Music I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. the I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. . . . I'd like to call this council member meeting on September 3rd to order and I'd like to start with introductions. We'll start to my left with the city attorney. Good evening, Patrick Baker, city attorney. Good evening, LaWanda Mayfield, Council Member at LARG. Start card is six. Ed Driggs, district seven. Malcolm Graham, district two. Marcus Jones, city manager. Dante Anderson, mayor, pro-tem district one. Good evening, everyone. James Mitchell at LARG. Good evening, Marjorie Molina, district five. Renee Johnson and I'm honored to represent district four. Ariel Smith, Lake City Clerk. Thank you, thank you to everyone. And now for tonight, in addition to our Council Committee discussions, we have two business items for a vote. And since these items are time sensitive in nature, and we have speakers signed up for both items. I propose we lead off our meeting with the consideration of the two business items. But before I do so, little birdie told me that today is Mrple Agmira's birthday as well. So we have a cake for Ed and I love for us to sing Happy Birthday to you. And there's the happy birthday dear, and dimple. Happy birthday to you. Okay, thanks a lot. Happy birthday to you. Oh, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, man. Excellent. Excellent. Happy birthday to both of you. And the cake will be in the back if someone wants a slice. They'll be cutting in the back. Just keep Mitchell away, okay? Thank you. Okay, so we're going to move forward with our first agenda item. It is the resolution in support of legislation authorizing a sales tax referendum. And I'm going to read the language first so that it can be in the record. And then I would like to see if there is a motion to support it. So this agenda item is to adopt a resolution to support the coalition of local jurisdictions in Mecklenburg County to seek authorization from the North Carolina General Assembly, authorizing the voters of Mecklenburg County to determine by referendum whether they will approve an additional sales tax for further investment in roadway and public transportation systems. Is there a motion for item one? Through a move. Second. I have a motion and a second. Thank you. But before we go through with our comments as a council, we do have several people who are signed up to speak on this particular item. And our clerk is going to keep track. Everyone will have three minutes to speak when they come up. And so our first person is Hope Wright. Is Hope in the room? Nope, okay. What about Adam Bree? Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, members of Council, Mr. Manager, good evening. My name is Adam Rue, I'm the president and CEO of South Park Community Partners. We are honored to be your economic development partners in South Park. First, I want to commend the hard work and the bold thinking required to get us to tonight to consider this generational investment in our transportation infrastructure. As a native charlatan, I've had a front row seat to our community's growth over these past few decades. Together, we have invested in jobs, we've strengthened our neighborhoods, and we've nurtured small businesses. And in doing so, we've created more reasons for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. We've been doing this for a few years. That 435% swing every Saturday and Sunday is driven by people going to and from home, to and from work, or to and from one of our hundreds of consumer facing destinations, excuse me, that support a robust visitor economy. So it's no surprise then that our transportation needs have grown along with our city and our region. We must empower new ways of moving around and that's why we believe now is the time for the next generation of transportation investment in Charlotte. In South Park we have adopted a new vision for our future, the South Park Forward 2035 Vision Plan which we unveiled four months ago. This is the community's vision for South Park to ensure it lives up to its promise as an economic engine for our entire region. And more than half of the 64 recommendations in our plan are related to transportation and mobility. So South Park becomes a more accessible and more inclusive place. For our district, that includes completing the South Park Loop, building mobility hubs, and creating a mobility innovation district that leads by example in developing shared solutions and exploring emerging technology. Our commitment to this vision also includes plans to invest in a micro transit program, which we hope can be a model for our region and beyond. But to achieve our shared vision from ability, new funding sources, and new partnerships are necessary. And that's why we encourage you to support this resolution tonight. Thanks for your leadership on this important issue for our regional economy, and we look forward to being your partners as we invest in our future. Thanks. I now understand that I just would just say that some of our speakers were re-routed to a different room. So hope if you'd like to come up, you will have three minutes to speak and address this issue. All right. Good morning. We're good afternoon. Sorry, or evening. Here we are. Mayor Brotem Anderson and council members. To save time I'm going to go ahead and speak on both issues. My name is Hope Wright and I am the advocacy manager for sustained Charlotte. I'd first like to thank you for your careful consideration of both votes tonight. These are not easy decisions. After years of debate regarding a one-cent sales tax increase for transportation investments countywide, we strongly encourage you to support both the purchase of the O line from Norfolk Southern needed for the red line and draft sales tax legislation. The draft sales tax legislation is not perfect. It is a compromise. However, it is a major and long-awaited step toward securing a much needed and significant new source of funding to invest in our transportation system. A step we believe must be taken now. For years, our inability to reach a consensus on this tax has caused us to fall further and further behind in providing residents with the safe, affordable, efficient, and clean transportation options they deserve. As you know, our population has continued to soar causing a tidal wave of development. This growth combined with the lack of sufficient funds to also invest in the transportation infrastructure needed to support it has led to more wasted time sitting in traffic for those who drive. It's led to more drivers, pedestrians and people on bikes dying due to streets not designed for safety. It's led to residents struggling to breathe because of our heavy reliance on private vehicles, the leading source of air pollution in Mecklenburg County. And it's led to those in our community without a car struggling