keep your comments to two minutes and limit the side conversations and the uh use of Technology uh we are going to push for time just so we can get everything done so we're going to do that regardless of who's in your seats so um we will be careful to make sure that you have a break um at some point but we will begin the agenda now so Marcus do you want me to bring your mic markers from your oh you got one in front of you D Patrick do we have enough people to start in the room the meeting hasn't stopped it's still the same meting started let's go okay so um thank thank thank thank you mayor and members of council I'll be brief before I turn it over to Ed mckenny but what I'm trying to do is uh maybe establish what we're trying to accomplish today uh it it would be great to have a uh good conversation about Mobility that's been somewhat of a struggle over the past few years but I think we're going to bring it home today and put you in a in a very good position uh we talked a bit about what the city can do and what this by itself and with the city needs in terms of uh other partners whether it's uh the towns the county or um the the state the general assembly so while we'll talk about projects today the the backdrop is and we've been talking about resources over the course of the last couple days whether it's a property tax or sales tax But ultimately whatever the choice that uh it will be would help us fund the priorities that you you talk about um so when we talk about what can occur through the help of our partners like uh the towns the county and and Raleigh we're really talking about the cats 2030 plan which is which is a Transit plan it's dealing with buses and trains and um and Mobility hubs and things that nature let's call it buses and trains and uh with that we're going to need a lot of help also what you asked us to do do is what could we do for our residents and so that is really what um Ed will concentrate on today and that basically means that for whatever reason that there isn't the sales tax uh that goes through a referendum of things that nature then Charlotte has to think about how can it deal with its growth and its infrastructure needs so as Ed speaks today and you have a couple of handouts in front of you it's uh about uh a little bit over 2,000 projects and those are um roads and sidewalks and bike paths and Greenways and all the things that we've been talking about over the course of the the last day and a half and if that's something a course that the council chooses to take then you could use property tax to begin to build you know sidewalks and intersections and Greenways and bike pass we don't think that that is the best way to do it however it it is a path so instead of focusing on my ask as we go as um it goes through uh his setup instead of focusing on the resource side I would ask you to let's take a look at the projects let's take a look at how we can have these projects bundled how we can have these Strategic investment areas uh 16 of them something that would be new in terms of a discussion uh throughout the entire County and I I will say and and this is the only thing I'm going to steal from you is that we're ready we are more than ready to begin to advance these projects uh we believe that we're going to put together a process very similar to corridors of opportunity where we take a crosssection of our organization we work together to deliver projects better and faster than we have in the past so with that said uh no pressure ID I'll turn it over to you thank you thank you uh again Ed um uh Special Assistant to the city manager for Mobility um excited to kind of have the time with you today and uh very excited you're going to meet them shortly but we have this uh great panel of experts here uh this afternoon that are also going to be part of our discussion so we'll get that to that after I've gone through a little bit of an update for you sort of intentional to do the update for you and for the panel because in some ways I'm interested to get their take on the work that we're doing they've they they are doing as ambitious of the kinds of things that we're looking to do and so they've got a lot of experience in this world and uh be curious to get their peer rreview and sort to get a sense of what might we be missing uh opportunities that we should be looking at uh and just kind of give us a sense of are we going in the right direction as well so it'll be a good dialogue and hopefully you'll get a great chance to uh kind of talk back and forth with them as we go into the panel so as the manager mentioned and uh you've all got a copy of this this is sort of the latest version of our kind of summary of the work but it goes uh it's probably good to repeat about all the stuff we've given you so about a year ago we did a full update of you may recall about a year ago we did a full update of where we were this was sort of the first iteration of our work following the adoption of our strategic Mobility plan which was really part of the comprehensive plan so those things all flowed together and we've been taking that vision and and converting it into something we can Implement right turning it into projects we were back with you in August to kind of give you a sense of where these areas strategic areas were going how we were thinking about bundling the manager mention so I'll talk a little bit more about that um last but not least I know there's several of you that were we're very interested in the 2000 this is the this is the book of 2000 right this is all of the needs and opportunities that describe the breadth of everything that we have uh and it's a you'll see in a moment it's it's an it was a very important foundation for the work that we've done to help us think about how we would prioritize all of that work so it was an interesting question is the screen you have to turn to some not connecting to there we go um so I think council member Mitchell said something interesting yesterday which uh maybe speaks a little bit to what I want to talk about the question was um what is the city we're trying to create you know the question about what if we've got this bigger we've got all these things going on you've been talking about all these things over the last few days what does it add up to and so this is a attempt to sort of what does that mean from a Mobility perspective and the way I would describe it is really Mobility is in the service of opportunity and for us in a couple of your biggest uh initiatives and focus is really around simply put sort of Housing and jobs and where Mobility sits within that is connecting those two things together right our job from Mobility standpoint is to is to make that as seamless as possible to advance opportunity we can do that in a number of ways right it's providing more ways to move that's Transit that's roads that's bike that's pedestrian uh but we can also think about less time uh how do we reduce the time how do we reduce the distance how reduce the cost that's not just uh Transit it's not just bike it's you know certainly we've got congestion needs we I know we've talked about that a lot and part of our strategy is to look at ways that we are also thinking not really about all modes uh we can quantify that we can we can find strategies that work to that goal but the at the end of the day uh our job is to is to really serve that broader goal make Mobility easier make it cheaper uh make it more efficient for everyone and that's across the board whether you commute on Providence Road or whether you're taking the bus uh down down BTY for to get to a job so uh that's that's really the broader Vision uh for us we've talked about in our strategic Mobility plan it's about safe our vision zero everything we do has to start with that it's about being Equitable and that gets it to this notion of mode and choice and opportunity for ease of Mobility this little describes what the manager was just talking about but I think it's an important thing to continue to be clear about because um we are in many ways mixing some of our language around the Mobility plan and our Mobility plans we use Mobility plan interchangeable and so as the manager described you could sort of see think think about in three simple ways we've got our city uh plan our Mobility plan that I'm going to talk about more detail today you've got the larger Transit plan which covers all of the city all of the county and the towns within the county and then you've got the regional plan which is connect Beyond and so they're they're they're connected right they're interconnected the only way we're going to be successful is if all of those are successful in working together but I also would say to the manager point they're um they're not dependent meaning we can move we don't need to wait depending upon your decisions and your priorities and the plan that we put in front of you uh we're ready to go and all the things that we have in our plan are completely supportive of those other plans and in many ways there's things we can do faster or in the short term uh to prepare ourselves for these bigger Investments and so it's important that we sort of put it in that context so that we don't um uh we don't get muddled in the language of what our plan is relative to these bigger plans and you know last thing I would say about that is that's the green bar there is you you make the decisions on that you set the priorities you decide the funding absolutely these are plans there are we are part of a bigger decision-making process but number one this plan you're able to do uh today and you're able to prioritize and fund it um based on your priorities so um I want to talk a little bit about the process that we've been in um and and sort of describe the uniqueness of this and so again all of this flowed from a vision right which was this the comprehensive plan and our supporting strategic Mobility plan but we're doing something probably that we've never done before from an infrastructure planning standpoint and it was made possible really because of the comprehensive plan right we were able to start from ground zero to say okay now this is the adopted set of policies around the way we want to grow and then our question for Mobility samp is okay how do we shape uh our plan our vision and and our program for investment to support that larger Vision so it allowed us to sort of rethink uh a new sort of a fresh start as to how we might build a strategy around investment for Mobility based on the fundamentals of that plan so Vision that's where it started need which was this right so you have a vision but what what was you know what's on the around what are we trying to do what are our gaps uh what are the challenges where where are we hearing from the community what what our challenges are so that's important two as mentioned there's 2,000 uh there's there's it's it's a list that goes beyond our ability to fund right obviously and so the question now is how do we prioritize and how do we take that screen it down in a way that makes it impactful uh makes it Focus make it makes it something that we can Implement and execute so you can't if if you're trying to move on 2,000 things you're never going to move in a meaningful way and so the idea now and you've been talking about the last two days how do we how do we prioritize across the city how do we make sure we're being Equitable across the city so we did that and it was it was extremely datadriven and so we took our priorities we I think was mentioned earlier we took our high Injury Network right as a starting point we looked at where we had Street lighting gaps we looked at where we had sidewalk gaps so we looked at the needs uh but we also looked at sort of what are our aspirations where did we want where's our bike system going what's where are we trying to go with our bike system where is cats going with their bus priority system and the mobility hubs and the micr mobility strategy they have where are we going with growth and so we looked at where the where the policy map said centers are going to be we also looked at the data of census growth where in 20 40 years what where is population going to be regardless of our land use plan we know uh where that growth is going to go so we layered all of those things together and analyzed where were the heat M you know what what's the resulting heat map where do all of those things begin to align in meaningful ways which was a way to sort of focus us across the city with 2,000 needs it's like let's let's take the data take it let let it take us where it wants us to go and let that be the focus um across the city right it's sort of agnostic to to uh you know whether it's a political priority or Community priority we went where the data told us you could say there's U over 10,000 points of that so there's completely data driven and I'll mention as we go forward that gives us the foundation to measure success right so that data now is the way that we're going to use to track measure what we're improving and and what the impact of that so the foundation of this is really datadriven the strategies the Strategic areas right so that took us to these heat Maps we defined 16 areas is I wanted I would love if we had all sorts of time in the afternoon I would love to show you what all of those are I'm sure you're very interested in what those are we'll have we'll have plenty of time I'm sure the manager will find some time in the next in the next month or so for us to go to a deeper dive we've actually developed an online platform uh that has all of this data that will allow the community to move around see where those areas are zoom in see the projects understand the strategy so that's still in the works again that was something I would love to show you today but we don't have time and it's still it's still sort of in beta version uh but again the idea there is becomes a transparent way that we can communicate to the community and demonstrate the work that we're doing from a from a strategy standpoint then the question is impact so now we've got to pick the projects and find the things that are going to sort of move the needle and that's taking the 2 you know we've now gone from 2000 to these 16 strategy areas and now we're honing in on you know plus or minus about 100 what I would call called projects or bundles and so what we're doing is taking things that example Street lighting sidewalk Gap and pedestrian Crossing like we mapped all those things but where do they cross and how would we bundle a a project that is Street lighting that is fixing a sidewalk Gap that's connecting a pedestrian Crossing to a bus stop that's what the strategy is driven around is not let's pick and choose and prioritize across the city let's find where we can have the most impact bundling those projects in an executable kind of quick way um so that's that's the the broad view of this strategy data driven it's comprehensive it's it crosses our geography but it's specific one size does not fit all Far East is different than the West Side Steel Creek is different than Mard Creek B Ford is different than Nations Ford so the notion is that this strategy um area approach gives us the ability to be context specific it's really built on the success of of quarters of opportunity right the same attitude this sort of the same structure is to go into these areas understand the needs and tailor the the implementation the investment in a way that's specific uh to those specific geographies you end up with sort of using the language of of quarter of opportunity you end up with playbooks right each of these 16 areas are a series of playbooks with projects and then that allows us to be ready so we can do some of those things quickly we can partner with Federal opportunities like like corridors has done with the raise Grant uh we can we can partner with private developers I'll show you example of that in a second so the notion is that Playbook just like corridors gives us the ability to to be adaptable and quickly take advantage of our ability to partner for funding our ability to do small part projects in short term to build to a longer larger term Vision scalable the bundles talked a little bit about the idea that there's the sum um is brighter than just the pieces and the parts and again ready for execution and um advancement based on the the plays and the projects that we've laid out still not pointing it the right direction there we go so um let me demonstrate what I want to do is demonstrate this using an example the danger of using this example right is it's specific to certain part Charlotte and you some of you may wonder how does this apply to your part Charlotte so I'll describe that but I think it's a great example of how a strategic area could work around mobility and so this is Valentine right and you are familiar with uh the approval process that you went through about two years ago probably one of the biggest rezonings that the city went through maybe just smaller than River District but probably uh uh one of the biggest ones we went through uh huge partnership right re rethinking Balentine uh New Uses mix of uses intensity and at the same time what I would say was we built a Playbook with that which is really the entitlement process of the resoning so we spent a tremendous amount of time negotiating through the resoning analyzing all the impacts of that growth and development and came up with a series of projects right some of those projects are sort of described here on this on this graphic so blue line extension was part of the commitment preserving that Corridor was part of the commitment of that project so it sets up like I described it sets up for the long-term opportunity for Transit that allows us to to do things and uh implement it in the short term there's a new street again that's built holistic uh completely as part of the development of the plan uh that is capacity I'll describe that in a second that is building capacity intersection improvements the that intersection again was improved adding capacity uh I also mentioned and show you an example of how that capacity is added by at the same time providing for bicycle facilities and connection so my argument is you can do both in the right way so we we can improve and have a roads first uh approach where I would describe it as that's everything that's cars that's pedestrian that's bike that's Transit and so uh that's the you know the notion of kind of taking all those pieces and parts and working them together The Greenway that was a part of that plan right this Greenway connects into the cross Charlotte truck into the Four Mile Creek that gets you to South Charlotte so that one small piece of this project in the plan connected you to this huge system and it's just a small piece an implementable piece of what I would describe as a strategy area the Blue Line obviously connects you to other strategy areas you could see awood at the top Uptown ultimately that's connecting you to University City so the other part I want to describe here is we're focus in strategy areas in these projects but we're also have the larger view that says okay we we are also wanting to make sure that that investment is connecting to a larger system right and having the the benefit of Mobility across our city um so the point here is mobility tied with growth in this case a very specific approach in Balentine intense mixed use that approach is going to be different in University City it's going to be different in Steel Creek and the Far East but think about the strategy the same way it's just going to be scaled and designed that's in a context appropriate way to base on the uniqueness of one of those 16 areas let me show you um just to make a a couple of final points on the project so that's a road that's one of the New Roads uh that was part of it we partnered that was another good example of where there was partnership there's public and private dollars in there uh I think Tracy will correct me it was maybe around 35 million of public support that was more than doubled by private investment and so this is an example of that so that's a road it's roads first it's got bike Lanes on it it's got one of our best connections of pedestrian enhancement um it's a one of our best examples of a complete Street that's two lanes one lane in each Direction adding East West connectivity in South Charlotte where East West connectivity is one of the most important challenging parts of congestion and managing traffic in South in South Charlotte so two lanes it's just it's a small two LAN road but I can I can demonstrate and we can measure the impact of that in South Charlotte so it's an example of adding capacity and a roads first strategy but also doing everything else uh that is part of the vision of that place quick another example that's an intersection in Valen timee I just make the same point that's that's capacity all day long but you probably can't see the details that's one of an example of a number of intersections that we've been doing now where we've integrated completely the bicycle connectivity to make it sort of a one of the more advanced designs for incorporating bicycle Connections in in an intersection you got to do that in a very careful way uh to coordinate with traffic but that's capacity for all modes the way I would argue and it's measurable capacity for cars uh pedestrian ultimately Transit Etc I'll just the last one I'll just show is um I'm always having trouble with this anyone there you go I'll keep moving but that's the green way so just to make the point actually the one thing I did want to say about this is all of that that I just showed you happened in two years so we had a Playbook that the Playbook the resoning uh was done uh two years ago obviously public private support that's what made it happen the private side built this but with our public dollars and support all got implemented in two years that's example of with the Playbook with in the right situations public private support uh things can happen quickly last one more thing about this is let's talk about Equity so that had a an intense Playbook through the resoning and I'm familiar because I was sort of leading all the Transportation negotiation of that so we analyzed the heck out of that plan and came up with all sorts of projects we haven't spent that time and energy in Far East or in Steel Creek or in maler creek and so this strategy around these areas will allow us to do that kind of thinking and that we've done in Balentine but in the areas that our analysis our data took us to so this gives us the platform uh to think about and have the same kind of energy equitably across the city and come up with a game plan that's specific to every part of our city and so we can't continue to do this with with this this strategy by just going where growth is going right and just doing it episodically when these kinds of projects come on we have to have a strategy that cuts across the whole community and thinks about these things holistically from a Mobility standpoint just to wrap it up I'm pointing there we go um put all this kind of uh put it all together for a moment and just sort of give you the bigger picture and kind of lead to the conversation we have over the last day or two around funding so strategic areas specific areas across the city from those areas we Define these kind of project bundles and now the bundles have to be funded and so the question now is we've got a game plan we put these bundles together but as Ryan described yesterday with if if we just stayed in the capacity we have for our bond program now we can't do any of this right we would continue with the programs we would continue with the named projects some of which are very big the notion of these bundles gives us the flexibility uh to do big and small projects um but we need more funding and another little subtle thing about that graph is more funding for these bundles also gives us the ability to maybe think about based on your priorities more funding for some of the other programs so we still do the other programs right we would still have a sidewalk program uh that would still look at the gaps across but we would have this this strategy um Playbook uh approach that would allow us to still focus and have investment in those areas uh while still doing the programmatic things and so a lot of a lot of priority conversations you'll ultimately have about how that funding works but the point being this strategy uh doesn't do us any good without more funding um and we need to think about about it and we're ready essentially as the manager said uh we're going to have this platform set up online we're ultimately going to use that as the foundation uh for the conversations and the community area plan processes coming up so these areas Monica described that earlier uh that that becomes uh this work becomes the foundation of a community conversation we'll have to confirm where we're going prioritize this investment and make sure it's tied to uh the vision and the growth of all these community area plans and and tied to the communities desires and intent for growth uh throughout the community I think that was wish these slides move faster you the mandra gave me the ability to do all these slides but he did he didn't anticipate it was going to take this long to move from each one so that that's the last slide just to again wrap up um to kind of give you a summary of of what I've been talking about we have a plan the process today in the beginning and all the way through implementation tracking measuring is data driven uh it is bold and it's we're going to need a significant amount of funding to do it uh but it's also scalable so that we can do things quickly get stuff on the ground quickly uh we got to have a mix of both big and small projects to prove like somebody said it earlier like if we're not doing things if we're not building a sidewalk at a bus station and see people see that day after day they're wondering what we're doing this strategy gives us the ability to have that impact quickly uh where people see it it's multimodal roads you can call it roads first but roads are there uh it's integrated it's in it's seamless we're not we're not prioritizing one or the other we've got a game plan that works across and it's building to the longer vision for Rail and bus I mentioned already it's measurable we we'll be able to kind of Define metrics that you all can and help us um shape and make sure that we're we're accountable to this work obviously it's interconnected to these bigger plans we don't need to wait uh and we're ready essentially ready to go with with um the funding conversations that you're going to have over the next you know next few months and certainly the longer term vision and question around sales tax and bigger funding I'll stop there I don't know how long I was read a bit quick one thing add before you go to Next Step so um I I would like to just throw a couple numbers out so you'll understand let's say the magnitude so as we've talked about the sales tax so I want to just clear up some things the sales tax has never been 100% Transit it has always had a transportation component to it the roads the bike paths the um Mobility hubs what have you whether it was 10% 20% 5050 so I just want to make sure that no one leaves here today believing that