you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I think it speaks volumes because when we start to take one issue in isolation you can pick that issue apart but this council through numerous annual strategy meetings in days and days of looking at goals, objectives and priorities and really landed on what I call a three-legged stool. It's a good place to live, a good paying job, and a way to get back and forth. And so I start off with that because we have, you have continued to do a lot of great things, even before the discussion tonight. A lot has happened since the Charlotte Moves Group. Your efforts on council alongside the community leaders have come to advance all the priorities and not just this one. And we believe it's done in a way that's never been done before, whether it's through the corridors of opportunity program or efforts to address safety and the environment through vision zero and CF. These efforts work together. You have been building on minority business enterprise and transformational investments in affordable housing. These programs, especially when we start to think about MWSBEs, these programs provide capital, technical expertise, critical networking, as well as bringing the MBEs to the next level. Legal assistance programs, how to navigate complex issues. And so when we start to think about some of the things that you've done, not just the CAP or what's happening around CBI, but even the Charlotte Small Business Growth Fund, which together with the private sector and the philanthropic community, that supports $40 million in lending to businesses that are unable to get traditional capital. Your $2 million investment helped make that happen. What's going to happen tonight at McKinney does this presentation. You'll see what's in it for the City of Charlotte. And that includes a year one of the ones in sales tax that 40% portion that comes to transportation in Charlotte is worth $100 million, $102 million, it'll be exact. And that grows. So I guess what I'm saying is the community is poised to have a discussion around transportation, much like what you've done with affordable housing and what you've done with good paying jobs. So I do want to talk a little bit about affordable housing if I turn it over to Ed. In this last budget, you doubled your efforts from the housing behind, from 50 million to 100 million. There's some great work and I won't do a spoiler alert, but there's some great work that's going on in the housing and state Communities committee about how to deploy those funds in a way that's never been done before So what I would say is that as we are talking about mobility tonight or transportation tonight That doesn't wipe out four years of work around some other key areas that actually work Together with what we're trying to do here. So with that said, I'd like to turn it over to Ed McKinney. Thank you. Again, Ed McKinney, a special assistant to the manager for mobility. A couple of things, I'll just go back real quick. Just a reminder, what we're going to do tonight is talk really about two things and two actions coming up before you. Transportation funding, which was really centered around the draft legislation and then the red line. So I'll walk through in Sarah Hazel and I will walk through the draft legislation specifically around the funding. And then we'll turn it over to Brent Kegel to talk through the red line purchase. Quick schedule. We've talked about this before. Here's where we are on our action review. And again, the goal next week, it's September 3rd, is these two requested actions. A couple of things just to kind of build upon what the manager just described. Again, a number of things we've been doing, certainly the plans that have already been described by the mayor. Thing that I think we wanted to sort of reemphasize is really the time is now. This notion of funding is critical to moving forward. It's certainly critical to our ability to move forward on our desired multimodal road investment specific to our strategic mobility plan. Without any more funding, we simply can't do our rail projects that are in the plan and we can't extend the frequency and the extension of our bus system. And so it's really important that to move forward on these big plans funding is absolutely critical. Let me talk about the funding and let me give you a sense of a little bit of context of the scale and maybe a different way to think about this as we move forward in some of these decisions to be made. These are some information prepared by the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance a couple of years ago that just talk about the impact of doing nothing and the impact of doing something. And so on the right side you have is sort of what you can gain out of this and on the other side is what you can lose and Scale on the on the red side lots if we don't address congestion, right? There's some real impacts these numbers are almost hard to kind of comprehend and I don't want to imply That the investment that we could make even transformational would make that red go away, right? We're constantly and will always be managing congestion. I think the thing to remember though, and the point to be made here is what we can do, right? What the investment we put in place will do. And so again, every dollar we spend will have an impact on the I'm going to use that increment in almost a casual way given the scale of what we're talking about, but remind you remember this slide and think about that $100 million of investment because you're going to see it in some big numbers as we go through. What does this mean for Charlotte? The manager described that I want to spend a little bit of time and talk about certainly the regional impact of this investment will, but also being really clear with you and the community about what this means for Charlotte. Before I get into the details, we've talked about the split of the funding strategy. We certainly talked about scale, but let's pause for a moment and think about how unique this is. There's certainly no community in the state that is thinking about transportation funding from this broad, multi-modal perspective. It'll be a really interesting model and certainly something that may be considered throughout the state and other places that are growing, right? This is a really unique way to think about our sales tax. It's pretty unique nationally. There's some great examples. We've been learning a little bit from Phoenix that they established a $31 billion investment program over a 30 year period and they did exactly the same thing. They understood a city like ours that is growing so fast, has needs that extend just beyond transit. So they've portioned some of that funding for transit for rail. They've personed some of that for bus and they certainly proportioned some of that for road. So it's a unique way to think about it. The scale is dramatic. 19 billion, we mentioned in the manager talked about what that one year looks like. This is a one year of the whole program, the 345 million. And remember, it's not just a transit plan. It's not just a rail plan, it's not just a bus plan, it's not just a road plan. This is a mobility strategy and a funding across all of those to really describe and to extend the mobility vision we have across the city. It's intentional and a couple of things I want to mention here is again the 100 million for the Charlotte and the split of the Rose between us and the towns. But again, the notion that we're not in those places throughout our show without throughout Charlotte that don't have access to transit to bus or rail and probably never will. So this road investment is critical to that. There's some basic needs. There are sidewalks of street lighting, etc. There are places that won't have access to rail itself long-term and there's opportunity to provide bus frequency and extend the access and bus frequency and control over that mobility across our city. Places that we can invest you in today in a very efficient way for bus. And so the notion is we've got a broad way to think about our transportation spending that's not just on anyone in particular mode. Another thing I wanted to describe in terms of about the scale of this program, and I want to sort of dissect this diagram a little bit for a moment in the uniqueness of this revenue. So there's a scale to this revenue that's dramatic, but it's also about the impact that has on our bond capacity and our ability to do lots of other things and address a lot of your other priorities. So on the right side of this is the revenue I just described. And we bucket it into two-year buckets to sort of be able to compare it to our bond program. So at the bottom you see the first two years at the top, you see the next two years, the 209, the 226. And we've married that up to the next two bond cycles 26 and 28. So you can compare these two numbers. So the revenue we're talking about over these two year periods compared to our bond capacity is more or less equal. So this is a scale that's pretty unprecedented in terms of the funding. And we'll do lots of projects. We'll have a lot of ability to accelerate the investments that we plan for in our strategic mobility plan. But that also allows us to do something pretty unique around the bond capacity. So that revenue is really income. And our debt capacity, the bond side, is really around capacity. So having more revenue will open up capacity and flexibility on the bond side. And so it's not just about the projects we can do with the 209, but it's what it will allow us to do in our future bond cycles. The study state has a limit on it. This revenue allows us to expand that capacity, give us flexibility. Those that flexibility will give counsel the ability to think about additional goals and additional investment beyond our current steady state for it, again, important priorities around housing, neighborhood investment, et cetera. And so, two halves of this. The revenue is really important that cash in hand will give us the ability to accelerate projects. But it's important and almost equally is impactful to think about the capacity it will provide within our bonds and the ability to address, again, not just transportation, but your goals across the city and across your priorities. Drilling it down, I want to start to describe what that investment looks like relative to the strategic mobility plan and discussions we've been having around our strategic investment areas and what that can mean for our projects moving forward. Here on one side you're just seeing the recently adopted, you recently adopted a capital improvement program for 2024, the unique scale, the 400 million that was adopted in your budget and you, a portion to portion of that for the strategic areas, the 55 million. Again, continuing to compare the scale of that investment in this revenue, it's essentially four times, again, out of over a two-year period. That's four times the scale of our strategic investment program as established. That's, again, on another comparison, that's 11% of our general fund budget. This scale of this is pretty significant. It will allow us to advance our strategic projects and our strategic area investment in a pretty dramatic way. Reminder. Again, the strategic area investment program that we've described, we've talked about this over the last couple years, we've talked about it in detail at your annual strategy meeting. This process where we went and focused in on where our priorities are, where our safety issues, where is growth happening, where is congestion targeted to those areas so that we could be really specific to the investments and have real impact. As a reminder, again, we've focused in on that in those areas in very specific ways. This is just a snapshot of District 5 going into an example here on the far east. Each area is unique. And so again, an example of how we can use those dollars, this new revenue, in multimodal ways to address issues that are specific in each area. Again, using the Harrisburg Road example. This is a place, again, where transit investment, there are bus routes in this area, but don't extend and don't provide the kind of service that you would see in other places of the city. The needs here, they're different, right? So it's not just about transit, sidewalk gaps, street lighting, safe crossings, intersection improvements. This money allows us to think about multimodal investment across the city in unique ways tailored to the unique conditions of each part of our city. That work is going on, so I wanted to give you a little bit of a preview of this. So this is our strategic investment team at work. This is just over the past summer. And so they've been going out. This is actually a field trip they did out in the Far East, the Harrisburg Red Corridor, to really begin to understand what are the kinds of projects and how should we scope those. A couple of things I want to share that are unique to this. It's across all of our disciplines and all of the people that touch projects from the contracts to the construction. And that includes our CBI team to understand the opportunities for business, small business and minority participation in these projects. How do we deliver projects in different ways? It allows us to achieve those kinds of goals. And so we're thinking about these projects and this investment in a holistic way to address, again not just transportation issues, you use those dollars to address and advance the goals that you have as a city. Community needs, protecting those, making sure that those projects are done in a way that's efficient, time kills every project and focus on small minority business. That team's ready to go and again with this new investment and this new funding will be able to advance those projects quickly. Real quick, back to the big picture, again a reminder, again back to the 19.4 billion, that transportation investment across roads, bus, rail, reminder about bus and rail. It's really important that distinction and providing sort of an allocation to those pieces are part of this vision, making sure that we've got bus investment that allows us to extend and think about our better bus program to add frequency on our corridors, the new advancement in micro transit. This is a unique time to actually dedicate funding for that program and certainly the protection of rail for the long-term program within the context of the 19.4 billion. The rail program though, or the transit program is much beyond that. It's the 17.4 billion on the bottom. And so that includes the ability to get federal funding to advance those projects in partnership and essentially allows us to extend those local dollars. It uses local dollars as a match to extend our transit program and our investment beyond simply the 19.4 billion. What is a transition really to talk about what that means from a transit standpoint, it's certainly important that we recognize the fact that this is a new constraint, right? This new funding strategy is a fiscally constrained program that thinks about our investment in a new way with a new constraint. That will require us certainly to think about the transit plan in a different way. That process will go on and certainly Brent can talk about this in more detail. But the notion is that we need to move forward and provide a plan that is fiscally constrained, that understands the capacity of that financial program, but do it in a public process. There will be a clear public process directed by the MTC. It's not a decision that has been made. It'll go through a sort of an extensive public process to update the transit plan within the context of that fiscal constraint. So it's, this is not a decision that has been made. It's the first time that we've actually had a fiscal constraint around our vision. And so that public process will certainly happen to define that program and that new plan within that fiscal constraint. Last thing to transition to the action we're really looking for you to do is this notion around supporting the resolution to move forward the referendum and the ask of the state legislature to afford our voters the ability to approve a sales tax and to fund transportation projects in the region. A couple of things we want to make sure it's clear to you that it's not. It's not endorsing or changing the 2030 plan. It's not determining that plan in a specific way. I just talked about the public process that we'll go through with that. And it's certainly not preempting that process. It's really just giving us the ability to take this conversation one step forward and continue the ability to get funding for our mobility plan and ultimately make public transparent decisions about how we use those dollars to fund our transit vision. Quick sense of the timeline. We are still very early in the process, right? So we've gone through the past year to develop the draft legislation against the support from the towns and the county to move forward. We are now in the process of going through with the towns and the county to get a public support for that so that we can reaffirm to the state that this is a vision. This is a strategy that the local jurisdiction support. But there are steps that have, that many steps that need to get there before we get to a referendum, right? So there's legislative discussion and consideration. There'll certainly be the transit plan update that will have to happen within that financial constraint. There'll be public engagement across all of those things. Our strategic area plans and those mobility projects that will be defining will go through a public process. It's important to know that this is just the first step. It's a critical step so that we can continue the conversation around funding. They'll be engagement as we move forward and lots of opportunities to shape the ultimate priorities and focus of these plans with the public because we get closer to a potential for a referendum. With that, a lot to cover there, I wanna transition over to Sarah to talk a little bit more about the details of the legislation and a little bit more about the potential for a transit authority. So good evening, Sarah Hazel, Chief Sustainability and Resiliency Officer. What I want to do is just hit on some of the high points that Ed described. And first, I'm going to start a little bit with what we gained related to the details of the draft legislation. So to reiterate, as a city, we get $100 million plus dollars in transportation revenue for complete streets. That represents 11% of our general fund and that investment can be significantly leveraged to support council's CBI efforts. So I wanted to pause on that. It advances our strategic investment areas and it creates capacity and flexibility for other council priorities. And then on the transit side, it really creates the ability to fund a plan that has been unfunded. It more than doubles the current investment in transit from 0.5 plus an additional 0.4 for rail and 0.2 for bus. So that's more than doubling the investment this community would make in transit. And it's a 50% increase in the bus program funding annually. On the other side of things, it also protects city council's interests and the city of Charlottesistan, a couple ways. This is one of a kind piece of legislation, not only because it addresses multiple modes so transit transportation, but it also allows for this county wide sales tax to back the future transit debt instead of the city. This is really important, and something that has not been done before for transit in North Carolina. It also really protects cats and employees by ensuring they transition to a new authority, keep their retirement benefits as well, and so that is specifically written into the legislation. The other way that it protects the public transit customers is that if you look at the governance of the new authority, you can see that Charlotte has 12 of 27 votes. That's 44%. If you look at the existing MTC structure, Charlotte has 11% of the votes. So it's a more equitable way to better represent riders who are 90% live in the city of Charlotte. The key piece here is really what's on the left and this mirrors the resolution language. The draft legislation at its core is asking the General Assembly to allow Mecklenburg County to hold a referendum to ask voters if they would like to make a choice to put a 1% sales tax in addition to the current sales tax to be used for roadway systems and public transportation. So that is really the key piece of this legislation. It's important to note that there is specific referendum language in the draft legislation that you may have seen. So unlike the existing quarter-cent sales tax that does not allow for specific language, voters will have a much clearer opportunity to understand what they're voting for at the ballot, and that is embedded in the legislation. It also clearly defines the red line as the priority. It does not define any other project to reiterate what Ed was saying, but just delivers on the promise of the red line, and it also allows for the city to be reimbursed for the purchase of the red line in a time bound manner. On the transportation and the revenue side, again the road 40% revenue distributed directly to the towns and city and on the transit side there's a limitation on rail at 40% and a minimum on bus at 20% which really protects and really holds sacred funding for bus riders who are core riders in our system. And then I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the new authority. So one piece of this legislation is moving to an authority, but why does this make sense? This is not a new conversation that we've been having in the community ever since 2004. A UNC had a study that they gave to the MTC and it suggested that if we are going to continue to advance transit in our region, a transit authority makes sense. The conversation is continued with the work around Connect Beyond and advancing the plan. And to note, if you kind of go to the right hand column, this new authority allows for expansion. So, it does provide for the opportunity with additional revenue that other jurisdictions could join with that dedicated funding source which again supports this regional vision. And authority also is really the system of major urban transit systems in the country. So it's the best practice at streamlines, the dual roles right now that MTC and the city hold. And the 1998 sales tax has really grown our system from just a city department to a system with expansive bus, rail, power transit, but bringing this system into a new governance structure that streamlines roles and is the best practice, is the reason for moving to a new authority and the reason that this is Outlined here in the draft legislation So just for a visual one governing board all activities under the governing board To reiterate 12 city appointments three representing business interests 12 county appointments six representing the towns Two state legislator appointments, one governor appointment. With that really recognizes a couple things, it recognizes that the state does have a critical voice in our infrastructure because it is regional in nature. It also represents and recognizes that every jurisdiction should have a voice in this system. And again, it better reflects the ridership and better represents equity when it comes to the allocation of votes for the city of Charlotte and the county. And so if you go to the right hand column here, so the .5 cents, which exists in the .6 cents, which is really the .4 and the .2, equals 1.1 cent that could be governed under this transit authority if this worked to come to fruition. It is very specific in the legislation that defines the transition and creation of the new authority. So there's a series of time bound plans and reports and things that need to occur in order to responsibly transition and ensure that the cities protected as well as our transit riders are protected and the new authority is set up for success. And finally one other important piece of this that it does require a super majority vote for required expansion which I think really does protect the integrity of what you see here that would require a super majority of all the existing members to bring somebody new in and change the voting structure or change any of the bylaws. So before I hand it over to Brent, just a reminder. So for action on September 3rd is a resolution and all local jurisdictions are considering this resolution at this time. And at that, I think we'll hand it over to Brent to talk more about the related topic of the red line Great good evening everyone. I'm Brent Kagle and I'm CEO cats. Thank you Ed and Sarah So as I get I'm going on the red line I want to talk a lot about the red line But I also want to sort of step back a little bit to the transit plan. The red line is part of the transit plan and has been part of the transit plan for many, many years. And when we start thinking about the red line and what it represents with the plan, the red line presents an opportunity for us to move forward with a project that has been part of the plan for decades. It also gives us the opportunity to start having meaningful conversations about funding the entire transit plan. However, we know that the current transit plan, as Mr. McKinney stated, is not fiscally constrained. And what that basically means is there's not enough money to pay for the plan. And that's been true for many many years So as we move through The possibility of additional funding that the legislation would bring the next step in the process is to develop a transit plan That is fiscally constrained and that will be a process that will launch early or late this year, this winter, November, and really run through about July of 2025. That's a process led by the MTC and CATs and would engage the communities throughout that are affected by the transit plan to understand what their priorities are and how we can best meet their transit needs in a fiscally constrained way. And the red line I think provides us the opportunity to start and have that conversation. Oops, I'm with the wrong way. So the red line city of Charlotte has been negotiating with or talking to Norfolk Southern since 2021. In 2023 the city and NS began negotiations for the purchase of the O line. I want to take a minute to thank the team. We had a very capable team. We have Rob Martinez with Moffitt and Nickel but also a 20 plus year veteran of Norfolk Southern in their properties Actually overseeing their properties group. We have Brad Thomas our lead council for cats and we have Kelly go forth our chief development officer for cats They have put in literally thousands of hours with Norfolk Southern to come to where we are today and hopefully next week on the third. And all the others on the team, it really was a huge effort. The red line and the 2030 plan, it's a 20 year pursuit. It's fundamental, as I said, to the transit plan and to our ability to move any transit plan forward. And it's critical to the sales tax. It's also important to Charlotte, 11 and a half miles of the corridor, of the red line corridor, fall within Charlotte City limits, four stations are in Charlotte, and we have already applied for a federal grant to evaluate and study equitable TOD opportunities along the corridor, including in Charlotte. And I'll point out that the deride station is part of one of our designated corridors of opportunity. It connects uptown's regional employment base and cultural destinations to the regional growth north and it links Charlotte Gateway Station, which really is a critical multimodal station and economic hub to the rest of the region. So where are we at today? Today, we're really looking at corridor preservation. This is the first step in moving forward and we can't go any farther without preserving this corridor. Norfolk Southern requires that this deal be closed on September 9th no later. So again that leads us to the time frame we're talking about. But I also want to point out that corridor preservation is an FTA-recognized process that we've done before, actually several times. We did corridor preservation with the original blue line, and we did corridor preservation with the blue line extension. The reason it's called out as sort of a special activity by the FTA is because it's time consuming. It's hard. And so when these corridors come up, you do everything you can to preserve them for future use for transit because if you miss the opportunity, you may not get it again. And I think we know that, right? We've been trying to work with Norfolk Southern for over 20 years as we've had conversations about this corridor. The next step, there will be a phase where the city owns the corridor, but we are not operating commuter rail. And really, that's just the ability of the city to hold the corridor until such time that there's a transit agency or transit authority. At that point the transit agency the new agency or authority would own and operate so they'll own the corridor and they would engage in operating commuter rail. The draft legislation again ensures the city will be reimbursed for the purchase price. It requires a timeline on establishing an agreement for the asset transfer. And it is clear that the transit agency or authority will be responsible for funding the design construction and operation of the red line as we move forward with commuter rail in the corridor. So how do, you know, what are the things that we did to get us here? Back in 2023, we received the big breakthrough. Norfolk Southern said they're willing to consider a possible transaction. That was a big change for us. said they're willing to consider a possible transaction. That was a big change for us. And we took that opportunity on August 28th, 2023. We had a closed session where we reviewed and discussed the Norfolk Southern Letter. We also had small group meetings with City Council October 2nd, 2023. Leading into 2024, the city signed a non-binding purchase and sale agreement with NS, requiring at that time a September 2024 closing that was in March, March 25th of 2024 when that closed session occurred. Recently we've had more small group meetings in July and August of this year. The closed session on August 19th bringing us here to the action review today. Moving forward to September 3rd, consideration by Council, if successful, then a closing no later than September 9th. So what are the actions related to the red line that Council will be asked to consider next week? The purchase and sale agreements, there are two PSAs. One is for the O line or red line alignment. The second is for a small strip of land adjacent to or continuous with the Charlotte Gateway Station. So let's talk about the first agreement. It is 74 million for the O line to the Mecklenburg County border. That is not to extend into Mooresville or Iardell County. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. The second purchase and sale agreement is 17 million and it's for the property adjacent to the Gateway Station. This is critical property for the red line because it is literally where the platform, where the terminus at Gateway Station. This is critical property for the red line because it is literally where the platform, where the terminus at Gateway Station will be. It's the platform ending the red line in uptown. Another agreement that will be in front of council is the Comprehensive Rail Agreement. The Comprehensive Rail Agreement protects the city and future transit agencies' rights to operate commuter rail and defines the terms with Norfolk Southern for how we share use of the corridor. Some of the key provisions, it allows us to assign the agreement in the future if there is a transit agency or authority. And it defines the terms of the agreement. It defines the commuter rail service rights. It defines the freight service rights. It provides compensation to either party, between the two parties for use of the alignment. It gives the city or the transit authority the ability for maintenance, for determining how maintenance and dispatching of the line will occur. It establishes liability limits for either party. It also requires an insurance policy be entered into and placed. So I'll mention this a little bit. We are working with the city's risk management group to execute or to get quotes on the insurance policy. We have not received that yet and we will not be able to close on an insurance policy by the ninth. So that's where the $10 million escrow account comes into play. In absence of the insurance policy, there's a requirement to place $10 million in escrow for any liability or claims. That escrow account is maintained only up until the point that the insurance is put into place. So it is a temporary situation while we seek or until we have placed insurance for the alignment. And then the Comprehensive Rail Agreement also provides the ability or an option to extend the line into Moorsville and Iardell County. That option is twofold. We can do either one of two things. Neither of these things are possible without express agreement and approval from Iardell County and Moorsville. But what it would allow us to do is either purchase the rest of the alignment or some portion of the rest of the alignment, either to Mount Morn or the entirety of the rest of the O line or enter into an operations agreement with Norfolk Southern and basically the best way to describe that is it's an agreement that would allow commuter rail to utilize that section of track even if we don't own it but we would pay on in effect a per-trained basis for utilizing that segment of track. And then it also outlines the improvements necessary for commuter rail operation along the entire alignment. So where are we at? What has already been completed? On July 16th, the Planning Commission completed the mandatory referral process. And on August 16th, the Surface Transportation Board, which is a federal board, approved the agreement that we have the draft CRA with Norfolk Southern. Next steps, August 19th was the closed session today, the 26th, leading into September 3rd for the purchase and sale agreements and the comprehensive rail agreements and then September 9th or earlier if possible actual closing on the deal. I will note because of the hard and fast deadline on the 9th, the September 3rd item is a no deferral item for the red line. Additional agreements. It may be that there are additional agreements necessary. These agreements could come before the city council, or they may come before a transit authority or agency. It just depends on the timing of these, but I will mention them. There is an anticipated future agreement for construction, and that would cover construction phasing for the Redline Project and freight service, including Norfolk Southern mainline improvements. There is also an operating and crossing agreement with CSX, which would address the crossing of the CSS-CSX tracks by future commuter rail. And there is an in Norfolk Southern operations agreement covering dispatch and maintenance responsibilities after commuter rail service begins. So again, just to reiterate what would what should you expect to see on our request for Council action on the third. First, the two purchase and sale agreements. Second, the comprehensive rail agreement. Third, an escrow agreement. And fourth, authorize the manager to negotiate and execute any additional documents required for closing by September 9th 2024. Again, the schedule and with that I will stop right there and I suppose there will be questions. I think we're going to ask who's the drapes to comment and start us off and move all along. The vice chair of the committee, Ms. Molina. And so, Mr. Drakes, you have the floor. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, colleagues, this is a pretty daunting proposition. I'm in formation here. We need to process that and decide what is actually the best interest to Charlotte. But as we do that, and that is just not to be excited about this, it's huge. This is really exciting. We are looking down to both a new kind of position ourselves for our future. We are not just sitting here and waiting to see what happens. Which frankly is what happens in a lot of places. We need to kind of be proactive. So let's look at everything that we've heard in that conference. I understand this question. It would be our practice. Our ignorance in terms of not just mobility, but it can be done in development jobs, the development equity. It also ties in with our UDO, another major initiative. So frankly, I'm proud of the fact that we are looking as actively as we are ahead and trying to make conscious choices instead of just reacting. I will very briefly comment on a lot of what we've heard. In my mind, as I've said before, you can simplify this conversation quite a bit. There is no question that we need to make a large investment in mobility infrastructure. You can see it out on the roads. You can hear it. Understand that it's going to be a few years if we move in this direction before the improvements start coming online. And it's urgent. We need to be doing something now. That also means that we need to have a revenue source, because our capacity to do the things we need to do from what we have is insufficient. And that led to, in 2021, the mobility task force recommending, as a revenue source, one cent sales tax. So now here we are doing something about it, right? And what the legislation says is actually not that complicated. It says you may conduct a referendum for a sales tax and understand what that means. That means nothing happens that the public doesn't agree with. Our challenge is going to be to take that authorization that we have and put something out there on the way of a plan that in November, or whenever that referendum comes out, the public agrees is good for us and worth paying for. Critical to understand that. It also specifies an allocation. So before we were looking at 80% for transit, for more, and we were looking at a smaller amount for other uses based on feedback from the legislature, which frankly I don't find was bad advice. We're now going 60% transit with a maximum of 40% for rail. That means there's a substantial amount of money for bus in there. Probably more than there would have been under the other plan. And so that's not a bad outcome. It also calls for authority. We saw also high, right? Charlotte needs for the authority to be created. It is in our interest not to have this day on our books and to have a more representative governance structure for planning in the future and let that take place at a county-wide level. So we should be willing, get behind that. One issue that people have talked about is, well how come we only have 12 votes out of 27? You can't create a structure in which one of the new holidays has total control. And we've seen that in Hartco, the others aren't even much that well. Then they're normally accepted. So that's why that's being done like that. The commits to the creation of the red line, we've heard the red line was in the plan earlier and didn't yet build for 26 years. So the idea that there are winners and losers here and that the Northern Towns and winners is not completely fair. I do want to emphasize to what we heard. Once we have this plan, the plan is going to get developed after or during and after the approval of the legislation. That plan is going to be worked out among all the members of the MTC. It's going to be subject to approval of the MTC. And it is not a Charlotte creation. Some of these allegations that Charlotte has done this or done that, where we are right now is the plan that we have before is still in place, to include the entire silver line. It won't change until the MTC votes to change it. What we're going to do, though, in the meantime meantime is come up with a proposed modified plan that operates within the bounds of the money that we're now expecting to get, and to therefore it's achievable. That plan is going to be developed in consultation with all the members of the MTC, the towns, the public. We can have a summit. There is nothing in the legislation that actually limits us. It just says you will spend the money this way, but the rest of it is a planning process. It's going to be conducted here. And I think that's critical to note as well. We're not actually limited. We don't even have to offer the referendum. We want to take this step so that we have the possibility of a referendum. It doesn't impose on us the burden of offering the referendum. We want to take this step so that we have the possibility of a referendum. It doesn't impose on us the burden of offering the referendum. So we'll do that when the time comes and we feel comfortable about gaining acceptance. I think I will acknowledge, since we're on this, I think we're all concerned about the position of Matthews and some of the things we've heard about their vote and that they have said. And I understand that totally. I would emphasize no one says that BRT is just as good as rail. It isn't. I get that, right? And they were counting on the rail and they're disappointed. The only thing I'll mention is though, the change in the plan came about because of the legislature saying you can't have all that money for rail. And other than that, there hasn't actually been a change in the plan. The change in the plan that is implied by those constraints on the money will take place through our planning process. And that planning process will allow all of the members to advance their interests and make their case and hopefully we will come out with something that best balances the interests of everybody. So as you can tell, I'm in support of this even though I'm not normally the guy who would be here advocating for attacks. And I will mention I did vote against the budget because I was concerned about finances. I believe this is an essential responsibility of the city government. It needs to be paid for and therefore I hope that we will reach a good outcome here. That's all I want to say right now. I'm very interested to hear what else has to say. I will point out we have what will happen hour until we We're supposed to go into the yes to go into please everybody try to leave time for each of us to say some Maybe I just overstep You can chair you get a little bit of Lee way We used a 30 minute question and answer So we're gonna now minute question and answer sentence. So we're going to now ask the vice chair, Marjorie Molina. To address. Thank you so much, Madam Mayor. And I wouldn't want to dare attempt to try to repeat what the chair has explained. I think it was very comprehensive, his explanation around what has taking place, what's in front of us, what we're looking at as a possibility. I think it's important to state that this is huge for us potentially. If we do take this step as a body, I feel like it's something that would change the trajectory of our city and who we become. I guess I'll put a personal note, I'll preface with a personal note, I travel, independence, boulevard every day, multiple times a day. I am a mother with children in CMS and they both go to magnet schools so we don't have bus service. So I have spent more hours in traffic than I'd like to acknowledge. And so I know that there's so many different possibilities in what we do to mitigate some of those traffic, you know, issues that we've experienced across our city, not just in East Charlotte. And so, you know, today I was encouraged. I told the city manager I was driving down independence. And I seemed like a bless, a Zoom pass me in the middle lane. I was on my way to take my daughter to school this morning. I was like, wow, yay. But it's encouraging where we are. And I will preface the statement and also say that speaking specifically from an East Charlotte perspective, I've heard from our neighbors and residents in East Charlotte who view the red line conversation as choosing a winner versus a loser. It is widely interpreted, although from this place I've seen information. I know that's not the case because I understand what's in front of us, but it's widely interpreted that we're choosing the red line over the silver line. That we're putting a precedent over the red line or for the red line as opposed to the silver line. And I want to assure you that that's not what we're talking about. These are unfortunately based on where we are operating from, we've been given a potential opportunity to have this information looked at by our state legislature. And this is what they would like in order to consider a possible referendum. And like my colleague said, this is something that the voters would ultimately say yes or no to. I do realize that there are some open-ended questions as a result of what's being presented. I read some articles this morning. I read my news. I don't watch it. So I read about three articles this morning. And I realized there are some open-ended questions around the silver line. I read and I thought that was very engaging. There are some open-ended questions around how it's determined based on what the actual authority would desire and those are things that we have to leave open to the process. So I also, because this has been in, you know, a conversation since 1998 in full disclosure, I was still in high school in 1998. So I, you know, but I do know that this is something that the northern towns have been waiting for and everyone in our county has been contributing half a cent sales tax with the expert with the expectation that we would deliver on transportation. So now at this moment in 2024 we have have an opportunity, which Charlotte taking a big risk, a big forward risk, to realize this potential opportunity. So I'll say that and I'll leave the rest for my colleagues here on the council, but I just want to say that for the members of each Charlotte, this is the beginning of a conversation that has to be ongoing. This isn't specifically around the silver line, although that's also something that like my colleague said, there's not been anything determined 100% that there's any emphasis being taken at this moment away from any silver line conversations, whether that be rail or bus rapid transit, I got to say that. And I'll leave the rest for my colleagues. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I want to recognize councilmember Watlington. Thank you Madam Mayor. Just a couple of things. Just because there's a lot of information, I do want to make sure that the public walks away super clear on a couple of things. As far as the vote for an authority, that is separate and apart from the vote to purchase the red line. Is that correct? Those are two separate actions, but on the same day. Okay. My question was whether or not there were two separate votes for an authority and a purchase and what I heard is that there are two separate votes on the same day. So for me certainly we want to continue digging into the makeup and the structure of the authority. It's understanding that that is a separate vote from the purchase. I do also want to just make clear for myself and for those that are watching clearly we're leaning forward as we've mentioned on purchasing the red line to enable us for things in the future that haven't been decided. Can you just repeat for me what is the city's position if the referendum is voted down as it relates to the red line itself, that we would have purchased by this. Yes, so, is this on? Yes, so a little bit about that. We did move through the slides pretty quick and I apologize. So, the current plan of finance in the short term for the corridor will be a short term five year, either a note program or variable rate program that can then be assumed or taken out replaced by the authority so that the city is paid back in its entirety. If the project does not move forward, we do know that this is an important corridor, right? There are only so many corridors in an urban area. And so we know that it has value. I'll also ask Rob to speak to that a little bit, knowing what he knows about Norfolk Southern and how the rail industry works. He needs to come to them. Come up to them. The podium, let me just introduce. Simply just that the fact that it's extraordinarily difficult, as I believe all of you are aware, to assemble a corridor of this magnitude. And of course here, the action that's going to be before the city is 22 mile corridor through a very urban, completely urban district, which is virtually impossible to assemble from scratch. So I think it's an ideal opportunity for the city. Does that mean we would sell it if the referendum went down? What what what what what happened? It certainly means that so it included in the CRA is we have the ability if the project is not going to move forward. At some point we determine that we're no longer going to preserve the corridor. We can accept offers, we can put it up for sale. And Norfolk's southern has the ability to counter any of those offers. And they're open openness to do that. We also wrote that into the, that's also written into the CRA, into the comprehensive Royal Agreement. Dr. Wallock, to your point, I go back to it, Brent said earlier, not the first time that we've engaged in court or preservation, that's the first step. And so let's just say that we get the authority, that'd be great. But we have a period of time to try to seek this authority also. So that's where the first step is quarter preservation. Again, the city owns. We don't operate anything. Okay. So what's important to me is just as we purchased, obviously, that there's a board plan. And it sounds like we would be in a position of some pretty valuable real estate if that was the case. And we would be able to get our money back essentially. And then the next question I had was, as a related to community engagement as the new plan is updated, I just want folks to make sure that they're very clear about their opportunity to engage in those decisions as they come. Yes. So as we go through the process, there will be extensive community engagement and I want to reiterate the silver line, no decisions have been made one way or another on the silver line. What we know is the silver line is a very large project. It constitutes at least 50% of the current transit plan in dollars, and we know that the funding is not sufficient. So we will continue with a open process to engage the community in the MTC. Thank you. And so lastly, I'll just say that there's been a ton of work that's gone into this. And so thank you to everyone who's been involved with this to date. It is a gargantuan task. The thing that I want to lift up and make sure that it's still a part of the conversation is that for me, this is only one side of the equation, right? We're talking about how important it is to invest in our infrastructure because we know that we have very real issues today. We also know that when we invest in rail, we invest in transportation, that is an economic development opportunity because people are going to come and build. And we know that with more buildings, then more residents, more users, and then we see ourselves in a constraint situation again. So I'd like to understand, what is it that we expect in terms of net organic growth as a result of this? And how does that impact the individual household that's paying taxes? Because I would hate for us to invest in this. And then we end up in a situation where we're still seeing issues because we've got now new traffic on these roads or in this rail line and we're also then going to have to come back to our residents in the future and ask for additional investment just to get whole. So that is a piece that for me is still missing, is to understand, yes we would want to invest, but what is it exactly that we're expecting in terms of a benefit? I see the projects, but how are we thinking about smart growth and development that will not then put us in the same situation we're in today? Is that clear? Absolutely, and I would say Dr. Walrington, to some extent The council has been thinking through that through some of the commissions committees that you put together The Equal Development Development Growth as well as the anti-displacement so We'll try to tie that all together to give you a better pitch of that. Thank you Anything else miss Ms. Watten? Okay, let's go to Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just have a couple questions. First of all, let me say that I was one of the champions for the infrastructure discussion. So obviously this is a need and we want to support this. I think we all understand the need for improvement. We understand the benefit that we're going to receive from the at least $300 million per year. So that's very important. But we still are able to ask questions, and we don't want to rubber stamp a deal. So I do have some questions. The first thing that we talked about earlier today during our session. Did we, what's the appraised value for the red line? Yes, ma'am. The City appraisal on the O-line corridor is $69.2 million and the City appraisal on the Gateway Station properties is $15.9 million. So what's that total? Give me just a second. $69.15, 80. Okay. I asked for it earlier. $86.8. Come on, go ahead. $86.8 million, that's like. $86.8 million. So $86.8 is the appraised value. And the purchase price is $91 million? That was $1. Mm-hmm. It's not anyone. Yes, men. We also talked about I think the Mr. Miner, I don't want to address the total. Let's go to the slide. Okay, let's start to the slide. Okay, let's start off with apples to apples. Can we get the slide with the cost? Oh yeah, everybody's down. Okay, everybody. Okay, go back one. Like 27? Okay. So let's start off with this, Kelly Brent, as we're going apples to apples. So the $74 million for the segment that ends in Mecklenburg County, the appraisal on that piece is your what? 69.2 million. And then on the, what I call the landing strip, which is not what I'm supposed to call it the 17 million the appraisal on that is what? 15.9 million, okay, those are the city appraised values, okay? The one thing that we cannot talk about tonight is values that are related to NS? But I do believe that we can say some things rub about where we landed, can't we? Okay. So you as this all goes through, there's a value, there is a value from one side, it's higher than the value from the other side. And what you attempt to do is meet somewhere this closer in the middle. And that's what we have attempted to do with this. Okay, thank you. And then there was an option to buy the, I think it was at seven miles from in Irredell County. Was that also an option? Okay, and what is that purchase price? 17.75 million. And what's that appraised value? I would need to get that for you. I don't have it right here with me. Okay. And just for the record, I did ask for these numbers to be very clear so that we wouldn't have this dysfunction or confusion on count until I did ask for these so we could compare apples to apples. Thank you. Also, we're going to be sharing the rail with North Folk and they'll still use it for freight. Is that correct? Yes. They will have a right to operate the existing freight operations that they have. They are minimal. Okay. Thank you. We discovered, I think during our transportation meeting, that there was a $50 million contract for the company to design the silver line or to analyze the silver line. How much of that contract, how much has been spent? As of a week and a half ago, during the public record request, I believe it was 43 million 43 million. So what happens with the other 7 million? It hasn't been spent and it will not be spent or what what will happen? We would certainly yes before we would spend those dollars. We would want to engage in a process to understand the transit plan and what it would have in store for the silver line. Okay, so that company were still engaged with them and they're continuing to do work for us. They have $7 million remaining on the contract. They are not actively doing work today or I believe it's very minimal amount of work that they are doing because of the uncertainty around the silver line. But in the future as we have better certainty than it may be that we enter into a new contract or it may be that we continue using the existing contract. Okay. Thank you. Will this route, we'll go all the way to the airport? Is the proposed plan for- Super line? Yes, to go all the way to the airport. Okay. Yes. Is there an option that we, and I know the silver line, we say that there's no final decisions that have been made, is there an option that East Charlotte and Matthews could have a rail line? I'd like to see us continuing to discuss that. So in the transit plan, we will first start by looking at the silver line, which is the largest project in the plan. So again the silver line in the transit plan has not been removed as rail. As we go through this the first thing that we would want to do is look at are there cost saving opportunities associated with the project as rail that could make the project financially feasible. That will be very difficult because the silver line itself to uptown to Matthews is approximately $6 billion. The rest of the alignment is another two to three billion. So together the silver line constitutes a very large share. But the first thing we will do is look at, are there cost saving opportunities? The second thing, if the answer is there are cost saving opportunities that could bring it into financial feasibility, will be really to ask the question, is that a project that we would want? And the we is the community because we may have to cut so much of the silver line as to make it not a project that is really the desire of the community anymore. And then we would start to look at alternatives like bus rapid transit. So councilmember Drake said that in 2021 is when we started the discussion about the one-cent sales tax. That's almost tax. That's almost five years ago. So things have changed. Prices have increased. Is it possible that we could approach the legislators with a different amount that would include East Charlotte and possibly Matthews. And we don't have to have that answer today. I just, I just, if there's a way, I think Dr. Watlington brought up a great point. If we are going to be increasing the value with this, with the rail line, does that create a larger disparity With East Charlotte and Matthews. So I just think that those are things we should think about if there is a way that we can truly make this a regional project Then I would be willing to support this We talked about public engagement and this is what happens. We have to make a decision next week. And I heard numbers like 1998, we've been talking about one of the projects in 2021. We've been talking about the other projects. So I would have liked to have seen more public engagement instead of the week of the meeting for them to have an opportunity to give us their feedback. And I understand the city staff, you all do great work but we are the ones that are accountable to those residents so and I mentioned that to you before Mr. Jones so I think this would have been a great opportunity for if we went into contracting March for us to be able to talk to the public and hear from the public sooner than this. I think that's all I have for today. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Johnson-Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, Mayor Plotip. I'm usually the last one, but I'm gonna be very quick, because I know we got some colleagues. I think my question is, one is for Dana City Manager. Can we get a good fear where I'm acting for our delegation is? I mean, this is very important as we move forward to kind of check their temperature, because I know in Raleigh, they're gonna kind of look at the delegation so we can kind of judge that I think it'd be helpful. I would say this, I know how district reps feel so when I looked at page 27 of slide, I saw that the red line touches in three district, district two at a gateway. Make sure I get this right, Councilmember Johnson. District four, Derrata, Harris, North Carolina, 115. Is that district five? No, look, she like me. Ah, okay. Y'all share. Okay. And then Eastfield is in district four. Correct? That's the only audience. Yeah. And so I guess my point is, and staff, we always say, can you show us the district that would touch on projects like this? And last but not least, I would share this and I'm going to date myself. But in 2015, we took a trip to Denver, Colorado, about eight elected officials and about 40 business leaders. And our whole goal was to look at the regional transit system. And I was just so amazed how Denver was the big city but played a very important part in regional transit system. And I was just so amazed how Denver was the big city, but played a very important part in regional transit development. I see us kind of having that same model. Charlotte is playing a role in a regional transit development. So I got excited in 2015. And here we are, 2024, knocking on the door. I want to remind even when this, when people compare land on the Charlotte, first want to remind even when this when people compare land on the Charlotte. First they always say is we don't like ATF because of transportation. So here we are being Charlotte trying to grow up Mr. Drex to your point trying to be proactive and create a transportation needs for our community. So thank you Madam Mayor Protell and for that. Thank you. Did a great job. And so now we go to Tariff. Thank you. I don't know what my position is on this yet. But the good news is I have a week to figure that out. So I'll work on that. I'll just give you just a quick kind of look into what my thinking is right now. And it's probably similar thinking to how average voters will be learning about it if they get to the ballot and look at it. They'll be thinking at that time, which is also an important lens for us to put on it. I think the first part is, is this the time to be raising taxes? And it's on the back of the fact that our economy is struggling right now in many ways, and we wake up and hear about employers laying folks off the fact that we just raise taxes in the budget. And then most importantly on this one, this is a regressive tax. It impacts and sits on the backs of those that can least afford to do it. So that means one important thing. It doesn't mean we can't do this. It means we've got to get it right. It's got to be designed well, and it's got to make sure it delivers the kind of ROI, particularly to those who are funding this and who are impacted by it. Get those benefits. So as I'll struggle with this over the next week, I'll be thinking about that and I'll also be thinking about the point of what does it look like to get it right? I know a lot of people have put a lot of hard work for decades into all of this, but I can't help but be concerned that it falls into kind of a similar trap that we have here in Charlotte, where the vast majority of effort is spent on kind of presenting and justifying why we need the money. A little bit of effort is then spent on allocating it and negotiating the buckets of money. And then beyond that, the only time it's been spent on anything is really design of light rail and particularly the silver line. So what I don't want to happen is to become known as the most cutting edge city in the entire world for investing in 20th century technology and innovation. But that requires us to put the kind of time we put into designing the silver line and looking at rail and justifying our budget needs and negotiating with towns to come together and design what a plan of the future looks like and skating to where that puck is going to be. And that also means a lot of honesty around the tables that do this, that all of the angst and passion you hear around light rail and silver line and this, it's primarily driven by the fact that people understand as they look at South end the economic impacts. That's a real true fact of the matter, but it's always hidden as we talk about moving people in congestion and this being a transportation based solution. So I think we have to call a spade a spade. I think we have to actually have that plan. I don't believe Mr. Manager that that plan will be available in the next week as we make the decision. So I think the point is this is a big enough and important enough decision that you can't just take a position to be anti or for just on a whim. So I think the only thing that's left is the governance model. And the governance model, not only does that help us pave the way with the towns and then the General Assembly. It gets us back to the word and the voters who are smart when they look at these items and do vote against things. When they voted against the sales tax for the arts, they recognized the fact that was there need sure? Is there need here sure? But the point was they smelled out the fact that there wasn't a really strategic smart plan in place to make that investment have a good ROI for everybody. And so the same things that I'll be struggling over the next week, I think are relevant because they're the same things that the voters, when they hit that referendum, if by some miracle it makes it that far. Does it mean it's a foregone conclusion? I'll end with just saying one point, whether you're for it or against it, colleagues. I don't think there's any scenario you can decouple your decision on the red line with supporting this draft legislation and moving forward. Because if you were yes on the red line and know on that, that's a bad indication of us holding the bag for something really important. So no matter where you're in, I'll be thinking along those lines. But if you have a problem with that governance model like I do or any other topics. Now's the time to figure it out because once we move forward on this tight timeline with the red line, we'll be holding the bag at that point and there's a lot of possible pros in that, but I have a lot of negatives and cons in my mind on how that could end up being a debacle. So we have a lot to figure out in a short amount of time. I appreciate the work that's been put into date. Thank you Madam Mayor. Well first let me take a moment to celebrate an important milestone here. When it comes to red line this is something that our predecessors have tried delivering for decades now. So this shows the progress that's been made by staff, Mr. Jones, and the entire team. This is transformational. While I celebrate that, there are certainly some concerns that I have as well. This will probably be the biggest project in the state's history. We are looking at $25 billion, probably the largest investment in the state's history. This is transformational. And as someone who has been a product of public transportation, our family did not own a car for many, many years. And we relied on a public transportation to get from point A to point B, whether it was doctor's appointment, groceries store, or getting to college in schools, I am absolutely in support of the public investments in our infrastructure. But I think the question that we have to ask here, yes, we are creating a legacy of quality of life that Mayor mentioned. But really the question here that we have to ask ourselves, are we creating two cities? Are we creating two cities where one part has an access to more efficient and effective transportation and one part does not? Just by looking at this because it is financially constrained, I cannot say that we are not creating two cities. And that's the part I have concerns about. And this is not just about Matthews, this is also about the east side, which I have represented in the past and as an east side resident. I'm concerned that we are leaving part of our city without having an efficient and effective