to reach their job, grocery store, medical appointments, and more. It has been suggested that because of the 40% funding cap on rail projects, the portion of the silver line between Uptown Charlotte and Matthews cannot be built as rail and would need to be bus rapid transit instead. However, no decision has been made about the silver line, and we urge you to work with other decision-makers to explore every option to build this line as planned. That said, a well-designed BRT system could possibly be a good alternative to rail and is worth exploring given the constraints placed on rail in the proposed legislation. We will advocate for a fresh look at our current countywide transit plan to be done through a transparent public process with significant and inclusive input from residents across the county. Rejecting this compromise legislation now because of the possibility that the silver line to Matthews would not be rail would very likely result in no new funding for transit and other transportation infrastructure for many years. This would perpetuate the status quo and the existing inequities in our transportation network. We would also like to see a commitment including funding to mitigate the displacement of existing residents and ensure affordable housing in the neighborhoods through which new rail investments will run. Not doing this for the blue line led to involuntary displacement and we must not repeat this mistake. BEEPING Thank you for your time and the time to act is now. Thank you, thank you. Our next speaker is to show a candidate. Once you get to the podium, you'll have three minutes. All right. Hello. Mayor Pro Tem and members of Council. My name is Tushal Akhandeli. I'm here speaking on behalf of Atco Properties and Camp North End. Once in a lifetime is an overused phrase, but sometimes is actually an accurate description of an opportunity. The chance to buy the red line right away from North folks southern is one of those rare once in a lifetime opportunities. The red line would improve Charlotte teams access to jobs, schools, grocery stores and medical services, reduce traffic and the pollution that comes with it, bring friends together before and after sports games or a concert and bring families back home safely after a day at the lake or a night in the city. Your vote tonight to purchase the line and move forward the sales tax legislation brings us one step closer to that reality. Tonight is the chance to make good on a plan that council members and mayors before you have been working on for 25 years. I'm also here to urge you to consider adding a red line stop at Camp North End, which sits in the middle of eight historic North End neighborhoods and in the middle of the North Graham North Tri-On corridor of opportunity. As you know, today, Camp North End is home to over two dozen locally owned small businesses. Many of them, women and minority owned, we're also home to over 350,000 square feet of office space and are months away from delivering our first 301 departments and becoming a fully 24-7 campus. What most people don't know is that the plans for Camp North End are to have over 2,000 full-time residents, over 10,000 daily office workers, and to become a hub for cultural events in Charlotte. In the past 12 months, over 850,000 people visited Camp North End, and we expect that number to grow by leaps and bounds over the next few years. We've heard from our North End neighbors and other members of the community about the importance of a stop at Camp North End. We've heard from potential residents at our new apartments about how the importance of a stop. We've heard from visitors on a busy day about how they would have loved to get to and from Camp North End by train. And we've heard from potential office tenants, especially large companies considering a relocation to Charlotte about the importance of access to transit in their search for office space. We hope you'll join us in supporting the addition of a Red Line Stop at Camp North and a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring world-class transit to an area which has been historically overlooked for projects like this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank this. Thank you. Hello good evening members of council. Thank you for listening to me today. I'm here to speak in favour of tonight's proposals for both Red Line and the sales tax proposed on front-eat today. I struck up a conversation at a bar recently with an acquire of distressed properties. It was a connoisse. And I remember this guy just about salivating when he gestured at the uptown skyscrapers around saying, you know, all this is coming down. Now, for him, I'm sure that's a wonderful business opportunity, but that should terrify every Charlotte resident. Because if that indeed were to happen, the hit to our property tax engine would be something that would be born directly by us. The residents, homeowners in particular, we would see those property tax increases hit our property tax bills swiftly and profoundly. Now, I've seen part of the why personally. I used to live in uptown, I used to work in uptown rather. And I'm pretty sure that my office shut down in part because of the failure of Earth and off its initiative. When I talk to many of my colleagues, many of whom who live in the Northern towns would be affected by the red line, they told me point blank, reason I don't come in is traffic. Now, as a blue line commuter, and a someone who saw many blue line commuters on the train every single day, we didn't have to deal with that problem. Now, commercial real estate sectors often talk these days about the flight quality, and I think that commute is part of that quality. It's something that can attract more workers back to the office. The red line and the other transit investments are funny today. I think our direct shots at making that happen and hopefully another step to preventing my new friends business opportunity from becoming reality. Now, as we do this, I think we should be clear about what needs to be done. We need trans-interstructure that is safe, clean, and that does job that needs to do. What I don't want to see is another glittering rendering placed next to news about delays, or news about delays, or some contractor dispute. I think we all should be very careful with our selection of partners and public private partnerships. We have certainly seen the endless pollukated delays that have gone around about the Brooklyn Village Project and Gateway Station. One of the particular answers that they gave is interest rates and I want us to be clear about this. The cheap money era is over. The Bay Boomer's earned Master's Harman now. More and more of their capital leaves investment markets, pushing pressure up on interest rates. And I would say the longer we wait, the great opportunity that we have of seeing higher construction