when we began the discussion with the one sales tax it was only for trains and buses okay I will tell you that whatever you do whatever this community does uh if you did a 1 cent sales tax it would be worth about $345 million in year one and I believe Ryan that's based on July 2025 okay good um and that based on the sales tax and the growth in that pretty conservative that's worth about $10.3 billion over 20 years okay however you decide to allocate it however it can get on the books um whether it's approved things of that nature but again that's something that's bigger than city council I also will say is I'll say it again is that the projects that you have and the 2030 Transit plan from NTC MTC is a part of connect Eng if you were to look at just the CIP and something that you could do on your own as Ryan talked about yesterday one penny on the property tax is worth $21 million okay so that's kind of the the scale right and and no means with Charlotte get everything that's related to the one cent sales tax um and you do know that the one cent sales tax is paid by people that actually don't live in Charlotte versus the property tax is 100% born by the Charlotte so I just wanted to do that as a backdrop it's not getting into the the process I think there are a bunch of sub subject matter experts are going to talk about their processes and how things happen but that was just a little bit on the revenue side versus some of the projects so what I'll do is I don't want to let's do a transition because I want to get to our panel so maybe I'll have our panel come up uh now and I'll I'll introduce and sort of transition to that conversation but as we do that maybe it's a good again a good time to maybe get some initial action from you uh to maybe warm up the conversation for our panelists uh I'll I'll introduce them we go into the uh hopefully we'll be informed dialogue with our our our experts here for the afternoon Ed we do have some questions from the floor so we'll recognize uh council member Mayfield asir and then Driggs and then we'll cut there and move to panel I'll remind you to please put keep your time to two minutes thank you it great presentation I'm not going to make you try to go back through the slide but question for you you said it took about we were able to see Valentine reimagine come out the ground in about two years how long did the strategy PlayBook take um the strategy look and let me clarify that strategy was essentially the resoning and so that took uh what it probably took a year and a half or two you as the developer it probably took 10 but so let me rephrase it we looking at like you said connection probably possibly iar Mallet still crate out by White Water how what do you imagine those individual playbooks looking looking like to make sure that it's supportive of what's in that community so great yeah great question tie back to this idea of the planning that's going on with the community area plan process so we've done a tremendous amount of work as I said we got this online platform that got that has the projects sort of already in place and what we now want to do so that's the great Foundation to go out to the community and say let's let's connect it to where the planning conversation is going where growth is going the community area the whole intent of the community area plan process but we'll have this as a foundation to test like here's the analysis that we did here's what we think the needs and opportunities are let's test that in a full conversation that's not just a Mobility conversation right it's a land use development growth conversation much like uh corridors right we we shouldn't and can't talk about mobility and isolation right needs to be around the community and so yes and and each of those then get informed by the unique characteristics and and nature of each community and part two the sidewalk transition slot which was beautiful going from the bike lane to the sidewalk and cutting back around is that the plan for where we throughout the city where we have bike lanes that have created to now look at how we transition to that sidewalk well absolutely yes and so that was you caught some good detail there quickly so um that's an example we've been doing that already we already have some good examples as we're uh retrofitting and converting some of our existing intersections um on our on our bike system map and so we're still scratching the surface of that but that's that's these folks will tell us a little bit about what they're doing but that is the next that is the next iteration of being a bike pedestrian friendly community and the design of intersections uh to make to make all of those things work in a safe way so Ed sorry how how is this plan different from what we had seen last year what I what we presented to you last year yes this is the same plan we've just spent the last year doing all of the sort of analysis project identification this kind of focus work so we've been there's been a lot of stuff we've been doing behind the scenes but this this is essentially the next iteration of the work we've been doing since we when since we talked to you last year so in terms of the allocation from allocation between railroads that hasn't changed it it still stays the same uh I would like to know how would this how would this work really um in the university area where we got uh connection really sidewalks to the Blue Line extens Blue Line uh street lights bike Lanes um and sidewalks uh I I think envisioning that would really help um this all looks great in terms of the plan but I think the bigger problem we have is the the funding uh and how how do we address that and um Mr Jones gave us some numbers here but certainly based on that property tax is out of question um so really the conversation begins here about sales tax and how do we get that um so I we we do need to discuss the strategy around how we get to sell STX ask successfully and I think that's what's missing counil member we have about 45 minutes after the panel discussion for coun discussion around some of the on funding okay well specifically whatever you want to talk about during that time but yeah I I think at some point let's allocate some time on discussing how do we go about funding ask successfully we need to develop a strategy uh behind that and as the chair of the intergovernmental relations budget and governance committee I think this could be part of commit discussion but I think at some point we do need to discuss that as a committee and then have a specific committee charge um because I think the plans are great but um certainly I think we need funding to implement them thanks thank you DRS thank you uh first of all as chairman of the transportation planning committee I want to welcome our guests uh really look forward to hearing from you interested in the experience of your respective cities because we have studied them uh Ed uh your reputation as a planner is welld deserved uh Sterling uh very good work um I think a lot of us are trying to figure out how we Implement right which gets back to a money question but it also raises other questions and we don't have time certainly in two minutes I don't have time um you know infilled sidewalks things like that like what does the city do while private investment is going on uh in order to bring together the private pieces and the public pieces right and that's something that will require funding as well um I did want to mention I thought it was clever highlighting Valentine to preempt any attempt on my part to complain that we weren't getting any investment I think I think we I think we actually did talk about that didn't we and uh however I will point out that investment took place in support of a billion and5 dollar of private investment 6,000 jobs 2 acres of land for affordable housing and uh my recollection is it was $42 million of public money being 25 of TIG and 17 of CIP versus some 60 to 70 of private so when you get a deal like that you take it all the time wherever it happens right but you're not going to so then you get back to the question of how we allocate to the geographies if you don't have all of those uh incentives um another thing is you said they're they're not interdependent if we are counting on sales tax there is a certain Independence we have got to present a unified Regional plan to the state legislature and the FEDS in order to qualify to get the permission to run the referendum and to qualify for the 40% of the funding of our plan that is still assumed to be coming from federal sources so I will mention that quick question for you uh it says here 80 miles of New Street connections doesn't actually specify how many miles of sidewalk but is that lane miles or is that street miles that's um that's got to be Street miles okay so how many miles of streets are there in the city of Charlotte in total oh Debbie we have to correct me how many about 5 L Street miles 5,000 L Lane miles uh 5,000 Lane miles so divide by some number to get an estimate but it's a couple of thousand Street miles m point point is 80 miles is a drop in the bucket compared to the growth that we are expecting and I'm still concerned that we are underinvestigated take to keep up with growth going to the future but uh uh that's all I have now it's otherwise it's it's endless but and really good work do appreciate it thank you thank you two two real quick responses to that the the drop in the bucket of the of the new Street miles yes but as described in that Valentine example that that road is uh it's probably 3/4 of a mile that new road again I can demonstrate that's East West capacity in a growing Activity Center it may sound like a small piece of infrastructure but has a huge huge benefit for connectivity access capacity so and most of those 80 miles you described are in those kinds of places right we've part of our planning has been anticipating where areas are going to grow and so yes I mean in in respect to the the sheer number of our Network it sounds small but it's it's where growth is going and those will have important capacity impacts and the last thing about balance 40 million of you know public investment with that private growth yes but again every area is different I I guarantee you like corridors we can have great impact for 5 million in the right areas with the right strategy so uh Valentine was risky using as example because it's huge and we did a lot of investment but it we can scale that and we can have impact if our strategy is focused and community driv no other questions oh good okay so finally uh so I we I really gr feel hugely grateful to have these three folks here you can see from above I'm not going to go into their full resumés but these are serious people I was nervous bringing them here to sort of be in front of this conversation uh yeah yeah we had we had some very interesting uh activity yesterday uh with Council um so it's a this is a great opportunity to get some really good feedback couple things you kind of see it on that slide uh they're coming from Big places doing big things so there these are cities that at least our size if not bigger uh these are folks that are leading the executive folks that are leading the infrastructure planning and implementation in those cities they they understand this uh as well and I think probably better than we have given the scale they're they're doing things that if we did what I just described we would be doing what many of them already are doing so they they'll give us a sense of where the Lessons Learned are and and how to approach this last thing I'll say is I've got these folks that come with what two or so weeks notice it's just it's incredible to me in the sort of national city transportation officials world how there's a bond and if you got a question or a need folks like this will will sort of drop their schedule and come so there's a you'll see this from the passion that they have uh to want to share their work and their thoughts and so again I just can't thank you all enough for being here uh we'll have a little bit of time this afternoon they're going to be here this evening so if need be the conversation can kind of continue into the evening to kind of get to know them a little bit better um again I'll just kind of quickly and I'll let them sort of talk a little bit more about themselves but UL kleckley from Miami dve County he's the uh CE o of their Department of Transportation and um Public Works they do roads and Transit they do everything and so he'll he'll give that perspective how that works at that scale uh Greer Johnson Gillis Jacksonville same scale she leads the infrastructure um uh the chief INF infrastructure and development officer for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority that's the countywide do Val County coverage they do Transit and transportations so they she talk about that connection and understands uh all that interconnection between all of those modes and then lastly Adam fips who most recently was the CEO of the Denver Department of Transportation infrastructure again everything these are these are huge departments doing major investment uh again across all modes all of these folks have really extreme experience in kind of how to implement the projects that the kind of projects and ambition that we have here today so I'll let them talk a little bit more themselves as we get into the conversation I don't want to spend a lot of time on on bios and rums because you'll see their experience as we get into it I think what I'll do is pose really the first question to the to the three of you to describe each of you have been leading or are leading major infrastructure programs um around multimodal investment with big funding local funding in lots of different ways so I think we're going to be interested to hear how does that funding work tell tell us about the scale of it tell us about the connection between all these modes there's a lot of other interesting things about uh Workforce Economic Development things like that but let's start by just painting the picture for uh what your programs are how they might relate to what we're doing and um uh just share with your some of your perspectives so I'll start with you Adam and talk about uh maybe Elevate Denver in the big big Bond program yeah certainly um and first I just want to say a quick thank you to everybody for uh for having myself from my colleagues up here today um if they were singing yesterday I'm glad I am here today you would not be inviting me back if I was here to sing uh for you all um the other thing that I just want to mention real quickly um is just a little bit of a shout out for you I hadn't had the chance um to see this strategic plan um until this presentation today and what I can tell you is uh this is what good looks like um and most cities in the US don't have this type of strategic document and so when you think about the Cadence of increasing delivery of infrastructure having an intentional plan that has metrics that has kpis that has accountability in it is that Foundation component and um Ed I only got to see the you know two or three slides and uh hear you for 20 minutes to talk about it but just want to kind of reassure everyone in this room that uh that is a wise place to start and certainly that necessary foundational component I I didn't pay you to say that that's true that is true uh but really a well a well done job there um second I want to congratulate all of you uh for having a growing city um you know if there's one thing that I've learned through my experience um in local government is that there's really only two directions for a city to go and that is to expand um or to shrink um and shrinkage uh creates a lot more challenge socially economically on uh uh constituency than growing does but that doesn't mean that growing doesn't create a challenge and really I think that Bridges the conversation into uh that Mobility that transportation that infrastructure um uh investment really so um to talk a little bit about uh what's been happening in Denver um I joined the City and County of Denver in 2016 uh really with the purpose of of twofold one was uh to expand the capital funding opportunities that the city had again a growing city that had Mobility needs that had disparity across the different modes that had congestion issues um a city that needed more funding uh but also uh to put into place programs and an implementation strategy that demonstrated that we are good stewards to that public tax dollar and that we have the ability to scale up and make that uh investment uh so not only get the money but spend the money as well and I always joke that uh there are few things in government harder than to spend money quickly uh when you have a specific purpose to spend that money on um so in 2016 Denver's 5-year Capital program uh was just about $600 million um I think similar to the city of Charlotte uh we do do a regular Cadence of property tax bonds uh for us that Cadence is every 10 years it sounds like that's uh a bit more often maybe every two years uh for the city of Charlotte uh but typically what we had seen was Bond packages that ranged between two 3400 uh million do um and the administration had the desire um to to Really increase that um in 2016 we were at that 5600 Mill million doll Mark uh I just left the the City and County of Denver two weeks ago um our 5-year Capital plan right now is $5.2 billion and so we scaled up by approximately a factor of 10 uh but really what I think is a testament not only to uh the governance side and the elected body to get us that funding uh but the Department of Transportation and infrastructure has been able to maintain an ontime on budget delivery uh of above 94% for both of those metrics and so not only did we increase the funding by a factor of 10 but we also increased our implementation uh accordingly so that we could get that work done um two things that I think I want to just kind of add to that that I think draws a strong Nexus to some of the discussion we just had here was um what we've really done in Denver which I think is certainly an opportunity uh for the city of Charlotte right now is leveraging uh OPM as we call it right other people's money and whether that is a private investment you can certainly leverage that from a development standpoint uh when you're a growing city uh but there's also an opportunity that exists today uh that I haven't heard mentioned yet that didn't exist when we started to do this in Denver uh and that's the bipartisan infrastructure law and I I'll share one thing with that and I'll I'll hand the conversation on um but every Federal investment in infrastructure in the history of United States has had one thing in common and that is that the subsequent uh availability of funding has been increased even when index to inflation over what the previous package was and when you look at the $1.2 trillion in the bipartisan infrastructure law certainly greater than the American uh the Raa funding that came in in 2009 2010 time frame um even when adjusted for inflation and so that's the one thing that's in common the one thing that makes the bipartisan infrastructure law different than any other Federal funding is that cities and counties are eligible recipients no federal funding opportunity at this scale had ever been a direct opportunity for cities and counties and I can certainly say that that's something all three of us are are are trying to leverage and take full advantage of and so as you have these conversations about uh is property tax and kind of a more locally controlled Capital Revenue Source a possibility um versus a sales tax that might have a slightly different governance model require that state legislator participation uh do know that these are all funding sources that are eligible to act as local match for pursuing that by partisan infrastructure law and most cities across the US are not in a position where they're prepared to accept those dollars deliver on those dollars and be able to meet those federal spending commitments and so certainly one thing I would advise as we uh kind of further the conversation today is strategic plan is step one uh step two is really developing a delivery mechanism a delivery program such that you can be competitive in pursuing those federal dollars and I don't want to get into the world of of of a campaign here but I suspect if sales tax were to be something that uh this body uh this collection of bodies ultimately wanted to pursue that's much more attractive to voters when it comes with you know a similar size dollar commitment from the federal government and thinking about that with intention as you go into it is really I think an opportunity uh that everybody should be aware of uh but excited to be here excited to take your questions and with that I'll turn it over to Greer all right thank you thank you Adam and I I first let me start off by thanking you all for having us Madam mayor Mr Jones and really everyone on the city counil thank you for allowing us to be here today um my name is grea Johnson Gillis I am the senior vice president and chief infrastructure and development officer at the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and with that role I oversee all of the Capitol program development for our agency in collaboration with the city of Jacksonville and the Florida Department of Transportation um but I'm also responsible for delivery of our autonomous vehicle program our ultimate Urban circulator um it's really an infrastructure program the way we look at it but we're bringing Innovation and Technology to our city I want to start off by starting with where Adam actually left off with the iig ja and how much of a game Cher that is we saw that in Jacksonville to be a game Cher as well because the way the JTA has always operated was we receive our operation operating funds our revenues from state and local forces factors but we also receive significant funds from federal discretionary grants especially to deliver our Capital program and so when we saw the iig come out for the same reasons that Adam mentioned we thought this was game changer for us to be a part of but then we also realiz as the Transit Agency for northeast Florida whereas previously we would always go after these grants ourselves for this one and the competitive nature of them we had to partner with the city we had to partner with the state we also had to partner with the community in terms of nonprofits and many of the community organizations um we've partnered with those who advocate for affordable housing we partner with those who are advocating for Workforce Development and we package our grant applications such that we all are on the application together and I just wanted to mention that point because of everything that Ed showed with regards to your strategic Mobility plan everything you're doing has reads partnership in it and so those Partnerships are so important especially if you're going to consider those large scale monies and of course whereas we are all competing for them we are up here advocating for you to do that but let me also step back because I heard a lot of similarities to what you all are doing to what we are doing in Jacksonville I heard the word seamless providing those some seamless options for everyone getting from point A to pointb multimodal we're looking at it the same way we're not just the bus company we do um bus Rapid Transit we do a ferry we do Paratransit Services we do on demand Services uh competing with your lifts and your Ubers and if you will uh besides the autonomous vehicle program we're also looking at um commuter rail yeah we're looking at commuter rail to solve some of the congestion problems we're car Centric environment in Jacksonville lots of Highways thanks to our department of transportation and one of the things we find every every year is that there's a lot of construction on our interstates so one way to get around that for the future is commu a rails so we're looking at that and we're looking at a variety of different options and modes because we think that seamless Mobility is really the nature of this getting from point A to point B we too did a strategic plan we call it move move 2027 and one of the things we did with that plan was that we went out to the community we went out to the elected officials we went out to the nonprofits and we asked them what do you want the JTA to be when they grow up and they said we need you the businesses said we need you to help our employees get to our jobs they can't get there the nonprofit said we need you to help people get to where they need to go the community basically said you need to not just go everywhere within the county and our county is 800 square miles we need you to hit the other counties as well because a lot of people who work in the city live elsewhere so we are facing some of the same things you are facing as well and for us the capital program the infrastructure we put in is important so it's those complete streets that we partner with the city and the state to build to make sure that our buses can get from point A to point B but it's also looking at the different types of modes that we can provide to help people that have options and innovatively whether it's on their app even if they're using cash app uh or even if they come and get a star card from us how do they get from point A to point B so wanted to give you a contact so what we have in Jacksonville some of the similarities that you have and look forward to the dialogue today thank you all right very good can you hear me all right very good so Ed thank you for the uh invitation to come today and Madame mayor and city manager and members of council it's always good to get in this uh part of the country um just as a quick plug I went to North Carolina an uh so I had the opportunity to go back and visit campus again so we going show you some agie right thank you very much I appreciate that um so uh as my colleagues has said there there's a uh really I I think an acknowledgement that needs to go out to each and every one of you for taking the time to actually step back and strategize around how are you going to invest with regards to your infrastructure pertaining to mobility and transportation I can tell you this does not happen everywhere so so you should quite frankly um I'm sure there was uh intense Fellowship uh this morning and throughout the the rest of the days but this is something that at the end of the day will put you in a better position to be on the same page with respect to how you need to move forward um uh just a little bit uh about Miami and I used to work in Denver in fact and and and we used to work together back in DC so so we have a collective group here but in Miami um we we are in the same position as many of these other uh cities so so if I were to have to sing a song today it would be Michael Jackson You're Not Alone because every single last no I I said if I had to so everybody's in the same boat and if you are in a burgeoning um growing city you're going to have these infrastructure challenges so just understand that's that's what it is uh in this country everybody is overly relying on their on their vehicle single occupancy vehicles um I think on average is about 70% of folks in how they travel is by themselves in a car uh the responsibility