transportation option. Well, I do hear the argument that, well, this is going to be left up to the transit authority to decide, but this is a math problem. We know there is not enough funding and the portion, the silver line that goes from uptown to Matthews, it is expensive. So we cannot say that yes, this is going to be left up to the transit authority decide, when we know that we are not going to be able to deliver on the promises that we made. And I have a difficult time getting on board with a plan. You know, I read an editorial this morning in the Charlotte observer about the city of Charlotte has one chance to get this right. And we got to make sure that the one chance that we have, we get this right. And we do not leave a segment of our city, where they do not have the equal access to the public transportation that other parts do. I hear Mr. Drake's argument about winners and losers. Yes, Redline is not a winner, because this has been in the plan, that we were supposed to deliver this decades ago, I get it. But I can certainly see, no one is a winner, but the east side and Matthews is a loser because they are not getting equal share, equal access to public transportation that other parts would have. Couple of questions, first staff. What response has been by other counties to buy into the fund to expand and build out our future connections in other counties? I think everybody is familiar with Connect Beyond and advancing the plan. And I won't speak for the mayor. I did it in a bunch of meetings this year, attended with a number of jurisdictions trying to figure out how to build, I guess, an authority, whether you call it, I guess it was a jellyfish model in a muffin model. How can you bring jurisdictions together to have a regional system? One of the struggles that's been in the downstop with this is that Mecklenburg County The city of Charlotte and the six towns already have the one-half-cent sales tax and a lot of Jurisdictions around us do do not have that So how do you begin to build some type of a mechanism where there's some jurisdictions with funding and some without I think that the State of North Carolina allows any county to have somewhere between a quarter cent and a half cent sales tax for transit, not the quarter cent that's just for anything that you can't say what it is on the ballot. And I think six of the hundred counties have taken advantage of that. So I guess the point being is that as you start to think about bringing other jurisdictions along, how do you do it in such a way that there are resources associated with those jurisdictions of that helps? Thank you. So I wanted to follow up on Councilwoman Johnson's question, where she asked a question whether the silver line will go to the airport. I just want to make sure that we are, we have an accurate answer. The way I understand this, the silver line, it's not going directly to the airport. It is within a mile or two. Am I correct? The silver line will have an airport station and that airport station will be on airport property at the corner. Right now it's planned for Josh Birmingham Parkway or little Rock, Wilkinson Boulevard and in effect where Little Rock Road becomes Josh Birmingham Parkway. It does not go directly to the terminal, but it is on airport property and will be connected as Miss Gentry has talked about the aviation director via another separate train that would bring the passengers on into the airport. This is sort of the way that airports, because of how the runways are arranged, this is how other airports have solved for that problem in other cities. And there are some other benefits to that arrangement or that alignment as well. So I was in Chicago and that was exactly what happened. You go so far and then you take their shuttle. Yes, you take the shuttle. I mean they moved I think something thousands and thousands of people that way. But I'm also seeing airports where trains directly go to the terminal. So you can see both examples, but I just wanted to make sure that there was an- Thank you. You got the answer. That you were- Most of the airports that that is true, the runways are aligned differently, allowing for the infrastructure of light rail to go directly to a terminal. But some of that is the previous infrastructure alignment. So I was not trying to hide the answer anything else. In my view, as the former aviation director, and now as the interim, CASE, the silver line and the airport will be connected in a very high, creating a very high level of service for all of the passengers who choose to use it. And I hope there are many, many who will. Okay, thank you, Mr. Kale. So I read this in one of the articles where NCDOT said, North Carolina Department of Transportation said that the true BRT, the true bus rapid transit may not be visible at this time because there is no room for stops on independence. Is that correct? So I am not saying that that person was incorrect. What I am saying is before I start my answer, let me be preface with whoever the gentleman was who said that I was absolutely correct. I think there are different views on that. What I would say is, as someone noted, we were really excited today. The bus lanes reopened on independence, and it was great. The bus lanes are there. They are planned to be possible managed lanes in the future. But again, that project was predicated on the idea that they would never be used for bus rapid transit or light rail. So what I would say is before I think it's fair to say absolutely not, cats would need to have further conversations with NCDOT as we go through the transit plan update to see what is possible. And I will say, I think there were other quotes from other NCDOT folks who reflect that to say they're willing and ready to have conversations with us about what that would look like in the future. Yeah, and thank you, Mr. Kago, because that race is further concerns, because even when we are looking at going from light rail to bus rapid transit, we are not really considering a true BRT because of the constraints that's there based on NCDOT in terms of dedicated lanes where they will have to navigate through the traffic to get to a stop, is there space for stops to be created? So it can be a truble BRT will have a dedicated right of way and that is what we will evaluate. A dedicated right of way not an enhanced bus service type of thing. And as we evaluate that, that would be the option, whether it be in the middle of independence, or the exact same alignment that the current silver line has identified, both of those things are possible and none of those are ruled out because we need to do the work to evaluate all of those options. Councillor Schumer. Yes. So, Bren, I think it's really important if you would just emphasize what a dedicated right away is and what would be considered gold standard BRT because if we haven't seen it we don't know what it looks like and all we can do is imagine a bus in competition with a bunch of other vehicles. Yeah a dedicated right of way. So a true, a full BRT implementation, the hallmarks of those, number one, there aren't any in the United States. The best we have is probably a bronze medal, so to speak, using the Olympics as a guide, right? If you start to think about in the world though, a dedicated or a full BRT is going to have specialized vehicles that are highlighting and come into a dedicated station similar to a light rail station or a platform. And they will have a full dedicated guideway. The difference in that is there's no track, but there is a guideway that is dedicated for both directions of travel. Not the bus lane. The bus lane is great, and we love it. But it is not just the bus lane. Certainly, there is a lot to learn about what true BRT is. I'm certainly learning. I watched the videos from Miami and there are a few other resource articles. But at the end of the day, Mr. Drake is right. We can say that BRT is the same as the light rail. That's the bottom line. But I guess at the end of the day, what we have to strive to do is get closer to delivering a true BRT and the concerns that I had because when I read North Carolina Department of Transportation Deputy Division Engineer, Sean, a person told transit time that it's too late for BRT to be part of the expansion which could begin in four years in quotation. There will not be space along the express lanes for any stations or accommodations to get pedestrians to the center of the roadway for stops of any kind. So Mr. Epperson, I respect everything that he said, but he is making one key assumption that may not be accurate and is very important. If we look at a true BRT, again, the silver line couldn't be accommodated the way that he's talking about because it has a dedicated guideway that is not on the independence-free way. If we are doing BRT, we will also evaluate that exact same alignment. Now, there are options, but again, his statement is sort of predicated on the idea that we would be utilizing the bus lanes on independence. And that has never been the plan for the silver line and would not need to be the plan for a BRT alignment as well. Thank you, Mr. Kago. Thank you. Just let me go. If I may, I have a lot of, I mean, I had 20 questions, but most of my questions were addressed. Well, that means I did my homework. Yeah, I mean, most of my questions were addressed in the afternoon session that I was in as with Councilwoman Johnson. Okay, I guess that's all I have. I might have something later on, which I will ask Mr. King. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Brown. We are going to stay here. No, we are going to everyone will have an opportunity to speak. We're not so. No, we are going to everyone will have an opportunity to speak. We're not. So no, feel free. I don't think we need to rush because we're not. Yeah, we're not rushing. Take your time. Yes. Y'all are piece of work. Yeah. Okay. Lots and lots and lots of information on a more serious note. I had been in meeting with a council member Mayfield and just listening to her because she had seasoned and was really leading the conversation on 8.19 when we were here when it was only two people present. Just kidding. Enough of them have a quorum though. But I want to go back to Mr. Mitchell said that they've been working on Councilmember Mitchell said we've been working since 2015. I know it's probably before that to get a resolution so we know that we're in 2024 now. So that transportation has certainly changed. to get a resolution so we know that we're in 2024 now so that transportation has certainly changed. I have been living in Charlotte my entire life. I have seen everything that there is to see as growth, transportation, and being someone that was you know born in a less privileged neighborhood, I come from poverty. It's no secret. Southside homes still exist on the corner of Remot Road and South Triumph. That's my humble beginnings and my foundation. And so everybody in that community used the bus. And when we used the bus, I'm 53. So when we use the bus, I guess age, probably in the early 70s, my mom would keep me on the public transportation bus. And so just think about when I rode the bus. And we thought that it was the best thing ever. Getting around, going to East Limon, going to the skating ring and everything that was over there, I'm going somewhere with this stay with me. Clearly, we need a different mode of transportation to be able to move forward in this city and to grow this city. Now, I'm doing my homework, lots of it. And I wanna give, I thank you to the economic team which is Mr. Drex, Melina, Graham and Johnson for all of your work and what you do over in that department. It clearly takes a team to be strategic to work together and bring back the things that we need so we can move it forward for our community to be able to clearly understand. So I did ask Mayor Fulton about the strategic investment team because I wanted to know and then she explained to me that there were 19 strategic investments. I would like to see what those are. I really do. Yes. I want to know what those are. And then I would like to also see how we're going to do CBI and contract them. What the data, what the percentage is for minorities to be able to get involved in that, because that's very, very important in dear to me. I also want to point out that I heard extensive community engagement as if I don't wear community across my chest because I know I do. So I want to know if someone can explain to me from your standpoint what community extensive community engagement would be since we have seven days for me to make a solid informed decision to be able to communicate to my constituents and all of these emails that I got concerning this project. So I just want to know what extensive community engagement would look like to the community and constituents, and because I remember the last time we had extensive community engagement, it was on the Panthers vote. And when we went to go vote and we used the data, then I got conflicting information that that data that we put out on the website for them to vote that we couldn't necessarily use that, because we didn't know if it was accurate and coming from the city of Charlotte or surrounding areas for people that will be actually influence or affected by the stadium. So I'll wait on extensive community engagement. Yeah, so we didn't let me clarify. extensive community engagement comes as we start to develop the updated or revised transit plan starting in late this year November, running through, we anticipate July. But that is to update the transit plan ahead of a possible referendum for the voters, not ahead of next week. So this wouldn't happen before November 5th. That's the election. I'm just I want to get mentally prepared. Correct. As we start to pull together the update the plan for updating the transit plan, the first phase will be to work with the MTC in November, December of this year and then engage the community and stakeholders starting approximately in January of 2025 through we anticipate July of 2025 ending with an updated transit plan for consideration and approval by the MTC, ahead of a possible referendum in November of 2025. Okay, November 2025, so it's November next year. Okay, and so two separate votes, I heard Dr. Wilders say that we're gonna have two separate votes, and those two separate votes are gonna take place on September three, is that correct? That is correct. Supposedly on that Tuesday when we come back because September the second is Labor Day. We're off. But we'll meet on that Tuesday, right? September the third is that our proposed date to vote. Okay. So I want to go back to an article that I read in detail, which really caught my attention. I wouldn't I have known if Councilmember may feel didn't bring it to my attention When we're in the meeting and so I'll just summarize it, but if you google it it comes up. It's The US accused this Northfoot Southern of the Lane M track Trains and the schedules and they are there in big trouble for that. They're doing it right now This article just came out. It's a new article that came out in July of 2023. And I just want to be sure that when we move for it with something that's going to be so strategic and should be effective for our community, that one that gets resolved. Like we cannot have transportation that's going to move people about this city effectively and efficiently and then deal with what their dealing with so I know anytime the US Versus someone that's a big deal of course. I know why We don't need to go into those details But whenever the US versus someone they've done their investigation Extensively so that's a concern for me that there are fines out there, there are questions out there, and it's been a continuation that they continue to do this. So that's something that caught my eye. I wanted to read it. The economic impact, how we move people affluently around this community, yes. There are too many cars on the road. I live in Still Creek and all I get is on 160. What are we gonna do out there? When is it gonna happen? We know that that's a North Carolina Department of Transportation Road, but I need to tell my constituents what are we trying to do to serve that. The bus doesn't go out there. It goes to the outlet and that's about it. You know, there's not cats doesn't effectively move around steel creek. So it looks good and I'm not saying one way or another where I support it or not, but I just want to have all my facts and make sure that we're digging into what we're getting into because there's no turning back. I think Taric said we got right now we're on the catch 22, the scales are unbalanced. And so I want to be effective and there's no I and team. Of course everybody bring their expert teased to the table to the diets and they say effectively, I know Mr. Drex is for it. He supported it and I'm not saying I'm against it. That's not what I'm saying at all. But from this conversation, we know when everybody say what they say, then the media put their spin on it because they definitely gonna put their spin on it. As to what they think it should be or how it should move forward, I wanna make sure that for me, that I understand exactly what I'm voting for. And it's not my vote. My vote is for the people that put me in the seat. And I say that every time I come here and so I'm gonna be consistent. I'm gonna be consistent when it comes to relaying my information back to my constituent. So I have some questions unanswered. I told Mr. Drex I would speak with him. He's an expert and he sound like he summarized it pretty good. It's comprehensive. It's abstract. It's detailed. All of that. I get it. But for someone that just writes the bus and comes to me and say, council member Brown, can you please explain to me what you guys are doing with the transportation and mobility plan? How do I effectively communicate to that person that I understand what their concerns are and how can I make them understand what we're doing that's gonna benefit them, because that's what these 11 positions are. The seven districts and the four at large, okay? I'm listening. I will say, and I think that unfortunately we probably, not necessarily tonight, should spend more time talking about all aspects of the current proposed legislation. Local bus is the backbone of every transit system in the United States, probably everywhere. And I know rightly so we've talked a lot, spent a lot of time talking about rail and some of the big projects. But local bus at 20% of the funding, that's about $69 million a year. That represents about a 50% increase in available annual funding. This is per year for improvements to our bus system. And every system is just that. It needs rail, it needs a lot of modes, multi-modes. But local bus, things like micro transit, this, the increase in revenues will also make a measurable difference in our ability to provide better frequencies, to enhance local bus service, to add modes that enhance local bus service like micro transit across the region. And so I hear what you're saying and you're right. For a lot of folks that they may not be right on that rail line, but what is in it for them? And I would urge us not to forget the improvements to bus that come along with it as well. Yeah, I totally understand we want to be able to move effectively. We have a lot of business people that come through the city that go to the airport. That's our big money maker. We know that millions of dollars the airport is the biggest money maker in the city of Charlotte. And so we want to make sure that we can move those business folks that are coming into our city from the airport to wherever they need to go in our city effectively and efficiently I get that but I also don't want to forget kind of similar to what councilmember Asher mere said how are we going to support the people that may not even touch that yes ma'am that transportation is through local bus yeah okay and so that's fine I got to I know all my questions may not be able to get answered. And then one last thing I wanted to really bring to attention, the tight timeline. Every time we get ready to get on a critical vote, and I know we gotta be moving. We got a thousand things that we gotta do. But every time there's a critical vote, it seems like our back are against the wall, we don't have enough time to research, to get the answers that we're looking for. And then to me, I feel like I'm making a decision that's not really informed. And I really want to be intentional as I move forward and I'm learning what I do for my constituents. I really want to make sure that, you know, we don't feel like it's crunch time. Like now I look at another 645, I know when I rushed that was for the racket But we have an agenda when we come in and the time frame is there and you look at it like there's no way This is gonna happen in that amount of time. So I you know my hat's off to the staff the staff do an amazing job. I'm straight forward When I ask my questions and just try to figure out what we're gonna do Yes, something needs to be done, but we need to be effective in whatever we do. And that is all of the points here. Crossing our eyes, out crossing our teeth and dotting our eyes and making sure that when we communicate it, each of us to our constituents, because they're gonna have questions. And we can't, we're not gonna be able to satisfy everybody. That's to be crystal clear on that. But the path that we choose needs to be most effective. And it looks like it makes the most sense for everybody, even if they're in. Because we all know that we can agree to disagree. But we want to make sure the decision that we're making makes the most sense for the entire city of Charlotte. And those that are going to use it and those that are not. And so that's those that are not. So that's all that I have. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right. And now we will talk about Ms. Mayfield. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you staff for the presentation, answering a lot of our questions. And thank you colleagues for asking questions that get us to the point for real conversation. Mr. Manager, I've shared with you, I also have concerns. So I will share that I share the concerns of my colleagues of the timeline of this information coming before us, but I do have a couple of questions. Mr. Manager, just for clarification, you were mentioning that the CRA, we have a timeline in which the project must start. No, I'm sorry. So what I was saying is, I think the question came up about Not getting the sales tax passed and what they were not to yeah, correct and We would love to be successful the first time out But within this five-year period There could be more than one bite at the ample, but again, we would love to be successful First if given the opportunity the first time, that we went to the ballot. So I appreciate that because colleagues, we also have to remember, even there's only probably one person that's in around the diets that was here during that time we read when there was time that we had a conversation about what is now our arena uptown. And it was not supported by the community council move. He didn't send over that. The council wanted to move forward. They put it on referendum. The community voted against the different council came in. Number of council members lost their seats behind it, different council came in, they moved forward with it, we've seen the impact of an economic boom. That is not to give an example to think that you have my yes on this, that was just, it can happen, where we have to figure out what's the best decision. I do have a question for staff and as you're making, and it's probably gonna be for you, Mr. Kago. But as we're making our way forward, the mayor mentioned Chicago. So I was also in Chicago, I think, in June for a conference. When I grabbed my bag out, my check bag, I actually walked a little distance and climbed onto a train. That train then took me all the way that I needed to go because that train ride was $5 versus the $50 that it would have cost, because in case you don't forget, we work a four-time, part-time page of it. So the polls are paying $50 for an Uber or a car. That train took me all the way where ultimately I had another, I would say eight minute walk to the actual hotel. So there is a way as we are growing the airport, as we're talking about the additional parallel, as we're talking about possibly a tunnel at some point where it seems like we've been having this conversation long enough. And as was mentioned by my colleagues, the transition of just the last five years, the amount of growth that we've had at the airport as far as the number of passengers locally that are leaving out of Charlotte not just being a leg airport where that transfer airport, that might be something where the question is, Mr. Kagle, have we gotten too far down the line of this conversation, specifically regarding the line that we'll be going to the airport to say that that is not a consideration versus stopping it for me to then get off the train with my luggage. Let's just say I have the full gambit. I'm checking two bags plus my carry-ons to then have to transfer to some other form of transportation. The current plan for the airport station, and I'm going to stick with where I was before. There is an airport station. The current plan puts the airport station approximately one mile from the terminal. As we have looked at that with the airport, the closest possible it could be is possibly three quarters of a mile to a half a mile. And so as we start to think about the traffic congestion improvements that can also be made at the airport by putting the airport terminal station at Wilkinson and the other improvements, I would say that yes, this is something that we and the airport have put a great deal of time into and there is a lot of thinking on the benefit side to it and I will urge folks there are many airports that utilize a connecting system like what we're talking about and it is a very high level of service. Phoenix is one of them if you've been to Phoenix and there are others as well. There are clearly airports that have terminal stations, national airport and DC is one of those, but they have different layouts for their runways and roadways than we do. They don't have a call to sacking terminal, is really the biggest issue. Okay. Council member. Yes sir. May I feel piggybacking on what Frances said, the biggest issue. Okay. Councillor Mellon. Yes sir. May I feel piggybacking on what French has said. I think it's extremely important and I may fumble this a little bit and Councillor McAurie will correct me. So I think it's too fast. It's one is there are opportunities, brothers, the MTC and new agency authority would have you to look at all of these different corridors to see what can occur with it. But I think it was also important is that 20% is related to bus. Let's just not think about it as bus, but as Michael Transit is all those things that we have been talking about to move people around and let's not forget about technological advances and how can we harness innovation to move people in a different way. Thank you Mr. Manager. I appreciate that but going back to the sharing of her childhood that Councilmember Brown mentioned being able to catch the bus from West Charlotte and be able to get to Eastland. Even though I'm not a native of Charlotte T and I've been here since 1988. There's a very different conversation. I feel like I am a native at this point. So what we have to recognize is a lot of those community and neighborhood routes with different leadership in the role that Mr. Kegel is now in. He's inherited a lot of those neighborhood routes that have been reassigned and or ended. So it makes it a little difficult to try to say how this benefits those who are more likely to use the public transportation because it's not just a convenience, it is a necessity. Now, in order to get from point A to point B, when we look at opportunities that we miss along the blue line and what we were creating in the individuals who have a vehicle versus the individuals who once lived there who would have benefited the most off of the transportation. When we look at under that umbrella, it's difficult for me to say, hey, this is a great thing, knowing that there was a time, because I lived off of Sherrod West, and I was able to take public transportation to get over the Eastland. When we had the Eastland, we had the ice getting rickety, we had all the things, even if you wanted to today, you can't. So when we're talking about bus rapid transit of which I'm spoken to you directly about it unless we have those designated lanes It is very difficult for that to be truly accessible and even with those designated lanes You got to have a way to get off if I wanted to take the public Transportation to get to both jangles so that way we don't have to have deal with the parking. If I want to get to ovens, I can't take transportation. This new bus that's running, even though it's running down its own private lane with concrete on the sides, you plan for all of it to try to get a close. It's independence which people do every day, unfortunately, trying to get from one side of independence to the other. So when we're having this conversation, I want to make sure to the best of our ability that we're having as much transparency as we possibly can. Mr. K, if we go back to slide 16, well, you know what, don't move it. I'm sorry, go back to right where we were right there. Page 16, slide 32. So we're saying right here, there's 74 million is to get that line. Here's the question that I have. So, Harnessville, Cornelius and Davidson are also going to have to put money, put a referendum on their ballot for the county or we're saying the county taxes because they've been saying Cornelius, Huntersville are all part of Mecklenburg County. So if we move forward with this, we're talking about the city. So once you get out of Charlotte proper city limits and you get into the county. What do we know what amount they're contributing to this? Tell the state of North Carolina cannot tell you where the point of sale is for sales tax. What they can tell you is what's collected in the county. So we'll know how much the county-wide sales tax generates. Okay, so just for clarification, because the county passed their budget, they had an increase in their budget. I don't remember the actual breakdown, but the Mecklerburg County have a designated amount that was just for transportation? So, when the MTC was formed back in the late 1990s, because of what I just said, that you really can't tell which jurisdiction within the county where the sale sacs is generated. There was a formula that doesn't really indicate much of anything. So I guess if you ask me again, I'm going to say the same thing. We don't know the exact amount that's collected in each. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. Wait this for Charlotte is fine for its own account piece of land. What is in the legislation is that piece of land will pass to the authority and we will get repaid. So we're making a bridge loan. We're just lending money in order to get that land to a safe place so we can move ahead. And then the legislation says that the earliest opportunity when there is sales tax revenue in the authority, then the land transfer is to the authority and we get our money back. So it's alone. And then ultimately then the cost is born from the sales tax by all the members of the authority or the MTC. Thank you for that clarification. Now that we've had all that, what's the timeline that we're looking at this? Because if we're telling Charlotte taxpayers that we want you to support this so that we can provide this bridge loan for us to move forward and go into our towns to be reimbursed, what are we looking at? Are we looking at the potential of being reimbursed in five years? Are we looking at being reimbursed in five years. Are we looking at being reimbursed in 10 years? Are we looking at a 25-year timeline before that reimbursement comes back where we then have the ability to put more infrastructure into solid proper? Sure. I'm going to try to regurgitate what you told me yesterday, Brandt, okay? So here's the point. Right now, again, this is unique legislation in the state of North Carolina with this transit and transportation. Our biggest problem has been that the cities, debt, we backed all of these purchases that the MTC or Cats made, even though they were made with the Hams and Sales Tax. But the whole vacant credit of the City of Charlotte had to back it. Now to your question, we do this with cops. Okay, so we have a triple-a bond rating and cops, a little bit different from a point is when this new agency is stood up, they will be able to issue revenue bonds. And revenue bonds are a better deal than air cops. So therefore, it would be their fiduciary responsibility to basically repaid this as quickly as they can because to spread this out when they have a better vehicle of financing than what we have would not be a good plan. Yeah, comment. Let's be clear, there is a risk involved in this transaction. Yeah. There is a danger we end up owning this thing. Okay. And I don't think we should push the foot around on that. We will have several opportunities to offer our random, as the referendum, as has happened in other places before there was finally success, the really bad outcome is we just don't get there. And now, congratulations Charlotte, you own this piece of land. The way I look at that is, let's say you think there's a 30% chance that that might happen, right? And let's say that then disposing of the land, you take a bit of a bath. You lose 30% of the money you put in. So that would be a $20 million loss in a 30% contingency. That translates to an equivalent cost, a certain cost today of $8 million. I get 30% chance that you lose 30% of your money. So this is a calculated risk. But in the context of all of the magnitudes we're talking about, for us to make that bet, in order for us to be able to move, because if we don't, there is no movement. In my mind, as I thought about this, was a reasonable cost to incur. But I just want to be clear, there is a risk. Okay, let's not pretend there isn't. All I will tell you is if we don't manage to get a referendum passed in the next five years from mobility, we have much bigger problems. I wouldn't agree with that. We need to look at something whether or not it's this. I don't know. So we're thinking about where he just said. This is the risk that we are taking. And that we're talking about putting this on the ballot for our constituents. We just, Matthews had their meeting now a month ago, where they voted, no. Yeah, here's the reality. They benefit regardless. So they have the flexibility to say no, raise your hand, but you will still benefit if this was a go forward. Are we in any way reliant on Davidson Cornelius Huntersville, any of that area, they're putting anything out in support. And I just want to make sure that we just have the answer out there because this is one of the questions I've been asked. So like for Matthews, there was conversation of their council coming together and voting not to support it. What if any impact does that have on us moving forward with this and is there any potential impact with any of these other partnering towns if they were to vote no. Are you asking? Because I'm trying to follow you. I want to make sure I follow you. Are you saying are they putting financial, like are they putting in financial? Is that what you're saying? No, I'm asking. Well, their vote, Matthew's vote was to vote no, not to put anything on to their referendum. What I'm asking is does that, how, if any way does that impact our decision and if any of the others, I don't know why we changed the screen since I was still looking at this slide. But if any of the others were to be identified and if they in their town council meeting were to vote no, does that have any impact on the decision that we're making? I think that all of us could probably, but I think that it wants to describe the fact that it's a county-wide tax. And so if it passes, everyone inside of Mecklenburg County that spends money in the stores pays that tax. So there's no way to back out of paying the tax. So when Matthews voted, no, that had absolutely no impact on. Well, no, it did have an impact because they were basically saying that they were going to tell their voters not to pass it. Right. Matthews is 31,000 people. Right, so they were saying those are the way not some of you managers. But they may, do you understand? I'm just saying. I'm just making a good decision. Can I manage a response to my question before you jump in? I'd like to tell you something. If you're giving one second. What do you have? Mac Matthews is not on board is something that is a concern to legislators that I spoke to with the told me it is not a reason for us not to proceed. If we had a situation contrary to expectations and contrary to all of the negotiations that have taken place, where others among the members of the MTC did not support the resolution, we would have a problem with the legislators. I doubt that we could provide this thing to them. And that is what I just asked the manager for them and him to answer because any of these other partners that are part of the NTC that we have, you have a very similar conversation to the conversation that we have if they choose to go the route that Matthews has, the what ifs, where does that put us? If we say yes, they say no. We move forward still. Let's just say that we still get enough support even though they say no on their end. Because we got just how the public pushed back. What is the what if look like? I think that I'll say the different way, Councilmember Maple, we are only in the position that we're in right now because of two things. One was getting the three northern towns on board because of the red line, okay? And as far as we know their own board. And the other thing was, and this is what makes this a very difficult Conversation is that it was so real heavy that the General similarly wouldn't even consider it So to the point that you asked I think that there is General consensus from the majority of the jurisdictions in Mecklenburg County to entertain this And that was the other piece that I needed you to say based off of our conversation. It's the fact that because although we were trying to put more real on the ground, our North Carolina General Assembly leadership is more supportive of more roles on the ground. So we're saying this is our balance, this is how we're trying to address the needs that we have and a piece of. I have concerns still of which I shared with you that we're even if we're having a conversation of getting rail that we're not going through the east side. Because we made major investments over at what is now the formerly Eastland site. It would have been great because along Abelmore Road, we have enough, it's wide enough where we probably could have gotten that designated lane 4 rail to go up. But I think we needed to be said and it hadn't been said at this point directly that what we are looking at is a constraint because I know Carolina General Assembly, not just our delegation. The General Assembly was like, we're not going to help support if you focus more rail than roads because we want more roads. The only other thing that I would add is that, and we have to figure out a way to make sure we get this information to all of you. So even when we think about East and West, there's the go line phase three. And we're going all the way from Eastland to Rosa. Yeah. So there are a bunch of opportunities in this infrastructure that can move people around. That little booklet, where we make it plain enough, so that we can get it out to the community. Because again, this short timeline, we could have had this conversation in May and June prior to us being out for six weeks so that we could have really had time to delve into it. Even though small group has been having conversation as a full council, just as councilmembers Johnson mentioned. At the end of the day, staff can bring some, bring a really good presentation to us, but we're the ones who have to go out to the community. And not only try to explain it, we're the ones who are going to see the impact if this is not presented in a way that really shows how we are attempting to connect the city. Knowing that we have bus routes that have been realigned and that honestly, areas of our community that need bus transportation the most, those routes have been eliminated. And that's causing the challenge. So let's be going to have that real conversation as well. It's difficult to say, yes, we're saying we're going to pay about 5 million more than what our praise will came back because what you were asking for was probably where we're doing 74 million you was probably asking for 100 million and we were able to negotiate down so when you say we had to figure out a happy medium medium opposed to that total being 85.1 million is probably 100 million but we managed to get there those are things that are helpful for us to be able to understand ourselves so that when we're talking to constituents when we're talking to bus riders when we're receiving emails from my bus riding constituency we can better explain to them I need to understand it so that I can be and try to explain it and we have not even a full seven days to really Wrap our head around approving something that we're now going to tell the community We want you to support this, but I'm not necessarily sure. I can explain to you why I supported it Thank you, okay. I think miss Ajira had something that she'd like to say. Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. You're welcome. Yeah. I just wanted to add something to Councilwoman Mayfield's point. As Mr. Drake said, there is risk here. And also there is an opportunity cost. And I had asked that question to Mr. Jones and the staff. We are taking $91 million from our general fund. I mean, our capacity to purchase this. So there is going to be, I think, in Mr. Jones in 26 and 28 bond will have less, is that correct? So there is an opportunity cost to that. In addition to the risk that you and Castleman, Watlington raised about, well, what happens if the plan doesn't go according to the plan and no one probably will buy this piece of land. So there is risk in addition to the opportunity cost. So I just wanted to make sure Mr. Jones, if you can also elaborate on the opportunity cost that we had discussed about the 26 and 28 bond. So thank you, Councilmember Ashmer. A lot of the discussion with the 2025 budget, sitting around this whole concept of pulling capacity forward. So we pulled some capacity forward in the 26 and the 28 bond, 23.5 million each one. But the concept of both of those were for future transportation projects. So we're going to use some of that capacity for this as well as the way that our CFO and our treasure have been able to finance this in such a way. So what will happen is your steady state, which is during a $20 million, 220. You just go back to the steady state basically in the 26th bond, the 28th bond and 30th bond. However, if indeed you're able to secure the sales tax, as early as July 1, 2026 lined up with it, 2026 bond, you will start to collect revenue. This estimated to be 102 million in the first year. Okay, so we have our last speaker. We do have a very long agenda downstairs. So I'm going to ask the mayor, Pro Tem, who has been patient for a long time to be recognized. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And don't worry, I only have 35 questions for the team. She's breaking murder. But seriously, I am a Charlotte native born and raised and have taken part of cats and participated in cats, not only for recreational reasons reasons but for necessity reasons. And I can't think of a more impactful opportunity for us to have a generational shift. Not only for our city but for our region. The sheer notion that we are setting the financial stack in motion and getting the consensus to purchase the red line. Ahead of some other key milestones is a testament to Charlotte's commitment to a regional transportation plan. And in fact, if we're going to do something as transformational as we've been calling our plan for many years, when you endeavor on anything that's transformational, there's always risk involved. There's always opportunity costs. It's about making the calculated risk mitigation the right way. And I want to thank all of the towns that, including Matthews, but all of the towns that have been working on this for a month through their town managers, through their elected officials and representatives, to really identify this as an opportunity to make an impact that we haven't been able to move the needle on in decades, not only in Charlotte, but within the regions. So we have, we also have, as we hear lots of conversations about some of the towns, but I actually went back and watched the Cornelius meeting, and I think Cornelius actually have it right, in that they will be unlocking millions and millions of dollars to dedicate to their road strategy. However, they see fit, and that will allow them to collaborate with other Northern towns, in addition to receiving the benefit of having this transit benefit along the red line. And so this really is just the beginning, but I think many of our counterparts within Methanburg County are beginning to see, just as we have seen, we haven't had a revenue source for all of these wonderful plans that Mr. McKinney and team have put together. But having this revenue source unlocks the opportunity for us to begin to address it, increases our opportunity for capacity, and then doubly allows us to tap into the federal dollars that we have to manifest that we have a revenue source in order to tap into. So it really is a multi prong approach that will allow us to be laser focus and strategic about how we invest not only in transit, not only in our overall bus system, but the complete transformational transportation plan that we've been working on for years. And I'm really excited to be a part of that. Lastly, I just wanna say, this is less to me and my eyes, less about a mobility decision and more about an economic development decision. There's so many charlatans who don't have cars or who do have cars and the expense of the car is a significant burden over their overall monthly economic pie that they would love and jump at an opportunity to be able to access and leverage a safe, reliable, secure transportation system. And the purchase of this online is really just the beginning of that. That will allow them to make the choice of whether they would like to purchase a car, utilize that car, or take a more economical choice as Ms. Mayfield mentioned when she was in Chicago. Do I pay $5 and get to where I need to be my proper destination, or do I pay $50? And still get there, but it hits my pocket deeper. So this weekend, Councilmember Melina and I had an opportunity to actually do a ride along on the cat's bus from East Charlotte with a small group of citizens who leveraged our transportation system quite a bit. We got from East Charlotte to Uptown Charlotte in 11 minutes. It was safe, it was secure, there was a lot of exchange that went on. And people were very surprised by how that whole endeavor went. So there's an educational process that I think is a part of this as well. But this is an opportunity to double down on our economic development impact for the city and the region for existing charlatans, for future charlatans who may decide whether or not they want to move the charlat based on their public transportation options. And I think as we move forward, I just want to be very clear because we've had lots of conversations about the silver line and other aspects, but those decisions have not been made yet. And once we have a transit authority, which is really a goal standard around the entire country is how you manage these things. So not at a city level or a county level, but really from a transit authority level, then we will have that opportunity to have the deep relational conversations, input sessions with the community so they can decide. This is really us doing all the work to allow charlatans and the residents of Maclinburg County to decide whether we want to invest in a transportation system that will put us on the path of being a world class city and a gold standard city in the US. Thank you Madam Mayor. Thank you everyone. a world-class city and a goals-standard city in the US. Thank you Madam Mayor. Thank you everyone. It's time to ask the speaker. We are going to have a rather long public forum as well as some recognitions that we have to make tonight. Please come down as quickly as you can so that we can begin as quickly as we can. I can't recall who's doing the invocation. you Thank you. . . you you you you you you you you you you Thank you for your patience and thank you for being here. We have been working hard, the entire council trying to make sure the decisions that we are having to undertake are the best and the best interest of our community. But I also, I'm going to change around the agenda. I know that people have agendas, so just give us a moment. We'll start getting to that point in a little bit. We are the quorum. Because as somewhat, I'm sorry, who's? We have a quorum. What? You have a quorum. You have a quorum. You're great. We're okay. We're okay. I know that. Okay. Okay. Before we go into the business of our continuing work, I'd like to take a moment to recognize one of our employees. Earlier this month, as Tropical Storm Debbie, inundated the city's surrounding areas with severe weather there. Staff at Solid Waste Services were working tirelessly, providing services to our residents. During the storm, Jamie Gray, a Solid Waste Sanitation Engineer, added a title to his name, and that title is Hero. Now I'd like to share a video. All right we're gonna see watch this video that we have among them. What are you doing? I was usually in three days, that was the first time actually helping somebody. I was just sitting in three days, that was the first time actually helping somebody. I'm not sure what it is. I was here. I was having a pigment cans and I heard to my yell, I couldn't understand what they're saying. So I thought maybe it's my just got to the end of it. I was about to keep on going and I heard that little girl screaming better. Hellfeltness when I got out, and what were there. ["The Area Up Their Front Door," trying to get out, but they couldn't, because they're thus covering all the reef, just fell down and found the door. That's okay. I never saw you around. This fell down and turned the door. That's okay. And that fell down. The walk right on there is in the duck. And there's a bucket of us. Big enough safe for me to stand up. The kids look and put them in the car. They had all their family there. Getting out of the kids were fine. They weren't crying the more. Other than that, the father didn't think he shook my hand. And I was missing it. And I wasn't that big no trash in me. Good. Thank you. Thank you Jamie for going above and beyond. I can tell why you have a lot of energy. A little one there with you. The way that you stepped up to help our community in a time of crisis, and for the daily work that you do, helping us make the city a beautiful place to live. You know, we often talk about the dedication of team Charlotte, bring what they bring to our roles, and you have shown us all what it truly means to be a public servant. You remind us that the part of our work isn't just the task that we're doing or completing or achieving. It's with the people that you and all of us serve and when lives touch and proud to live in a community where neighbors show up for each other in so many inspiring ways. So Jamie, I want you to come down now. I want you to know this isn't something we do ordinarily. But I would love that if you would come down with your family and let us shake your hand. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Oh, we can't. OK. I forgot to tell you about the slippery parts. She's coming to you. She's Russian. Many opportunities to do something first. I'm not about that one but okay. Oh! Oh! How are you? How are you? Oh! Don't let your brother else stand. Oh. You said you would sit in the back of the door. You would sit in the back of bit more. Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more. Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more. You're going to be a little bit more. Yes, right now. Please, are city attorney? You guys are going to be a little bit more. Oh, I'm looking at a baby. You look like a baby. Oh, I'm looking at a baby. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your husband's house. Refine. You gotta get right. Thank you. Brother. Brother love. Yes, she's great. Thank you so much. I love her. I love her. This is fun. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just stand aside on my hand, okay? Thank you, Ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, guys. You did it. You did it. You did it. You did it. You did it. You did it. Thank you so much. We fight for you everything. Thank you. Thank you. It's so much really appreciate it. Thank you, dad. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. That's the way it's not a permanent. It's heartwarming. It's really heartwarming. All right, now we are going to be busy for a few minutes. We're now going to go to the speakers list. Before we do the consent agenda. So I have our speakers. I will call your names. Please be careful. The steps are steep and sometimes slippery. Our first speaker is Megan Lucas. Oh, sorry. Someone talked to me. Yes, we're everyone. Oh, can't we see that before we begin the discussion? All right. So we'll have our public form and we're going to ask Megan Lucas and Heather McCullough to come down and speak first and then following Miss McCullough will be Cindy Campbell and Natalie Peterman. Mayor, we're going to do that after we start the business meeting. We will do that. Can I just add one thing is they're coming down please? Yes. I just want to thank you mayor. Want to make sure that everyone knows. Please come as mayor mentioned. It's a little slippery. Thanks to our amazing team with the Charlotte Mecklenburg doing the time that we were on break. If you have a wheelchair or you need accessibility, there is now spaces on both sides where you are able to have your chair. And if you all will notice there is now a lower podium that makes it a little bit more convenient for those versus having to step up. So just wanted to make sure that you all notice that there have been a few minor changes to make this building, you're building a little bit more accessible. Thank you, Ann. Thank you. We will have speakers that if they need access, we will be having the podium or the microphone so that if you need access and cannot come down these stairs, there will be, I see, you can see one and one. Raise your hand so that we can make sure that anyone that has a knee can use those facilities. That opportunity. All right, so are you are? I'm Heather. Heather? Yes, Megan is not here. I'm not sure what this is. Thank you for being here. Thank you. You have two minutes. Okay. Thank you for being here. You have two minutes. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight. My name is Heather McCullough. I moved here in 2017 and I am a resident of District 1. Since I've been old enough, I've volunteered. In 2022, I saw a post that C-Mac needed help. I applied and three months later I was approved. Yes, it took three months to get through the application process to volunteer walking dogs. Given CMAC as part of CMPD, this is not uncommon. Upon completing my training, I became a regular. I enjoy meeting the dogs and giving them a much needed break from their kennels. Shortly after I started, I received an ACC capacity email. I drove to the shelter to pick up my first foster, Mary Ann, a six-month-old who had been found in an abandoned car with her litter mate. I had never fostered and had not planned on doing so, but how could I not help save a life? Little did I know the frequency with which I would receive these emails monthly, weekly, lately, multiple times a week. My experience is not unique. Time and again, I see new volunteers grabbing a foster dog when an act capacity email comes out. Many like me had never fostered before. Best case, the dog gets adopted quickly, but often it takes longer, and during that time, they are less available to walk dogs at the shelter. Fosters often find the dog they brought home has kennel cough. They bring them to the shelter vet and can face hours of way time due to under staffing. Since June it has been common to receive notification from the vet that they are short staffed and fosters should only be brought in if it is an emergency. In the June City Council meeting I heard it repeatedly mentioned that Charlotte is the 14th largest city and yet we still have the same shelter from over 30 years ago when we were the 33rd largest. Having attended these meetings for a year, I appreciate all the important topics that come before you. I believe one of them is making C-MAC an independent city department with more autonomy over their budget and ability to implement life saving programming. And I respectfully ask you to solidify a commitment to the adoption center project as an initial step towards right sizing the shelter. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Our next speakers are Natalie Peterman and Saday Cannon. Sharday. Sharday, thank you. Cannon. Cindy. Cindy. I'm sorry. Did you say Cindy Campbell? Yes, Cindy. You're here too. Yes, thank you. So our next speaker will be Cindy Campbell and Natalie Peterman. So Shade is not here. Shade is not here. Thank you very much, Miss Brown. Okay. Please. Two minutes. Okay. Hi. My name is Cindy. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm a volunteer with Friends of Feral Felines. Since January this year, donor dollars have provided subsidies to space 645 female cats and neuter 560 male cats for a total of 1,205 cats spayed or neutered. One male cat who forcefully impregnates a female cat can result in three litters per year. This means the number of females just mentioned would have gifted Charlotte a city already exploding with cats and kittens approximately 4,000 additional kittens. Why should this matter to you city council and Charlotte residents? Because citizen volunteers are being exploited. A small number of caring citizens are doing their best to address the issues because fellow citizens do not spay or neuter their cats. Almost 3,000 people have contacted friends of feral felines begging for help this year, and there is never just one cat. As human women, we have access to birth control, morning after pills and even abortion. Female cats have no choice or ability to avoid assault and are forced to give birth. We cannot tell humans not to have sex. You also cannot tell them not to bring a kitten home. The issue arises when citizens allow fertile and testosterone hyped up felines to reproduce at random or abandon them altogether. This is not a cat problem. It is a citizen problem. How can you help? Please review the 2025 budget for animal care and control. Page 17 references an other adjustment item $30 million for a planning program. Ten new positions were added in this department this year. Page 42 states the budget represents a 29% increase for these positions, over $600,000. If 300 dogs, cats, and other animals are coming in daily, and 200 to 300 are in foster homes, doesn't it make sense to address this by offering Spade Nooter Services citizens? Cindy, thank you very much, Ms. Campbell. Thank you. Ms. Peterman? Yes. Good evening. My name is Natalie Peterman and I appreciate you giving me some time this evening. I'm here to give you a little bit of insight as to what it's like to be a volunteer for animal care and control. I spend my time in animal control, care and control walking dogs. This gives them a break from the kennel, enriches their time with the shelter, and gives them some much-needed human contact. As volunteers, we frequently receive emails from our volunteer coordinator, letting us know that the kennels are at capacity. On repeat, we hear all dogs at risk. Must be out by the end of the day. Euthanasia decisions will have to be made. The days that we get these emails are the hardest ones for me to go to the shelter. It's hard to get it out of the back of my mind that it could be the dog's last walk, the last treat that they get to eat, the last ball that they get to chase, or the last lap that they get to sit in. One night, after getting yet another capacity email, I took out a dog by the name of Melody. She had was time to put her back in the kennel, I just wasn't ready. I signed her out and put her in my vehicle. I didn't have a plan. I just knew I wanted something more for her if this was going to be her last time out of the shelter. In the end, she got to enjoy some french fries and took a nap in the seat of my truck. Was it enough? Not really, but not enough seems like the theme of animal control, not enough space, not enough money, not enough programs, not enough staff, not enough homes. I'm tired of the dogs making up for the scarcity with their lives. To help make this lack of enough better, I ask the city council to consider two things. Please consider building a larger shelter and removing animal care and control out from underneath the police department. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speakers are Tamara Artis and Nicole Campbell. I don't think we need to want to add. I don't see them. All right. I then misartists and miscambles are not available. So we will go to Victoria Penel and S you very much. And Sigmund Williams, is there another, is Sigmund Williams available? If not, then we'll go to April Lewis. Feel free to come down. All right, so Miss Canal? Yes, hi. Thank you. Good evening, members of the City Council and community. My name is Victoria Pennell, and I am the executive program director of Reimagined Reentry. Reimagined Reentry is an organization dedicated to transforming the lives of individuals reintering our community from incarceration. Our mission is rooted in a holistic approach, focusing on leveraging the qualities and potential of returning citizens to foster positive change both for themselves and their communities. Reimagined reentry is driven by the belief that everyone from young people to adults has inherent strengths that when recognized, supported and nurtured can lead to transformative outcomes. We recognize that every year at least two thirds of justice and system impacted individuals released from prison are likely to be re-arrested and sent back within three years. In order to combat that, our programming was designed with three core objectives in mind, providing opportunities, reducing barriers, support and empowerment. We offer a range of services including job training, educational workshops and mentoring programs for both juveniles and adults. Navigating the reentry process also often includes overcoming significant hurdles, such as access to housing, legal assistance and mental health support. Our programs address these barriers by offering targeted resources and advocacy, ensuring that returning citizens have the support they need to overcome challenges to achieve stability. To further our mission, we are seeking the City Council's support in the form of resources and information for funding, access to community spaces, job training programs, and educational facilities will enhance our ability to deliver these crucial services. As well as insights into local needs and gaps will help us tailor our programs effectively. Investing in reentry support is an investment in our community's future. By partnering with us, you will help us reduce recidivism, build stronger communities and foster a more equitable society. Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to working together to make a meaningful impact. All right. I want to make sure I know April. So they're standing with me. I'm the speaker. They're just here in support of me. What we're speaking together. I just wanted them to say their name so that we would know that they're with you. No, why was I? You want to say your name? So which one? I'm Dimbo. I'm on, she's my friend. Yeah. We have a same name. On April, Louis. Subject. April, Louis, okay. I was thinking. You're not here? Yeah. No, he's not here. Okay. Okay, thanks. And then, thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Alicia Harvey. Nice to see you. Thank you guys for standing here with her. All right. I have two minutes. All right. Honorable Mayor, council members and fellow charlatans, I'm here today to open a conversation about a collaborative solution to our housing challenges, transforming the lamplighter Inn into a neighborhood stabilization center. I am pleased to share that both the residents and the owner of the Lamplider Inn are in agreement with this proposal demonstrating strong community support. Recent research from Harvard University's opportunity insights highlights a critical issue in Charlotte. Children from lower income families have only 4% chance of reaching the top income quintile compared to 19% for those who have higher income families. This center aims to address this opportunity gap and we invite your input on how to maximize its impact. The study identifies three key factors influencing economic mobility, educational attainment, social networks, and neighborhood effects. I propose center targets all three and we're eager to discuss how we can refine this approach. One, we envision offering job training and educational resources. How can we best align these with our city's needs? Our transitional cooperative housing model aims to foster diverse social networks. And we'd love for your thoughts on ensuring this integration is successful. Third, we're planning a 10 minute neighborhood concept. And what services do you believe are most crucial for our community. Now this isn't just about housing, it's about creating a hub of support that strengthens our entire community fabric. We want to partner with local schools and employers and we're open to your suggestions on potential collaborations. The research shows that children's outcomes are shaped primarily by their social environments and community level factors. We believe this center can improve these outcomes and we're keen to hear your ideas on achieving this goal. This project aligns with expert recommendations to focus on youth, target communities, and invest in social capital. It embodies Charlottes commitment to innovative urban development and we want to ensure it reflects our city's values and aspirations. We see this as the beginning of a dialogue. We urge the council and community members to engage with us in shaping this vital resource. Together we can build a Charlotte where everyone, regardless of background, has a fair shot. Thank you very much. We're April White, White, White. I would like to introduce you to Sean Heath, who manages a lot of our programs, and you know who he is, so I think whatever you guys do, you're doing the work. So as you're doing the work, let him help you do and fill in all the gaps and we'll see you soon. All right, our next speaker, Shannon Bircham. And I know that this isn't going to be the best way for me to pronounce. But you Kamaka Anonte. Kamaka Anonte. Yes, thank you. You're up there. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. So Ms. Burkham. I know. Oh, you can go to the top. Yeah, you can go to. Sorry. I'm sorry. Please, you have two minutes. Good evening to the members of City Council. My name is Shannon Purchum and I have lived in Charlotte for four and a half years and worked in uptown for two and a half years. I am the sole provider for a family of three. I also have a son with special needs and everything we do is on a strict budget. I'm addressing you today to ask for a change in the current and future with these regulations. When I first started working in uptown Saturday street parking was free. Now I pay on Saturdays and come September 3rd, there's more changes and increases. If your goal is to incite turnover, then it may work to some degree, but I know we can find a better solution. With that being said, the burning question is why? Why are you making these changes now? I need you to help me make it make sense. Where is all the extra revenue from increased street park and fees and ticketing going? These new regulations won't work because people will simply stop coming out to help town Charlotte. And there are 120,000 people who work in uptown and 33,000 residents, but there is 18 million visitors annually. The visitors are your bread and butter. The workers and residents are your glue. I also think it's interesting to note that the median annual income for individual workers in uptown is about $68,000, but the MIT living wage calculator says, for a single adult to be comfortable living in Charlotte, they must make an estimated $101,000. So it stands for reason the uptown Charlotte employees do not make enough as it is to be comfortable living here, how are they supposed to afford 150 to 300 a month in parking fees because they can't move their car every two hours? There has to be a better solution. There will be beneficial for everyone. I'm asking for a median consideration to drop the two hours zoning regulation and focus on ticketing those who have not paid it all for their street parking. I also propose for a immediate action to remove the extended parking hours about to take effects on September 3rd. What I propose from midterm action is creating a program called Uptown Employee Parking Plan, where employees can work with private lots to have a designated area for their employees to park at a monthly discounted rate. Because let's face it, the workers are here to stay and we are essential to making the city run. Another solution I'd like to propose is to have the private parking lots to offer an hourly rate for those who don't need 10 hours of parking. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. If you would give those to the city clerk right over that way, he will help you with that. Officer will help. And thank you for bringing this to our attention. Really appreciate that. Okay. You did a great job. All right. So, um, um, Demaka, here you are up here. Thank you so very much. Can you hear us okay? Yes. I want to make sure we can hear you though. Yeah. You hear me. All right. Okay. Um, my name is Ucamaca Nekke. I'm actually up here because I just recently got diagnosed with multiple cirrhosis and a symptom of multiple cirrhosis is optic neuritis. So as a result on May 25th, I actually went blind in my left eye. So because of how things work in Charlotte, ideally I shouldn't have went to work. In a different city, I wouldn't have went to work while disabled, but the city of Charlotte does not offer any resources to disabled people. So I had to keep working while I was in the middle of a MS flare up. In that process, I was misdiagnosed five times by five different specialists, one of them being a MS specialist and told me that, basically, even though I was presenting textbook symptoms of MS that I did not qualify for diagnosis, which I later found out was wrong. Also during this process, I've had to take the public bus because again, I can't drive because I have optic neuritis. And I also didn't qualify for a paratransit because I didn't have a diagnosis because I was misdiagnosed by HM and NOVONT five times. I saw 22 doctors and did not get an answer until I had to go to Durham. And I say all of this because I'm kind of frustrated as a disabled person, recently disabled, that I have to keep working. I have to contact Senator Ted Bud to ask him what resources are there for me as I wait for disability to come in and what do I do until I get paid? Because as we know, disability takes 14 months to get paid out. But the city of Charlotte, the only resource there is to pay for at least rent and utilities is crisis, but crisis has been the nine people's applications for months. Paratransit, for example, the bus that I just rode on today, it doesn't even have AC. With multiple slurosis, you can't even be in an environment with too much heat or you have another risk for a flare-up. So I just realized in Charlotte, I understand that Charlotte is a blue city in a red state So a lot of precautions or things that are usually helped to like you know Use to help lower income or disadvantage people isn't really a thing But I've reached to my peak point of frustration The bus system doesn't work the way it's supposed to So I know What you said it moved all of us. I'd like to ask Ms. Bapson to work with you so that we can have more of your story and also to have opportunities to see where we fit in that can support you in this city. All right. So is Liz? She's up she's gonna come upstairs up I call it they you they set up top but she's gonna come up there and she'll work with you again continue to help us understand how we can help you okay thank you very much. Thank you. Applause Our next speaker is Kimberly Potts and Gina Gupton. Next speakers. I'm going to see there's a little bit of the room. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady here. This lady. You have two minutes. All right. My name is Kimberly Pots. I'm here to speak on affordable housing. Which in my opinion is almost a thing of the past here in Charlotte. From finding a one bearable apartment housing, you're looking at a close to like $1,500 a month. And that's 1,500 times two. For someone to find housing here. Luxury housing, it's fine. All these apartments and housing that's going up, it's fine to throw the pretty amenities or whatever. If you want to impress somebody, go down the south side, reduce the south side for some of these people who don't have housing or have the problem finding housing, redo Brookhill, who we've been trying to redo Brookhill for months. I would love to work with some people about finding housing because it's almost irrelevant here in Charlotte and to try to pay rent and if you're put out, where do you go? Go to a tent community? They dunk those down. Kids don't eat. The only time kids eat is at school. They don't have anything. You think that there's only adults in those tents? There are kids in those tents as well. This has been a passion of my heart for a long time, from looking at downtown with people laying in the bus shelters or whatever, it used to break my heart. And it breaks my heart that we can't afford rent here and shot in, Carolina. And if anyone would like to work for me, or there are any resources that could work with me, I'm willing to work to make Charlottes a better place for those who cannot afford rent here in Charlottesville, Carolina. Thank you for your... Thank you for your thoughtfulness and your leadership on this issue. We recognize it and we know how it is and charlat as well as many other places in this country. So thank you very much for what you're doing. All right. Ms. Goupton. Hi, good evening. And I would like to thank you in advance for taking the time to listen to me. My name is Gina Gupton. I'm the president of the Bellmead Green HOA in northwest Charlotte. And we are near the White Water Afting Center. So that is a very popular area for 18-wheeler trucks that have coming through from the business park. And we're having problems with infiltrating our neighborhood, knocking down our street signs, our directional signs. And it's costing the city quite a bit of money because it's happening more often than not. In addition to that, there's a lot of grit on the roads in terms of stones and things that hit windshields. So we would really need the city's support with coming out near the roundabouts, please. And thank you to street clean those areas so that those pebbles are not hitting our windshields and the metal off of those trucks are not piercing our trucks. The other thing that I'd like to bring to the city council's attention and I see that Mrs. Walentons there and she was our previous, yes you are wonderful miss you and I just wanted to mention that when AT&T and Google fiber are you know Installing the fiber optics. They're breaking the gas lines the water lines I know that they come out and they mark those areas But we're having a water main break issue right now on Bell Me Drive. And Google Fibers actually has their wires sticking out of the ground for the past five months. And there's a concave of a sidewalk that needs to be addressed. Now that is a state road, Bell Me Drive. And I'd love to be able to explain why it's necessary for me to bring that to your attention It's because when the state comes to do any repairs on that road They actually damage all of our established bushes all of our juniper They'll never they won't pull a permit, but they will take those heavy Equipment and they will just go and they will just ruin our whole area So we need your support and I thank you in advance. Thank you. We'll have to, Miss Gopton, we'll have to have someone to come out to the area and see what we can do, okay? Thank you. All right, I believe our next speaker is Stephanie. My last, last, and this is our 15th speaker. I believe our next speaker is Stephanie. Last. Last. Last. And this is our 15th speaker. No wait a minute. Like put it on this. I have several of the units. One. I think we have two more speakers. I'm sorry. Stephanie, how many did we have so far? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. How many did we have so far? I'm trying to check one that checked off. 10th speaker. Thank you so much for being here and um please let me have your name again. My name is Stephanie the last name is pronounced loss. It's French so don't feel bad for mispronouncing it. Well thank you Let me have your name again. My name is Stephanie. The last name is pronounced loss. It's French. So don't feel bad for mispronouncing it. Thank you so much. I think we have a few French speakers in this around the style. So you have two minutes. Yes ma'am. Good evening, steady council. My name is Stephanie Loss. And our represent Strawberry Acres in neighboring communities. I would like to acknowledge Council Member Brown for a continued support of District 3. Our neighborhood is being negatively impacted by the actions of the airport, our property values and quality of life are being diminished right before our various. It sands me to imagine a historic home, some built in 1953, where our children now play, where we host barbecues, celebrate anniversaries, suffer the same fate of the man's house to make room for yet another industrial park. We demand an investigation into exactly how the man's house was allowed to be demolished. The airport says they did nothing wrong. However, the HLC say they followed the proper procedures to present the mounts for historical protection. But somehow it felt to make the agenda of this chamber. In corporate America, somebody would be fired for that. Yep. Yep, thank you. I don't think one more piece of our rich historic property dating back to the 1760s needs to be touched or designated until we have some better answers. So my question is, who is being held accountable for these actions? Over the last few months, we have engaged with over 100 neighbors and concerned citizens and we are demanding transparency. So my message here tonight, I want to be clear, I want to stop, I want to hold up, wait a minute, let's put some residents in this because we deserve to have our voices heard. We deserve to be a part of this process. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Eric Wood. Mr. Wood. Eric Wood. Eric is not here this evening. He had to travel for business. We do have another speaker that would like to come down. Diana James, if you'd allow her to take his place. I'm going to go to the next speaker and catch up if she needs to. Diana, James. James. Followed by Jimmy Vaselo. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to the council today and I acknowledge council member Brown. My name is Diana James and I am an 11 year resident of Stilbury acres, the neighborhood, immediately across Stil Creek Creek Road from the Still Creek Presbyterian man's house that was recently demolished. It was heartbreaking to see a house injury of history was brought down by a bulldozer. This incredible piece of history that was once home to pastors and their families of Still Creek Presbyterian, which was founded in 1760 and has ties to Billy Graham himself. I see the destruction of what should have been considered a historic landmark a travesty. Now our own historic neighborhood is in the sides of the airport's plans. There is so little of Charlotte's history that remains, should we not protect what is left? Since the man's was intended to be presented to City Council for a vote, the residents in our community are very concerned. The historic Douglas House and even our homes could meet a similar fate. You are set to vote to de-designate property once owned by Steel Creek Presbyterian Church, that just happens to be the only barrier between my home and what will become busy logistics centers and manufacturing facilities right in my front door. How can property that until now has been protected by historical designation be so easily disregarded? Is the property any less significant now? I think not. What is to be the fate of stillberry acres? Where we live in a charming neighborhood that has been around for seven decades, with big trees and yards big enough for our kids to run and play. Are we all destined to live in neighborhoods where the homes look exactly alike, with the yards the size of a postage stamp? The American historian, David McCulloch said, history is who we are and why we are. Still Creek Presbyterian Church is, and it's a joining properties, including what was the man's house, and our own Douglas house are among some of the most historic properties in Charlotte. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Vassalo. Hello, my name is Jimmy Vasilio, and I'm a member of the Housing Justice Coalition. I'm here tonight to support residents near Charlotte Douglas International Airport, including those with steelberry acres, who are asking for transparency and accountability when it comes to airport development. Over the past few years, residents in the area have seen an incredible amount of change that has led to more manufacturing and logistics development than at any other time since they've lived there. A lot of that development seemingly being rushed as headlines are constantly, and I'd say suspiciously, generated about traffic at the airport. This has been exemplified by the destruction of the Steel Creek Presbyterian Mance, which despite a recommendation for preservation by the Charlotte Historic Landmarks Commission in 2023 Was demolished quickly on August 2nd after questions were asked about its future in late July As someone who was part of the Charlotte 2040 policy map process in 2020 I said in meetings were vacant lots near the airport that were designated residential We're seemingly being turned into manufacturing and logistics Resonings without broad consent or participation from surrounding neighborhoods like Steelberry Acres. My concerns about these vacant residential lots being turned into manufacturing rezoning was the fact that they butted occupied neighborhoods that were zoned residential. This concern was met with responses about best use despite concerns regarding increased pollution, traffic and noise for those neighborhoods they abutted. I've lived a Charlotte long enough to know that when the city is determined to grow in coordination with private interests, it plans to do it at the expense of working class citizens in quick fashion. We see it with the corridors of opportunity. We see it in how it gives housing trust fund dollars to Olivia to carry out displacement rather than provide public housing. And we see it in the destruction of the man's and airport development in general. Instead of transparency about preservation efforts in its destruction, the city released an incorrect statement saying that they were never contacted by the landmarks commission about the man's. Thank you very much. Our next speakers are Garland Green and Don Nicole McAulay. Paulie. Before I get on the clock, I brought you a handout and I appreciate you getting a copy and looking at it. What I want to talk to you about today is light rail. Charlotte has been pushing for expansion of light rail to no avail for years. The state North Carolina legislature is big on roads first to quote it, digs, we need to change our strategy. What we're talking about now is doing that. The goal is running a 1% sales tax proposal, including a big spin on light rail up the flag folded in the North Carolina legislature and hope that they'll bite on it. And oh, by the way, we're talking about a $19 billion tax payout on this. That is a heck of a lot of money. And we talk about 1%, but we never quantify it to what it really is. $19 billion. The source of my conversation, or is XI of the Charlotte observer, Article XI of the Charlotte ledger and information out of your 2015 budget. Two things that I really hadn't been talked about that is very concerning. There's been a significant decline in light rail ridership since its inception. Secondly, a very small percentage of Mecklenburg County citizens ride the light rail only 1.5%. We're talking about spending $10 billion on light rail for 1.5% that might become 3% of our population. People need to know about that. And even more concerning is with the $10 million tax spend, there has been no opportunity for public input. I was listening to your meeting earlier today and that was brought out. We have a tendency to not have public input in certain situations or have input at the very last minute, like with the stadium for the Panthers. And we need public input before you fly something up the pole to the state legislature. I'd like to talk about each one of the lines separately, but I'll put that in my packet. And if you look at that, I'd be most appreciative. Thank you, Diane. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Is Don Nicole McElwine here? Yes. Is McElwine? Yes. Okay. Okay. That is the completion of our speakers for this meeting. And so we will now go to our agenda and we're going to start with introductions by the city. Before we, can I add something? Are we going to do the introductions? Okay, I wanted to add something about the public hearing. Sure. Okay, we heard about Google Fiber and I just wanted to to let you know that I have an email to to our city attorney. I have an email right now from a resident same issue. There's sewage in her house. The water pipe was broken. The city saying it's not their responsibility. There was raw sewage in her house. Her insurance won't pay because it's a third party. So the city attorney, they sent the email 10 days ago. She's waiting their mice in the house now and it's a problem. So I've asked the city attorney for a report of how often this is happening. Because we need to know if this is indeed happening of Google Fiverr or any vendor is causing our residents problems. So I hope to get an answer as soon as possible with that report and your feedback from the risk department if you could copy all of the council members. That would be great. Certainly. If I could just add council member Johnson and we have had a number of conversations about this. This does cross a number of departments, particularly it goes from C dot to Charlotte water and we have all the folks that are now talking to each other to make sure we can get that information to you. Thank you. This is a problem in the city. It is a problem. And I mean, this is Google's second time coming after the idea of fiber and the first time was not much of a joy either. so maybe we have had in the past We've had to actually call the Google Exact and say here's what we're finding and so I think we need to go ahead and pull that back up from the first time that they came in when they were in the center city It it it is a problem So I don't know how much we can do, but I think it's definitely an idea to begin to talk to there, see their chief person that's doing this work or responsible for this work. OK. OK. We'll do the way. All right. Now we'll go and have introductions of the council members. Starting with Ms. Kelly. We'll start with our city clerk. Stephanie Kelly, city clerk. Simple as Shmerra at large. Two on the brownest honor to serve district three. Good evening, Marjorie Molina district five. Renee Johnson and I'm honored to serve district four. Good evening, James Mitchell city council at large. Marcus Jones city manager. Good evening, James Mitchell City Councilor Locke. Arcas Jones City Manager. Good evening, Vylaos Mayor. Good evening, Dottay Anderson. Mayor Protoem, District one. That's right, District seven. Tarpa Cargis six. Good evening, Luana Mayfield Councilman, Vylaos. Good evening, I'm Victoria Wollington, your Charlotte City Councilmember, representing headlock. Patrick Baker, city attorney. All right, thank you. Now if you choose to be with us, we will have an invocation. We recognize that not everyone follows the same tenants that we have. So feel free to express yourself as we can. Tonight our invocation is by Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Which will be followed by the pledge of allegiance. Thank you, Madam Mayor. First I want to lift up those children and the students who started school today. We ask that they are kept safe and just have a prosperous year. Grant us, O Lord, a vision of your city as your love would have it. A city where the weak are protected and none are hungry or poor. A city where the riches of creation are shared and everyone can enjoy them. A city where different races and cultures live in harmony and mutual respect, a city where peace is built with justice and justice is guided by love. Give us the inspiration and the courage to build it through your love. Amen. Amen. That was beautiful. If you choose to join us in the pledge of allegiance, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, which extends one nation under God, indivis on our agenda is the consent agenda items. And I would like to have, is there any item that someone would like to have a separate vote? Ms. Johnson, thank you. I'd like to pull number 27, 28, 29, 31, twenty seven twenty eight twenty nine thirty one thirty three forty one forty five fifty two and fifty four. All right, is this for discussion or comment? You want a separate vote for each one? In possible discussion. Yeah, okay. A separate vote for those. Miss Mayfield? Claire, I have items to pull, but I didn't hear all the numbers from my colleague. So after 39 what did you say? I said 33, 41, 45, 52 and 54. All right. Are there any others that miss Mayfield? Yes. A separate vote or a comment? A separate vote. Okay. 35, 39. 52. And 57. All right. All right. Anyone else? All right. All right. So I'm going to we have a list here for separate votes. So do I have a motion for the items one through 70 with the exception of those that were asked for by Councilmember Johnson and make some move. We have a motion. We have a second. We need a second. Second. Second. Second. All right. All in favor of any discussion for the motion. All in favor of the motion, please raise your hands. All right. That's unanimous. Now we will go back and I guess we will just be best to try it in alphabetical order. I mean in numerical order. So the first one I believe is item 27. The item is to approve the purchase of firearm ammunition by the sole source exemption, approve a contract with Dana Safety Supply for the purchase of firearm ammunition for a term of three years, Ms. Johnson. Yes, can we ask Mr. Coker to come up from the CBI? Mr. Coker, please, Johnis. Mr. Coker, please, Johnis. Okay. Ms. Johnson, he's almost there. Okay. Mr. Johnson, he's almost there. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Coker. So I reached out to him, Ann Marie earlier today. So thank you. And I ask a question, the total amount of expenditures this week, were you able to get that total? No, that took quite a bit of time, but I've made a note of it. And as soon as I'm able to pull that together, I'll make sure I forward it to you. Oh, I'm sorry. I would have done it myself. I thought it would be done. OK. What I wanted to compare was the total amount of expenditures versus the awards for minority women and small businesses. So I wanted to kind of compare that. Number 27, if you look at the Charlotte business inclusion, the sentence says this is a sole source contract and is exempt under the CBI program. Can you tell us why this will be exempt under the CPI program? Well, there's several reasons why something might be exempt, but as it relates to sole source, there really typically is no MWSBE vendors who do that type of work. I know we've talked about it in the realm of another item, but we also see situations where there's on call services where there's no subcontracting opportunities as well as single scopes. But in this particular item, fire ammunition, we really have no one who does that kind of work and therefore it's you're usually going to find these type of contracts except from the goal setting Okay Thank you All right motion to approve we have a motion in a second and all in favor. Please raise your hands All right, thank you that item passes the next item is item 28 Which is approved contracts with the following companies for nuisance abatement services. I will, the list goes from Caroline Alon to see MW property, DJ's lawn, ESA preservation, GMB enterprises, heroes lawn care, rosy landscaping, and Treena quality lawn service. Ms. Johnson? Thank you. I wanted to acknowledge this one because it looks like 100% of the contracts are going to minority businesses. Is that correct? No. What percentage is CBI on this one? I thought it was 100%. It goes second date. These three fronts. These three fronts. It's a hundred percent of the vendor's income. I thought it was 100% because second date. These three firms are not. These three firms are not. It's 100% of the vendors listed at the bottom of the note, starting with Carolina, law and service, as well as DJs, law and EAS and GMB. I think it's on the next page, two of two that list out the inclusion ones. So it says the following certified primes have elected to self-perform 100% of the work on the next page. So what percent has been granted to its minority or MWSBE Business. Madam Johnson, if I may, is not determined yet. So for nuisance abatement services, we get a pool of vendors and we make sure, okay, they're got their licenses, they're certified, they're not all certified, sorry, but they're all insured. So we have this pool on the ready. So when a nuisance situation comes up, Rebecca, have an earned her team send out a notice and they'll put in bids. So it's not no way to tell in advance how many, but these four out of the, I forget how many I can't see, but those four each time they'd be 100% because they're all self-performing. There's no way in advance to no. It's gas-based. Thank you. All right, the next item is item 20. Thank you. We need to take a motion and prove this once. We have a motion to approve 20. Additional questions? Oh, you have a motion to approve 20 additional questions. You have a question. Okay, thank you, Ms. Mayfield. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Maria, I also reached out. So you shared a little bit regarding we've identified these particular vendors. We know that they have already gone through our process and been bedded. What is the tracking process that we have in place to make sure that we have equitable distribution? Mainly because Mr. Coker and I were at an event earlier this year where we learned of a vendor who was approved through Council previous process, but that vendor actually never received any work through the city. So do we have a process to actually track equitable distribution? Yes, ma'am. We track the distribution, not necessarily with this one is it guaranteed to be equitable because you have to put in a bid. So you might be one of these vendors, you might get out bid every time. Okay. For other contracts, but we have rotation and things like that in place. But we definitely can pull that information because we track it. So Mr. Coker, for you, ICBI program has done quite a bit of investment through AMP up and through others. Is there a way and you may not have the answer tonight because I didn't send this to you earlier. I only sent it to Miss Harris. A way to track, again to ensure that we utilize as many of these renters as possible. And if there is a disconnect where a vendor keeps getting out bid. We step in since our ultimate goal is to grow businesses and it's not really beneficial if businesses go through the process. But yet, they're not actually being selected. Knowing we have to go with the lowest response of bidder. But at the same time, we turn around and have to approve a number of amendments. So you really want the lowest response of bidder when we go back and look at the totality of the actual project you bid on. So do we have anything in place or have any conversations about? Well, you've just planned to see you right. We don't have a response to that, but it's duly noted councilmember may feel and we will get on top of it and if there's a best practice that we can implement we'll explore that and of course we'll work with the departments to understand their side. I would encourage you the fact that the city of Charlotte is the best practice on a lot of things so I'll post the look and see what someone else might be doing we might be able to create it. Mr. Manager you are about to jump in. Yes so thank you Councillor Romney-Feel. We had a conversation the day about that and so the con it's exactly what you said. If we have these lists and these firms are not getting any of the work then how do we utilize CVI to get them better prepared to be more competitive? So I totally agree with you. We need to capture the data, not just who gets what, but how competitive are some of these firms with the processes that we have in place? So total agreement. Thank you. Okay, so we have a motion. Do I have a motion on 29? And move to approve. Do I have second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor raise your hand. Anyone? Okay. So the next item is item 31. I think that was 20. Was it? That was 29. That was 28. That was 28 $28. That was $28. We were on. $29 now. Okay. Approved contracts with the following contract. We just did a nuisance abatement one. It's $21.29 now. We're on $29. We're on $29. So now we're on the purchase of plant mix asphalt from a state contract? Yes, this one indicates this contract is being purchased off existing state contracts and is exempt from the CBI program. I wanted you to explain that process please. Yeah, when you have a contract that's exempt or when it's off a current track based on this type of commodity type. That's the basis of having an exemption. Okay, so I'm just bringing the exact for the different reasons. I think there's been three different reasons so far that we haven't had, that we haven't met our CBI goal and I just want to make sure we are being intentional. We talk about upward mobility and a tale of two cities and these are opportunities to be very, very intentional. One thing about this council, we're unique. We're like, this is a historic council. In the nation, we are the only council with the black woman mayor and so many women of color. We're not the only, no, don't go. Well, that's what Alexis was showing from the city. Did the research and it, were it? Well, I think Karen Bass and LA is kind of like the black woman mayor. Oh, there's many, no, but there are no to have the majority of like what I'm saying. We have the American conservatives too. Oh my. Oh, what, anyway. I think the American conservative is too. All right. Oh my. I don't know if it's that. That's what our city staff is doing. Okay. Regardless. I'm just saying we need to be deliberate in ensuring upward mobility for residents when we have the opportunities. And we talk about CBI. And so when there's exemptions for different reasons, I just want to highlight those reasons. And that's women and minority businesses. So this one's exempt because, and if this is something we can look at, changing this policy or talking about, just really reviewing that I want the public to hear. When we talk about CBI, our organizations are being overlooked. And if there's some intentionality, you and I, Mr. Coco, we're at a meeting for women business owners. And Dawn, I'm sorry she wasn't able to come or stay. Don McGillin, she has a program. So maybe that's something we can take a look at. There might be women business owners that can meet these needs. So I just want to make sure that we're doing the outreach and enriching as many folks as possible, equitably. I agree with that Councilmember. And as I said, we're all about constant and never-ending improvement. And with our program, we're always making changes. We learn new things and we look to implement those things that we can legally pull off and it's well as you know things that are based on the availability of firms but your points are well taken. Thank you. Senator. Thank you Madam Mayor. Councillor Neill. Councillor Neill, how's the member brown? Thank you Madam Mayor. I just want to say that in reference to what Councillor Wormen Johnson just said that we make things look attractive but we're not following through with it and the data is not that it's supported. That's what I heard out of my ears and so we're going to do these things that we can just back it up and support it. And from the sounds of it, we're not doing that. So that is something we definitely need to look into. I mean, it really is. I mean, it's just public. We see the council. We serve for the community for the public not for us, not for our agenda, but for the people that put us here. So we just got to be more intentional. And so when I heard that, that's what I heard. And you know, I know you got I know you have worked hard. Maybe we're missing the mark and somehow we're missing the mark. But you know, just like without when they come in and they speak about different things that we're doing to them in the community and then the council don't know about it It drives me crazy because collectively we're all responsible. We're all accountable We are and we're a team and that's what a team come in at the team gets the blame for the Historic landmark being knocked down and still creep. I'm I'm just saying, can't say I didn't know about it. My constituents don't want to hear that. They want to know that I'm representing them unapologetically in our truth, all of us, and making sure that we can give them a detailed explanation of things. And a lot of times I can't. I just can't. So that's where I'm at. Again, we're hearing you. We will work as we continue to do when we have things that are per policy that are exempt. That's the policy and we follow that to the tee. Now sometimes it has to be changed, or as we'll have to work with the city managers or office to make those changes if we can do it legally. But I'm hearing what you're saying and it's duly noted. Well, thank you so much and thank you for your hard work. But when you say sometimes things had to be changed or it has to be an adjustment, do we get that information or is that something that you do with the city manager and we don't know about it? No, you will know about it, but when we made the most recent change to our procedures manual, we can with the office of the city managers make those change. When it's a policy change, that comes to you. Yeah, I know. Right, I get that. But when you talk about people that are filled out the application, and they pass the credentials and they're able to move forward and then they don't hear anything do we reach out to them is there a process? Is there a check in balances so we even just keep and constant communication with them to say you pass it. We still know that you are here and this is what you can expect next, like the next steps. That's all I'm asking. Good question. I mean, I'm not asking for too much and I'm not trying to be hard. I just want to ask the tough questions that people will want to know. I want to know as a representative of, as a member of this council. I think the manager wanted to. Yeah. I think the manager wanted to. Yeah, so Mayor Marim's to council a little bit different than 28, which we just went over where there are some opportunities. I think that when we start to think about purchasing off of state contracts, there's these negotiations which get you to a low price that is available for all municipalities to purchase all for those contracts, whether they're vehicles of things that nature. We'll continue to look at the philosophy, the policies of the city. I just wanted to hold this one a little differently because a lot of those negotiations in terms of the price are, some people call it piggybacking, being able to just use the state contract that's been negotiated. But your questions are duly noted. Thank you for all your hard work, Mr. Manager. You're in a position for a reason. And I know you take the tough questions with a grain of salt. You always smile, you always poised, and you represent your position very well. So thank you for taking those tough questions from us. Sometimes I look out and I see people making all these faces but you don't do that. You really, really take the tough questions. And we got to do a better job with our face expressions because as a council when we're asking questions I think your staff can benefit from just looking at your face. We don't know what you're thinking about looking at your face. It's a poker face. Very demure. So thank you for that. There's more to say now, okay? That's, to me, that's a professional compliment to you on how you handle your position. So thank you. That is very fair. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so we have a motion. Do we have a motion for 29? So moved. Second. And we have a second. All in favor, please raise your hands. All right, now the next item that we have after 29 is 31. So on agenda item 31, flashing beacons for pedestrian crossings. Are there any comments? Yes. Johnson. Thank you. So we've had, they were exempt because there was soul source exemption because of the state contract. This is another reason for an exemption. The contract goals were not established on this contract because there were no viable subcontracting opportunities. Can you explain what that means, please? Again, in instances like this, and more times than not, it's based on a single scope of work. And so when you look at that contract, there's nothing else but the actual scope of work, in this case, the flash and beacons to be performed. Now what we do is based on the commodity codes, we will send that out to the certified MWSP ease and all of them will have a shot at bidding on it. But in this instance there's no viable subcontracting opportunities. Okay, I just wanted my colleagues to recognize there are at least four reasons for exemptions for minority contracting. Moved to close. Second. I mean, yeah, moved to approve. Inevitable comments. You would like to speak, Mr. O'Argis, and I will second. Okay, I have a motion and second for number 31. All in favor favor raise hands. Any opposed? That is unanimous. We will move on to agenda item 35. 33? 33? 33? 33? I didn't read my own handwriting. Item number 33, air filtration systems and maintenance. Are there any comments on agenda item number 33? Yes. Ms. Johnson. This is a fourth reason. Contract goals were not established on this contract because there were no MWSBEs available to perform the work for the contract. I know it's self-explanatory. I just want my colleagues to recognize this is the fourth reason. Make sure that we are utilizing as many resources as possible. Perhaps reach out to that QC women in business. Don McHill, one that database she has or if there's any other ways that we can do some outreach. If we truly want to meet these goals, I think there's just lots of room for improvement. That's all I have. that we can do some outreach if we truly want to meet these goals. I think there's just lots of room for improvement. That's all I have. Is there a motion to approve A and B? So, all in favor raise hands, any opposed? Statistic unanimous. Before we proceed, Mr. Coker, it might be, you know, we have recurring statements here and you're having to explain again and again. Perhaps as you are creating the agenda that you might put in no in detail each item as to why this particular item did not fit our criteria for NWSB participation. I think that would add to transparency in the process as well. And I have a couple folks reviewing this live, taking the notes and so we will put together a report and really give you a sense of the work we're doing, especially in these instances that are problematic, ones where we see that there are gaps in availability but we will address it in a detailed fashion. Thank you. Mr. Drake, would like to be recognized? I'm just concerned that maybe these questions raise a question about our commitment to our CBI program. And Mr. Coker, do you know what the total dollar volume is of contracts the city's enters into fulfilling our CBI goals? I've seen a number before. That's a good question. Great question. Actually, you're going to see something at the end of the week and you're weekend reading. Our annual report, we did $197 million last year with the three designations. And that, as far as I know, is a record. But I'll provide that to you. I'll give you some detail on everything that you'll see in there. And along with that, and this is probably a tribute to you, Councilman. You're gonna see our economic impact study. We talked about that, we completed it, and you're gonna understand for every dollar that we invest, what the yield is in the way of ROI. I think those are fair questions I just wanted to point out that we do have a very large, Mr. Mitchell over there is the alone ranger, the champion. We do make a large investment in our CPI program. Thank you, Mr. Driggs. We'll move on to agenda item number 35. Constructs Sardis Road, Road, North, Sidewalk? Are there any comments? Which way? Mayfield. Thank you. Marie, I sent a question trying to understand why the bid from Caroline and Prime Developer LLC did not meet the general statues and also what was in the DOT proposal that justifies that $463,000 increase? Yes, ma'am, and thank you for that. So part of the reason, well the main reason, they did not submit completed sign bond documents. So, and we did consult with attorney office. That bid was not deemed responsive. And then their second part of your question was on the difference in the cost. And if you take prom was kind of anomaly, they were way lower. But if you average the next five, this was in line. And it was under the engineer's estimate. That helps me to better understand that last one of colleagues having additional question. I move for A to reject the low bid submitted by Caroline Applied Developers, LLC, and B to approve a contract in the amount of $1,444,397 to the lowest responsible better DOT construction, which is a SB. Second. The lowest responsible better DOT construction, which is a SB second. I have a motion to reject A and approve B and a second all in favor raise hands. Any opposed? That is unanimous. You have something agenda says. Motion is to approve A and B, A being to reject. A is to reject. I'm just getting clarification color. A is to reject. A is to reject. Okay. A is as stated, I'm just getting clear of the question. A is to reject. Okay. D was to oppose. I'm going to approve. I'm going to approve. Yes. And that is unanimous. Okay. Yeah. My vote is yes. Excellent. We'll move on to agenda item number 39, engineering services for water and sanitary sewer relocation and improvements. Were there any comments for this item? Ms. Mayfield. Thank you. May I? Yes, ma'am. So I saw for the sake of continuity that when we identified that the same subs were chosen by each prime. So I'm just, and we do this all the time, but the question I'm trying to get to is we've identified 10% for minor participation. I think it's a contract stating that it's 10% per selected prime or 10% in totality. So thank you for that. It's 10% per promise. So each prime has in the subulets in your agenda or who they are planning to do business with to meet that 10%. We don't know necessarily what ratio will land in the subulets until the actual work is, till they know actually what the actual work will be, but they've all committed to 10% and they've identified those vendors to meet that 10% each one. Thank you, but I don't think I've ever asked that question before, but for whatever reason it jumped out because these vendors that we identify, you will see that they are utilizing the same subs. So it just triggered the question of, okay, so under each sub, that is separate work. So for those that because they still have to do their own, be it process. And so in theory it's really more than 10% the way it breaks down when it comes time to actually utilizing the PIMS because of Kimmily horn uses Let's say RDL private utility located For Kimmily horn that's 10% But call use engineering and design has RDL down for engineering support. If RDL is chosen for both, since those are two different primes, that 10% goal is for each of those primes, or we're just saying the total, couldn't total 10% could be like 2%. So it's 10% sorry to interrupt you, but it's 10% of the prime, but not 10% for each subcontractor identified So of which unfortunately the manager is not around to tell but how and Okay, let's grant it. I've been doing this a decade now, but it for whatever reason that is the question that came up Because when we're approving these goals and we say 10% 5% 7% whatever it is. But then we list eight different companies. Understanding that those companies still have to be in and lowest responsive. Sorry, not necessarily for this contract. Okay. This one and I'm sorry I can't speak to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. I'm trying to get the money back. For all years, they split this in a way where you've identified four different companies for this engineering support versus two companies that will get the bulk of the work. But I just wanted to get a better understanding to make sure, keeping in line with the comments that my colleague mentioned in questions I've asked previously that if we're going to identify multiple businesses that we have an equitable metric in place to ensure as many businesses get the opportunity. So that we're not putting ourselves in a position where the three frameworks are the ones that utilize all the time. So thank you for that explanation. Yes, thank you. We've definitely taken yours and other speedback about what we can do to help grow ones that may not get business. Thank you, Lily. Thank you, Ms. Mayfield. Is there a motion to approve A and authorize B for item number 39? Move to approve A, authorize B. Okay. Motion in the second all in favor raise hands any opposed That is unanimous will move on to agenda item number 41 39 So we got 3335 and 39 We just finished 39 39 was was what we just yes, oh that was my apologies. Yes. My apologies. That was my apologies. I lost track. So we are moving on to agenda 41. 41. Number 41. The instrumentation of water testing is there are there any comments? Yes, I have comments. Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. So, Mayor Pro Tem, you said that there were recurring reasons and that Mr. Koch might consider putting a sentence in the agenda item. The hard copy, there are reasons, there are sentences. So we have explanation. And thus far, we've had different reasons. They weren't recurring reasons. So we've heard four different ones, and this is the fifth different reason for an exemption. And this one is because these are for operative purchasing contracts and our exempt from the CBI program. Can you explain with that me please? Yes, a cooperative is a situation where there are a number of contracts or items that are purchased as a group. And that allows us to get a lower price. And with these type of cooperatives, you get the lower price and they're exempt from the policy. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So, I mean, again, if we're serious about our meeting our CBI goals, we as a council might look at our policy. Thus far, we've heard soul-sourced contracts are exempt, state contracts or state, what is it, when we piggyback or state contracts are exempt, no viable, subcontracting is exempt, no MWSPE contract is available, and then cooperative purchases are exempt as well. So this is for my colleagues just to recognize that we should pay closer attention and possibly look at our policies for CBI. That's all I have. There's no questions. Move to approve. Second. Thank you. I have a motion to move and approve Miss Molina. Just really quickly. I mean, so this begs the question, Mr. Coker. So obviously this is a policy standard, right? Like these particular decisions are being made based on a current standard, right? Like these particular decisions are being made based on a current policy, right? Yeah, it's actually our procedure manual, but, you know, it's much the same thing. But is this something that corresponds with the decision that a council previous has made as to how these decisions are determined? Like is it? So what I'm trying to make sure that I collect from this exercise of isolating these particular items is, is there something that the council can do to standardize this decision making or has that already been done as an exercise prior to now? Because I mean, so what I'm finding, right? Because I see my colleague here meticulously making notes as to try to find something that corresponds with the standard, something that this policy body can take a look at and see if we can formulate from a policy perspective, right? So, and I'm this may be putting you on the spot, and I'm open to you may be coming back to the council with something that says this is the policy standard that's been previously adopted by council that corresponds basically with how we make this decision. Or I don't know, Mr. Managers, there's something like even a recommendation of how we can move forward. Is there, again, this is a question for standardization, so that there's not an implication that we're knit-dicking or that the city is making these decisions on a case-by-case basis. There should, in my opinion, even listening to this exercise be some standard to which how, to which we're making these decisions. Does that make sense? It does. Thank you Mayor and Mayor of the Council. What I would, what we will do is come back to you with those things that are policy driven, those things are administrative driven, and let's take a fresh look at it to see, you know, how some of these are aligned with where the council would like to go, where some of these are aligned with what has been, what calls for lack of a better work in the work balances there. I do want to continue to reiterate though that part of what we're trying to achieve with CBI to bring more opportunities and scale up those different, you know, a folks that are doing business with the city. So why don't I would like to do that? I'd like to just, because this is a great exercise. Oh yeah, I think so too. A little painful, but great. So I'd like to be able to, because to see how much this policy driven, how much the ministerially driven, let you see that and then we can make some decisions based on that fair enough. Thank you for that, Mr. Manage. I think, and thank you to both of our colleagues for bringing this to our attention as a body. And I'm glad Mr. Manage, you're willing to do that because I, you know, based on some of what has happened since I've been a member of the council, you know, now we have a study as to, you know, for some guidance and how we've, you know, done historically, right, and how we've administered those opportunities or not, right? And now the scope of who we intend to include in those opportunities, we have that information, you know, qualitative and quantitative information to collect from. So I look forward to that. And again, I'm looking through this with you guys as you're making this decisions. But I think it's a good assessment to say it's time now to take a look at what you're bringing decisions, but I think it's a good assessment to say it's time now to take a look at what you're bringing to our attention. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Molina. Any additional comments? That's it, Mayor Patrice. I had a motion and a second to approve agenda item number 41 as stated in our agenda. All in favor raise hands. Any opposed? That is unanimous, we'll move on to agenda item number 45, plumbing services. Are there any comments related to agenda item 45? Yes, Ms. Johnson. So this one is a repeat reason that the contract goals were not established on these contracts because there were no viable sub-contracting opportunities. And this one just jumped out to me because my grandfather was the best plumber in the city, right? But I don't know that he would have had the credentials to get a city contract. So I want to make sure that we are, there is a pathway that we are able to to help these small businesses, you know, that to be able to compete at this level and have the credentials to be able to do that. So, I just wanted to make sure we talked about tracking, we talked about tools. You just mentioned that, Mr. Jones, how we can help these businesses to scale up. So, you see plumbing services and there's no opportunities, these are jobs that individuals have that may not have a college degree. So I think these are great opportunities, that's all I have for that. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Is there a motion to approve agenda item number 45? I stated an urgent. Some move. Second. There's a motion in second. All in favor raise hands. Any opposed? That's unanimous. We will move on to agenda item number 52. Professional engineering services for minor storm drainage improvement projects. Are there any statements or comments on this item? Same thing. Okay, go ahead. Ms. Mayfield? All right. Thank you. Marie, and this is really consistent with the conversation that we've been having tonight. Mr. Calker, the question that I sent to Maria is what is the process to ensure all eight companies are utilized and to ensure equity in the displacement but I believe you answered earlier that as we go along even though we've identified a number of different companies, they're still a process where they have to bid. So for this particular one, thank you for bringing this up. It's a different model. Stormwater is co-locating with these vendors and playing to keep giving them projects. So when they finish projects, keep using. So in this one, ideally, everybody would be used multiple times. And I appreciate you sharing that because a number of our projects earlier, and correct me up a long, because they were construction related. It was a different conversation, but because of one, the department, and that department being the enterprise, that this is an opportunity with those that identify We'll be utilized We just We haven't here contract goals were established on this contract as there were no viable subcontracting opportunities Mr. Manager mr. Coker for Since I've been back this time around, we've had multiple conversations that we have MWSBEs that are prime ready and that our goals should not just be for subs. And we should be identifying if we are doing what we should be doing, because I do not like the fact of Guilford County having higher numbers in MWSB and DBE participation than what we have for the City of Charlotte So when we have our opportunity, it would be nice to have it noted if any of these businesses are MBEs, SBEs, MWSBEs, because we should not regulate minority participation only to be a sub. When we have a number of opportunities as palms that should be considered for these positions, so when we say that no goals were established, our overall goal should be to receive the best vendor and to create as many opportunities for the best vendor. Yet adding in that if we have an opportunity to support a SBE or an MBA and they actually submit a viable bid, they should not be regulated to oh, we're going to utilize you as a sub. Thank you miss Mayfield any additional comments is there a motion to approve A and and authorize B of item 52. And I understand. Some move. I have a motion. There's a motion in a second, all in favor, raise hands. Any opposed? That is unanimous. We'll move on to agenda item number 54. Cat's Operation Bus Onsite Inspection Services Contract. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, Ms. Johnson. I'm not sure what on-site inspection services are. Yes, ma'am. So this is vendors that would come on when we say on-site they come to the CAT facilities and perform the inspections. Okay, and this is another one where there were no MWSPE's available to perform the inspections. Okay, okay. Okay, and this is another one where there were no MWSPEs available to perform the work for this contract. And I think you've talked about this before, Councilmember Mayfield, if there were a needs list or something, that we could identify services where there are not any minority businesses. And again, use that database through Clean City Women in Business or something and just making sure we're doing the outreach. That's all I have. Thank you, Ms Johnson. I'm going to approve. Second. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. I'm going to move to approve AMB for 57 airport port parallel runway north and around taxiway. Marie was able to answer the question. Second. I have there is a motion and a second to approve 57 all in favor raise hands. Any opposed? That is unanimous and that completes our our items pulled from the consent agenda and I will pass it back over to the mayor. All right let's see where we are on this process right now 60 we're at the beginning we'll go ahead and start at the beginning who wants to start huh with the end of the beginning. We'll go ahead and start at the beginning. Who wants to start? With the end of the beginning now. With the end of the beginning. So let's start with our action. What am I? Our public hearings now. We have public hearings and a number of them. So I got action, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I want public hearings. On item number seven, public hearing and decision on amendment of the still creak Presbyterian Church and Cemetery, historic landmark designation and we have one speaker. Colin? Aren't you on item seven? Come on down. And you have the morning one speaker for that. You want to speak? Would you like to speak? We have morning one though. I only to speak. Would you like to speak? We have more than one though. I only have one. Not for that. Madam, it's on the second page. I know someone took my idea. We have four. We got more than one. Okay, we have more than one. Six speakers. Let me get the speakers list. We have Stuart. This is item number seven. So Stuart Gray, John Howard. Do you wish to, is Stuart, do you want to speak? Stuart Gray, John Howard, and Tommy Warlock are here to answer questions. If staff has questions about these items. All right. So if we have questions, we'll go ahead and at our next. This is also where Colin wanted to speak or you are answering questions too. I'm going to answer questions. Okay. All right, so do we have anyone that wants to speak to this? I'm going to be. All right, so do we have anyone that wants to speak to this? I'm going to be. You can't step in. Oh, Stephanie? Yes, she's here. She's here. Uh-huh. Where? Come on down. We want to hear your comments. I can hear you. Stephanie, you got three minutes on this one. Did you print anything for us? Did you print it? Yes, I did. I was gonna print it again in the locker room. Give it to the officer. Thank you, hon. I got enough of that team, right? I think, yeah. May I ask if you also have Diana Jane's, I'm sorry. May I ask if you also have Diana James on the agenda to speak this evening? I'm sorry. You also have Diana James on the agenda to speak this evening on this item. Yes, Diana James, after Eric Wood. Is Eric Wood here? No, unfortunately he's traveling for business. All right. So just full transparency, the presentation you're being handed right now is really Diana's presentation. So I have my own message to deliver and she's going to deliver that message. Okay. All right, are we ready to start? Yes, please. All right. Good evening, Senator Counsel. Again, my name is Stephanie Loss. I represent the Stobbery Acres Neighborhood and surrounding communities. Again, I would like to acknowledge Council Member Brown for continued support of District 3. In airport official, recently made a statement that they are in the business to flat planes. Plains is not what we are talking about tonight. We are concerned about the push for development to build manufacturing and logistics centers that would surround us. We know where we live and we've accepted the noise from the airplanes. Many of us in fact have taken a part of the noise mitigation program. We get it. So why does it feel as if the airport has transitioned into a business of land acquisition for manufacturing and logistics? They say we want an airport fit for a queen, but what about the residents? As I drive around, I see many, many empty buildings. Why don't we fill those first before we destroy more historic properties? I can't help but wonder, is this need or green? A major barrier to the airport's 2040 plan was the man's house. How did this historically designated home get demolished seamlessly in the dark of night without city council's vote, without City Council's voice. Our community is outraged along with the HLC. Stoke Creek Presbyterian Church is the second oldest church in Charlotte. The Reverend Billy Graham himself likely crossed the threshold of that home countless times. The church once served as a cornerstone of our community and boasted a congregation of over 1,000 members. Many of us went to church there, our kids went to daycare there, my son graduated from pre-K, we hunted Easter eggs on the front lawn, I voted in that gym. The airport should not be allowed to do whatever they want. They are the second most profitable airport in the US, congrats to them. But I hope you will pause to consider the impacts their long term plans will have on our families, on hundreds of families at that. Members of our community deserve a voice in this process. Tonight City Council has faced the difficult decision to vote to designate the historic still creek press, pentarian church and historic cemetery and the surrounding property for industrial development that will soon swallow up my precious neighborhood, stillberry acres and many of our neighboring neighborhoods. There has been a major lack of transparency in this process by the airport, and this will have a major impact on hundreds of citizens. I don't like to speak in opposition without offering a solution, so my message is simple. Again, I'm asking us to push the pause button. This needs to be looked at as a more comprehensive plan than one rezoning, another rezoning, another rezoning, us coming to all these meetings, how it impacts us, where is our voice? At the end of the day, I'm looking at development to the right in front and behind me. And my 90 home community, my precious community that's been around since the 50s that both historic homes has significant historic value is going to be demolished in this process. We are being picked apart at rates that are not fair. They are not comparable. The prices that the airport is paying us for our homes are not fair. We cannot replace these properties in Charlotte. The closest thing I came was a $350,000 difference to living in Gastonia. Thank you. Thank you for your time and consideration. Please defer tonight's decision. Thank you. Okay, our next speaker is Diana James. Thank you, Council for the opportunity to speak yet again. Please take a note of the presentation that you were handed. The very first picture is the historic man's house that was demolished back in August second. We thought that there was an opportunity to save that property but somehow it never made it to this chamber. So it was very disappointed. I want you to take a look at the second page. So everything, airport owns everything in dark blue and of course our little community is circled in red. Take a look at that, how we are completely surrounded by what is to be manufacturing logistic centers. Now on the second page, the future of steel creek and the steel creek community and beyond. Third page, sorry, the third page. Everything that is highlighted in red there is what they are calling an area of influence. That includes areas of West Charlotte and Mecklenburg County and that are the vicinity of the airport. So these are going to be planned further developments for whatever purposes that they see fit. Now, on the very next page, I wanna take an opportunity to look at the plan for our communities, which is the CLT South. So there are several purposes listed, which maybe sounds good for tax dollars, and it probably makes sense for our city, but how will this impact our families, our property values, our quality of life and stillberry acres and the surrounding communities. And then on the next page, stillberry acres historic significance. We have 90 hums remain that were built in the from the 50s to the 70s. Historic Douglas House that was built in 1911 remains an important role in our story. And some of our families have lived there for decades. De-designation of historic properties means erasing our history, diminishing our way of life, and ensures decreasing property values. Is this the airport's plan all along? Where families once lived, and I gave you a couple of pictures of examples of beautiful properties that once had homes standing there. These families absolutely volunteered to sell their property the airport but where in Charlotte can you find a yard that looks like that? We aren't just a piece of property for the airport to acquire. We're a neighborhood that needs family to us. And then of course on the very last page, save our history. The still Creek Presbyterian Church that was established in 1760, the beautiful sanctuary that was built in 1889, the acreage around the church is designated as historically significant today. Why does that change because the airport wants more logistics and manufacturing? The Douglas House was built in 1911. It symbolizes the heart and soul of stillberry acres. Vote no to designate the special historic properties and protect stillberry acres from over development. Okay. All right. Is there any other person that would like to speak to this topic? Okay. Colin Brown. Okay. Thank you. Madam Mayor, councilmembers Colin Brown on behalf of Foundry who really has nothing to do with a lot that we heard about. So there's a lot of confusion