costs and higher rates in the future. I wanna speak lastly on the road's piece of this proposal. I don't think we should kid ourselves. It's generally lastly on the road's piece of this proposal. I don't think we should kid ourselves. It's generally expected that the road has a service life 25 years. Our financial statements think that number's 40, though. And if you look at the statistical section, it looks like we have been pushing that estimate up over the years. Our roads are ancient. I'm pretty sure that many of our interchange were designed by sociopaths. It should have been designing pinball machines. They also lack basic safety features. In particular, reflective tape for things like lane lines and meetings. I think we need that to say nothing of completing our bicycle lane network as well as our sidewalk network. So yes, we need to invest in roads as well. It's for that reason that I would encourage you to vote yes and favor both proposals on your docket tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Our next speaker is Joe Boss. Good evening everybody. My name is Joe Boss, Chief Advocacy Officer at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. Thank you for having the conversation today about transportation in Charlotte. And thank you for all the work you have done and effort you have put into this plan thus far. As the voice of business, the CLT Alliance can share that the business community is united, and its support of the recently announced proposal to advance transportation in our future in this region. We have an opportunity to blaze a trail. This piece of legislation has never been done in North Carolina. So I would say the legislation that you're reviewing and discussing is a tremendous step forward in accomplishing our shared transportation initiatives. Just last week the CLT Alliance let a group of 2,000 business and civic leaders, including some in this room, on a one-day trip to Miami to study the region's transportation system, and better understand how similar developments might work in Charlotte. Leaders got an up-close look at the opportunities available from investing in high-frequency transportation vehicles as part of an overall multimodal transportation plan. Now, we hope to take learnings from a peer high-growth market that is doing something transformative to see what could be applicable here, what might work, and what might not. Additionally, the study of the red line that's in front of you tonight and its pending purchase offers another transformative solution for Charlotte. Offering multiple solutions will be key to successful future in our transportation network. The CLT Alliance will continue to provide the business perspective on transportation and to work with key stakeholders across this region to make progress on our transportation solutions. Investments in transportation infrastructure will be key to the region's long term competitiveness, success, and quality of life for all of us. Thank you for your consideration of this important initiative, and we encourage you to vote yes. Thank you, Mr. Bost. Our next speaker is Jared Herndt's. Good evening, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of Council and City Manager of Parkestians. My name is Chair at Horms and I serve it. And just also for now I'm going to combine both mine and to one. So I proudly serve as Chair of the Transit Services Advisory Council or TSEC. So speaking upon many of the, many, both traffic as well, transportation related issues within the area. When you look at the city of Charlotte and our broader region, North, South, East, and West, cats is not in the place where we wanted to be, was having heavy headways and service that can use improvement in other areas. With these sales tax and the mobility plan, it will greatly, greatly have a huge effect on many of the topics that we talk about on a monthly and often more times basis when it comes to our ridership, both within the board and everyone we talk to outside of TSA. In addition when you look at our northern towns those are areas that are often choked with traffic. And those are areas where the purchasing of this very time, the sub purchasing of the O line tracks can be able to provide additional opportunity for them to be able to commute to work, go to a panthers game, so on and so forth. And also a project that they have themselves been waiting for, have been waiting for a long time. We are at a very pivotal moment where we are able to make very transformative change within our community. And yes, as mentioned, this plan is not perfect. However, it still is gonna be able to strengthen the state of transit within our broader area and be able to make hats into more of a world class transportation system. We are currently as noted by some recent articles that we are growing roughly at the same rate of Atlanta as Atlanta. One of the things we don't want to do is be choked up with traffic like Atlanta. And with having roughly 41,000 riders within Q1 of 2020 to 24. That number is going to grow as we get more and more residents. So I encourage you guys to please consider and support both the purchase of those tracks as well as the drafting of the legislation and move it to our front random and let the citizens of Charlotte decide. So thank you. I yield back your time. Thank you, Mr. Horms. Our next speaker is author Walker. Who's author with us? Good evening, Mayor Protabpt and you council members. I'm Arthur Walker. I'm a bus driver for cats obviously. Anyhow one thing I'd like to say is Charlotte is a great city and one thing that makes a city great is all that it has to offer. But let us not forget the thing that really makes a city great is its ability to listen to the needs of those in the community that it serves And that is what I feel this proposed one-cent sales tax does It strengthens a need within the community of Charlotte and surrounding towns The one-cent sales tax will allow for the expansion of light rail system not only in Charlotte, but in the surroundings towns and communities, giving those who depend on public transportation greater access to job opportunities, cultural events, shopping and medical care, just to name a few of its benefits. The one-cent sale tax will also provide means for the improvement to the Charlotte area transit bus system. Now God bless our mechanics and they do their best with what they have and keeping the buses running. However, the catch bus fleet is aging. And along with age buses do run into mechanical issues. And every time a bus breaks down, I can't help but think of the passenger who is late for work in losing pay. I can't stop thinking of the passenger who has grocery bags full of frozen food or grocery or perishable refrigerated items that are getting warmer by the minute, and possibly making some of them unsafe to eat. I also think of the passenger who has lost