as Transportation professionals and leaders in this industry industry is to figure out ways to have a more balanced transportation system uh that means providing options it's not saying one option is better than another um it is saying that there shouldn't be one option that's prevalent and dominant over another so it's balance um and I say all the time in Miami we have 2.8 million residents we have 2.8 million commuters and 2.8 million different types of commutes and so each one of them is important we need to figure out a way to have our transportation system and service to be to provide those um types of options for folks so just a couple of things I would say is that um in order to be successful we always run into first the projects always about the projects however before you start talking about projects or Services uh it's important to have local consensus and strong leadership in place I it doesn't you can have the greatest plans uh that you want you can have the greatest ideas if if you're not collecting I ly aligned from a leadership standpoint across all branches of government as well as Department leadership uh and sister agencies uh that are in a respective area you will always have friction so so in Miami we're in a special case where I work for the county there's 34 cities within the county so we have to work with all of them to figure out ways that we can leverage our current funding source as well as where we're going in the future to move Miami forward uh we have a accy commission we have our our current Administration and we have I think the department leadership in place now to really advance and deliver on on what is expected of us and so I'll go right into the funding because I know that's that's important and I think this very appropriate for this discussion around sales tax and what has transpired in Miami back in 2002 there was a short tax that was passed a half penny sear tax and uh in the State of Florida um municipalities and counties and the like or allowed and have the authorization to put up to a 1% sales tax on a ballot referendum that the voters were to approve um after several failed attempts back in the 90s um it was decided upon to go with a half cent sales tax that came with caveats the sales tax passed in 2002 but what ended up happening is that it got diluted by a couple of different ways one is that 23% of what gets collected out of the CeX which is around $350 million a year goes directly to municipalities so for example the city of Miami is the largest city inside the county it's about 400,000 uh 450,000 people they they are taking away from the ctax where otherwise would have gone to Transit the ctax was specifically to go to expand our transit system as a part of the deal to get the the ballot um approved uh the referendum approved uh there are no expectations of and requirements for the municipality to spend their portion of the ctax which means that a transit ctax or is going to go to expand the system now we have 23% that's going to roadways sidewalks and whatever the municipality wants to decide um fast forward now 20 years later what has happened in that period of time is that You' you've only Built we've only have built half a mile of rail to extend for our existing system at the time to the airport we have a 10 billion dollar uh Capital program that's focused on Transit expansion and in 20 22 years we've been half a mile now currently we actually now are are building out our first ever uh bus rer transit system it's a 20 mile All Battery electric operated system with 14 iconic uh brt stations $368 million project uh we partnered with other people's money uh from the Florida Department of Transportation and the federal government we will be uh substantially complete in 2024 and Revenue Service in 2025 we are expanding and actually creating the first ever Community rail uh service that's connecting downtown Miami to Aventure which is kind of on the border of BR and Miami dat uh it's about 9 9.8 miles $620 or so million dollar project uh and is utilizing the existing Inner City rail tracks that currently bright line service runs on uh at this point in time we have a variety of different other projects we have we have four other corridors that we are working on to actually Implement and deliver these projects it took 22 years to get here and the reason why is because there wasn't local consensus it wasn't a financial commitment and there wasn't a product delivery capacity you need those two things to be able to do anything that you're talking about today the last thing I'll just mention is that the other restriction on the CAG due to the fact that the general public did not feel confident in the ability for the county to be able to deliver on these Transit type projects is that they implemented a a oversight board called the citizens uh Transportation trust I would encourage you to not do that uh you you hire people that know what they're doing and have the expertise allow them to actually deliver on those projects when you start add additional oversight which on his face may have been a good idea but in practicality it creates a concern with how you implement and just more angst and controversy when it's not needed so I I I would encourage you as you as you start to talk about well local funding sources to set everything upright try to get as much as you can try to allow the funding source to be as flexible as possible um if you have a list of projects that make it clear that that's what the uh uh the the ask is of the voters and then figure out ways that you have systems in place to actually go and Implement that will help you out for the next round of funding or any other Revenue raise that you need to have Let's uh so let's stay on the funding theme for a moment um and let's let's uh let's let's pretend for the moment that we got the sales tax we we got some other funding and we're spending billions of dollars talk there's some interesting things maybe we'll start with you guer there's there's also an attitude about that spending that is a uh an economic development business local business small business minority business it's a program right we're if you're if we're a public agency spending billions of dollars we should be thinking about it in that light as well and I think you all are doing very interesting things I want to start with you g because you had this talk about jobs for Jacks I would love to thank you for that um so in Jacksonville um at the time in 2020 uh we had a a a city council and a mayor who were really not interested in doing the sales tax um even though that is the option in Florida but Florida also has the option that you could tax gas and the local option sales gas tax so according to Florida statute you can actually tax up to 12 cents on every gallon and that G and that funding would go strictly to Transportation infrastructure improvements um in Jacksonville Duval County we are combined City and County uh we had only taxed up to 6% and that 6% was split between the city of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority so in 20120 we actually together Lobby city council to ex to not only in increased the number increased the cost from 6 cents to 12 cents but expanded for 30 years extended for 30 years it was already in place less extended for another 30 years and it passed because it passed on those things that you mentioned ated city council directed the city of Jacksonville and the JTA if you do this it goes to Transportation infrastructure in the county you have to spend 25% for local and small businesses in the county you you're you not a goal it needs to come back and you need to give it to County businesses local and small businesses those who are certified with the city of Jacksonville to be able to work on these projects you and we want you to make sure that you hire residents in the county to work on these jobs you need to come up with the Workforce Development plan and make sure that residents are working on the jobs and just to ensure that you are doing this we're going to hold you accountable we want you to have a website we want you to put on your website your numbers how much money have you collected from the local auction gas tax how much have you spent how much of it has gone to those local and small businesses how many jobs have you new jobs have you created and they were very intentional don't just say you hired somebody and they're working on the job an FTE but you're actually hiring from the county and they're working on your job and so we that those are the metrics that are placed on us and so what we did and answered to your question Ed was we came up with a Workforce Development plan and we thought that we would develop this ourselves we would put together the Workforce Development plan and then tell the community this is it and then we went out to the stakeholders all the nonprofits who are in the Workforce Development business and they said we could do this for you there's no need for you to reinvent the wheel so we partnered with them and how we did this was we actually attained grant funding we provide that to the those Partners so that they can start the training as we work on the projects we also said in and what we've done in all of our solicitations we put in a a clause that we will evaluate Professional Services for design contractors for construction projects and we said Workforce Development you need to hire these many people and you need to partner with these a these nonprofit agencies for this and we didn't just make those numbers up we actually commissioned a study with our local University in North Florida to tell us how many jobs can we anticipate and and that has been a game Cher for us because it was that one thing that brought that consensus usus talked about for the city council for the businesses for everyone in the community to be able to say we are willing to do this local option gas tax for the next 30 Years in order to see these Investments be realized but we also can see the benefits um to the community not only helping small businesses to become Primes and work on projects but helping residents who are underemployed or unemployed get opportunity I think you maybe Adam you must be doing similar or have done similar things in Denver yeah uh certainly um in fact Let me let me highlight a little bit of uh what we're doing in the small business space because I think that's important as well um not only did we see this expansive growth of our Capital program but we uh we have both small business and minority and women-owned business business uh utilization goals and requirements on each one of our projects um and it's been a really effective way to grow business to grow jobs in Denver um when we expanded um this um Capital funding source and this Capital implementation we also as a department were able to Triple the percentage that went to small business and so uh when you think about that we increased our Capital program by a factor of 10 but we not only scaled the small business utilization at that same rate but we tripled it on top of that and so really what that did was it it contributed to a thriving small minority diverse business Community but also added to our Workforce challenges um right that connectivity to the community that Workforce availability wasn't what we needed to do and so we were actually uh you know I hate to admit it but on the lagging side of the workforce component and just in fact recently in the last 6 months formally adopted an ordinance that now requires it in all of our capital projects but what I can say is uh when we first piloted it about 3 years ago uh we didn't know what the targets should be we didn't know what good look like uh for our community and the workforce needs uh similar to Mr cley's Point around 2.8 million different people two 2.8 million different commutes right every individual in your community uh has a different Workforce need right um and so we had to kind of do a little bit of shooting in the dark on what what should we expect um and we we set ourselves a stretch goal and so what we said was we wanted 15% of all labor hours on any city and county at Denver infrastructure project to be a Workforce Development hour that was either somebody that was new in the trades it was either somebody that was doing a career shift uh somebody that was uh maybe Justice involved at one point somebody that may have experienced homelessness at one point we created a whole bunch of different categories and said cumulatively 15% of our project laor needs to come from this uh in an effort to be transparent I think that's a a Cornerstone of good government uh in our vertical construction projects that wasn't a problem we hit 15% in our transportation in our Mobility space uh has been more of a challenge right and and we're okay with that U because what it says is we need to continue to be Innovative we need to continue to look at alternative ways to do this uh but one thing that we have found to be extremely beneficial and this uh and may maybe be a good transition point in the conversation as well um is how you deliver projects will greatly influence how you can be uh effective in this Workforce and small business space and if we continue to have tried to deliver projects in a traditional design bid build type of capacity we would have never been able to do it and so when we shifted how we look at selecting work uh and contractors vendors to work with uh and when we shifted what our our risk tolerance was as a city for delivering Capital infrastructure is when we could start to thread in some of our values around small business around Workforce and do so in a successful way and so I just want to make sure that we keep that conversation I think to the benefit of of all of you uh very tied as as it relates to both funding opportunity and also an openness and embracing of uh new approaches to how you're going to deliver this funding once it's once it's in hand so you just you just opened box I don't think we're going to be able to close so but but for your context that that's been very timely for a conversation counil has had maybe take that Ulus and talk what you're doing in Miami build upon this kind of notion of project delivery questions I sure are in people's minds is all the stuff you just describe that sounds like it costs more that sounds like um you know there is no Workforce how do you do like there's challenges to that so maybe let's talk about some of the challenges and and what that looks like in Miami yeah yeah there there are definitely challenges in the industry around infrastructure just to have the uh number of experienced people to be able to just perform the work and we're experiencing that in South Florida where I've talked about just my my projects that I have but we also have to contend with the Florida Department of Transportation and their District uh we have partner agencies that have major Capital programs as well so what ends up Happ happening uh is that you have a resource strain in a specific region if you're not all intertwined and you're not figuring out ways to deliver projects the best way you can so fundamentally you may not have enough people to do the work that you want to do right and so so that's a real thing for the contract and Consulting Community but also for for staff to have to manage the projects so it so it is a concern um and and for and to go back on what we're doing in Miami with respect to small business and minority businesses and have to be careful with how we say this but the there is a focus on a capital program over the next five years which is roughly 7.9 billion do worth of infrastructure projects to commit 20% to small minority owned businesses that's a that's a goal from the county uh irrespective of other forces around that around that topic um and the reason why I'm saying that is that you have to be intentional with it you you cannot expect to um have a a a stretch go and I remember in Denver like the the lead leadership from the mayor all the way down to our leadership in the department we forced ourselves to make sure we uh appropriately identified the best project delivery strategies uh to be able to help meet that meet that goal and that's a intentional thing that you have to do I would say that for uh the way for looking at project delivery there's a couple ways that you can look at it and you use the term bundling of projects before for as a part of the plan that sometimes can be a improper approach to how you go out and procure services from a designed or construction standpoint um but you have to monitor that because uh depending on whether or not your your your design build or design build and the like you might inadvertently squeeze out those smaller minority owned businesses taking that approach um inversely um there might be bigger projects that that might be higher dollar value and if you want to build capacity within small minority owned businesses unbundling a certain task within a project might be the option that you would want to take to be able to get there so you just you really have to take the time to evaluate uh those options and figure out what the best approach is um the way in which uh I know we did this in Denver and we're doing it now here in in in Miami is uh it's this all starts in the planning phase of your Capital program and in the process that you have to implement to understand the Project Life Cycle development of a project is important it's something we Adam how long did it take for us to get get that in place it it it it this is embarrassing to admit it took us almost three years to get from uh shifting how we thought about project delivery to a uh a process uh a practice a manual uh that was repeatable um in a quality fashion right to get there so so outside of the project that you identify the process by which you want to deliver the project is on a individual project basis so setting up that process where you have the right amount of rigor and you understand what the best uh strategy would be to deliver that Project based on the goals that you want is is is critical in this as well and so you know so I I just as background I used to be in Denver I used to run the Denver Department of Transportation infrastructure Adam uh was our Deputy City engineer he got promoted to city engineer and then when I left he took over that role and I went to Miami so and now he left so big footsteps Ed can I add one piece on Workforce that I think just puts us into context um this is a major problem in infrastructure um if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics the workforce within the United States that is in infrastructure job categories is about 17 million people that's everything from the trades that's everything from a labor standpoint that's everything from a traditional engineer project manager architecture standpoint as well so 17 million is our Workforce today that Workforce is reducing at a rate of about 1.7 million people a year so 10% is leaving the workforce and we're only graduating um folks into this at a 340,000 person per year rate so if you look at a simple linear extrapolation of that data we're about 12 years away as the United States not having a Workforce in infrastructure which means our traffic signals aren't going to work our water treatment's not going to work our our wastewater treatment is going to be in issue this is a serious problem and so when we talk about Workforce and I think you've heard you know all three of us really emphasize how that has been such a big component of our Capital delivery program it also needs to start very early and so what you do today in your you know primary schools in your secondary schools in uh community colleges um that is a pipeline for that Workforce tomorrow as well and when we speak to different uh approaches and different ways that we think about project delivery those requirements that type of um uh decisions today will ensure that sustainability that viability the community in the future as well and so just know that that is certainly a challenge that is facing this industry that uh if you aren't already feeling it now I suspect you probably are uh is one that I certainly would forecast as continuing to become more and more challenging as we continue to see that Workforce and infrastructure decrease now now you've you've really sobered the mood um but this is good anded if I may really quickly just a quick time check I know we're running a little bit behind in terms of open discussion so maybe your last one or two questions and we can open it up y so yeah so what I've been doing is trying to set the stage so we've got I think we've got a lot of good stuff I'm sure you're thinking about a question so I want to get to that well I got one last question because I want to I want to sort of lighten the mood and talk about the future a little bit and then we then let's dive in so let's talk about Innovation uh you know the world is changing uh we're in a post pandemic World um all sorts of new things happening in transit micromobility on demand I know you guys are all doing those kinds of things so light in the mood talk about what is what's cool what's going on what are some really exciting opportunities for us to think about mobility in different ways and then then let's go into a conversation with Council um uh I'll start with you Adam because I'm familiar last time I was in Denver I got to see the uh the Denver connector in in the lyia neighborhood which is just incredible the connection between an underserved neighborhood and a very very targeted micromobility on demand service it just it was a pilot to tell us that story yeah certainly and this is my opportunity to throw a little bit of credit to Mr cley's Direction uh so uh under cley's leadership in Denver uh really we envisioned a micromobility solution that is entirely free uh but geographically constrained uh to our neighborhoods that have most historically been underinvested in um and just before uh ulis uh moved to Miami um or just after he moved to Miami rather we launched the service um what I can tell you is it's our Mont Bellow connector Mont Bellow is is one of our most underserved communities um what we had estimated for ridership in the first year we hit seven weeks into our service and so what we realized was there is this incredibly pent up demand for a Mobility solution that we knew existed but we didn't realize existed to the degree that it did um and so we had to completely kind of scratch our plans and say how do we expand this um since we did that in 2021 we've now launched to four other neighborhoods and what I love to tell remind uh my mayor of is we did that without a capital investment from the city we're able to do that entirely through grant funding entirely through Partnerships with our regional uh Transit provider um and and really hit those neighborhoods that needed it the most and I'll tell you what surpris me second most to the demand that we had with the micromobility is the Destin that it was taking folks right when you think about micr Mobility I think there's a tendency for folks to think of it as a first mile or Last Mile solution and certainly that is a high percentage of the utilization but the number one location uh within not Bell Community where this uh microtransit launched was actually the rec center and if you think about healthy lifestyle choices you think about the resources that a recreation center provides the community similar to a library uh at the time the community didn't have a library we actually built that as part of the Elevate Denver Bond program um but that was what the community looked for um the second most visited destination was was also uh the grocery store um Mont Bellow is a bit of a food desert within the City and County of Denver and what we realized is it's really burdensome if you are Transit dependent or you have a a Transit preference to get groceries right um and this micro uh Transit solution allowed you to go to the grocery store get more than just a few bag of groceries and have h a service that took you then directly to your home um so that if you had something that was perishable or or just the the burden of the of the capacity the weight issue uh was was significant those were our top two destinations um Transit stations was number three um and so it really uh informed us on that Community need and it's certainly been something that we've uh shown to other cities across the US um as we as we have demonstrated uh what how good of a solution this was for Denver now you've heard across this table and you will continue to hear every Community has a different need and so every solution is going to look slightly different uh but microtransit was certainly been one that has has filled a void and continues to fill a void in Denver Greer I think you mentioned your Urban uh ultimate Urban circulator let's talk about that a little bit more sure sure let me share that with you um that's our autonomous vehicle program in 2025 we will launch the first autonomous vehicle Revenue Service in Downtown Jacksonville it's a three mile Loop in Downtown Jacksonville on a fixed route and then it'll be uh electric autonomous shared vehicle so small shuttle that will go from um our headquarters at the Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center all the way to the east which is our sports and entertainment complex where our new Jaguar Stadium will be built but the reason why we did this was solving a need how do we make sure we provide services not just first mile Last Mile but consistent Services uh to everyone in the downtown core ultimately we're going to expand this and make this a 10 mile system one of the things our CEO Nat for has always said is that if we're trying to make sure we provide these options for everyone how do we make sure we have those services for everyone where they need to go and as I know is probably faced just like all of us in the transit industry operator shortage especially after the pandemic has been huge so what if we put autonomous vehicles the sering need in a fixed route and a fixed location and a shuttle service and allow us to take operators and put them on those high volume routes where that capacity is needed and where we can't put a 40ft bus in some of the rural areas or some of the underserved areas we see this as the future of Mobility a lot of my Transit Brethren and sisters also see that so a lot of agencies is looking at how do we make those use cases for autonomous vehicles and so we we feel that this is going to be a game Cher for our community and they're going to see this as something that's going to help them get to those jobs get to those food deserts and what have you but on top of that I I do need to add one bit of innovation that we just launched at the J at TA that allowed us to save cost and we all have Paratransit services to serve many of in the disability Community but then the JTA also had uh a ready ride which is our our on demand service that partnered that really took the place of lift and Uber many cases we decided to comingo those services so now we have one vehicle that will actually go whether it's someone who is disabled to need support or someone who just wants to get a ride if they're going to the same location why have two or three different Vehicles taking one person back