going on. You may remember about a month ago we came with a resigning petition for an area right around the Steel Creek Church. Part of what Foundry is committed to do in working with the airport, with historic landmarks, is to preserve the Steel Creek Presbyterian Church, to preserve the cemetery, and to potentially move the Douglas House to that site and preserve it. So what's going on is, I think the site is 37 acres in total that is designated. The plan that has been worked out to save those properties, is to sell a portion of that to my client who will develop it. The remaining 14 acres where the church is, the cemetery and the Douglas House will remain. She built this city, would move into the church structure, operate their nonprofit there. Founder also has a partnership with Kerry Meek Foundation to come on site, work on job training. So, imagine my surprise also a couple weeks ago when I read about the man's house being torn down, I was afraid that was the house that we said it is not. So yes, something has gone on between historic landmarks and the airport. I get it. That doesn't have anything to do with us. It is confusing. So when I talked to Council Member Brown, I said, at number one, I wanted to distinguish, I don't know what's going on there. We are committed to saving, to preserving these areas, to do that. We do need the D designation. So the D designation, that is being brought actually by historic landmark staff. We are not a part of that. We're here supporting it. That is being worked out with the Stork landmarks, with our client. We do not own the property. The property is owned or owned by the City of Charlotte, and the Steel Creek Presbyterian Church. So that's just the background. I know there's a lot of drama going on also. Is there? So I wanted to distinguish this from that and let you know that the plan for these properties, even though there is a D designation, the point of that essentially is to create the financial ability to maintain the 14 acres that is the historic church, the cemetery and the Douglas House. So I'll defer to the experts on historic to kind of talk through that. Don't take my word for it. That's our involvement. Thank you. Happy to answer questions. Okay. Mr. Gray, I think it would be very helpful if we had on the point of view for the landmark, historic landmark. Before we say anything to Colin first. I'm sorry. You wanted to ask Colin a question? I wanted to make a comment to Colin. And I think Dr. Walsh and hands are hand up very straightforwardly. You know, we're good. So I was hoping that we would get to hear from all the people that are engaged and then we can have comments and questions. So we'll remember Ms. Brown first and then Ms. Watland. Okay. Would you please walk us through this discussion on- Good evening. I'm Stuart Graham, the director of the Mecknerburg County Historic Lamparks Department, and with me is Tommy Warwick, our preservation specialist. And I'm going to ask Tommy to walk you through what is recommended by the Charlotte Mecknerburg Historic Lamparks Commission for the Still Creek Presbyterian Church property. Thank you. Good evening. The Still Creek Presbyterian Church property has been designated as a local historical landmark since 1991. It constitutes 31 acres. Of those 31 acres, 10 acres are associated with the cemetery. A half acre parcel is associated with the historic sanctuary. The remainder are non-designated buildings or undeveloped property. The concept in order to preserve those historic structures, the historic cemetery and the historic sanctuary is to take those properties that are not historic or have not been designated to take them off of the designation and to allow those to be developed per foundry's plans. As was told to you earlier, that will be able, that will enable the financing of those preservation and the preservation of those particular properties. Okay, so I think we've heard from the three parties that the neighborhood, the Foundry, which is the developer as well as the Mecklenburg County preservation. So let's open it up, Ms. Brown. If you can help us with this. Oh yeah, absolutely 110%. So Stephanie and stillberry acres I've been in constant communication with them. I was at the meeting. It's Foundry here. A representative from Foundry. Oh, he's here. Foundry, they came in. Foundry, they came in. They explained, they gave details. Mr. Brown, Colin Brown was there at the church. We met inside of the historic, beautiful church, Op. 160. There was some negotiation. A steelberry made left. They were not satisfied. But one of the community leaders, Stephanie, who's here, she wrote a phenomenal letter which I thought was amazing at that time. As a representative for them and their representative sitting at the day is, she's been in constant communication with me over the last few days. And it's disheartening to them in their community. I don't know all of the details, so I can't speak on all the details. A while the man's home was torn down from what their telling me it should not have happened. The media got a hold to it, it was ugly. And so again, I don't know all the details I won't speak on that, but I can surely speak to the fact of I understand their reservations, why they feel the way that they feel, because of the way that it happened. If there was a way that we could prevent that, so that that did not happen, because she was very fair in going in the community knocking on doors, getting other residents involved, making sure that voices were elevated. And so it was a very strange process. Foundry spoke very well. They agreed to bring in, she built this city, which I think is a phenomenal opportunity. But when there goes that lack of transparency, when residents feel like or constituents feel like their community is going to be sucked up and evacuated and I can't speak to what's going to happen. I understand their position so as their representative I want to hold and support their position and so I also want to read something. If someone want to speak to what I just said while I'm finding what I need to read, I wasn't prepared to read. I'm going to read it. Stephanie, what you sent to me. Foundry, can you come down for me, please? It's foundry. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. You have to come to the microphone here. Ms. Brown is going to ask him. Bill, some reveal with the Foundry commercial. Thank you so much. I remember seeing you at Steel Creek. Would you tell what you proposed for she built this city and when Stephanie wrote the letter that I read for council some time ago, can't remember the exact dates. On while we came to an agreement and I said I would like to move forward with all communities coming to an end result like this. Will you share some of the things that you were gonna do for she built the city, on the property as you stated that you would reserve the church, would you go over what you were doing for she built the city. So that people listening and watching, and maybe the council that don't understand what you offered, I would like for you to say that, and I'm also gonna still read what I said said as I stand in solidarity with the community. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for letting me be here. The genesis of all this was we had a community meeting tied to the rezoning of the cemetery and the land that the John Douglas House sits on. That was passed a couple months ago. At the end of that, John Douglas House sits on. That was passed a couple of months ago. At the end of that, sorry, the community meeting, we hosted over at the Still Creek Sanctuary. Ms. Brown came to, Mr. Brown came to Stephanie and Diane and others where we shared our plan, discussed she built this city taking over the historic sanctuary. So as it currently sits, it's vacant and needs to be occupied and brought back to life. Excuse me. She built the city as a minority owned, predominantly female, non-profit whose focus is teaching the construction trades to women and introducing them into the construction industry that's historically obviously dominated by men. They are out of space and our agreement was to gift the sanctuary to, she built the city, let them occupy it, operate out of it, and in teaching their trades, restore the sanctuary and make that their new headquarters. We would gift that to them as well as execute a perpetual preservation easement with the landmarks commission to continue the preservation of the cemetery, but also the four or five acres or so that, that front steel creek road, all the big trees in the green grass leading up to the view of the sanctuary up on the hill, and then a little bit of excess land where we would contribute $50,000 to the landmarks commission to assist in their efforts to move the Douglas House across the property to a new home behind the sanctuary where we would tie in utilities and create a building pad for that to reside and also be preserved under the same preservation easement. I'll leave anything out. In fact, I think I talked in this last week as well to explain it. I think a lot of the frustration is that for the Foundry Resenting Petition there was a community meeting. There was discussion. The community could see what was going on, a developer committed to save a house, to provide some community benefits, to work with historic landmarks. That was not what occurred with another property called the Mans House, and I think that is the great frustration, that was a good bit of my call, with the neighborhood was, well, why did this happen this way and the other happened the other way? I can't answer why things happen on the man's house that's not involving us. I would say, and I know there's frustration and I may agree with some of that, but we shouldn't penalize the group that is really operated in good faith that's provided the types of community benefits that the community has told us they wanted So that that's what's so interesting is hey, we want the same treatment for the other properties there Why is that happening? I don't know why that's happening? But we've got a very good actor that has worked in good faith I think if you ask the community has found her to done a good job They'd say so I think there's frustration one uses leverage, but so anyway that that's that I hope that kind of explains some of the consternation. Okay, so again, thank you so much for taking the time to explain that. You're using it penalized, which I really don't like. I don't think it's penalized to anyone. We're not saying we're not doing anything. I just wanted the community to be heard and I've been very fair showing up in my position and trying to be a balance for both sides. I'm a fair person. I just wanted the community to be heard. I got a lot of emails, a ton of emails. I didn't know what was going on. I can't speak to something that I don't know about. For me, I would rather get the information. Have my colleagues tell me what's going on? That's been here. My predecessors, the veterans on the council that's been here that could tell me what they thought. And when I reached out and asked, they were just as shocked as I was. So that is where the confusion came in. Nothing against the proposition that you have put before us, but I wanted to share where the concern came from. And it is a legitimate concern. So I don't want to downplay that it's not, it's in the same area. I also want to express their concerns on how they're saying just very little of the church is going to be saved. That's their concern about how much is it just a little piece of the church that's going to be saved or are we going to be saving the entire preservation of that church? All deferred to the historic folks. I'm listening. The plan as was presented to the Charlotte-Maconburg Historic Lamarck's commission was that the historic sanctuary, and I believe it dates from the 1880s, and it's a substantial building, that the historic sanctuary would be preserved. So the entire church? The entire sanctuary. Right, that's what I mean, the church, the sanctuary. But the church, I mean the churches also currently includes several other buildings that probably date from the mid part of the 20th century and those buildings would not be preserved. Just the sink. And they're not historic. Right. And the designation, the Lamart designation only includes the sanctuary. So it'll be the 1880s sanctuary. So the buildings that are being proposed not to be preserved are not designated. Okay, so I have an email here from Miss 79. So I'm going to go ahead and just read one part of it and I'll forward it over to my colleagues so that they can see the email because I do want my colleagues to understand where she's coming from and what she sent. I know we have a few other questions on the floor, but it's good evening addressing City Council mayor, all of us. Our neighborhood has been negatively impacted by the actions of the airport. Our property values and quality of life are being diminished right before our very eyes. And airport efficiency made a recent statement that they are in the business of flat planes. Plains are not what we're talking about tonight. So she said that already. So why does it feel like the airport is transitioning to the business of land acquisition and manufacturing and logistics? For me, someone that represents the district and airport is one, it's the largest economic. Thank you. The word that I'm looking for, the largest economic, thank you. The word that I'm looking for, the largest economic driver for the city of Charlotte. We really have to be more transparent. The neighbors have every right to be upset. That neighborhood is beautiful. I drive past it every day. I drive past the church every day because I live right there in that area. So the concerns to me are legitimate concerns. I yield to the community and the residents, and I think we need to hear their voices, and we need to listen to their voices. So that's my position tonight as a representative for district three. How council member Brown, I know that we've heard from the commission and from Foundry, and I think that what I've heard is the man's and It's issue and the airport. So why don't we have the century come up and talk? I didn't even know she was here. Miss Gentry. Why should you hear the whole time tonight? Yes. Okay. I didn't see her. Okay. Sorry. Well, that's okay I didn't see all of this stuff all the time. So why don't we get? Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mr. Manager and Council. There's been a lot discussed this evening, so I'm going to start with the item that is on your agenda. First of all, still Creek Presbyterian Church has been a mainstay in the airport community for centuries now. We did purchase the main campus in April of 2019. It was a matter of preservation for that congregation as to why they actually sold it to us. During that time we committed to preserving the sanctuary. We committed to preserving that in the interest of our entire community, not just the airport neighborhood. I can tell you that to date between this transaction and the previous transaction, we've invested nearly $10 million in that property in the name of preservation. We then went through an extensive process of analysis for proposals. We initially did an interest solicitation, and then we actually went out for an RFQ, at which time there were numerous submissions that were received. We immediately cast to the sides the ones that did not have a plan for the sanctuary. Since that time, we have probably been through seven, eight, nine iterations of what could happen with the sanctuary. And we are so pleased that Foundry has worked with us to find a future user and put that back into active use. In terms of some of the things you've heard tonight, let me clarify for you why we have purchased this property and some of the neighboring purchases. This is one of the highest noise zones in our community. It is part of our part 150 program. These neighborhoods are approved for sound insulation and or home buyout. So stillberry acres that you've heard from the residents tonight. We've been purchasing homes voluntarily in that area since 1983. It is a difficult place in terms of being in the middle of an area that is changing. That's why the church left. And we had made it known to the congregation at any point if you want to sell to the airport, you come to us and we'll be ready to do that. The development that is occurring is a federal requirement. Let me clarify that. When we buy something related to noise, we have a federal obligation to not return that to noise, to a residential area due to the fact we bought it for noise purposes. We must put it back into active use. And so that is what is happening in and around that area. We've been very prudent about this over the years. All of these homes right now from the residents you've heard from, there are standing offers for voluntary purchase. I understand that's not what some of those residents want, but there is not an immediate plan for that neighborhood. Nor will we be knocking on their door to ask them if they want residents want, but there is not an immediate plan for that neighborhood. Nor will we be knocking on their door to ask them if they want to sell to us. That is completely voluntary. Is there neighborhood changing? Yes it is. We are very committed to preserving the sanctuary that has been our focus the entire time. I'd be happy to discuss the mints if you want, but I don't feel that that's germane to the action that you're taking tonight. All right, thank you. I think I had Miss Watlington next, so. You had Miss Watlington next, but not Cahaley came up. I hadn't addressed her. But that's fine. I'll yield to Ms. Dr. Walton. Dr. Wale. No, we can we're fine. Let's you want to talk with Hayley. I thought you were asking. I wouldn't ask. I have a question for her. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. Are you finished? No, go ahead Dr. Bartlett. Yes. She was next. Two questions. Well, not even really a question. A statement or question. Because this feels to me like a lot of what we're trying to prevent when we talk about anti displacement. I understand there are needs, if you will, or there are reasons behind making these purchases, I ennoys, et cetera, et cetera. But if I'm understanding correctly, once you buy it, then you're compelled to do something else with it, right? So my question becomes why are we not being thoughtful about buying it? I mean, all of them, or I think it it, you mean why wouldn't we buy everything? No what I'm saying is why would, if we know that once it's purchased that triggers particular events that have to happen. And we also know that we're spending a good bit of money in this city to prevent displacement. It just feels like a little bit of cognitive dissonance when we're now acting in such a way that accelerates displacement in a particular area. So before we talk about making purchases of particular properties and transactions, I feel like we owe it to stillberry to think about how does this impact their neighborhood, just like we do for the corridors of opportunity. And I think that that plan needs to be more sound, and whether that comes through the community area planning process or a special work session. It just feels like there's work to be done there in that way. The other thing that I was going to ask is is I am particularly interested in this man's piece. So if you could just help us understand what happened, why is that different than what's occurring here or why they would not be at risk for what happened before? Well they're very different situations. In 2018 Council actually approved a historic structure preservation plan with the airport. It was put together as a result of the runway that was forthcoming and we did that in conjunction with the environmental assessment that occurred during that period. We worked together with SHIPO, which is the state agency, and we came up with a preservation plan and a strategy for how those entities, those properties rather, would be documented for various entities to use the information surrounding them. This was unanimously approved by Council in 2018. It did involve hearing the man's down. And so this is, it was put on hold during COVID because we were spending, not spending anything but essential funds. And this is the soonest that it was able to be demolished. Now in between all of that time, there was discussion with the HLC about its historic status. And so it did go through their process and then it was actually removed from their process at the recommendation of their staff and it was removed from your process at the recommendation of our staff. The county then issued the permit for demolition and much like we do with all of our properties, we demolished it as quickly as we could. We realize there are neighbors living there, and over the years we have let structures stand and try to consolidate them into one demolition. That's not a good strategy for the neighbors who are there. So we've become much more attentive about the immediately taking down a facility as soon as we have that issue to prevent undesirable activities in an area that's not lived in. So it sounds like then that the crux of it is whether or not something can be removed out of the process without council action. I'm not can you clarify that? Sure, sure. I think I heard you say that the property entered into the HLC process and that the staff level it was recommended to be removed. So if staff recommended it, who made the decision? Our staff, Matt Wachay, which HLC staff, HLC staff agreed not to push it forward anymore, that it was not going to be pursued in that way. And our staff, when it came through, actually said, oh, this is different. The property owner was not aware that this was occurring. Let me back up. The property owner was not in agreement. This was occurring, which me back up, the property owner was not in agreement. This was occurring, which was the airport, the city. And in addition to that, the property owner actually, on behalf of City Council, has already taken a different action that this would be contrary to. So the two parties got together, we sat down. We tried to figure out what was going on. Planning worked with HLC and the action was removed. Because the city was the property owner. Yes. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. All right. Ms. Sash. Mirror. And then we'll come back to Ms. Brown. Yes. Ms. Sash. Brown. Yes. Ms. Saj Mera? Yes. Thank you, Mera Mera. This has been a very difficult conversation to follow, especially after multiple back and forth, two different properties. I've seen media reports on this. I've seen councilwoman Brown's emails about this. And just the statement that was first sent to the media, then it was retracted because it was corrected. So my question is really about the men's building, because I think that's where some of this issues around transparency stem from and unfortunately that is contributing to some of the confusion here on this agenda item. So I know you said that in 2018 City Council approved this unanimously. So when you say approved unanimously was the demolition that was approved unanimously in 2018. The demolishing was part of a larger action that was an agreement for numerous historical properties in the area of airport development. So you represent historic landmark commission correct? Yes ma'am. I'm the county department director and the landmark commission is one of our primary responsibilities. And thank you for your service and in preserving our historic structures. So, historic landmark commission made a decision to not demolish the site and to preserve it, correct? I've got a statement of the actions of the landmarks commission and the HLC staff. I could read that. I think that might. Yes, please, so that I can follow the timeline, because. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I think that's the case. I can email this to him. OK, that would be fine. Thank you. Are we getting a little off topic? I know. I was going to say, what was the question that you're using as a person? I'm talking about another transaction. Another transaction? No. This is very relevant. Help me. No, Ms. Sashmira, I understand. I just want you to repeat what you've, the question that you've asked him. What I asked him is to help us understand this actions that were taken by historic landmark commission and the action that they took was to preserve the site. So I asked him, what was the timeline about that? How is that different from what Ms. Gentry told us? Now, I want us to make sure we hear all the sites because it's important in order for us to make a decision that it's important to hear all sites. There are two different transactions. However, the issue here is transparency. So I think what, that's why I want to hear historic landmark commissions, timeline and the process and the statement that you have written. So we can better understand, is there anything that we need to do differently from transparency perspective to address community's concerns? But I think the problem is, I don't disagree that we need to have that conversation. I just I think it has absolutely no bearing on the details of this case. Miss Gentry said that the council adopted a group agreement with in 2018 to declare or decide to demolish several what I would call historic properties for the rationale was that they were out and not being maintained and that there were issues. So if that's not the story, if that's the story we've been told, I think everybody has had a chance to contribute. But if that's not the story, then what do we mean? So this is my district respectfully and I am digging deep into this because when it came out in the media it was a mess. So in all fairness, I have to answer to these constituents. I get these tough emails. The media called me the interview. I yield not the interview because I can't speak on ignorance if I don't think it's a different thing. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it's different. I don't think it to say. I don't think that's how it was different. If there was something different. Well, I'll restate it. Okay. Because I think I kind of, you know, I'm kind of simple because I don't have all this knowledge. So let's go. Well, I don't believe that. I'm just saying. City Council dollars, I got a lot of knowledge. City Council dollars. So here we go. What I think my colleague was saying was, what is going to be the difference for what we're dealing with right now? Andrew came up with a very attractive deal and package to move forward and I signed up on it and so did stillberry. When the media got a hold to the man's, mansion, historic, the HLC the people who are in the community. I want to mention the HLC commission said one thing in the media. We were saying something else. But city council when I reached out to the knowledgeable colleagues of mine, none of them knew anything about it. So I wanted to bring it tonight in our fairness. Not trying to keep you I know school is starting. People got to move forward but we have a duty and we took a oath to serve this community and I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna serve this community when we feel like we can't do that then we need to give out Position up to somebody else. It's plain and simple. We have a duty to serve when it's election time We stand out there lying all day and night. We should be able to sit in these seats all day and night. I don't care who it is. We should be able to sit here and do our job for our constituents. I'm going to say that. Because that is the truth. Everybody got these attractive signs when it's election time. But we need to make sure that we're attractive when we're on an agenda. That's just it. That's all. It can be left. So very relevant to what you're saying. To me, I'm going to make a motion. If you don't want to hear, I'm going to make a motion. No, I might not like my motion. I want to hear him. Go ahead. All right, I would be glad to give this brief statement. Okay. Okay. After months of meetings and discussion with CLT staff on developing a preservation plan for the historic Still Creek Church Mance on December 11th, 2023, in response to the planned demolition of the Mance, the Charlotte Macombark Historic Lamarks Commission voted unanimously to recommend to you the Charlotte City Council that the historic steel Creek Mance be designated as a local historic Lamarck. All of the proper processes were followed by the HLC and the staff of the Mecklenburg County Historic Landmarks Department. On January 19, 2024, staff emailed a resolution and associated package documents to show its planning, design and development, pardon me, Department for consideration at City Council's February 12, 2024 meeting. The resolution would have scheduled a March 25, 2024 public hearing to consider landmark designation for the Mance. Confirmation from Charlotte's Planning, Design, and development department was received on January 24th, indicating that the item had been added to the February 12th, 2024 City Council agenda. That is all we know. So what year was this? 24. 24. 