precious time they intend to suspend visiting loved ones, friends or family, hospital nursing facilities, or homebound due to various reasons such as medical or mobility issues. The one-cent sales tax would provide cuts and funds to provide mechanics, necessary parts and other items to help them perform repairs and routine maintenance in a more timely manner. It would also allow cats to purchase more buses so it can be put or so that more buses can be put on the routes, shortening the time between buses. So one who misses their connection for any number of reasons, instead of can won't have to wait the 30, 45 minutes or even an hour sometimes for the next bus. But in closing, I would like everyone to imagine what your life would be like if tomorrow you lost your means of transportation. How would you get to the grocery store? How would you gather with friends and family or get to your place of worship? Most importantly, how would you get to work to support yourself, your family, or your children? And while thinking upon this, I ask, how important is the one-cent sales tax now? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Walker. Our next speaker is Michael Smith. You did a great job, Mr. Walker. What's that? What's that? Mayor Pratton, members of Council, thank you for your leadership. As we consider this generational investment for our community's mobility strategy, the funding, the vision, and the thoughtful partnership with our legislature. Our board recently enjoyed a presentation from Liz Bapson laying out everything that you're considering. We were grateful for that. It stirred a lot of inspiration. And that was the hope. So thank you Liz for joining us. This is an exciting leap for our transportation aspirations with the purchase of the red line property and the resolution supporting the one cent sales tax legislation. This move by Charlotte is a power move. It'll unlock five different things. Billion unlocking and leveraging billions in federal bipartisan infrastructure, land funds. Number two, advancing a regional transportation network to mitigate congestion, enhanced conactivity, support job creation, and better align with today's and tomorrow's economy. Number three, provide inclusive transit and transportation planning with equitable investments and all modes of transportation. Roads, bus, rail, bikeways and sidewalks. Number four, strengthen our center city and its ability to drive tax revenue for all of the priorities of our community. Number five, and most of all, this is an opportunity to work with local, state, and federal officials to create a shared vision for the infrastructure to enable Charlotte as a great and growing city. With Charlotte's region growing and welcoming 117 new residents daily, bold leadership and infrastructure planning are crucial for the city to leap ahead of its competitors. These investments will connect our residents to the jobs of today and tomorrow, to the Gateway Station, to our arts, our cultural sports, and entertainment and housing. I have found our communities transit and transportation investments to be an unmatched tool to stimulate and then to shape private investment. It's as strong as we have. Exhibit a south end, the hottest sub market in the southeast. Exhibit B, Charlotte Douglas Airport. I mean those examples are incredible for us. I know of no better tool to drive in migration a talent and to grow tomorrow's economy. This feels like a dramatic beginning of the next chapter of Charlotte's storied history with thoughtful creation of a mobility vision for the next three decades. Let's leap forward together and in the wisdom of Winston Churchill, perfection is the enemy of progress. We applaud the leadership of Council and staff. Thank you. Our next speaker is Nile Bowen. Good evening, Mayor, members of Council, TMOC staff and colleagues here in attendance of lending their support. My name is Nile Bowen and I'm a bus operator with CATS TMLC. Although I'm allowed in three minutes, my comments will be brief and to the point that's to avoid redundancy and light of the other speakers before me. In addition to expediting updates and repairs to the cat's fleet, the proposed sales tax increase would also enable much needed operator security improvements as well. Additionally, the increase would significantly bolster cats' quality of service expand its infrastructure, create jobs, and raise the salaries and pay of a community of dedicated and hardworking transportation professionals at CATS TMOC. This is why I strongly encourage you to support this increase. Thank you. Our next speaker is John Morris. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Mayor Prattam, Council, City Manager, and staff. And I just want to take a second. The last speaker and his predecessor to have two bus drivers come up in here and speak. I just feel like I need to sit down. It's quite remarkable to have the people that actually work the system up here supporting the system. So with that, I'll be brief. The reason I'm here is I was on a panel that Rebick put together where the director of transportation from Miami-Dade County, Ulyss, Clarkley, did a study, or a presentation on the bus rapid transit system, which can't really, I wasn't terribly aware of. I grew up in, or lived in Europe for a year and did a lot of rapid transit and a lot of bus systems, but this was a new concept to me. I think it's different. I think it's one of the first speakers said it's something that we need to explore and get our heads around. But the reason that this plan and what do they say, Michael, you ended up that Winston Churchill perfectionism, enemy of progress, This plan, we're not getting perfect. We're not getting everything we want, especially certain stakeholders, I understand their reluctance. But we are getting what we need, which is something our state legislators can support. And something more importantly, the federal government supports. The federal government is in for innovation. It wants a flexible solution and it needs a cost effective solution, which is a taxpayer. I really appreciate. So I'll end by saying, let's support a cohesive regional transit system. No, we're not going gonna get what we want. But after listening to Mr. Clarkley talk about what's happening in Miami, I was just in an article today by John Porter where Las Vegas is considering something similar. We're not gonna compare ourselves to those cities. We're Charlotte, we do it our way. But we do need to take leadership from people who are out in front of us. And for both of those reasons, I support both of the initiatives tonight. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Thank you. The next speaker is Will Darden. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Anderson, Council, everyone here tonight. I'll be sharing once for both measures as well. My name is Will Darden. I serve as the president of the Commonwealth Morningside Neighborhood Association. Thank you for the chance to share today. Both the sales tax resolution proposal to go before the General Assembly and the pending red line purchase agreement aligned with our neighborhoods core value. Supporting inclusive thoughtful growth both within and around our specific community nestled between Plasmidwood and Chantilly. In addition to volunteering as a member of our neighborhood association board, I'm an educator and an on-profit professional by trade. In my work at Urban Promise Charlotte, I coach young adults, the majority of whom identify as first generation college students who grew up in low income communities around Charlotte toward achieving their career in leadership goals. For the young adults I support, as well as their communities, social and economic mobility is a major priority. But it's no secret that Charlotte has historically struggled to provide its most under-resourced citizens with opportunities to achieve economic mobility. And while we should celebrate the recent news from Raj Chetty and his team that our city has improved from being 50th out of 50 to 38th, we still have a ways to go. In my conversations with students and their families over the past 10 years, I've observed the burden that navigating Charlotte's built environment has on our most vulnerable. As our city has grown and become more expensive, too many of my students and their families have been pushed the outer edges of the metro, we're housings more affordable. But then this begins a vicious cycle. Students need a car to get to their jobs, but they also need a well-paying job to afford the costs of the car. Hundreds of dollars of their paychecks end up going toward car payments, loan interest, insurance premiums, fuel and parking costs with little left over to save for a rainy day or prepare for the future. Both myself and our Commonwealth Morningside Neighbors believe a strong commitment to regional transit will help lower inequities by improving access to jobs, grocery stores, medical appointments, and more for those who do not or cannot drive a car. I appreciate the work that's been done to achieve a compromise with our state's political leaders and present a plan that invests in multimodal transit. And I encourage this council to continue to work over the next year to finalize a thoughtful transit and mobility plan that ensures all parts of our city including the west side, east Charlotte, Matthews, receive significant investment that will improve mobility for their constituents. I urge you all to vote for both resolutions tonight as the first steps of many. Our community needs to take to become a place where all our citizens and not just our most resourced have what they need to flourish and thrive in our great city. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Darden. The next speaker is Chris Wallace. Good evening. My name is Chris Wallace. I'm a North Mech resident. I've been a cats writer for about nine years. I don't own a car or drive it all. I'm here today to speak in support of both the sales tax and the online acquisition resolutions, but I'm mainly gonna focus on the latter tonight. I wanted to talk today to say how important it is to have those resources added to not just North Mac, but our other communities with BRT expansion from the sales tax referendum. It's incredibly important to be able to get to work or get to an event in Charlotte and not have to deal with I-77 or independence or any of the other clogged roadways that we currently have. With the time in between today and when the red line rolls out, there is a lot that I would love to see done that can only be done with the sales tax referendum. I'd love to see work done that focuses on improving the roads and completing the streets near stations, adding things like two-way turn lanes, protected bike lanes, adequate signaling. Work also needs to be done to ensure quality local service within the areas inside the towns and between the towns. I know North Mac is currently slated to pilot micro transit next year. While I don't personally love that service style as the solution to the problems, if it continues then it needs to address three key points, multimodal support by way of bike racks and room for wheelchair accessibility, the ability to access satellite zones such as neighbors or workplaces that are outside the traditional coverage zone that's planned, and clear real-time information for potential riders on vehicle wait times and potential occupancy for shared rides. I do hope regardless of method that service improvements do come to North Mac while we wait on the red line and I would welcome any discussion with council members who would like to reach out with me. I believe my email was put in my application to speak. Further, I want to point out that the red line as much as it is a huge progress point for Lake Norman's transit access, it's not going to be the end. I do think the option should be explored, such as Express Bus Service to and from the red line stations, to surrounding areas like maybe Denver or Concord or Moorsville. Being cross-county, these would be obviously more complicated, but they'd be very much worth it. And finally, I would love to see the city develop and retain a first party labor force during this project, as opposed to exclusively contracting it out. Directly employing workers would help to build up a labor force for this and future projects and help address costs in a long term manner. Thank you for your time and please vote in favor of both business items. I plan to take the train home so if anybody needs me, it will be in the lobby for seven to ten years. Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Our My name is Faith Strickland. I'm a bus operator for CATS. I want to highlight the benefits of the sales tax proposal currently under consideration. And in my opinion, this measure is critical. For many reasons, first, it will allow us to purchase new buses which will enhance the quality and reliability of our service. Second, it will provide funds and repair, excuse me, it will help us provide funds to repair and maintain existing buses helping us keep the buses in working condition. Third it will help us return to our pre-pandemic schedule, improving service frequency, and reducing wait times for passengers. Finally, it will support improvement for our wages. It's very important to keep dedicated and skilled staff. So by supporting this proposal, we'll help ensure that our transit system remains efficient and effective, which is essential for keeping the Charlotte Transportation Network moving smoothly. Thank you guys for your time. Thank you, Mr. Strickland. Our final speaker on this agenda item is Garland Green. Good evening. I think all of y'all are getting to know me a little bit from South Charlotte District 7. I was