and forth now we're looking at a AI to help us schedule so that we can say hey if we've got someone we're dropping off maybe for dialysis and someone next to them needs to be picked up to go to the grocery store then why don't we just have one vehicle do that and that allowed us to save about2 2% of our cost on the parat transit contract that we had as well as the ready ride contract that we had and so we were looking at Innovation as a way to help us save cost so just some ideas to think and consider of how autonomous technology and Innovation can help you to save cost I'm sure Ulus you got a few things to to share yeah and and I do want to give a shout out and Kudos TOS um in the transit space to the where you're you're having a healthy competition amongst the rest of the transit agencies to try to catch up so um in Miami we we have we have a old but autonomous people mover system that's elevated that uh connects people uh to areas downtown it's about a 4.4 mile Loop um that needs to be replaced so we're working on that but we also most um recently have started a new service called metroconnect and uh it's a additional new service that is on demand that has also autonomous vehicles as a part of the fleet uh that we've been able to contract with via uh to be able to provide to be able to get people more accustomed to taking these types of uh Vehicles as they start to proliferate into the transit space uh and so we just recently uh reoptimized our bus Network um where we expanded this Metro connect service to be able to provide proper on demand service to those people that were affected by uh the the changes in our bus routes moving forward as context uh we are at 101% of pre-pandemic levels on our ridership and Transit the biggest growth has been in our bus Network our our bus system moves 70% of our Riders and it continues to grow month over month of about 5 to 6% per month so a lot of times in the transit space everybody gets very excited about Rail and the like and all these other options outside of a bus the bus system is the Workhorse of any transit system across this country so don't be afraid to look at once you get to a point where you have those different types of modal options to consider that the people that need to get to where they need to go are going to rely on a bus system that's efficient and and effective um and so our Metro connect uh Service uh again it's something that's very K to to Uber a lift it's a shared ride uh we have 10 different zones throughout the county and right now we're moving close to 1,200 passengers per day on that service and so um that's the that's the wave of the future once you start getting into autonomous vehicles uh you can start to expand that service because you're not as reliant on operators uh which will continue to be a huge issue uh within the transit industry and uh it's just a add a layer of Mobility that you can provide so um the last thing I'll I'll I'll mention about kind of uh innovation in the text space and this is not with respect to Transit but has a indirect benefit to Transit is that uh in Miami we have the largest Advanced traffic management system project in the world it's $250 million we have 3,000 traffic signals um we have a a contractor that's uh uh updating all of our signals that will make them uh dynamic in our operable as well as uh uh allow our traffic Management Center to be able to uh uh actual um uh reconfigure our signals uh based off of uh Dynamics out in the field so we can be a lot more Nimble that means that you can move uh traffic regardless of your car or on a bus or or your biking or your your pedestrian or our transportation our traffic system will be able to adaptively change itself to be able to make sure we move people efficiently so that's another add layer that you might want to consider on a technology space uh to again have a have that efficient comprehensive transportation system well Debbie and and Liz will kick me if I did say that we may not have the biggest one in the world but we have a pretty big one too we're doing uh very similar things we have a traffic management uh system that does a lot of things what you're doing but make a back plug to our to our investment plan and our strategy is that connecting that system through fiber is the only way you can make that work and that's part of the plan and part of the the strategies we talked about so that's a layer to the investment that we know we need to continue to make so good Segway so hopefully uh I prime the pump if you guys aren't worn out I want hopefully there's some questions dialogue we can go deeper into any or all the topics that came up or you must have other questions so I'll open it up to the to the floor we have some questions teed up from uh Victoria Dante and Ed and Malcolm thank you um most first of all thank you'all for being here I appreciate your expertise and your willingness to share um many of the questions that I had you addressed but I want to dig a little bit deeper into Jacksonville because of the square mileage and this here even though we're much smaller in land size we've got this idea that bus is kind of the choice the transit of Last Resort right and so getting folks around the idea that having a bus when especially when they've got multiple stops to make in a morning on the way to work they've got to drop people off or do whatever doesn't really feel like something that they'll ever get the benefit of um I heard you talk about the jobs for Jacks and the play with mwsb participation and things like that um today how do you sell um investment in bus or in rail versus some of the other micromobility options given the land mass that you all have and I don't know how how far and wide you cover but I would imagine IM that you've got um diversity in like a Clay County versus a duall county in terms of what people need and what they want so how do you how do you package that so like YULA said the our fixed route is our Workhorse and even though we have 800 square miles um some of the areas are R more rural than Urban and some of those areas um are difficult to get a 40ft bus into and what have you we do cover um all of the all of the 800 square miles and the frequency changes especially um depending on the routes that ready ride system that we've put in place that sort of on demand service is what we have put up to be able to get to those areas where we may not have as frequent as a service that many of the residents may need and we use it as a way to connect you in in a first mile Last Mile um way so if you're trying to get from maybe in a rural area and try to get to a bus stop or one of our hubs this ready ride system will be able to get you there and connect you to one of our more frequent routes so how we package it um and how we get it out is a lot of it is collaborating with the city council members collaborating with the mayor in the city of Jacksonville and getting them to be able to tell their constituents of the service and this need um of course marketing is good and our Sal being able to get out to the residents get out to the community to let them know the services are available um but that's been the biggest thing that we have been able to do is just a lot of Outreach we have a u a customer service team that we actually send out into the community we go to community meetings we let people know hey we have this service are you using this service um especially in those areas where they are food deserts this has been really get a this has been a really good tool to be able to help people to seey if you're in a food desert use this route on our fixed route to get to the food desk get to an area to to buy groceries or use our ready ride and here's how you use the ready ride and we also use travel trainers to teach people we go to senior centers we go to schools we go anywhere we need to go to help people here's how you use the services on the JTA so I I share all of that just a combination of things to help people understand and know what the services are and be able to utilize the services okay um thank you as you think as I think about buyin initial buyin um for like the sales tax or whatever momentarily sorry we'll need to move on to the next question momentarily okay um my question is about buyin to get a referendum to pass so when you talk about right now you've got a large square foot you got people in urban areas rural areas right now today a lot of our traffic goes as I'm sure in each of your cities goes in and out of the county lines and so someone who lives out in a Ste Creek for example is going to say I'm not getting on this Transit line because I have other stops make or I'm not going uptown we've got this Hub and spoke system where what what is the whiff them for me so I'm trying to understand what is it that you're selling to get the Buy in from the folks in a much more um dispersed Community do you I think I understand and let me just ask the question back so I'm because I want to make sure I answer it in those areas where someone may be a choice writer that's it and not your essential writer how do you get them to support this this Transit investment or what have you um let me give you a real world um example how we did it when we were advocating for the extension and expansion of the local option sales um gas tax because that's what we heard we heard and what we what we appealed to them was twofold not just your neighbors see the need and the value but but this will contribute to a better working transportation system IE help with congestion as well so we use those two things but then we really appeal to the Investments need to be made somewhere along the line because the infrastructure there's a time limit on all infrastructure and it's going to crumble so if we don't make the Investments now it's going to be more expensive down the line and when we all come back years later it's going to be more costly so between those three things that's how we were able to advance it I will say one other thing and Adam mentioned this earlier if you are if you have a track record of delivery if you have a track record of keeping your word that sells it as well Mr Ford our CEO was the one who went to every public meeting and spoke at every public meeting and he went to every city council meeting and spoke at every city council meeting and a lot of what we heard from everyone was JTA yep you said you were going to do this the last time you did it you said you were going to deliver this project the last time and you did it because you did that we'll do this so that track record is also very important cuz they know if you were true to your word back then and delivered on projects back then you're going to deliver now and that helped to build that consistence and win that support the the one thing I would add to that too that I think um maybe to encourage you to challenge how you've thought about this in the past is if you were to do a sales tax referendum um and the financial guy in the back might kick me under the table um you know depending on the financial mechanism what you can now go to voters with is an infrastructure package that is much more diverse right and so yes maybe a portion of it Transit maybe a portion of it is those Mobility hubs you spoke to but you can start to scale a transportation package that really does have something to benefit every single Community within Charlotte and so that's not something you can do with $80 million that's not something you can do with $200 million but if you have I think I've heard 10 billion over 20 years you can do that and see if I see any flinching in the back right you can start to look at a pro program that has diversity and um is spread across the entire community so that what is in it for me is a direct translatable project for every person that lives within the city of Charlotte thank you um thank you for being here your comments I think th those last comments were particularly Salient for us as we have our updated plan and we've identified 86 High congestion intersections throughout the city and 380 Mi of high frequency bus Corridor so that is something we can directly use I I have two questions for you one is I'm interested Miss Gillis in and and and perhaps you Mr Keeley as well but the there's a perception around autonomous vehicles um with the community and then certainly the latest events with GM cancelling their Cruise Line you know Crews had come and they' mapped out our city and we were next on their list and all of a sudden you know that was halted how did you sell that to your cons your resident base that this is a safe option um that they wouldn't have to worry about I I can I can go ahead and start i i i as as we mentioned in our current cont contract we're trying to ease people into using this as a Mobility option so so before we uh decided to add in AVS as a part of the fleet for a Metro connect uh service we did a demonstration pilot uh where we actually had an autonomous vehicle that uh we use at the zoo that we promoted very well that we branded very well and it allowed people to come and actually test out the actual um vehicle and and it the zoo Miami is is a large a large place so people Park and you have to walk basically about a mile and a half to get to the entrance of the zoo so we said well this is a great way to start to to Brand not only this service but expose people to the ability that this is a safe option for you uh to be able to get around I think that's one option that's how we we've done it JTA is a lot more advanc and they probably have some more ideas of how they they Market it and branded their service what we did is a multifold um before we actually decided to go forward with it we would get autonomous vehicles we would ask vendors to give us autonomous vehicles and it would be the shuttles not not the robo taxis that we've all heard but actual shuttles and we'd actually run them on the corridor so people can try them we also went to the First Responders the police the fire we asked them to come test it out what do you see anything we should be mindful of and we got them to build consistence because we said help us write the testing protocols based on safety around that and then we decided almost like Ulus and Miami went to the zoos we went to the schools and we stood up stem programs where we would go to elementary and middle schools and get students young students and educate them around autonomous vehicles and so they could see that it would be safe they would we would stand out in front of the vehicle they would see the vehicle stop and then they would go home and tell their parents and all of that helped to build the the understanding of it so when we said we're ready we're going to be launching this that many of the residents saw it and knew from either firsthand experience or from their kids that this was coming now with that being said we are still out there educating we're still out there talking to people we take every opportunity that we can to take a vehicle out so a actual shuttle out and demonstrate it so people can see it and we put popup popup shuttle rides around so to get people ready for the service when it launches so a lot of that touching feeling the education so people can see it and continually doing that to help them to really get that confidence into the into that technology great thank you that was a really good point Point um my last question is and I'm sure Mr Mr Driggs will highlight this when he speaks but we have an interesting um structure here in Charlotte in the region uh with the MTC and then we have responsibilities as a city for for pieces of Transportation but we have our neighbors who surround us um who want to have a voice in this and we don't have a a u transportation Authority we don't have an authority here I'm I'm interested in uh if you could perhaps um talk about how the JTA was established and your views around the benefits of having an authority versus working with an individual municipality or County okay I think we all may need to add to that for the JTA we start started in 1955 as really A Toll Authority an Expressway Authority that morphed into a Transit Authority in the 70s when we took over all the different coach operators um in the city um by means of that Authority we are technically a state organ a state agency however we are governed by seven member board we are govern and the board makes policy decisions in behalf of our agency however the CEO has uh full autonomy to be able to move and deliver on any of the services or needs um we do not um have the city of Jacksonville rather does not have any Authority per se over the JTA however there is a portion of sales tax that comes to us through the city and and it's a a nominal amount about a million dollar every year but because of that we are required to go before the city council um for approval of our budget technically our board approves our budget and we follow what the board says but we follow the process with the city because they provide that that sales tax to us um the benefits we see is having the board really guide us and direct us on policy decisions and help us to be able to move and be as Nimble and as Innovative as possible um that's that's been I would say one of the benefits that we see with that type of governance structure um we don't because we don't have we're not considered a municipality agency or what heavy we don't have um we don't have a lot of um oversight by the city with us but with that being said we still take an opportunity to partner with the city every chance we get especially on the road work that we do because many of the complete streets projects that we do we're doing it in behalf of the city government but maybe I'll turn it over to Adam or Ulus if you have any um thoughts on the municipality side I can I can certainly add uh a little bit to that you know I think um we're authorities from my experience and I've not worked in an authority but certainly work adjacent to them uh where authorities are most effective is that they have that full um kind of breath of uh authority to implement of authority to raise funding of authority to to operate um that they're not riant on another group or another body um to to ultimately deliver what it is that the taxpayers expect for them to deliver and so what I would really say is from a municipal standpoint when you may not be that Authority or when you're working with an authority I think it gets down to what Mr kley had said at the very beginning which is uh making sure that there is alignment right uh when you don't have that ability to push independently you must be aligned and if you're not aligned then you'll see a capital program that stalls uh you'll see that delivery no longer be an area of trust with the community and that what that collaboration looks like uh without additional layers of of governance um but truly in a partnership capacity uh is is the way to be most effective within that um to Greer's earlier Point Federal funding can be a great tool to use to drive that partner ship because certainly what uh our elected representatives in DC and with the US do look for when they're awarding these grants is what does that Regional partnership look like and when the authority when the municipalities when the counties right and Charlotte is a city and county correct um so that's a little bit easier from that standin okay so so when you have County alignment with City Alignment with State alignment with authority alignment that's how you can be effective there don't you and and so that that I think would I'd simply identify as an area that uh if there is a path there if there is the possibility to work towards um common goals a common Vision on something um that that will be valuable and that will be a focus uh without that Transportation Authority existing within Charlotte we're we're working on it right that's why you got Ed now there you go and we'll move to council member Ed for his question so miss Anderson was right that's kind of uh the general neighborhood I was interested in um we have recognize the need for that alignment we are pretty far away from achieving it I'll just put it that way uh so I hope what we take away here is an understanding I mean you said they're not interdependent my point is in that sense they are um I'd be interested to hear a little more still about the authority so um what is how are the seven members of the board chosen are they representative of communities who are part of the structure for us in Jacksonville uh the mayor selects three members the governor selects three members and then the seventh member is the representative from the Florida Department of Transportation our district 2 secretary and uh does the authority issue debt do you receive that you receive tax proceeds you issue thatb is not recourse to any uh municipality could you repeat your question sorry I was a banker so I uh uh when when that debt is issued do the do the investors who buy the debt they have any recourse to any Community or is their repayment solely derived from the authority the latter solely derived from okay so it's non-recourse debt this is kind of important for us to think about um and the other question I had then uh Mr kley you you alluded to difficulties that were experienced in yeah I think it's picking me up still uh uh difficulties that were experienced in getting a referendum passed like a couple of failed attempts were're aware of other communities who have offered these referendums and and been unsuccessful could you describe in more detail the public information campaign that leads up to like who does it who pays for it uh how long does it take yeah so for the successful passes of the 20 2 um referendum that was about two years worth of Outreach that at that time and again I wasn't working for Miami at that time but it it took an extensive amount of effort across the board to be able to get in front of as many communities as possible business uh stakeholders and the like to articulate the need for for the ctax um and what what frankly happened is that the original um plan which again I mentioned the the the half penny ctax that was supposed to go solely to Transit expansion out of those discussions the plan was revised where you where you add again getting to Adam's Point you're figuring out other projects and other communities and municipalities that people were uh desirous of implementing and you included that as a part of a project list and what we call the people's Transportation plan and so every single uh municipality actually had their own independent infrastructure project that wasn't tied to a Transit Expansion Project so that that ultimately um it's it's a very long process if you're going to do it right and it's all handson deck type of process I can tell you right now where we are uh with respect to uh long-term Funding Solutions because we we're we're going to be running up against a point where we need to identify whether or not we want to go after the other half penny C tax that we're actively starting to do some polling now and so as an example our chair of the board of County Commissioners put a question on the ballot uh in August when the elections are going to occur asking a simple question do should the county invest into expanding a mass transit system he is taking that to say okay now the answer should be yes should be yes for the most part but then the harder question is going to come with which will be how are we going to pay for this so I think you you're starting to have that conversation now to then over the next two years we'll we will be hiring Consultants we'll be going out doing polling we will be boots on the ground and going to every single Community to make sure that they understand the need for any additional Revenue sources that we would want to raise and I think any in any referendum in any municipality you would need to have that extensive type of of Outreach so it's a multi-year effort and and do you get private sector like businesses and so on involved is there a booster group I mean there's some question for us about who would actually pay the cost of a public information campaign right so is that from private sources it's it can be a combination I I can I can tell you that there's heavy interest in in South Florida amongst the business Community to figure out the transportation infrastructure problem and and quite frankly sometimes having the business stakeholders be at the lead of that conversation is better than government going in and say hey this is what we can do for you so it it every every area in every region is different just depends on the circumstances in Miami it's more difficult because of uh the perception of not delivering on what's been promised in the past and we we're actively changing that um I would just say as I mentioned credibility is key and I think if if if you have a a demonstrated ability to deliver projects it's a lot easier to have that to conversation this is so helpful thank you I mean it just aligns my head spinning uh this is exactly what we're grapping very good Malcolm you still have a question no most of my questions have been asked and answered but I one simple one though is how do you get everybody to play in the sandbox together and I'm talking about the the the the regional governments and get Regional cooperation and Regional Buy in behind a singular vision for the community it's it's it's difficult so so um uh so in Miami D you have you have 13 County Commissioners those same 13 County Commissioners set on our our Metropolitan planning board uh I mentioned the uh citizen advisory Transportation trust 13 positions appointed by Commissioners and a mayor uh so uh and then not to mention the state legislature and dealing with the with the district offices I I would say you're always going to have friction you're not it's that's not going to go away however taking taking the time to kind of put I would say uh EOS and personalities aside and aligning yourself to a plan is a first step um in in our County uh we we are moving forward with our County specific Transportation master plan that's on top of the the plan that the no has already set forward our our no is a one count no which makes it very unique so so now I can say okay no no director board and all the municipalities our plan is aligning with your your long range Transportation plan so we're all on the same page here the issues that we're talking about is how we're going to be able to implement and get this stuff done it's not a philosophical you know issue um so I think fundamentally that's key and I do believe that it depends on who the leaders are in the region you got to have the right people in the right positions um to be able to help facilitate that discussion and be okay with having that discussion and listening and hearing people out so it's it's it's a challenge and I don't know if there's one Silver Bullet to it but um that's been my experience I I concur with Ulus I know for us in Jacksonville especially when we work with the other counties um at first there's that sense that the big the big at is coming and what have you but how we were able to work effectively with them and build some consensus was getting alignment on one thing helping that one thing and then seeing how you deliver on that one thing turn things around there was one