24. The year that I was elected. So I have the floor. May I? Yes. You're so beautiful. So thank you. Yes. It's disappointing. Very. Do you say the list from the city's perspective? HLC followed the process. And that's all I got to say. But. OK, that's all I got. Thank you. Have we finally got that? OK. Thank you. Okay. I don't know what's going on. We have a meeting up here. The mind's of misjentry. You want to come in on this? I would just ask that if there's anyone from planning here, I don't know Monica's here or anyone. The airport was not in some of those subsequent follow-up meetings. And so it's time. And so as far as what's on the agenda and what's not as this process was, so each department puts in placeholders, finished items, everything. And then we, a strategy and budget, collect all those into a first draft. Then we review those internally and say, is this going to be viable and finished? Or is this going to have to wait? Or this might be settled, not ever come forward? So that's part of what I do. And when we had a first draft, this was the learning curve for me because these used to be on zoning and this was the first I had this situation where somebody said Wait the city owns this and the city's playing to demolish this and so when I'm talking to the airport They're like oh yet no And I did not know that the commission had that authority to be able to put something without the owner knowing. So that's a process improving. When we're talking about transparency, we can start now too. Adding a clause is the owner concurring something similar to that, because I had no idea that something could be historically designated without the owner agreeing to it being. So I'm part of it too, because I didn't know that anything that commissioned book for it automatically came forward. And when aviation's saying, oh no, we've already worked with the state, we've got this plan in place, we've already submitted demolition paperwork and all these other agreements. That said, okay, well let me know what you'll work out. So that's, I understand that's behind the scenes process, but wasn't really planning that didn't even think when she said, planning to come up. It's more a process for the agenda. What gets on the agenda? Okay, all right, Mayor, thank you. Councillor for bearing. I didn't expect for the discussion to go as long as it did, but I know Councillor member Johnson wanted to ask a question and Councillor member may feel and then I'll close what I have to say. Okay. All right, Ms. Johnson. Thank you. I just have a quick question. Can you define sanctuary? Does I feel like there's some some antics here? Can you define? Sure. Okay. And we probably don't have a visual, but at one point in the late 19th century, the sanctuary building, which was where they held the services. If you think about your typical image of a Christian church with the steeple and the box like building an auditorium building, that's the sanctuary. Okay. And so again, and it is the historic building associated with still Greek Presbyterian Church. Okay. Thank you. You all were saying sanctuary, not sanctuary building. So I would just want to thank you. I know you're coming to the podium I'm not quite sure why. I think Miss Brown has said that Miss Mayfield would be next in this discussion. Is that correct? Actually I'm working directly with the City Court's office to get some information to help separate and I'll share with the district We'll to let her know what I was doing. Okay. That's right. No problem. So with me, Mr. Brown did you want to say something else? I just want to make sure we're distinguishing the item. We're moving the HL this is the H in the position tonight. Very clear on what I needed to hear as a representative, still still berries in district three. It's a huge district. So there's a lot of moving parts, but I want to be crystal clear on this one. When the article came out, I was totally lost. And what I just heard tonight is truly disturbing. And for staff, you guys work extremely hard. Thank you for your hard work. But if you can't understand the position that I have as a district rep from what we've heard tonight, I know some of you might be confusing and scratching your head as well. We got to do a better job would be in transparent. What we just heard is conflicting information and it's no wonder we're confused. There's no wonder our residents are confused. There's no wonder they have reservations. Because I am a person that is fair when I said in that church, with Stephanie, she wrote a letter. When we move forward with our community and we have intentionality and being the best representation of the city that we can. It doesn't show in this demolition that we just took place. That's just my opinion as a rep. Foundry did a great job of representation and they stood in the church with Stephanie? We can have a conversation with us, the residents, Stephanie, you said yield. You want the residents to be involved. I hear you as your representative. I hear Steele Berry. As the representative also foundry has not done anything to us or me to pull the plug on something that they're trying to move forward with. I want to be perfectly honest with that. However, I have your best interest as hard as your rep. I will work with you and I will make sure everything that you ask me, the specific of appropriation, making sure that the sanctuary will not fall into the same category that what we said we will do when we had that meeting in the church is what we will do I got sick that day I wasn't even supposed to be there but I came and I stood the entire time so I hurt everybody out in the church so Colin I don't know if you have any other questions for me but for me to move forward and my representation of steel ver I want to be crystal clear they have some unanswered questions and I think we you myself foundry and steel bear will get together. That's great. Immediately. Thank you very much for this because I think you have captured one of the things that's very important is and I think both as a district graph as well as Miss Watlington is to say okay what are we this is an item on our agenda it was signed up for a speakers list and I'm not quite sure what the question is I've heard that perhaps I don't think we can build a mass again. So that's probably the man's to the get to that. I heard you say that you agree with the Foundry's Association and commitment with the the historic. I agree with what they told still very they were going to do. We need to make sure that we stand behind that. We need to make sure that is what is going to happen. But I also as the rep understand totally still very reservation. Why they don't believe us and why we look like we're not being truthful in their eyes with what just happened with the demilation of demands. It's in the same vicinity. They have every right to pour out their passion and represent their community, the way that they have tonight. And as their district rep, I don't see anything wrong with the way they presented themselves. And I stand with them. I work with Colin, and I know that he and I have a professional relationship, but we can work together and move forward. So I expect transparency and for it to be laid out and I want to include the residents on everything that we do. I think that is a fair thing for me to do. You got anything else you need from me, Colin? So I think that you've heard the question can this be done in transparent? I think that we have an agreement with Foundry that's transparent. Would you agree with that Ms. Brown? The jury's still out on it, but I'm going to stand on what. Okay, all right, so I guess what I'm understanding is that there needs to be more work with the neighborhood and that might be something that would be possible for us to actually do. You know, when we were talking this afternoon about the Ed McKinney's idea of what would they call the bubbles in the strategic investment areas perhaps this is a time for The or neighborhood to be a part and have discussions around the strategic areas that they want to see done and Accomplish if we do that because that's like a planning bubble if that's correct So planning staff will be working in with the expertise from the neighborhood as well as from the district rep. I think that that might be a strategy that would work for how do we make sure that the neighborhood is being heard and valued. I think that's what we're trying to do. So I want to say that we don't have an action item on the agenda, but the action is around the idea of keeping that neighborhood organized and vibrant, and that may be best under the strategic investments that we're working on. That's bubble this. Yeah, I've seen that. I just also want to bring something else like Haley said, there's no immediate plans to go through the neighborhood and that is voluntary. So those are some key words that stood out for stillberry. You know, that we want to reserve history in our city. You know, you go, I'm just, our clothes, but I was in Philadelphia this past weekend. There's a lot of history in that city. Honestly, I've been living here for 53. We don't have that history. It's just slowly evaporating and going away. I just have to make a clear conscious and solid statement. Everything that I saw as a little girl, chicken coop, is gone. I can go down the list, Mr. Kaye's ice cream. You know, those are places that I've flown, I mean, you know. And if I'm made sure mayor, we do have a number of ways neighbors can participate with the airport. Mrs. Las has participated in that in the past, and I would encourage her to continue that through our airport neighborhood committee. Roundtable, excuse me, noise round table. There are various avenues for neighbors to get plugged in. And we hear your concerns about communication. Thank you so much for saying that you're here at Concerned, so I will yield and give the meeting back to Mayor and closing. I would like to say that Mrs. Lawrence Stephanie, she's very, very intentional. She sent a heartfelt letter to my cell, Colin and Foundry and was submissive in this process. But then when that happened, it just took her back to where she was at. So that was to me like a re-traumization for her. If I will say that, that reminded her of something that she didn't want to see. And that's how we got to this place. So I'm hearing everyone having an opportunity to speak and Ms. Brown's willingness to lead. Can we now close, is there a vote on the public hearing and a decision on the amendment of the Steel Creek Presbyterian Church and Cemetery, historic landmark designation is the action that we have. Is there a motion? We'll close the hearing. Second. Here we have a motion to close the public hearing. Any other discussion? All in favor of closing the public hearing? Please raise your hands. Now what is the next step after closing the public hearing? Public hearing and the seat. Action B. Action B is action B to maintain, to have the, I want to see if I have this here. We have action B adopted amendment with an effective date of August 26, 2024, designating all land and structures associated with the property known as Still Creek Presbyterian, church and cemetery with the exception of the tax parcels that are listed in our agenda. Do we have a motion? We have a motion. Do we have a second? Do we have a second? Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of the motion, please raise your hands. Okay. Can we clarify that, Madam Mayor? I just point of clarification because I want to make sure that I'm clear and make sure that everyone else is clear. So the amendment is for what, can someone, can you hand me a amendment? It's in our agenda book. Yeah. On page 2024 I believe. And so what I don't, I'm not clear on the amendment or it would say adopt an amendment with the effective date of August 26, 2024. Designating so still, can you help me what that means exactly and define it for all of us? Happy to, Tommy may have to back me up on this, but basically we're requesting that the City Council amend the existing designation ordinance, and that amendment would designate some of the property, but would leave remaining the 10 acre cemetery and the approximately four and a half acres around the sanctuary. Those would stay designated historic, but what would the other amount be? 23 acres. But the other 23 acres that surround the church would no longer be designated as a landmark. And those 23 acres, I'll just venture to say, are a substantial part of the Foundry development. So with that Madam Mayor, with that clarification, I, the district revs has brought a lot of concerns forward. I'm looking for a recommendation to. I would like to actually ask the airport. I'm looking for the report. What is the impact of that compared to the materials that you gave us about the idea that once you have to do this, you have to treat the community and voluntary and is this an acceptable statement or is this going to cause us more of this concern? I think if you push this deal and foundry will take their money and they will go invest it somewhere else in our community. And we have been turning over every stone to try and find someone to use this sanctuary. And I can tell you it has not been an adaptive and easy adaptive reuse. We've been through a brewery, we've been through Billy Graham Center, we've been through Billy Graham Center, we've been through all kinds of workforce development entities trying to find a proper fit. We will continue for the building to be there, for it to be empty, and for it to be empty and for it to be to be unused and our goal is to put it back into active use and preserve it and that is absolutely a commitment the airport has made and will continue to to support that's why we're doing all of this is to maintain the historic sanctuary? Madam Mayor, if I may say just one thing is the Charlotte McMurray Historic Lama Works Commission is in complete agreement. That is the reason that they have voted to recommend that the portion of this property be designated-designated because they believe that the Foundry Project project, sorry, that the Foundry Project is an appropriate project for the adaptive reuse of the sanctuary. And, you know, it is not done lightly to recommend de-designation of any historical property. Councillor Sainte-Heldenham. Councillor Sainte-Heldenham. Councillor Sainte-Heldenham. Councillor Sainte-Heldenham. I would recommend the designation of any his or her. Did you send some type of correspondence to the council? No. We don't have any getting your decision. I don't have nothing. We don't have anything. The Lamar's Commission, as all this motion forward, y'all for your consideration. I just wanted to see what the angel has not been rec has not had a chance to speak. So let's recognize I think the question is that have Mr. Mitchell address his concern of question. So this is scary now I'm woke right. I've been sleep for Wow so to apologize. I think you heard tonight a lot of frustration from neighborhood and from the City Council rep. If this is not time sensitive, my motion would be to delay this until we have some conversation with the district rep, the neighborhood, and historic landmark commission. This is not a good way for us to have this conversation at 1015. And so if it's, if it's mayor of my ex, of course. I think I can see two questions, Ms. Gentry and Mr. Brown. Go ahead, Ms. Mitchell. Okay, so if it's not time sensitive I'll make a motion, we defer this action tonight until September 20, what's our last Monday meeting? Hold on one moment, before we make that decision. We want to hear from Mayfield. She had her hand up. I had. Well, no, I think Mr. Mitchell was trying to ask the question, but he didn't get his motion on the floor. You got a second. And then I think what I was saying. I was going to hear what she was saying. OK. You have a, are you addressing this? I made a motion. I got to say it. What day though? I have a motion in a second to delay until September. We already had a motion in a second. We do. This is a substitute motion. Okay. So I'd like to defer this action to the last Monday and September. This is a separate action. You don't have a meeting. So should we go to the first Monday and October? Yes. To the first Monday and October, for this to come make the council to allow council member Brown and all the parties to have a conversation about how do we move forward? Thank you. Second Monday and October. Okay. And further misadj October. Okay. Any further miss? Yes. So this is to the motion. Yes. Yes. For the substitute motion. For the deferral. I know this is the motion that we have on our agenda. It came as a recommendation of historic landmark commission. So folks at Fondry, with this delay in any way, how would that have an impact if any to your project development timeline? Because I know you all. Well, I mean, everything is time sensitive, right? I know. You know, Founders come a long way. They've worked with HLC. They've worked with the community, they've had the community benefit. We want to get this done. The sooner the better. I mean, would it be possible to defer this to the September, put it on the September zoning meeting? Which would, that soon, October, I was getting, that's tough. I think what you're hearing is that the developer is saying that October is too far away, Mr. Mitchell. But Mr. Mitchell has the floor in the motion. We appreciate Mr. Mitchell's effort. All right. All right. I will hope to develop or would agree with us and be a good corporate partner while we work through this collectively. It is September 16th, work. October. But what is, this is all. I can tell you we are under contract with Foundry and that has, that does have an expiration date. So I think the developer was, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but we were striving to close by the end of the year. So we do have contractual documents that hold us to a certain timeframe just for your awareness. If I may, ma'am. So Ms. Jench, when is the expiration date on the contract? February. It will be 2025. Yes, but the developer was trying to close before the end of the year. But we're trying to meet the second Monday in October. I understand that. I'm just morning to share with you so you're aware that we do have contractual obligations. Thank you. I'm confident that we can still meet your deadline at the end of the year. But I think we need this collective voice to work together to try to find a good solution for everyone to feel comfortable. I think that Mr. Mitchell makes a great point there. If we can get something organized earlier, that would be great, but I think that we need to have more factual and more understanding from the neighborhood as well as the impact on the airport. So we have a motion on the floor to delay until October. It's the date again. It's the date. It's October the 14th. October the 14th. Yes. Feel free that council member. Yeah, I'm wondering if it's 14th. You could do anything between now and the 14th and come back whenever you're ready. And I wanted to just give a few minutes to make sure that you're ready. I wanted to give you a councilor Mitchell for making that amendment for me or that motion. I also want us to walk away and learn something valuable here. I do. I want us to vote on the motion first. I still want to speak. I hear you. We have a motion on the floor. All in favor I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to say not as a hearing. Hard of the challenge tonight is that's this hearing. on our summer break so that there was time for that conversation and not have a boat immediately because unfortunately because we had two separate conversations happening, the reason I feel that we had two separate conversations is because some of us were under impression that for one part of the conversation that was supposed to come back to council and it did not make its way back to council. So when councilmember Brown recognized me earlier, it's because I asked for our city clerk to pull up to send to us sometime this week the 2018 original motion because I was here and I do not remember having a conversation regarding this piece. So somewhere in the initial what was presented to us the vote on, I just want clarification about what was there because now we're in 2024. But earlier this year, I know from this diet, I asked questions regarding the potential what's going to happen with this space. I was under the impression it was going to come back and that we were going to have a chance to talk about it before instead of reading in the paper. The challenge is, there seems to be a period where within some departments, it is a need to know basis and staff is determining what council needs to know. At the end of the day, we're the ones who the community is going to ask the question of where the ones that is going to be in a particular position. For tonight, this was the first time anyone has had someone from the airport to have a discussion, but at the same time, the hearing should have been a separate conversation altogether. And then at a later date, we should have had the conversation on boating on what's next. Because then a lot of the questions that was asked tonight in reference to the hearing, there would have been time for the district rep, as well as her council colleagues to review it and have a better understanding. So I would like to encourage which we mentioned several council colleagues have mentioned this more than one occasion. It will be helpful not to have the hearing on the same night that there is a decision because if we decide that we need more information, we don't get the chance. So then you have staff telling us that, well, we have a contractual obligation. No disrespect, that's not my problem. My responsibility to the best of my ability is to understand what's in front of us, and for us to hear from community, as well as the developers and petitioners for that hearing. It does not help when we're put in a position where we need to do both on the same evening without having enough information ourselves. Thank you. Miss Mayfield. All right, so we have a motion to close the public hearing. I was after Mayfield and then we're going to close. We already voted on the motion. Yes, but Ms. Brown would like to be. Yeah, be very brief. I just want to say this is a very valuable lesson for us to take away and be good stored as over our community in the assets and what they put in front of us. You know, when we go and we get the budget and we look at things and we vote on them and we try to support our manager to the best of our ability. These are things that we really got to be careful about. Foundry is definitely not better foundry and they were very transparent on what they were going to do with, she built the city. And so that's why I was reserved. Then I'm glad that my colleague stepped up to make a motion that would not put them out of the picture. But it is for all of us to look through a clear lens on how we represent moving forward. I cannot ignore a community of people that had 100 signatures plus still counting. That's going to affect the condition of that community and that district. So I'm happy with the decision for the respect of Foundry because they did nothing in this position there in the line of fire. Because we didn't do what we were supposed to do. And I say we collectively, cuz now I sit on the council. Nobody wants to hear you, didn't do what we were supposed to do. And I say we collectively, because now I sit on the council. Nobody wants to hear you didn't know. So that's why I reached out to my colleagues. So I'm happy with the decision that we made. I'm sure that we can move forward and good faith and make this work for everybody. That's what we did the first time. All right. Okay, let's go to agenda item number eight. It's a public hearing and decision on the Alexander Howell House historic landmark designation. This is a public hearing to consider the historic landmark designation for the property known as Alexander Howell House. Are there any speakers? Thank you. Any speakers? Moe toose in here. All right. We're going to close the public hearing. Do we? I need a second. Second. Yeah, we need a second. All in favor of closing. Definitely as a close. Let me start. You doing A and B? Yes. Yes. We're doing A and B. Okay. be. And on item 8, I wonder though, I'm going to say not knowing, not having the reports and things like what I think happened today with the lack of clarity. I wonder if we ought to just wait and see because none of us, I think, how many of us will, maybe other, I mean this has been something that, you know, councilmember Brown has been going through for this other one, let's not get into another one. We need to have, I think, some better process for looking at these designation than just the agenda. I agree. So I'm going to suggest that we have this as a part of the discussion. It's like, if you can, if Miss Brown and the neighborhood and all of that can work and we'll have some staff folks that could do this, then let's bring all of these back at one time. Thank you. I've been here all this time. Oh, no man, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. You got the sign up to speak. I got the sign up. Yes. Yes, but we just close. Okay. No, we can close the future. And you're she can sign up with Alexander Howell House. And please. I don't know if they can we can. Yeah, right there. Be careful. You can use the microphone there. And that way that's what he says. You did not but there was a motion on the floor. Right. And you did not vote on that motion. So. Here is still over. There was a motion on the floor and you did not vote on that motion so The motion was to close the hearing There was no vote She can speak Oh, we need I'm looking at the attorney as the park in the chair I'm looking at the attorney as the park in the chair So that she can speak as part of the hearing There you go. Just keep the seat. I need it with your motion. If the intention is for the speaker to speak. You like that thing. Not the city of Tariya. We pay you. All right. I think because we did not close, we did not close the motion for a. We will hear from you. And then Ms. For parliamentarians say and for Yes, I am withdrawing my motion. Is that correct Kelly? Miss Kelly. If you would give us your name and At some point with I know you're up there talking but we'll need your address so we can contact you with the clerk's office with a phone number and something like that. Okay. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Ashley Larkin. My husband had to leave but we are the current proud owners of 250 Cherokee. A full report was provided and created for us to explain the architectural significance of the property that we hope to protect. Much like all these conversations I've heard tonight is exactly why we went through this lengthy process and it's not an inexpensive process either. But we seek to protect our residential property with great significance historically and a historically significant autosynthric neighborhood in Charlotte that is threatened all the time by retail development, medical development, multifamily high rises. And we have a significant piece of property that's just under two acres. So we are particularly at risk. I am just about a block off of Providence Road on Cherokee. I think the report, if you have read it, I think it was in the agenda, was beautifully written and explaining the origin of the home, the families that built it, the history, the neighborhood, the importance of the architect, and furthermore, proposed that the house be not just called Sidenham Alexander home, but the Alexander Howe home because Bard Howe, who resided there, it was a significant leader in our community. We have gone through the historic landmark commission process. It was taken to the state and now we are here hoping for your approval because like all these other conversations that have been going on, we are anxious to keep this house from being torn down and demolished. We are offered ridiculous sums of money for developers to come in and tear it down. And our hope is to stop that as the current owner and not allow that to happen to ourselves or our neighbors or our community. So I just plead with you that you will consider our request. We've taken a long hard look at it. We're not doing it for tax reasons. We really have been warned that we can significantly impact the resale of the property by doing this. But our intention is very clear and purposeful with our mission to protect a historic structure in the city of Charlotte where things are getting completely demolished all the time. And I thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm saying all night. Move to approve A and B. Second. All right. We have a motion to approve A and B in a second. And is there anyone that would like to speak to that? Ms. Johnson. I think that we actually have her information. It's in their application in the document that we have. So we do have yours. I can give it to you very easily. I'll just we have it. It's in our it's in our agenda. Okay, so it's Peter. I'm sorry. I'll broadcast it all over. I know there are six attachments. So I'll send that. So, yeah. I'll be okay. My question is you wanted to, we talked about deferring it earlier. Are we going to defer? Yeah, I'm sorry. defer, and then my second question is, I'm supporting the historic designation, but can we hold off on the name and not commit until it's gone through? Because there's been some processes of renaming things in the city lately after research. I don't know if that would fall into that, but I just wanted to. Actually, he told me and Stuart might speak to that much better than ICANN. The researcher, the architectural historian, when doing her research here in Charlotte, felt strongly that the house involvement and prominence in the community should be noted and attached with the house along with Sidnam Alexander. I think she gives a justification much better than I can go into detail with. Okay, thank you. If we're different, but we're going to be deferring it, right? To do all of that research. I don't think the motion was to go on the floor. Yeah, my motion was to approve the motion on the floor. The motion on the floor is in this case. There is no confusion. There is no community opposition. The longer we wait, we might lose this. Yes, correct. I mean, there is a sense of urgency here. The current owner wants it. There is no opposition. We want to preserve this two acres in district six. There are six attachments. It shows why historic landmark commission supports it. There is a long history behind it. I don't see a reason why we need to defer this. I mean, I understood the first one because of the community opposition. This is actually a normal course of business thing. We're talking about creating and not de-listing. Exactly. And I don't see the controversy around this one. There's no acknowledgment. It doesn't involve any other governmental rules or regulations. It's just basically. I was trying to get it. So I think it's appropriate that we could have a motion to approve the Alexander Howell House historic landmark designation. If the council so chooses Order order. I can wait till after we vote. Well, I do have a point of order She's a chicken wait talk to we vote. Okay, all right Is there any further discussion on it all in favor of the designation, please raise your hands. One, two, three, four, five, six. Okay. The motion was to approve a close adherent and beat, correct? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. All four of them. All four of them. So we haven't asked any of them. This may feel how did you vote? You haven't asked am a no. So no vote. Okay, so that passes. All right. The next item is the public point of order. Yes. Yes ma'am, I realize that it is 10 30 at this point. I know that on our zoning meeting nights we have a hard stop at 10 p.m. So given that we still have a substantial agenda, I just want to lift up the fact that we are past that to the clock. I think we need to make a decision as to whether or not we're staying here to finish this meeting or to move this to a future agenda. I got to remember on Locke say he was paying us overtime. Oh, well, in that case, that's not it. Just these, yeah, that's the motion. We are usually in that position. I think it's part of coming back from a rather long opportunity to get some time with our family and friends. But that won't do any good If we just give it all back. That's not. And that's, I agree. I understand that. But I guess the question is, if the council would like to proceed for another 10 minutes or a adjourn and have a, oh, this is my day. It's not gonna be 10 minutes. You being very kind about that. Well, you're about 10 o'clock. That's part of the 11 o'clock. Our first meeting week, we're giving a half an hour to ask questions and ask with a little bit of a second hour and a half. So those are the kind of things that need to be planned out. I say move it. I love that idea of a planned out meeting. Best of session. I do. But whatever you want to do. OK. deal. Whatever you want to do. Okay. All right. This is on the agenda that's going to take a long time. I don't. It's just growing through. It's resolution of alleyways and things like that. You've got nominations that can be submitted. Regional transportation planning. You've got to pay for it. So we have a lot. You didn't make a much noise. Does it need to take a long time? It's going to be easy. Okay. We can take this time and spend it talking about time or we can go ahead and continue. We have two that got little ones. We can go to tell them, man. Let's go. It's the love of me. I mean, all is love. Madam Mayor, if I may, I'm sorry, but if we could at least do the next public hearing because otherwise, and this is Tilly. Yes. We do need to restart the notice requirement if we move that. All right, let's go ahead. We're going to take item number nine. Public hearing and decision on John Phillips, little junior house historic landmark designation for A and B. Conduct the public hearing and we have, do we have any speakers? None. Adopt an ordinance with an effective date of August 26 for the little John house which is John p little junior house 36 queens rose and there's a picture of the house And the history of it right there So do we have a motion? So moved. A and B. A and B. All right. Any discussion? Any further discussion? All in favor? Please raise your hands. Anyone opposed? I mean raise your hands so the clerk can get to it. All right. Is anyone opposed? Okay with that. That leads us to a public hearing to close an alleyway off of Kensington Drive. Is there any sprouting to speaking towards that? Not hearing anybody? Through the AMB. All right. Do we have a motion for the closure of the alleyway off of Kensington Drive? All in favor, please raise your hands. Anyone opposed? All right, that moves on as well. There's no managers report. Okay. Come on. There are. There are. Except the nominations can be submitted to the clerk if you have your nominations. That would carry us through 19 to 26. We do have acceptance of some grants that we need to have and we can go through those pretty quickly if we can have six people stay with us. All right. So on the first one is- I may accept the carbon- A motion to accept the carbon reduction program discretionary grant. A and B, move for approval. All right. Any further discussion? All in favor? They're key. I need more hands. One two three four six. Okay so that takes us through the next item for a municipal agreement with NCDOT. We have a motion and is there any. All right all in favor please raise your hand. One two three four. Dipple. She's in. She was never been here. Yes. They are yes. Okay thank you. All right so that made that motion is approved and that's adopted. The lease at the McGill Rose Garden. Move for approval and be married. Second. All right any further discussion? Anybody raise your hands please?. Second. All right. Any further discussion? Anybody, raise your hands, please? Anyone opposed? All right. The next one is the lease of office basis for the police department in the North. We'll approve of A and B. All right. Any other discussion? All in favor? Please raise your hands. And we, I need enough. Ms. Molina, please thank you. That's helpful. All right. So the next one is the soil, Macklenburg soil and water conservation district urban cost share program. Move forward approval. Action 8. All right. Second. Move a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Anybody raise your hand if you're in favor? All right. That passes anyone opposed? That's here. The next one is 17 Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization Memorandum of Understanding. You're the mayor authorization to execute the Memorand Understanding. All right. Second. All right, all in favor. Raise your hand. All right. The next item is interlocal agreement for youth diversion program grant for the fiscal year of 2025. Move for approval. Second. Second. All in favor. Raise your hands. Thank you. The next ones are our nominations and please send those in and then we have a motion to close. I'm sorry. I already have the votes. If there are several that receive more than six. If there is a motion and you feel so inclined to appoint those persons, we will only bring one board back to you next at the next meeting for the bicycle advisory. Constance Wagner received seven nominations for the Citizens Review Board to Risa Marasio, Marasio, I'm sorry, received nine nominations as did Suzy Taylor for the Domestic Violence Advisory Board and Angelia Buford Hayes received nine nominations and Christine Hart received six nominations and for the Historic District Commission, Sarah Kern received ten nominations as did Cameron Hoelts. All right, so you heard the clerk's announcement for the by committee, City Citizen Review Board, Domestic Violence Council and the historic designation. And all of those receiving the appropriate amount of votes to be found. It would be a sign to these committees all in favour. Do we have a motion? And all in? We have a motion to approve. And we have a motion. And please raise your hand if you in support of the motion. And you want to oppose. Thank you very much. All right, the other one you have to bring back the public access. Yes, ma'am. Always. Always. Always. You can tell me. Thank you, everyone, for helping us get through tonight. Tough times. You got to. You're doing it. You have a motion to close, everybody. Go home. Go home. Go home. Go home. Music you I'm sorry. you Thank you.