involved pretty extensively in a rezoning petition down there and I spoke last week to you folks as well about this issue and sent you some emails. So I think you're starting to recognize me a little bit. I'm not naive enough to think that these two petitions won't pass tonight. I think the real question is is going to be unanimous or not. From that point where do we really go and what's going to happen is going to go up to our good North Carolina state legislature and they're going to decide what needs to be done. And what I really want to take a minute or two to talk about is what's going to happen when it comes back here. I think it's just super important for the public to be well informed on this issue. Experience have found that information flows very well at the last minute. I've got a 30 page document, I printed off, that has all the details of these two issues we're talking about, but the public needs to be informed of great deal of self. And I'm asking Councilman Drake's, my Councilman Hold, a very large South Charlotte town meeting like he's done in the past. Let's try to get as many people as we can there. Let's try to inform them before they get there and give them questions to give them opportunity to ask questions and have those answers. The importance here is for the public to have knowledge and make an important informed decision. And I'm challenging each one of you in your districts to have a town hall meeting and have your constituentry very informed. I'm also going to talk about the other towns. on how meeting and have your constituentry very informed. I'm also gonna talk about the, to the other towns, been in touch with Pineville and where have you, where I live very close to, everybody needs to be informed on this so we can work together to make a decision that everybody feels comfortable about because we're asking people to take on additional tax. We've had a 1% sales tax from the city. We've had a 1% sales tax from the county. Now we're asking for another 1%. We need to understand what we're getting there and needs to be defined. What's gonna happen? I know you're gonna have a larger transit system, but what does the council support? Gray line, silver line, red line in the next immediate future. What road projects are going to be done in the next five years? People need to have an understanding of this. What bus in hand for sure are going to be done in a short term? So we can understand what we're voting on. If you consider that, I'd be most appreciative. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Green. Well, that concludes all of the speakers who have signed up to speak on this particular agenda item. And so now we're going to transition to the council discussion. And I'd like to start with the chair, Mr. Ed Drake's. Mayor Pro Tem, thank you. And I will speak to both items tonight. I think we have a couple of speakers who signed up only on the red line, but most of them are speakers that already talked about this first item. Clearly, tonight's the night, right? It's a big moment for Charlotte and there's a lot to think about. You've heard me before, so I'm going to, I hope you'll be pleased. I'm not going to repeat everything I've said. I will try to be brief. But let me just note, we've been working on this for years, right? This is not something that's happening suddenly. And Council has been brief from time to time. I have a schedule of all the touch points informing Council about the progress of discussions on the legislation and on the purchase of the red line. So I think we've had the benefit of getting that information. We've heard the terms of the red line deal. We've seen the terms of the Red Line deal. We've seen a draft of the legislation. So I hope we're all ready to make a decision tonight. And simply stated, there are two things we're voting on. The final approval of an agreement to purchase the O-line property from Northwick Southern on which the Red Line passenger service could operate is one item. And the other item is a resolution requesting that Raleigh permit Mechemburg County to conduct a referendum for a one-cent sales tax to fund mobility. But that's all the resolution says, right? So let's be clear, the resolution itself is simply do we want to ask Raleigh for permission to conduct a referendum which will not pass unless the people of Mecklenburg County like what they see. So I think in response to a lot of concerns that have been raised, that's critical to understand. And I wanted to mention also that there are a couple of things that our votes tonight, particularly on the legislation, do not do. And we need to be clear about this. The vote that we're talking about tonight does not modify the existing MTC adopted 2030 plan, right? So we're going to take this step tonight to try to get closer to the referendum. And in the course of proceeding to the referendum, we will have a robust engagement process that figures out what the best use is of the funds that we now know we are asking for that we hope to get. So the plan is not modified. Right now, as the plan stands, it still has a serval line from Matthews to Belmont. I think it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that the funding that is available to us now makes it unlikely. We're going to be able to build the server line because of the huge cost in relation to the amount of money that we have for real. And I represent that bus rapid transit is just as good. Okay, it's disappointing for people that thought there was going to be a rail line there to think about a bus rapid transit is just as good. Okay, it's disappointing for people that thought there was going to be a rail line there to think about a bus rapid transit. I would just encourage the people who are disappointed to understand that we, something is better than nothing. It would be too bad to kind of deny this entire process because it doesn't live up to the hopes and expectations even though in my mind it has a lot to offer. Another thing it doesn't do is obligate the city or the county to conduct this referendum. We are just asking for permission. May we do that? We have to know that we are going to be able to do that before it makes much sense to talk about all of the other things that we need to discuss. But that's all it says. Is it okay if we do that before it makes much sense to talk about all of the other things that we need to discuss. But that's all it says is it okay if we do that. And we're hoping they'll come back and say yes, okay if you do that. And that will be supported by the draft legislation, which as you know has in it a provision about the allocation of funds and the governance and so on. We all know what that is, But just want to be clear, the thing we're talking about tonight just says is it okay to do that. And then the other thing it does not do is beyond that high level allocation of funds 40, 