County um in particular where we were trying to um do some projects there and even increase and expand Services um and as opposed to us going in we waited for them to come to us and then once they came to us then we were able to have the conversation to get some alignment and then we asked them to really comment to us on our strategic plan be a part of the strategic planning process to show that we want to hear from you and take in your thoughts um your feedback and really your goals and so we can find those alignment but if we didn't do that I don't think we would have been able to overcome that it's it's it's a lot better than it was and but I think by us coming to that alignment with that one area helped bridge the gap on everything else thank you um next we'll have uh dimple and then Tar this is very helpful very insightful I what certainly clicked with me is when you talked about delivering on promises credibility is important um certainly those are some of the challenges that we are uh dealing with uh here locally um just most of my questions were addressed around um Mr DRS asked some really good questions and so did some of my colleagues uh I do have one questions that one question that did not get addressed around um ridership numbers so we get this question often asked um what have you seen in your um region around ridership pre and post pandemic so once you have respond I'll have a follow up on follow up on that that's that's right for us of ridership uh we were we were tracking about 70% of post pandemic a post pandemic of our prepandemic numbers yeah we're at 70% um one of the things that we did of course with the um well let me just answer that question first yes 70% yeah yeah and and across our entire system so that that includes rail Our People Mover Metro Bus uh and our pair of Transit we're we're above prepandemic levels above so yeah we're at 100 101% prepandemic Levels the big biggest increase that we saw was actually in our bus system it's important to note the the the our metro rail system which is uh 24 Mile 23 station uh elevated Metro Rail it's been the one that's lagging the most and so this is a byproduct essentially where the that alignment is and it's to the it's further south southern part of the county and it kind of loops around to the airport um where we're only about 34s uh of our writers ship returned um and I and the reason I make a point on that is because everybody is excited about rail everybody and I keep reminding people that the the the ridership levels that we are experiencing in the increase is not on our rail system it's on our bus system so so that's just just a little snapshot in into to the writers ship that's that's helpful um so my followup question to that I think uh you both acknowledge that ridership number has reduced post pandemic especially Light Rail um so when question gets asked why do you invest in the infrastructure especially lill what would you say to that I'll take that first so so um one because again it's about uh the fundamental stance that you need to have to have a burgeoning city to provide multiple different types of transportation and Mobility options for folks so that's that's just fundamental the second piece is and this is something that we sometimes Miss in the transit space but it's something that we're focused on um there's a there's a clear Nexus between housing and transportation okay Miami is like the the I say this probably the most challenged place when it comes to housing I don't know why everybody wants some wood to Miami I don't know why but uh but what we found is that um we we are laser targeted in making sure that all of the available uh land use policies and available land that we own from a Transit perspective can be transitioned into housing so right now we're building 6,000 affordable housing units which is more housing units that we are building than our public Housing and Community Development Department so it's a Nexus so so when you talk about investment it is you're investing in infrastructure Mobility is one component of it but if you do it right and you plan for it right from a land use perspective you're also addressing a housing need and and that ends up being an improvement in quality of life so kind of think about it holistically to kind of get around that concern with well the writers ship is not this and like it's more than that it's it's your figing out ways to leverage that infrastructure investment to make people's lives better and in in housing and transportation space we wholeheartly agree we're doing the exact same thing um Transit oriented development is the be is the way to connect people to jobs to transportation and providing what they need that was the biggest thing we saw in the Pandemic those people who relied on us so we don't want to take that away from them but we want to be able to provide them with the places to stay we are too building affordable housing with our Transit oriented development um not as many units as they are in Miami we're a little smaller than that so but we still see that viable need we're even taking it to even those future services that we're going to put online uh the autonomous vehicle Network we've already identified the transit oriented development locations where we need to support work Workforce housing um the commuter rail line that we're studying right now we know this is longterm um when everything does come back we already looked at transit or oriented development locations there as well but it's got to be holistic it's got to serve the need for everybody and that's how we we are telling that story we're saying the buses are still very important the everything else is equally important but if you're going to connect the community and allow the community to grow and have that economic development that everybody wants especially as all these other things come online that transportation is still the key and it's got to be focused on the public transportation not the single occupancy vehicle this is very helpful and I I have a council M will need to move on yeah uh I just one last question um coun we we have two we have to move on we can come back to it if we no I don't need a response I just need to put that in a law yeah so um I think one of the speakers mentioned that we they had put in referendum just the question about Transportation I think it's worth exploring that option I do not know if we need an authority from the state to have that but i' would like to just get a response on that that would be helpful so miss s were you speaking to Marcus and I about yeah so well Patrick is not here so I was going to actually ask about a referendum yeah about [Music] referendum yeah you can put it in the parking lot and we can do it um and come back to it I think we'll have some time later today this evening to have more conversation um following up with some of the panelists and that could be one of the questions mhm yeah aome okay okay and then we'll have a final question from Clark and I'll take a little break and do a post check on alignment great I'm just going to make a brief comment um more holistically because this is our time to discuss the presentation we saw as well as what we heard but I'm basing it on some of the themes you guys said and and again I'm I'm teeing this up in the spirit of collaboration and really give everyone time to think and reflect before having to react to it um because that's what we learned yesterday you're supposed to say when you're a d to eyes and seas so you're welcome yes we're learning to be better people as well yeah so the the thing I heard from you guys that resonated most with me for our current situation which is a log Jam a lot of plans a lot of Visions but a log Jam nonetheless is we you said we need to have that unified front of the stakeholder ERS and um I so if I was going to lay this out as something for us to take away and think about and talk about I think you start with where do we all agree I think we all agree from the top General Assembly to the feds to every one of us sorry not those feds um we absolutely need a transformational investment in transportation and missing that opportunity would be a killer for us in the future there's no doubt about that when I say transformational seven 8 n 10 plus billion dollars because that's what a city like ours need what we're missing is that unified front with all the stakeholders all the way up including the voters so I think the why on that is we've done a ton of work but as a unified voice we haven't clearly defined and really communicated our ultimate goal is it reducing congestion is it increasing options is it economic impact there's a lot of goals and sub goals but we have to agree on that together and then and then what is key in my opinion is it's clear that we need a roads first strategy and that's just a buzzed word it doesn't really mean that much until we uh go into it but we need a roads first compromise in some way that's measured not by marketing the same plan that we've had to being roads first and showing and I'm not not a critique I love the things I saw out of that but measuring it in the spend allocation that we're doing and I believe if we redesign that plan and and we're more importantly the capital allocation around it to be that roads first for example sake you know in a $10 billion investment 6 billion are going for car congestion mitigation efforts like intersection capacity the bus Rapid Transit smart technology AV infrastructure and then 4 billion is for mass transit like the red line and then we're getting it inside baseball here but one of the problems is we can't do everything we want because when we put the Silver Line back in by definition there there is there is no way to make it a roads First Capital allocation the silver line is too expensive so having to table that not say we're not going to do it but table it so we can get the transformational investment I think that allows us to unite all the stakeholders and not only get a referendum approval from Raleigh which is what we need to do this but also unlock funding from Raleigh which was something that was not even contemplated before all of this so it requires compromise but what it is not is a remarketing of of saying roads first it comes in the form of the capital allocation but I think we're at a point now where we have to do this work and and reflect on it because in my mind the options in the foreseeable near and maybe midterm future is it's either something like that or it's nothing and we stay in the Log Jam and I think we can all agree starting where where I began that we all need this transformational investment in transportation so I would give that in the spirit of D's speaking to eyes and C's of something to reflect on and we can discuss and figure out how we negotiate that um but that's it long story sorry but no question so thank [Applause] you is where our state capital is yeah make thank you and I hope this was useful for uh the council just a couple of things and why we did what we did today maybe we should start it that way um with that so there were questions over the course of the last few years and it was well what's the regional plan good better and different connect Beyond is a regional plan it is Gerald Dean Gartner it's all everybody's plans are thrown in that and the City of Charlotte and is the backbone of that plan and terms of the cats there's a 2030 plan that 2030 plan has been approved over and over and over again by the MTC that's the plan dealing with buses Light Rail commuter rail street car so what we tried to do today was some of the stumbling blocks were well what is the city's plan okay so over the course of the last year we've taken those 2,000 plus projects and we've tried to bring it down to something and we may have to use a different term bundling it it means something different to Miss Mayfield when it comes to projects so but so we um but we have the Strategic investment areas it's data driven it's throughout the entire city so we believe we have the projects which are the city's projects and there are two other plans out there that our regional plan and then the cast plan so we're growing and what I wanted to do today is just's do a reality check even if you received Authority in the short session there there's no way you're going to put that on the ballot in 2024 okay so so you're you're easily almost two years away from having something on the ballot so as your city manager and I believe jism first got to do it have to do it I owe you something to start to begin funding your plan absent anything else whether it's a little bit of property tax a lot of I don't know but we can't continue to do nothing as we have these plans in these projects and the last thing I'll say to give you know just a little flavor for a panelist thank you so much uh is that I think what uh and I like what Mr barari said I I think what's missing now is the strategy around how do you get this on the ballot to let the voters have a chance to discuss it and right wrong or indifferent for the last three years it's been around getting um the six towns the county and the city together to agree upon something and Promises made promises broken things trust things that nature there's this thing called the red line and because the red line that commuter rail was not delivered the three Northern towns rightfully so felt some kind of way so the concept was how do you get those three Northern towns on board get the right sponsor of the bill to be introduced in Raleigh and to have some agreement amongst meinberg County last thing I'll say again because you'll probably have some conversations around dinner with with the council members is that one of the things to unlock this was the conversation around the red line which we are having right now with Nork Southern so as you think about strategy whatever that strategy is going to be we do have to put a budget together this year and we do know that there won't be a 1 cent sales tax in that budget that you will approve in June but there needs to be some discussion about how do we begin to fund some of air needs last thing I was to say thanks again it still amazes me that we got these three folks so it's kind of like getting three Marcus's in charlot in Charlotte for you know half a day these these folks are extremely busy um so thank you we really appreciate it sounds like we'll have a great conversation uh can we trust you with the five minute stretch break well somebody said [Laughter] no thank you uh we'll start in five minutes uh with staff updates thank [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] he [Music] [Music] la [Music] n [Music] n [Music] [Music] la [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] e [Music] he [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] m [Music] [Music] good afternoon again we could have council members and staff members and seats we're going to start and continue with our updates from um staff around some of our important initiatives I do want to thank uh the panelists again for just an amazing conversation and sharing all of your knowledge and expertise so freely um we are going to to re revisit this conversation in the morning uh part of the goal for the the that session was to really get some alignment and common threads among the uh council members and to also just to have some agreement in alignment with the strategy or the framework that Ed brought forth so we need to revisit the conversation to put a bow on it not that it will be complete as of tomorrow not complete but at least some understanding and alignment around some of the common things that we heard um from the uh team and from the discussion and just to get some alignment with the committee or the council so we heard funding options importance of alignment with other stakeholders and organizations uh collaborations with key partners and some creativity around that we talked about schools and number of different organizations um have a broad value proposition to get by in in uh community and business leg strategy so having communities and businesses out front instead of government um leveraging past performan is credibility uh creative approaches to build trust um a holistic approach um specifically as it relates to using Mobility as a catalyst for economic development and quality of life and most importantly we're her validation of the framework that um Ed shared with us so we are we will revisit this conversation in the morning again just to really understand the common threats and understand where there is alignment on the council okay and without further Ado I'd like to introduce uh Rachel Stark who will talk with us about the digital divide thank you hi everyone I'm glad everyone's still awake I know after food it's a little bit hard but I'm glad we had a really great panel thanks that for pulling that together because that was really cool as a former planner to be hearing some of the cool ideas of how you actually Implement that work so so I'm Rachel Stark I'm the smart cities program manager for you all and uh with that work it ties into some of the things they were talking about like uh AVS and I know up here behind me there's a picture of uh some some really cool stuff coming down from the sky I think it says groceries um being delivered yeah something like that Amazon flying warehouse but those are things like we we envision this really uh even more advanced digital world than we already live in and uh I mean even just getting here obviously we use Google things that make us get where we want to go when we want to go and package in a way that we want it um to be and every day we're informing these Technologies we're wrestling with these Technologies we're probably cursing some of these Technologies um but we're really benefiting also from these Technologies and even creating some of them so as we become the majority of how we go about our our business using these Technologies um we start to get this expectation that everyone would can do the same things and are doing the same things that we're doing and that's just not the case so as you know we have a digital divide um that that's out there and that means that some of the things that we expect people to be able to do they may not be able to do and we really want to continue to work on that um and I want to say a huge thank you to you all for your commitment the 3.25 million from cares and the 10 million for arpa uh kudos to all of your investment in that work um and because of that investment and because of our partners focused in investment in this we have narrowed the digital divide by a good quarter which is some really good progress we still have a ways to go um but some of the things to keep in mind are things like uh our ACP funding from the federal level is uh set to expire at the end of April sometime in May it will be all spent out uh so again thank you for putting that on the legislative agenda your legislative agenda making sure that we're advocating for the ACP to continue because that impacts 67,000 over 67,000 households s in Charlotte and so those folks are going to be wrestling with what they do with that internet bill and that loss of the $30 savings that they're currently uh experiencing additionally we're in uh your investment has gone to supporting 40 uh 4,000 households over 4,000 households are currently connected to access Charlotte we also have Wi-Fi on all all the city buses as well as the Goldline links um and then we also have our digital navigation service so anyone within the city of Charlotte or mikelberg County can call 311 and say hey I would like to get help connecting to Affordable devices or affordable internet can you help me and through our partnership with Queens University and we can we can get that to everybody um and with that it's really as we know it's really essential to the work that we do whether it's communication whether it's the 2040 comprehensive plan and we want uh people to weigh in on surveys or to know that activities are coming up whether it's around entrepreneur ship Education Health Care everyone is more and more needing these this digital connection um it's also essential for jobs 91 to 92% of all jobs require digital skill and if you have and and jobs that have three or more digital skills are likely to pay 45% average more in the state of North Carolina so it's a really key piece to some of the upward Mobility that we want to get to in the city of Charlotte um which feeds into why we're doing the Learn to Earn uh modeling exploring that through a pilot we haven't spent the 2.5 million that you have set aside through what we talked about in early 2022 uh but we're getting ready to uh set that up because of the learnings we've done with that pilot where we've been able to explore some basic digital literacy as well as Workforce Development training to get people devices at the end of their those trainings uh so we are we we did the first round in last summer and we're getting ready to do the second round starting in February and then there'll be another uh push going out probably sometime in March for additional folks and with the learnings that we learned last time is really like the library is really helpful because obviously people go to the library for a lot of services and they have that trust and relationship but there's others who who may not go to the library there may be a linguage barrier there may be re-entering Society for a variety of reasons they may be a new immigrant and we're looking at how do we um connect with the services providers that they're already working with the people who are well connected with them to get get them ready to be able to to provide these resources um in addition to that uh what we're looking to do this is something that I keep thinking about in the work we do we have in mind what we want people to do which is here's the digital world we want you to get ready and go do it but we're trying to to basically follow the principles of that Irish um I think it's an Irish blessing may the road rise up to meet you I feel like that's kind of what we're trying to do here we're saying this is the path that you need to travel but we're also trying to make this path is easy and visible for you to travel it and so we're trying to raise that path up for people to to be able to do that so that's part of the work we're doing and then we're also looking at our digital resources obviously we have apps within the city of Charlotte that we push people to use um but we also have applications for resources and so one of the things that we're deploying as a proof of concept is really getting out this uh in partnership with google. or pull pulling out this program that is we're calling in quotes a universal platform it's not going to be ival at the very beginning but it's going to be a proof of concept starting with some of our Housing Services so it's really just a starting point for really thinking about how do we deliver that basic digital access thinking about how do we provide information around the Technologies and tools that we get out there and thinking about how do we make it easy to find and get the benefits from these uh digital resources and then how do we create new tools with community that really get them what they want so with that I'm going to go to the discussion questions which are one what should should the city's long-term role be in supporting efforts to close the digital divide um another question that could kick off your conversation is what are the challenges and opportunities do you see in the year ahead around this topic and then should this continue to be a strategic initiative as we move forward did I do all right on time you did excellent thank you so much Rachel any any questions from the floor I awesome I can I have have a question I have a question I I know that we have invested a lot of things from the city at some point again it would be nice to figure out who else is doing this work because while we are very successful on the idea of you know seven over 7,000 people what who else is doing this and so I know that you guys have a collaboration and it's organized and having a little bit more information about that would be a good idea for us to see what's going to be what is actually being addressed and then a couple of weeks ago I was talking to Charter is I think their Spectrum Charter Spectrum and Charter Charter Spectrum and they were talking about their their possibility of continuing to provide reduced cost um to certain communities and so I don't know Rachel if if you've had a chance to look at what they're saying and is it's something that we could really engage yeah we've had some initial conversations but I think we need to continue to talk especially to the leadership that you're also talking with okay thank you very good Park yeah this is uh this is something that is critically important that we get right but there's a lot of opportunities for us to go down a wrong path or not have the outcomes we want Braxton and I sat down years ago and this was a kind of one of our first shared passion projects and as we scoped it I I I think and worked with Renee and the team and several others I think what the initial Vision here was how can we make this huge impact that is needed and kill as multiple birds with with one stone and I think it went back to starting with well if we're talking about planning Mobility autonomous vehicles we need ubiquitous 5G coverage across the community for that but there secondary outcomes of having that and being able to say okay well maybe we don't have to figure out the fiber and some of the other problems that exist just trying to focus on digital divide by itself so having that ubiquitous coverage was number one then coming up with this Learn to Earn concept enabled us to skip the great work but maybe uh obsolete work of putting these mesh networks into communities and and and complexes that brought it from the street to their house and being able to say 5G is there we ship you a smart device that's populated with the Learn to Earn capabilities of Partners everywhere training upskilling and as you achieve you unlock a laptop and we mail you seamlessly the laptop to your house and your phone becomes your 5G hotspot at you know gig plus speeds so it it totally disrupts the concept the old model of solving the digital divide by accessibility and then it gives the other pieces of the training and of of the hardware that needed to do it so I think that the team has done a great job kind of with the initial scoping figuring this out but what I think is absolutely necessary next is US kind of re-engaging and saying okay a big Vision requires big big investment sometimes collaboration across these other verticals that I mentioned and us getting more more directly involved so I think the takeaway needs to be us us revisiting kind of where we left off from strategy setting to say okay what's what does the next chapter need to look like thank you Ed I just to ACC anybody doubt yeah turn your mic on push the button here we go it's it's a utility like water okay so uh if anybody's in doubt about the answer to the third question it's yes yes is that all we need okay all you want I have something just really quickly uh and this brings to mind actually two things one uh the digital divide is actually