20, 40, it doesn't limit us. It doesn't tell us what we can or can't do. So the state is not writing this plan for us. We are going to have a lot of latitude in the community among Mecklenburg County neighbors within Charlotte. Charlotte will have something like $108 million a year of road money to be allocated to projects within our city limits. And those are all things to look forward to. So I guess this is why you've heard me speak in support before. Three quick points to note. For one, I think it's clear it doesn't make any sense to vote for one of these two things and not vote for the other, right? I mean, they go hand in hand. The other thing is, at the end of the day, this is a simple choice between taking action and not taking action. If this gets denied, we're to get denied tonight, we would be nowhere. And the idea that maybe there's still time to kind of change it or renegotiate it or do something, no, we're up against the time limit for the Norfolk Southern thing. A huge amount of time is going into this. So we really need to stop and think if you're inclined not to support it because you have a concern that what you're looking at instead is nothing for years. It would take a long time for us to get back to where we are and I also wanted to mention just among us council members here if you vote no tonight Because you have concerns then and we forward, which I expect we will, you're going to, the time will come when this referendum comes up. And there is going to be controversy about the referendum. And people will point to us, to those of us who said no and say you didn't support this. So I just hope it happens. I've been doing this for a long time. And whether or not that bothers you. Okay. I just I Want us all to recognize that if we're able to be united on this that would be a big plus in terms of Starting the process of plan development and getting to a referendum that can succeed So that's my comments. Thank you, Madam Mayor for ten Thank you, Mayor Patten. Thank you, Mr. Driggs. And we're all gonna have an opportunity to speak on this. I'm gonna go to the Vice Chair, Ms. Molina. Thank you, Mayor Patten. First of all, I think I don't wanna, I wanna first of all say that I don't want to repeat what the Chairman has said. I think a lot of all say that I don't want to repeat what the chairman has said. I think a lot of what he stated, we've all heard to some degree and we know what we're looking at. So I want to iterate that particularly, I want to speak specifically to the residents that are District 5. Because I think that's very important and I want them to know on a premise statement that my support of this, it does not mean that I'm voting in support of BRT for the east side. It does not mean that I'm voting in support of the red line over the silver line or the blue line extension. It doesn't mean that I agree with everything that's in the draft legislation. It does not mean that I will necessarily support everything that is, you know, whatever's in the transit plan of what we end up with. What it does mean is that our community needs solutions to traffic and congestion, and our community needs significant investments in our infrastructure. And parts of the community that's been underserved historically need investment. That's the premise of my support. And so without moving these two pieces of legislation forward today, we don't have a chance to give our residents, our voters, or anyone for that matter in our city. The opportunity to have their voices heard. And if we do nothing to solve that problem, we effectively put a stop to our best chances for resolving any of those issues. I want to be clear with our community that the vote today is simply to move the conversation forward and ensure this opportunity, which our community has waited for, the entire city of Charlotte, for more than 20 years that it doesn't stop tonight with all of the work that's been put into the draft legislation and securing the possibility of Norfolk Southern. And this is not the finish line. I want to make sure that I reiterate that tonight is not the finish line. I want to make sure that I interrate that. Tonight is not the finish line. It's really just the beginning. But I want to pause there for a second because I want to shape a conversation that it's really kind of gotten off track. As the first woman of color to ever be duly elected to district five in the city's history. I want to introduce you to what it means when we say district five in E Charlotte. District five in E Charlotte is a 64% black and Hispanic community. We have one of the largest percentages of non-car owner bus ridership community members in the city. Our community members in the city. Our community members ride the bus, and we have some of the largest percentages of those humans that live in that district. We're talking about the mainstream portions of the conversation, which is the silver line, but to introduce you to precincts 201, 203, 205, we so passionately call the Far East. Those, the residents out there don't have street lights. They don't have sidewalks. Even if we could provide them a bus, we got to build them a sidewalk before we could even give them a bus. Right? So if you live in the Far East, how do you get to work? If you live in the Far East, how do you catch a bus? If you live in the Far East, what does this mean for you? And I think depending on the geography of where you're talking about when you say East Charlotte, this conversation can mean something completely diverse for you. If you live in precinct 123 or 104 or 4 or 124, where you're much further away from the independence corridor, what transportation and infrastructure investment means for you is a lot different if you live proximate than if you live proximate to, let's say, Monroe Road or Independence Boulevard. Right? And so, you know, when you're dealing with traditionally under-invested district where the average income is around $53,000, we're more than $20,000 below the county's average and earning a 93% of the humans that I represent got a job, right? And so when you start to talk about what transportation means, transportation, when you have non-car owning transit dependent humans, that may mean an opportunity for them to get to a job where they can earn more money, right? So it's really thinking long range, long view, again, when I say the area that I represent, I'm not talking about the sexy line, although that's important, because it also means in an under-invested area, traditionally what we understand as a, you know, a train line that is congruent to blue line, you get economic impact as a result of that decision. So I don't want to ignore that particular truth. I just want to expand the consideration to say that District 5 is a tapestry, a rich fabric of more than 70% of the most diverse humans in our city. Right? And I mean, I'm going to