a part of the mayor's racial Equity initiative um and so my first question is how is that particular initiative is is that kind of concurrent with our work or is that completely separate and aart like where are we in that particular portion of you know delivering to the community do so of course the racial Equity initiative has for you you know this better than I do right but one of those one of those deliverables is directly related to the digital divide and it's integrated into the Queens University program that's referenced in the document that we have where it talks about the um Opera funds and the households that were given the internet what I am concerned about is the 2year grant that puts Bruce in his position to keep this going but I think that there's time to figure out who's going to do what and what the Innovations I mean I feel like the equity program is so far away gone you know so things have changed and I think that um what T said is and and Ed actually said is how do we figure out the um utility aspect of digital divide and to go back and do some work around it okay and uh thank you mayor and then the second part of my question has to do with so I this is um thinking about what council member barari was talking about about a ubiquitous like connection um I know that Kansas City and other cities like that have actually taken initiatives to welcome in and not to say that our current providers aren't doing a good job but they've actually welcomed in and this is longstanding they probably are eons away from you know other people and and we're double their size right um but they've actually you know they they kind of stood out front front and this was during the Obama Administration to achieve 5G to you know make that access available throughout their Community have we have we looked at any of those you know cities that kind of jumped out ahead of of you know 5G and access and things of that nature than you we have done some uh convers we've had some conversations both with carriers and with cities around the country so um like one another one that's similar is uh Chattanooga went in and did their own network um I think one of the challenges we run into is obviously every State's a little bit different in terms of the rules and regulations but we are trying to figure out what is that we can do that's creative and especially going into this next year is going to be key to continue to have those conversations and and work with the carriers to get some of the things that you all are talking about so that everyone can benefit and that we have that infrastructure in place for what we want to do okay I'm I'm really excited to hear that and you know just kind of following up on you know kind of the rationale for my thought one of the things that have been very I guess fruitful for me is when I go somewhere like let's say National League of cities or something something like that and I'm talking to another you know uh leader from another city and they're sharing with me just like what we just did and and I really love that practice because it really kind of you know it it really resets possibility for us it has for me anyway when I talk to other people who are doing various things and and one of the um like I said that piece of that information came simply by being you know within proximity to someone talking about something else that were doing that made me kind of just Google and get familiar kind of a baseline understanding for what some other cities were doing as far as connectivity in their digital divide so I'd be interested in knowing especially how we you know drive this forward you know looking at what other cities are doing and and seeing what possibility is for us here in Charlotte considering our size right and you know the scope of our work so that's all I have thank you thank you council member uh thank you Rachel great job appreciate that awesome next we will have Holly asrd and Stephen cooker to talk about small business and um smaller minority businesses we can solve all of the small business problems if we just agree on the rail line and get it [Laughter] done let see oh all right somebody did it for us thank you so much um so I would like to begin by saying thank you to everybody in this room who supports um Steve and I every single day without you guys we wouldn't be able to stand up here and talk about the good work that's going on and I think really what the future of what both of our areas um are going to do so I will start with what we do in Economic Development I'm first going to going to talk about the ecosystem which is something that I know you all are passionately engaged in You Gave Over $5 million in Grants in arpa and cares act funding uh to our partners in the ecosystem but that is one thing that um and Christy Floyd by the way is here in the back um on our team uh and her team actually really is the one who does this work day in and day out but we work very hard and very closely with our partners we are a leader a convenor of this ecosystem we meet on a quarterly basis council member Mitchell I see you shaking your head cuz I know you know you hear all about it and as a result of that really what we are able to do is we were able to take small businesses that come to us that ask us questions that say we have this problem we have this concern and we can actually give a direct handoff to a partner that will help with that work so we've did that with over 700 businesses this past year the other thing that we have is the amp up Charlotte program and this is a really cool thing actually we're going to be collaborating more and more with Steve and his team on this but amp up is our program it's a seven Monon initiative that puts a minority business owner through a program that grows their business we've had several success stories um Leo and Louise is one that actually most of you know in this room and so to date we have graduated over 102 businesses from amp up we currently have an existing cohort of 20 companies that is going through it CBI comes to every cohort they talk to the businesses about getting registered um and they actually help them through that process they actually help us with recruitment to the amp cohorts and one thing that we're really excited about over this next year is we're going to talk about ways to really partner up the contractor development program in amp up Charlotte and then the last thing which I'm incredibly excited about you know we got our inspiration from everything that happened with Workforce Development and hire Charlotte and y'all's commitment to really saying how do we make this ecosystem easier to navigate and how do we make this as as easy as possible for somebody who has that you know desire to get that job where do they go so we actually want to do the same thing for the small business world so what we would like to do you all graciously uh approve funding uh last year for us to do the first ever small business strategic plan this has never been done in this community um in the history really of the Charlotte Community this won't just be about the city of Charlotte organization this is truly looking at what is the ecosystem who are the players that exist within that ecosystem what are the strengths what are the challenges what are we doing right and then you know what are those opportunities to grow what are the duplication of resources all the things that we need to do and so what we're and then they're going to dive in obviously specifically on what the city of Charlotte as an organization does as well so what we want to make sure in the end the end goal is is that the Investments you all make in the work that we do or within the ecosystem itself that those Investments are not duplicative of anything that are going on they actually truly fill a need that exists within that ecosystem so we're very excited about it the other thing I've heard a lot today is data data data small business data is hard I won't go into why that is here but this plan will have data which we're really excited about and give us an implementation plan with measurable steps that actually tell us what to do as far as how to move forward in the work that we do as a community but also as a city organization so I'll turn it over Steve thank you Holly and uh let me just say uh I guess good evening uh one of the uh good things about going you know toward the tail end of the uh Retreat uh is the fact that you get to listen to all these great ideas and all the uh serious communication about serious issues this panel listening to their discussion I tell you uh there's uh a reason why they call you know things best practices because folks are doing it uh it's tried and proven and I think uh you know the great thing about Charlotte is we just have commitment across the board you know I've been here now for three and a half years uh my first one of my first conversations uh with manager Jones and we talked about commitment and I can say uh he's demonstrated everything that's needed but there's so much more uh beautiful thing about it if we're talking about good news bad news good news is there's so many straight line approaches to what we need to do to get where we go and so if you're student of uh geometry A to B straight line quickest path also the fact that 80% of what we need to do to get our program and we make no bones about what we want to do be Nations leading 80% of it can happen inside uh the city uh Council leadership tremendous uh they hold us accountable uh but we're going to ask more uh my theme of what I'm talking about is the very capacity building uh programs that we' talked about we have two uh won't cost a whole lot of money either uh the first of which is uh our Mentor Protege program linkup CLT uh that's a program that uh was recommended by our disparity study consultant uh we've put our uh advisory committee to work and and they've delivered something uh that I think is very solid we ran it by our attorney Tom Thomas powers and we feel good about it uh we're going to hire a position that's going to lead that effort and I think coming out it'll be a a just amazing program because it's well received already uh we've done the groundwork for it uh the other uh this is I think going to be signature to Charlotte and that's CBI University when you think about uh capacity building uh we've got an up just a tremendous program we got next CLT now we have contractor development program program uh but if you look at our uh Resource Partners those in the ecosystem there's so many uh organizations that's committed to capacity and it's confusing to our uh almost 1,600 firms and so what we want to do is consolidate all of that uh centralize it uh have an assessment component to it direct them in the right direction and guess what when all of this is fully implemented uh we have three years I've said to my my team before the next disparity study we want to get ourselves to Nations leading but we need to have uh more certified firms we're working on that we need uh higher levels of spin we're working on that we need to take some of these very tools that we talked about and and uh Implement them and and do them in such a way that's smart uh and again I know we have the commitment so I'm highly confident we'll get there thank you okay we have questions from Lana dimple Malcolm thank you thank you thank you great presentation from both of you I'm excited about how we're moving forward when we have the next followup it will be Happ unless you already know it we have that we awarded 193 million to mwsb in fiscal year 2023 but you're not telling me out of what total awards that we gave out cuz the biggest ask that I have is making sure that we're aligning those total spend dollars to the opportunities so 193 million is great they will be helpful to know out of what total spin so that we can see is that 193 million 2% 5% 27% of the total span that's a good question uh 10.8 8% uh of our discretionary spend uh if you look at uh the breakdown in terms of designations um 51.8 million with MBE 86.9 wbees and 54.5 with sbes so do we have a of which it can go into the parking lot you said 10.8% of our discretionary spend if I'm saying what was our total spend what percentage is this 193 million out of our total spend you don't have to come up with that number right now if you don't have it but that would be good for us to know so that we can help get the give you all the language that you need to hit the goals that we've identified for you all but other than that absolutely wonderful let us know how we can better support how you're moving forward with staff and or financial support because we got limited funds so thank you good great job Stephen Holly um I have referred many minority or woman-owned businesses to Steve and he's been able to help them with the process of getting certified and connecting with opportunities and I appreciate it where he's also made himself available to some of this community events especially with minority and women owned businesses and that certainly goes a long way um and Holly thank you all thank you also for attending some of the small business women's forums uh I have uh invited you at and I certainly appreciate that so the first bullet point where you have uh uh economic development team referred over 700 businesses to Partners are this uh are this uh minority and women-owned businesses or small businesses uh I'm going to say probably I'm going off the top of my head I'm not looking at there I'm going to guess it's about 70% mwsb I mean they come to us from you all um you know we they come to us from the different events that we throw I we throw events and I mean Council Mayfield I'm going give you a shout out you're 100% attendance at every single one of them I think when you weren't even on Council you were attending them which is great um but you know we have over 250 businesses at a minimum at these events they come up to us we make those referrals there um it's organic you know it's just word of mouth so it kind of comes from all over but if we can track that data we will and so I'm guessing it's about 70% so are these two partners outside of the city yes so that would be so when we can we con we are very very fortunate in this community to have the number of Resource Partners that we do and yes every ecosystem you're never going to have one that's completely connected because it's just not the nature of ecosystems ours can strengthen and get better but it is pretty amazing what's done and so christe actually on a quarterly basis um convenes uh over 30 partners and to us those partners are um academic nonprofit and government that do something to support are small businesses and so they all do something different some of them do some of the same things um but we know when a small business comes to us we know relationally where to send them and it's great because the small business doesn't have to you know Steve was talking about to navigate the internet and follow find all that they just come to us and we say okay here is the person that you need to talk to and we do that email introduction to them so uh I just have a followup question for Steve do we have a do we have data on how many of our certified business owners are actually getting opportunities beating opportunities I know it was very low last time uh that we had uh given presentation on and I know that your team was working on increasing that number so that there are more beating opportunities or at least they are getting they're getting uh contracts uh we were trying to work work on that so where are we uh today uh good question uh it fluctuates I've been here again for 3 years uh but it's in the range between 25 and 30% of our total uh mwsp certified firms so only 25% are actually getting contracts and what do you think what should be our goal well I think uh you know I I've uh said this uh to Brandon Miller who is a whiz at our reporting Brandon uh uh just gave me a sense of if we just bumped it up 7% that would be millions of dollars of spend now uh we're going to ready to we're performing an economic impact study and so you're going to see what the ROI is on our our program uh in the next couple months uh but what I want to be able to do is you know give you a sense of also what that uh 7% let's call it that uh what that would mean uh and in time I will be able to give you the a sense of what that means in in a way of an Roi I think that that would be helpful as part of our next steps because certainly it's great as they get as they're getting certified and becoming certified minority in women owned business owner uh but I think we need to take a step further to to also ensure that they are are getting opportunities whether it's through City or whether it's through our partners or even the private sector thank you thank you Malcolm thank you thank you um Holly Steve just want to thank you for for really really doing a good job I mean when I I don't think you guys get enough credit because when folks think about Economic Development it's always the big projects the big things that we do but again you you guys are doing the blocking and the tackling working with small business owners and our minority firms and I think that's really really important and the impact that we're making are great certainly we should continue to do this as a strategic initiative and and be very focused on it uh and I think that you are the the small business strategy plan I think is spot on uh the the CBI University uh is spot on is consistent to where I think we should be going we be really highlighting the utilization of small small Amon firms throughout the community um couple questions uh one uh two one and council member Brown alluded to it earlier on on another topic is making sure the community know that these programs exist and that continues uh to be a struggle um on a wide variety of um platforms for us so could you kind of help us understand how we're communicating to the general public uh that these programs exist hly and then Steve the council's engaged in a lot of high-profile public projects I think we talked about this before uh the Pearl District Atrium uh whether it's the Spectrum or maybe even the Panthers I mean how are we tracking and working with these these entities at the appropriate time to ensure that the council um desires for greater input for minority participation is being tracked and and and um that the end users are fulfilling their obligations to us okay I'll start so you're you're right I mean it is something that I feel like it doesn't matter how much how hard we try to work on the communication front you know there's always that that Gap and so I feel like first I want to say as part of the Strategic plan when they're doing that assessment I think that's going to come out and so I would be um I mean I'm not going to predetermine what that would what would be a recommendation but I'm guessing that that will be a recommendation and I told you the recommendations aren't just like statements it's measurable it's actual steps like an implementation plan of what you can do um so we're really excited about that but what I will say is we're really grateful um to Jason and his team so um Beverly is a big part of this as well um you know with amp up they do some really creative things to Market this like radio campaigns all kinds of different things that um are absolutely amazing and have really bumped up our numbers and and then honestly graduates of this program just absolutely love it you know and that's also we also support just so you all know um we really have worked hard on the external front um to really build out a pipeline for mwsp support mostly um minority own business support and so we actually provide funding to boost pad um and Aspire Community Capital which is a pre-stage of amp up and then next CLT um and scaleup CLT and so um um what I will say is that this whole community of business owners are huge advocates for us as well and then we use the C social media channels we attend every single event that we possibly can to talk about this information but there's absolutely another thing that's happened is the alliance um has a new digital platform where they're actually putting all of these different resources in one spot that's kind of they're working through the Kinks of that just you know any kind of new technology you put out there's always going to be something so what I will say is is that we're using what we know is at our disposal but we know there's so much more that we can be doing as well and so um we're open to suggestions I would say but then also I really think this plan is going to give us a really concrete communication strategy that we can Implement and move forward and just uh quickly to piggy back on that um council member Mitchell uh I thought he was going to smack me on my hand when uh we talked about the bonding program and the early wins we we got he said Steve you need to telling us about this and and so you know that really uh hit home I should add uh part of our disparity study uh one of the things came out of it was Outreach and engagement uh our cbac we started a subcommittee focus on that area they're spread throughout uh our 10 staff members we're spread throughout multiple organizations throughout the city we uh of course uh attend uh those of you who have Town Hall meetings and speak to the constituents uh particularly those who are either in business thinking about uh being in business or uh have a family member who's in business and and of course we've uh recently hired a dedicated Outreach and engagement uh person who is just tremendous uh he's been with us just uh uh a month and he's just already made impact and so we're going to uh get out there we're going to do it even more so uh you'll soon see newsletters uh coming from CBI uh we haven't done that uh we're working on uh with uh Communications and marketing a concept called CBI TV you know V visuals in in video form is just incredible so a lot uh more effort uh in this area a lot more focus and I think you will see it high and the high-profile projects thank you he didn't answer did you have a okay I thought you were just follow to retoric okay uh relative to that uh we have uh I think the most strategic uh Communications uh especially when something is large often times Ed is involved uh we have uh early Communications I forget which one of those panel members talked about the idea of getting in front early so that uh you know you can actually have some real impact we do have that kind of communications with Ed as well as those who you know support the Pearl the corridors uh so that's definitely something that we do thank you uh James Victoria and then tar okay uh I I'm going say kudos to both Harley and and stepen Harley thank you uh the emails I sending you how you quickly been a great face for our small business in our community your can do attitude it works well for our small business Comm Community Stephen 3 years ago I can't believe if you really hit the ground and you've been running and I'm all excited about linkup CLT CBI University one question though for you Stephen we got, 1600 firms what is your goal if you had to throw out a go B certified firms well uh I talked about uh let's call it operation 2027 okay by that time I want to turn that to at least 1,800 uh that's a lot you know we've opened up the entire state uh we went from a 13 count CSA to all 100 counties in York County in South Carolina so I see no reason with the effort that we're doing in the way of Outreach and engagement why we can't at least hit that Mark uh I have a woman on my team Kimberly tips we call her KT she is just tremendous uh I think you'll you we'll hit that number keep you posted couple more comments if I made on the other uh I love the work you're doing the CBI advisor community continue to do that and let me go through the questions though so yes for me great initiative we continue to move forward um specific policy areas to explore next year Stephen I do thank you have the bond insurance program you guys done an excellent job of getting that started I would like for us to see kind of expand that and get more results if we can uh city manager here's one for you though and the challenges opportunity ahead and one of our speaker touched on it we had to be careful on our project delivery method have to support our CBI I think we all had a conversation about a project we had and the participation was low lot due and largely to the project method type we selected so let's make sure we can have that in our whole DNA throughout the city that what we do let's make sure we have a lens how can we support our CBI program thank you great job thank you s to hit the questions yes absolutely this should be a strategic initiative moving forward I concur with council member Mitchell in regards to uh project delivery I think that is one of the um the highest priorities in terms of policy areas that we need to look at particularly in general services so I'd like to see um how we intend to restructure or to approach project delivery to better um enable mwsb participation um when I think about that as a in addition to the the project delivery method when I think about good faith estimate or good faith efforts I really really would like to see us give some effort to how we can um invest in our mwsb and invest in those relationships between the pre and those potential mwbes because those good faith efforts for me often fall short and I I think there's a role that we can play to improve those efforts um when it comes to Workforce Development in small business I know that there's already work happening in this space but I absolutely am looking forward to seeing how the two marry up how do we enable small businesses to hire locally how do we um enable uh our our potential employ employees if you will or our workers those that are seeking employment to connect with small businesses here within our own ecosystem so I definitely look forward to that um I did want to follow up on a previous request um and it if it needs to go to the parking lot then it can go there but I want to make sure that I lift it up again I'm very very interested to understand as we look at all of our spend and who our proms are how how we're performing there when it comes to percent mws s spe so for each each um pre or you can do it by project or however you want to do it I just want to get an understanding of who are our best Partners when it comes to really trying to build capacity in mwsb and who might we be able to come alongside to help make those connections or to help uh build capacity in those particular Industries or in those particular trades so that there are mwsp partners that can that can be worked with um so well let me pause for a second I know that was a previous request I just want to see if there's any update to that or we can put it to the parking lot well I I will say this most of the goals we set we meet now who's at the top of the food chain um you know there are some that are you know it's just great to work with them if you're talking about well if you don't have it the list now it's fine we can put on the parking lot I can get you that awesome and then finally um I know I've had this conversation a few times with um with the city attorney and I just want to make sure that as a council we're really really looking at on these larger projects how do we make sure that our legal framework as we go into contracts um ensure participation targets are committed to on the front end and that we're getting that information back I know time and time again we've asked about that and have not yet seen that so that one I don't want to I don't want to pass that one by for in 2024 thank you thank you Tark yeah I just have three quick comments that uh I'd like to hit on in a non-threatening way as I focus on the big picture so I I in the scope of that last one should this continue to be a strategic initiative moving forward I think we'll all agree the answer is a resounding yes but I think the the the sub question there is how are we scoping the body of work and the out come that we're responsible for achieving here so the three things there I'd love us to really consider as we walk away from here is one making sure we don't reinvent any wheels and we don't go at this alone um we've had a lot of work in the past on this we want to make sure we build upon and we know that the county and other really material partners are doing similar things so I think it's really important that we collaborate and not reinvent the wheel in that way uh number two is um the focus and an elevated focus on the small business piece we often say small business minority business kind of as a tagline for it all um and while both are being worked on and I know staff's doing a great job on both fronts we have the elevated programs and processes and Investments that we make on the minority business front rightly so but we really need to focus on a broader lift up of small business overall and it's been a while since I've seen the stats but last time I saw them over 10 10,000 small businesses defined small businesses are in Charlotte and they make up over 60% of the workforce and they're coming out of a pandemic and in the middle of an economic environment where they are really struggling and this includes uh you know from Mom and Pop bakeries to a burining startup scene in Charlotte that most people it isn't even on their radar these are things I think we could go in with a holistic focus and lift it up at an elevated level where it deserves to be and then focus on the minority and women own aspects within the cross-sections of where they may not be getting the same opportunity so that's number two and then finally number three and I think this is this is one we've talked about before but I think it's critically important is the role that we should be playing as the city of Charlotte between in minority business um development between capacity building we've heard a lot about that already here you know capacity building mean who is an existing minority business to get into that program operation 2027 you just said was 1700 1800 versus the equality of the contract awarding process so the latter is our internal scope and we have to get that right when we see percentages that are down and not representative of what of what the community of these businesses represent that's a problem and we all need to be focused on it I think capacity building is incredibly important but that the the city's role should be a convenor of the private sector of nonprofits and of others to go out and do that not the responsible party to say we're going to create more minority businesses because that is is the goal I think it both are noble causes but I think we need to make sure we know where we're a convener and someone else's the ultimate necessary accountable party ver versus our in shop responsibility thank you okay if no no further questions thank you so much for a great [Applause] presentation and without further Ado we have Marcus with arts arts and culture I think I was a D2 yes Workforce Development next I'm proud of it yes are you Marcus are you doing arts and culture at in the middle Malcolm in the middle right oh I'm the god I said can we all just get along right just can we just come together both are needed well good evening everyone evening think I'd get my chance yes oh man um well good evening I am Danielle Frasier uh Special Assistant to city manager for Workforce Development and so thank you all I have no idea IDE where we are if I'm going back to this baseball analogy but uh we had a long seventh inning stretch so um I'm hoping that I I can hit a home run and maybe get some of my colleagues off this bace and and get them home um but I I had about two hours of slides to share with you all today um but but I I I boiled it down to two two slides and and hopefully a couple of minutes that I I hope that I'll be able to share with you a hire Charlotte and a Workforce Development update and hopefully to share some things with you all that will spark some great dialogue as we uh dive deeper into this strategic priority um so we've heard a lot of great presentations and discussions today and I heard Workforce Development a lot whether we were talking about housing Mobility transportation and so uh I think it just goes to to show how critical Workforce Development really is to our our community uh and so a little bit I I've been here for a little less than 6 months now and so I've learned a a great deal about this organization and and the great things that we are doing and one of the things that that I've really learned is uh how much the city of Charlotte is really supporting internal uh and external Workforce Development uh efforts and if I could I think uh council member Molina sent it said it yesterday is that we don't celebrate our our wins enough and so I really want to highlight one thing um of many things that I I've learned about this organization is that we do well and it's our registered apprenticeship programs uh I know you all have been a proponent of that uh but we have 17 registered apprenticeships across this organization it is absolutely unheard of um and pretty impressive we're one of 300 organizations across this country that are endorsed by the Department of Labor um for uh being a an apprenticeship Ambassador and we're only one of three municipalities and so again very very impressive I wanted Council to know how much that this organization is leading as an employer um across not just our community but across our our nation and so we play a key role uh in in our ecosystem as an employer but also as a community serving organization and so we also play a convenor a connector I think I just heard council member uh bukari say a convener uh an investor and so um we're a piece of this ecosystem uh we're a piece of the pie if you will not to make you hungry but um but a very important one and and so speaking of those pieces of the pie I'd like to share an update on higher Charlotte which has been a uh very critical Community uh collaborative that has been in our community for the past few years and I just want to give you a quick update I know you have more detailed information in your appendix but as a refresher uh the higher Charlotte initiative was an economic development Le initiative uh that was focused on creating and filling good jobs and there were two project goals under uh this initiative and and the first was to develop a vision and framework uh to fill good jobs of today and tomorrow uh and that framework is actually completed in April of 2022 uh with the help of our ecosystem Partners uh and it was heavily focused on skills attainment and credential attainment and the second goal was to be informed on how we uh how we deploy our arpa dollars to help support this framework and so uh if you recall you all approved a $9.1 million um budget to help support this framework last year uh and again these details are are in your packet um but the update that I'll just share here is that we accomplished goal one check and then goal two is is in process um and that you will be getting updates in the near future on where we are with these uh projects and how we will be deploying these funds and you'll probably be seeing some some RCA coming your your way soon um but with these with these goals of higher Charlotte and um with all of the data and all of the great work and I've got to give uh and recognize uh Tracy Dodson and her team for all of this work this was hard work she brought together the Community Partners I was able to be a part of the steering committee and so there was a lot of great work that went into this and it was uh ecosystem informed and I really really believe that this is going to lay a strong foundation in how we move forward and what our Workforce Development plan uh will will and can look like and so this brings me to um the last uh bullet on this slide which is just to to say to you that we have a robust Workforce Development ecosystem uh that is very collaborative it's very connected it includes our private sector our public sector our Workforce Partners our nonprofit Partners um our education Partners all coming together to try to solve um some Workforce Development challenges on helping individuals get good jobs and helping businesses to find uh good talent and so again we play a key role in all of this uh and we are connected to all of these key collaboratives yes it worked okay so looking ahead uh which I hope is is going to be um the the meat of your your conversation today uh and for uh the sake of of of time I won't um read through through all of these but I did want to provide we did do some um some peer city um reviews and that's where I think you saw the the um samples over there on the wall yesterday um but what what we did know and in the research that we did um uh on other cities is that we are all struggling with some of the very same things right businesses aren't able to find Talent um there's a misalignment between the talent the available Talent we have and the skills needed for those jobs um we have some residents that uh lack the access and the opportunity for the resources that they need and they may have some barriers to education and employment and so uh and and to retain and imp and uh obtain uh employment and so um we have a lot of things in common with our peer cities and again I'm not going to read through these things but I I did want to um give you some things to think about in your discussion today and to consider those three bullet areas of of uh consideration are really areas that I think that we have an opportunity to continue to lean in uh whether it's uh it's career resource awareness career Pathways um credential attainment Etc but what I really wanted to to focus in um with you today and again for this discussion is to point out a couple of the questions I think I had more questions than everybody else today but um really want your your thoughts and your feedback um on Workforce Development as you made this a strategic priority and ask you what was it that you wanted to solve for through Workforce Development um do we want to focus on specific communities uh whether it's corridors or whether it's specific geographies do we want to focus on specific Talent right what who who do we want to impact the most do we want to F focus on specific skills I think I heard uh council member Mitchell and Graham in their readout yesterday say that they wanted to focus on um jobs that don't require 2-e fouryear degree but a post-secondary credential and so uh thinking about all these things as we um want to create a plan of of impact also of the industries that we have in demand in our community Are there specific ones that we want to focus on I know in that infrastructure conversation there was I think a lot of opportunity I think I'm going to help a lot of work ahead um um but also um what does success look like right and qualitatively and quantitatively I heard uh council member Driggs say yesterday that the numbers are great and we need them to measure but what story are we trying to tell and ultimately what impact uh are we trying to make also uh I heard council member uh Anderson say we want to make sure that we're tying uh digital inclusion uh to Workforce Development in a greater way to ensure that our talent uh can have the access and the literacy that they need in order to get a job and to get a better job and so and we're already having those conversations Rachel and I and uh assistant city manager ESU on how we can Bridge um those two already so uh and then of course our our last question should it be a Strate strategic initiative but again I kind of breeed through this but it's hard when you're standing between uh you and dinner and so I really would love to pause right there and and hear more from you and answer any questions that you may have okay our first question was Dante one of the most important priorities that we have of course housing is important than the other ones are as well but to have a strong viable Workforce will allow us to attract from an economic development perspective companies to come here and it will allow individuals to um move their themselves up the economic ladder right and I think those could be for me two elements of what success would look like year overy year if we have people who are moving up and out of uh poverty and up the economic uh ladder and we are able to attract new companies to come here or existing companies to expand and that would definitely be something um I would like to see us track I think we could probably have a Monday uh first Monday conversation about the T the um industries that we'd like to specifically address because I I think that that deserves a more robust conversation um but I'm really excited about having you on board and I agree with a couple council members that said yesterday we need to have the credential attainment for those individuals who don't have the opportunity to to attend a two or fouryear university however we want to give them that opportunity to live and thrive in Charlotte right so they can afford to live here and enjoy living here so looking forward to what you're going to put together this year thank you I I agree with everything that um Dante said I do think the industry matching industry with opportunities is an important factor that we have so thanks for what you'd said and I say it too um but I also had a question when we talk about on specific communities Talent skills and skill levels I think one of the things that um has been been a concern of mine is that we no longer um have a relationship with CMS for those trads that they used to um have like you know Auto Repair um and you know yeah that and you know I always remember what was the guy's name that um he was the drywall he kept saying on the school board it was like you need to have some drywall training in here but I think one of the things that I say the is because not everybody is going to go and get a two-year degree and when we talk about young men and women coming out of high school that are not going to go to college but have to have a career so I'd like to ask how do we look at this focus on working with CMS to determine some of those talent and skill levels that when people walk across that stage that they can walk into something that we have that will allow them to make a sufficient living in our city thank you thank you Danielle for a good presentation for to answer the questions that you have for me what do success look like I would like to see more local Partnerships uh versus out ofate companies winning bids and then having to utilize local companies to learn how to do business in Charlotte to me that is part of that success of homegrown and promoting from within for the question of do we want to focus on specific communities Talent skill levels I would like to see us focus on specific Partnerships that we already have such as Urban League such as the Goodwill training where we provided funding and construction as the mayor mentioned Central Pont Community College we already have some relationships with certain corporate Partners where we've connected individuals to training what does that followup look like versus specific Community or Talent those specific Partnerships that we already have to make sure that we're making that we're our funding for whatever that training will is 8 weeks 12 weeks we just help fund training for the individuals that put the lights up on the pole that climb the poles it would be great if we are tracking and building that relationship with Duke Energy to have them people get direct hires cuz those are young people without necessarily A 2-year degree it's a 12we program and they're making 880,000 60 to 80,000 a year so that's what the combination of success looks like for me and where to focus and as far as the question of should this continue to be a strategic initiative I believe yes I would also like to see us be much more targeted on how this how we're selling this initiative to the community thank you and and if I could just add there uh thank you council member for your remarks um through our arpa funding we are extending uh the renew program with both Urban League and Goodwill as well as Goodwill is receiving um a grant for the bank Works training so yes so to your point I I agree with you it's it's happening thank you yes we should continue having this as a strategic um initiative moving forward success for me looks like having a Workforce that reflects the industries that we want to Target and we've got the right skills within the community to deliver Community going forward right do we have tool and die makers do we have sanitation workers do we have Telecom workers what we know that we've got basic Community needs and we know what industries that we're going to Target based on the work that was done several years ago uh in regards to the growing Industries um so recruitment matching up to our Industries matching up to our Workforce um that's what success looks like for me that people have choices here in Charlotte uh where they don't have to go to other cities to earn a living um obviously we want that to line up to wages that they can afford to live here so that goes back to the types of industries that we're trying to recruit um when I think about um uh focusing on specific communities absolutely and I think it has to has to has to be hyperfocused on our youth I know that we have adult Workforce Development programs I think we've got to go deeper we've got to reach down um into CMS and work more closely with them as best we can because we know even as we talk about uh crime as we talk about how people having barriers to employment we want to really be able to um prevent some of the things that now we're having to be confronted with right um and so I think that that requires us to be much more connected at that level and at an individual level I don't know if it's the guidance counselors or whoever particularly within the schools maybe it's community and schools as partners but it's got to be um youth focus and it's got to be down to the individual we don't want to label someone too early on as their potential or anything like that I'm not I'm not saying we want to stunt people's potential but we also want to be able to get folks uh exposed early on to what options there are um and and get them on track to get to where they want to go we know that um other countries have amazing apprenticeship models as well and so there's opportunities to Benchmark from there but that's what success looks like um for me me and um what does council want to for through Workforce Development y I think I've answered each of your questions thank you thank you uh Danielle you know how excited I am that you're here uh the key priority for me has been the apprenticeships and that's partly because um I lived in Europe and I saw how widespread apprenticeships are and how effective they are uh I think a key thing though in Europe is that it's it's accepted that there are kind of two tracks there's a kind of trade track and there's an academic track and that people split and go in those different directions in this country there is still a perception that college is synonymous with a certain kind of success and that failure to go to college conversely is a certain kind of failure uh that's unfortunate because a lot of people who go to college don't graduate a huge percentage uh or they graduate and they're not employable because they didn't actually acquire any SK skills so I guess uh my first question is what can we do to make the idea of not getting a 4year degree kind of more socially acceptable or remove a little bit of the stigma um or or conversely maybe the uh the association of the 4year degree with success because the connection is not good so can we actually do more to promote that understanding yes I do I do think so um you're you're you're singing singing music to my ears um I was on the sat on the CTE Advisory Board of CMS some time ago and that was one of the things that we talked about is uh awareness um there is a a stigma around Career and Technical education that it's not a viable pathway and that they're not good jobs uh I do think that the city of Charlotte can help with this and and one of those was just around pathway awareness right and and talking about all of the pathways that are available to our community and especially to our young people uh if a 2-year and a four-year track is not uh their goal I think that our apprenticeship programs even as an employer has has been a great example of that uh I think that we could potentially partner with with some Community with industry and even have awareness campaigns uh around that you got to get to parents you got to get to faculty you got to get to teachers you've got to get down into K through 12 uh and align with with them I know some schools Do It um uh do it more than others and how they're Pro promoting uh CTE but I do think that there's opportunity in partnering with how do we get that message out uh and how do we spread that awareness even more about all of the opportunities that are non twoyear 4year degree second question was uh and I raised this when we were talking about housing um is there a way that we can connect Workforce Development uh to our subsidized housing housing to leverage our investment in housing by having people improve to the point where they don't need help paying their rent so do you see a potential tie in there yeah I I Rebecca and I have actually had that convers ation on on a couple of occasions and she has educated me on the housing first model and so we know that based on um certain regulations and and the focus areas of certain funding that that may be um a challenge but I I do think that there's opportunity to one make sure that we're connecting individuals with Workforce Development uh efforts and I know that that's something that's already happening but I Rebecca and I spoke about that and said that there's there's more opportunity to make sure that there's a stronger connection there could be a kind of benefits Cliff problem and then they don't qualify for the subsidy thank you very good thank you James so first of all let me just say thank you to uh the city manager and Danielle for you being here Council I want to remind you all this all started January 2023 when we had our strategy session at UNCC Charlotte this Council said the Workforce Development was going to be a priority so I want to say thank you we're so excited you're here I'm going to Echo Council mcgraham though he whispered to me me he said we just need to get out of her way and so I purposely have not scheduled meeting with you for a whole year so Danielle could be Danielle so let me go through the questions real quickly I think the first one for me is what we're trying to solve is make sure those citizens in our community who want to be productive who want to a skill set and I would like for us to follow lead of what school systems are doing not only CMS but also Gord County Schools part of the their RFP request now is to have a Workforce Development plan so those who are bidding on their work you have to show and they tell you at a minimum we would like for you to hire one or two people from the nonprofits I think that's direction we should go especially having someone of your level here number two what community we want to focus on there are three of us who was raised in Southside Tia Dante and myself there's an organization in place called strive CLT Dr Gwen High I think that would be a great opportunity to focus on the community Southside homes what a partner already there with elivan that we can do some real good work so I'm adamant about focus on Southside I'll throw that out uh industry I'm partial to construction because we are a forgiving industry and those who are trying to come back in the workforce construction industry we Embrace that so in my mind when we build we see building we trying to build we should be building people at the same time what does success look like I'm sick and tired of us being 50 out of 50 so success for US based on what's that report called mayor chatty study the chatty study that we somehow now we we making progress we're no longer saying we 50 out of 50 but hopefully through your leadership we can at least move up 10 or 12 uh and not be 50 out 50 and yes uh I think we should continue to move forward because this is very important to our community amazing thank you thank you thank you um and I I just want to Echo the sentiments of uh of uh council member Mitchell and actually he he hit on some points that I was I was going to hit um so the first thing was and I wanted to ask the manager the mayor the attorney we now have Danielle and it's a deliverable of this Council but I I I'm wondering is this work that's going to continue for in other words is her place a place of permanence hers we now got Ed mckenny you know we have these specific roles and so I'm I'm wondering uh CBI the way that CBI right now is embedded I think that these are deliverables that are inevitable in perpetuity whether it's this Council or any Council so I'd like to think about how we create this as a position of permanence something that you know beyond regular deliverables Beyond just we got it checked and then it's done and then a new Council comes and says oh well Workforce Development is not that important oh small business is not that important you know and then it's just this up and down you know kind of trolley thing you know like I said it sticks out to me because again when council member Mayfield returned she talked about things that have been done prior years before right that seemed like they were kind of repetitious to what we were trying to create now so I wonder when we when we hit these Milestones where we find success how do we cement those practices into the organizational structure of Charlotte so I'd like to think about that that's offline maybe that's a parking lot issue that we can kind of talk about Circle in um secondly I am a proud product of gford County Schools my entire life and so when I graduated from high school we had National Honor Society and we had something called vocational educational Honor Society which something that concurrently you know for the high Achievers encourage them to look for Education um that would you know be specific to a four-year institution and then it also ushered certain students into a technical background right having them you know be encouraged to do both because imagine honoring a student for the ability to you know have a technical path and realize the earnings that were possible as a result of being honored in that way right and um so I I'm you know thinking through the process of CMS and some of the things that I I see and don't see once I got here um is is something that we could kind of talk about to promote you know how we engage our students um you know to to get them to consider what what's what's interesting to them right and kind of remove some of that stigma like council member Drake said um and then my last thing you know it's not time check okay thank you my last thing is um as we think through the I guess the the you know talent that we'd like to um you know attract you know Steer our residents towards we we attract six Industries according to you know what the alliance works on day in and day out for our region you know and I'd really like to think about that because that's who we're attracting from the outside and those are what the business I think we have to kind of work with the business Community concurrently right the jobs that are being created I think we have to respond to the jobs that are actually being created in our region you know um while we think about you know what we're going to specify as far as Workforce training member okay sorry about that but we can talk offline because you know how excited I am so happy you're here thank you happy to work with you I can't wait to get started thank you DK thanks well first and foremost I'm I'm really impressed by the thoroughness of everyone's comments and I agree with just about everything that's been said so far uh this is what the disc thing said to say doing it your head keep I admire I admire and like you Victoria um so uh just a quick comment here and this comes from a place of I have been deep in the weeds in this in this vertical for a long time um what does success look like to me what I've learned is nearly anybody can create some programs and run a few folks through them through few dozen even a couple hundred what success looks like for at our at our level is scale can it be done for tens of thousands in a meaningful and sustainable way in where they're headed so I think my advice and and and kind of what I'd say I think we really and this is a this would be a wholesale change Mr manager and I don't know that we have the appetite for it but I don't believe that we are going to be able to to build the thing that has that scale if we go about it as we're building a product the product is complex and it's going to I mean there are there are hundreds of private sector companies that are doing this and failing but if we step back at a more strategic level and tried to build a platform that others products could scale and I think in doing so my my my just simple initial concept and it may or may not be good I just thought of it right now as we were sitting here and I was listening to everyone talk is maybe something similar to the voucher or stien program but holistically where these stiens or vouchers follow students follow adults they get to choose where they go within a city approved vendor list of different things that strategically align with where we want to go and there then Danielle and the team's work becomes after teeing up the initial stuff finding and shepherding in existing programs and products finding new ones that need to be built but it doesn't all have to be quarterbacked out of the city and I think if if we were to step back and do that then the focus isn't the the I mean the the level of operations it takes to do this is really tough doing that is something that isn't going to be easy but achievable and then the focus of the team can be how to integrate this vertically like we've already said with the vertical pieces so it becomes horizontal how do we tie this into our transportation plans for for Equity how do we tie it into affordable housing how do we tie it into transportation and clothing and food and child care and so that we're solving something horizontally there and you will never even if you have the 1% chance of success at at building the product you'll never have the time to go really focus on those unless you build a platform thank you okay thank you for the opportunity uh most of my colleagues have already articulated you know a lot of the uh what I wanted to say in reference to a strong focus on apprenticeship um youth involvement youthy which is really important um as well as um Ian I mean just being the a top priority for this Council um can't speak for everybody else this is really really important to me and we look forward to you coming at the appropriate time in front of the economic development committee to kind of um for us to kind of kind of have more Deep dive and and conversations with it um but we're very excited that you're here for sure two qu questions one um yes yes yes yes yes to all the questions right um a focus would be certainly working with our quarters of opportunity we have these six business hubs down strategically located throughout the city and if that can be a place where uh folks can drop in and identify um Workforce Development opportunities employment opportunities uh don't know whether not there is a a community job board where folks can kind of go and kind of see what's available there and could you talk about your relationship between the city and Central PM Community College and what what what does that look like as Rel to Workforce Development sure um well I'll first start off with uh thank you for the for the question um our relationship with Central pedmont is one from an employer standpoint and our relationship through our prepaid uh tuition program so that's the program that we help support our internal Talent um through external it's it's really around just Outreach and around collabor operations maybe around um job fairs or around um educating Central pedmont as well as our other partners on what are the jobs that we have at the city of Charlotte so it's more from an employer standpoint uh which is great but I think we have an opportunity now that we are furthering uh what Workforce Development efforts look like and what our plan is to incorporate them especially from an external training provider so to speak and helping us to um train and develop Talent what about the the certificate programs is employer Comes To Town uh the need Workforce uh that Workforce needs to be trained through Central Pont Community College is there a relationship where you would know that's occurring and and how do you kind of facilitate that right so I guess let me go back to my previous life um being at Charlotte Works uh so at the Workforce Development board we had what was called uh an eligible training provider list that was a vetted list of providers that we subsidized uh training vouchers to and so just through my relationships and my connections there uh knowing what has been vetted as industry recognized credentials uh in central pedmont was one of the largest um training providers that partners with with Charlotte works and receives funding and so I would go through my existing Partnerships and channels that way and I'm pretty familiar with the programming that they have available and especially through those certificate programs and even through their um their short-term uh credentialing programs does that answer your question if no Malcolm you're done okay okay um I I just wanted to ask one question Danielle and this is something that happened um we have been trying to work with Central Pont and to do some Workforce Development training and I don't know if this is still the case but there we were talking about people that can't get away from their jobs because that's essential for them so they had to come in on Saturday and Sunday and when I talk talked to um the president she said that it was it was for the jobs that are in the medical industry and it was very difficult for her to get teachers because the state funding didn't always support that kind of flexibility of you know where they could be so I I'm I'm posing this as a question because I do think that those 5,000 jobs at the Pearl are going to be very significant important to us so is this could you kind of go back back can ask are you able to get the kind of resources for people that are working but want to upscale themselves for these positions and just let us know if that's another Avenue for us or if Central Pete m is already covering it absolutely I can definitely do that thank you thank you we'll take one last question from uh dimple quickly and uh we have one another agenda item uh or topic for today so we'll need to wrap this conversation thank you yes so when I'm when you are one of the last most of the things are covered but I do want to highlight and uplift A specific group uh that Mr Mitchell and I met back in 2019 when we were working with Refugee support services and uh other immigrant communities I think because of the language barrier I do see not many nonprofits uh work Workforce Development programs that are catered to that group specifically so I think we do need to look at that uh but Mr bukari is right when he talked about how we need to talk about scalability and we don't need to reinvent the wheels here we already have so many organizations that are already providing great Workforce Development opportunities and trainings and just partner in with them um I haven't I'm not aware of many organizations that um that provide training in different languages so I'm sure there are Workforce opportunities for those um that have English as a language barrier there are construction jobs there are fiber optics there are very heavy technical jobs that you don't have to be fluent in English so uh if we can explore that option um because when we looked at some of our high unemployment areas those were all focused around corridors of opportunities and one of them one of those areas was Alba Marl and Central Corridor uh where we have um demographics that have language barrier and also we need to look at it look at this internally right I mean we have 8,000 plus employees Workforce even within our organization we have have we have um shortage of workers when it comes to bus operators um I don't know how we are doing with water sanitation workers so if we can also have apprenticeship opportunities for folks to work with the city uh especially cats it's a perfect example I think we we can stand up those training internally for uh for our Workforce uh so we need to look at internal partners as well as external partners and that's all I have but I look forward to working with you thanks thank you thank you Council M Danielle excellent work thank you for update thank [Applause] you all right next up is do you need a break no no I'm fine you're good okay so uh hopefully this will not take long and uh the reason I'm stepping in is not because Priya couldn't come up and deliver an amazing uh update I just wanted to talk a little bit about where we have been since the uh Council accepted the uh arts and culture plan and late in the fall so great work from PR of the city's first uh arts and culture officer and a lot of good things are happening and if you could just turn to page 38 of the yeah of your your booklet and and I think it it tells us a story so let's go back a little bit in time if you think about the conversations today around safety we were in a very similar situation a few years ago with arts and culture uh you may recall that there was a failed quar cense sales tax initiative from the county as well as we knew that uh corporate uh giving was drying up and so I I'll just point you to two data points the low point of funding for those organizations that the city funded over the years was in 2021 that low point was $4.3 Million okay so we have the infusion fund so the city um comes together with the private sector and basically has a $36 million commitment over a three-year period 6 million from the city 6 million from the private sector and the private sector actually raised an additional 5 million so we had about $41 million for this three-year period that three-year period goes through this current fiscal year so when we get to the budget uh and we begin the FY 25 uh budget there's a um decision that needs to be made in terms of arts and culture there are some colors on uh this chart one I guess that's lime green um the Thrive organizations for the most part one of the things that the the council said is that we are paying debt on facilities and a top priority are the facilities that we're paying debt on they can't go dark and those organizations that occupy those facilities can't go out of business either so during uh this in course of these last few years there was an ad hoc committee back in 2021 and then city council head of policy framework back in 2023 and so I believe that as we have moved forward as a city we have stayed within those Frameworks with your top priority being let's make sure we make those investments in those facilities that that are our facilities so over the uh three-year period of this infusion fund you can see what has occurred in terms of the increase in these particular categories so think about the Thrive organizations that's been 103% increase from the low point the Alana when we start to think of U more of our organizations that are around um you know some of the minority organizations that are in the system um they have gone up by 190% and all of the other organizations and and that's the the list of that's not in green or in red um have also gone up by 51% so I would say in terms terms of funding uh there has been a stabilization in the ecosystem but it's more than you know going from 4.3 million to 8.4 million there's also been a great deal of collaboration so you appointed with the private sector arts and culture board and they were able to put out different grants that were based on collaboration across the system so I would say that the infusion fund has been very successful in stabilizing um this subset of the arts and culture community and the question becomes what do we do going forward I would say that the good news is that as you're having your annual strategy meeting the uh count is also having their Retreat and they are having a discussion about arts and C culture and I believe that the uh co-chairs of the arts and culture Advisory Board are are presenting and the county is and this is good collaboration um so I don't want to get too far out in front of Dena um but we are actually at the table talking about having Lanes in which the city can make contributions in Lanes in which the county can can make contributions uh I will it was you Mr barari that talked about hardwiring or restricting some funds that are related to your priorities same concept for the county okay and then opportunities for collaboration uh across those identified restricted lanes if you will for um some of the other Concepts that you had about how can we make sure that this ecos system is actually collaborating so while I'm not asking for a decision today other than are we headed in the right direction and the other thing I think is important is that I I believe if these different entities are still important to the council start thinking about at least $8.5 million if if these are the the the groups that are important to us think about it that way um and so and also think about stabilizing the community and if you start to think about the city and the county from the public sector coming together and putting funds together um I think it would be bigger than anything we've had up to this point the one thing I would say to you that's an outstanding issue will be governance and governance is difficult in any thing that we do whether it's uh Mobility or whether it's arts and culture funding but that is just the the update the conversations are beginning to happen between the city and the county about funding um I do want to bring to your attention that stabilizing these groups is more than um what you have put in in the past and I guess the last thing that I would say along these lines is that the private sector's involvement up to this point has been if there is Public Funding for those entities organizations that are important to you then the private sector would be able to fund in a very different manner in other words sponsorships or things of that nature so don't need a decision today I just last time we didn't have a chance to talk about this at the annual strategy meeting and I I know there's a lot of Um passion around this I do believe the path that we are on right now is consistent with the priorities of the council but that's the the update so I'm going to base this comment on what you said there without having a ton of detail on what where the rubber meets the road that that is would be one of the more promising things I've heard in a long time on on this very important and difficult topic if what you just said is directionally going to be the thing that happens I think that is critical that the county plays a major role in in making that come to fruition so that sounds good but obviously that's a wild card and that has to happen I think you said my magic words which I've said from the beginning which are like we we don't need to be in the weeds of parsing out $100 here and 200 here we need to be at a policy level so to your governance Point 90% of the governance problem goes away when we articulate our vision and our policy and if there are two buckets of which one larger bucket are the things that are the um you know the responsibilities we already bear but then the other bucket is is more of an allocation that says here's what we want to accomplish here's what we value so no one's going and telling us here's the plan do you sign off on it they're reading what we value and they're building the plan and executing it on base like that so if it's in policy it shouldn't even really have to come to us but the point there is when I just as an example what I mean by value is like we might say we value things that our private sector leans into in that second bucket therefore we humor matches up to this amount that have this thing happening so there I think there's enough guard rails we can put around that I I have as many of you have have have been frustrated for a very long time about un being unable to get to the finish line so that's I just Devil's in the details but if that's the direction we're heading that sounds good to me are we going to hear an update on the plan or is this the Arts conversation so um the list that we have here on page 38 uh is that basically a derivative of the uh hello is is that a uh uh a legacy list that came down from the Arts and Science Council process absolutely that that if you go back in time the first time that the council put in its first 6 million that was the list that we put on the board right yes so so we're still kind waiting to see the full implementation of our arts and culture plan right which contemplates a new modality for deciding on where the money goes Mr Mitchell excuse me I'm trying to talk to uh that um that that sort of laid out criteria and represented presumably a departure from the past which is why we went to the trouble to do all that and I believe that Miss cirar told us in the past that she would be bringing forward more in terms of like the governance and the and the grant making process if that's right yes so Mr Dr what what I would add to what you just said is that um and I think I said this back in the fall think about the plan as the community's plan the council will never Implement that entire plan but the community gets to implement that plan and we'll have a lane or two or three in that plan and I believe that it begins with what we've been doing over time okay thank you parking lot I would love to hear from prya because we didn't get her in but I know we coming up on time so Mr Mr Jones um I had stepped away for a minute so from what I understand this 8.4 million is what we will recommend I would say at a minimum okay because when you start to think about what was provided over this threeyear period was basically $12 million a year if you back out almost 900,000 related to the um a ASC you get closer to about $1 million that were put into the into the the infusion fund the bulk of that and I think that's where Mr barari is going the bulk of that would be H hardwired to these organizations that you have funded over the years with some allocation for more collaboration okay so there will still be a line item for ASC or no no this all online items specifically for organizations so when you when you get to the governance I think that would be you know some of the issues so let's back up a little bit so it's been very easy for the city and I would recommend that we continue down this pathway it's an allocation that's sets in the foundation for the Carolinas and to put all this money out it it cost us something like 60 Grand to to get you know $12 million out some N9 m i mean 11 million so having funds hardwired the council not making determinations about who gets what got it much like in the past when the money went to the to the ASC now to the let's say the foundation a very very low administrative fee that's related to it and the funds getting out into the community with agreements with all the organizations that are going to receive funding that they are doing things that are consistent with the values of the city but not line items in the budget where people are coming in comment on those so so not individual Financial partner application I think that's that's huge because we spend this is 0.001% of our budget and we spend two hours every year discussing this I think that's great um this is great but I guess I I just want to make sure we we have IND individual artist um and that I just want to make sure we are how are they going to get funding because currently they are getting support from ASC so um what I would suggest is if you start to think about it some of the funds think about the infusion fund individual artists have been able to get funds out of the infusion fund okay so if we move forward and we have something that's close to $1 million then you you you're almost replicating the infusion fund going forward with a good deal of the money hardwired I know in my heart that the county isn't going to spend a lot of money on our facilities nor should they because they're our facilities but as they bring money to the table there are going to be some things like artists that the ASC has funded through County funds prior there will also be and if you start to look at this as just one big pot of money and you start to look at the resources that goes out through the entire ecosystem then once again the city council is not implementing the plan we're implementing pieces of the plan that are important to us so the way I see this is like this um big pot of money each entity is Distributing their share and then Foundation really with a very low ma very low management fee gets the money out to organizations um based on some sort of criteria yeah yes but let me add one other thing that doesn't mean just as the county is funding the admin costs of the ASC this year they may have that a priority going forward also and so the admin fee would be different depending on how the The Entity that's putting out the grants because for us if it's just an allocation to The Mint Museum it it's writing a check if there's a process where people are competing that's a bit different and and there is some Administration administrative feeds related to that type of process I mean I'm fine with the model I'm just only concerned about what happens if some of these organizations that we support do not end up getting funding like that we are obligated to and and again you you hardwire it it it's it's restricted it's not even a discussion okay well that as long as that's in place I'm fine so recapping so possibly a $8.4 million allocation right right um no city funding for ASC that would be your call right now we we I don't have that built in I I I I get it um you use the word corporate sponsorship what does that mean so as the um private sector started to look at how they would best value their contributions it's maybe and I'm not good at this PRI will help me out so there may be an exhibit that comes in and maybe it's Bank of America that is sponsoring that exhibit and maybe there's a a quarter of a million dollar contribution you've done the same thing with like Picasso from time to time you have as as a city council have sponsored these types of you know events and so that could take relieve you of having to do things like that in the future but but that's no guarantee right no guarantee there optional they can do it or not what about the public Art stays stays the same right now public the guard comes out of your CIP and there will be no changes to this who administers that ASC they'll continue to do that correct and governance that's the whole another problem for somebody else whole another problem for a different day we don't know when that day coming but it's going be a different well that what what what that's the rub right well somebody yeah I would say let's have the beginning of the conversation so let's let's start to think if if you put in 11 million and 88.4 goes to these organizations and then there's something that's in there that is flexible for collaboration there could be a conversation of about how many appointments what the city council have to abort when there's little money that isn't hardwired versus if the county put in a bunch of money let's say that's not necessarily hard wi so that's what I mean I think the appointments and things like that would be the conversation that's not for today but a conversation has to occur I like how he started at 8.4 and we're up to 11 in the same [Laughter] conversation uh just quickly I think the question is who makes the decisions about the grants with the discretionary money and I'm not sure we've and that was kind of I thought going to come out of the arts and culture plan process and so I'm wondering if we're still waiting for more information they're still working through that yeah okay thank you uh that wraps our last agenda item today I know it's been a very long day with a lot of information thank you very much for uh leaning in again today staying with it engaged with great questions great information yes Marcus and D ala I I know we're I guess 30 minutes off schedule if that is we had a closed session and and I want to know if that's something the council still wants to do today first yes Patrick can you give us the um so that everybody can get out of here you guys enjoy um but you give us the motion to go into close session please yes we got we have stuff tomorrow too you have the evaluations for the three people remember we agreed so that's tomorrow yeah so we need a motion to go into close session to consult with the city attorney to preserve the attorney client privilege between the attorney and the city council pursuing to 143 31811 A3 and to discuss matters related to the location or expansion of Industries or other business in Charlotte including agreement on attentive list of Economic Development incentives that may be offered to the body public uh pursuant to ncgs 143 31811 A4 do I have a motion we have a second all in favor please I any opposed thank you all right this [Music] is