to my home horn and say that I am the district. If you talk about black and Hispanic, I am the district, 64% of the humans that live in that district are either black or Spanish-speaking Latino. Right? We have an additional 6% that's Asian and we have an additional almost 5% that's in that district are either black or Spanish-speaking Latino, right? We have an additional 6% that's Asian, and we have an additional almost 5% that's elder. That's more than 70% minority and also under-invested and from a transportation perspective, more than 10,000 humans on a weekly basis used our transit systems on a weekly basis, which is substantial when you consider an impact of 40,000 citywide. I'm talking about our community members use transportation. And so when you talk about an overall impact and the ability to impact people and we look at this comprehensively, it goes beyond just the silver line conversation. And that's what I want to implore upon you all as we continue to develop what we say when we mean district five in East Charlotte. Because when I was initially duly elected to take this position, the first thing I did was I wanted to understand the fabric of what it meant. And as I learned, I held a town hall, you know, to learn. I heard people saying, why don't we have jobs? And so I got with our economic development community, or our economic development department in Mecklenburg counties, and I held a town hall. And they talked about when we were in our last planning session, decade ago, and how E Charlotte was actually planned. And we don't have the access to highways that businesses prefer that would in turn attract jobs to us. So the infrastructure is more conducive for living, right? We have an abundance of housing options and we don't have the ability to attract jobs because there's not sufficient proximity to highways. But what if we are able to provide transit because that's the only solution, that's the only solution I've found since I've set in this job. If we can't bring jobs to East Charlotte, we must find ways to get humans in East Charlotte to jobs. So transportation has always been in the back of my mind, always been a necessary solution, and always been a comprehensive need when it comes to the tapestry that is the East Charlotte fabric. So I want to make sure that I paint that picture effectively. And again, this is not the finish line. This is really just the beginning before tonight. And in the decades up to this point, we've really just imagined possibility. But now we have a potential structure to which we can make plans for if this referendum is in fact approved by the voters of Mecklenburg County. Or essentially, we are allowed the permission to put the referendum before the voters of Mecklenburg County. So I just, I want to implore that. And as far as actually it's one person who spoke, Chris Wallace, I see you. I think to have a transit dependent human come and speak to us, I think it's important for us to hear that perspective and have him, and Jack, and have our cats, you know, operators, bus operators come here and give us their perspective and they're not paid to come here. They came on their own accord, which I think it's very important because they are, they are absolutely necessary to this conversation. So I will hold there and like I said, I just want to reiterate to the people who are listening to me knowing that the silver line conversation is one that has been the most popular in the news, introducing you to the 28 precincts and the entire tapestry that is, each Charlotte is very important. And from a representation perspective and the diversity of our need, you know, I am looking at the full scope of possibility to create impact in what we call e-Charlotte in District 5. So I'll digress there and thank you so much, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Molina. We will move to Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. So this is a tough vote as most votes are that we that we deal with. We have to acknowledge that people are hurting. People are hurting due to the property tax increase by the city, the county inflation. We know that people are hurting, and we need to acknowledge that. This vote tonight is to purchase the rail line and to move forward with getting this tax on the ballot. This will allow residents in Charlotte to make that decision in 2025. They'll be able to make that decision. While we do acknowledge that people are hurting and it's very important, I would be remiss if I didn't say, I could pull my original campaign materials and I've committed to affordable housing, public accountability, and responsible development. And I believe that this tax is a solution. This is the solution to help to balance the infrastructure. I championed the first infrastructure meeting to have these discussion. So I believe as the District 4 representative, this is a, it's a huge benefit for District 4. And while the citizens will make that final decision, the improvements that this will allow, the pedestrian improvements, the traffic improvements, mallard Creek improvements, and North Lake improvements, the last mile solution from the blue line to the research area, which is a huge job driver in the district four, this is a solution. So for council, it's a challenge because we recognize that individuals, we recognize the burden that many individuals do bear, but this also from an equitable perspective will allow improvements to transportation to get to work. And it's a big decision. The voters will decide, but this is a tax. The vote tonight, I will be supporting. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. We will move to Ms. Whitelington. I will always support the opportunity for the public to decide for themselves so I will be supporting. Thank you, Mr. Graham. I'll take all of her time. So I got about 20 minutes, right? I love it. Yeah, I'll plus the seat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not another good example. So thank you, Madam Mayor Protim. And let me start off also by thanking Chairman Drake for his leadership as well as the City of Manjure on this initiative. I made a lot of phone calls as I told Ed this morning to a wide variety of state leaders, mirrors of the small towns, council members of the small towns, and they always said, I just got through talking to Ed and so I know Ed's been out there doing the work for this committee and for the council and the manager for his leadership. When I got back to council the second time around, I said I wanted to do baked things, right? And this is a baked thing for our community and our region. Regionalism can't be just a buzz word, it must be action. And certainly when we talk about transportation, connectivity, mobility, you can't talk about any of those things without talking about jobs and housing and housing patterns with an overlay of public safety, we'll all of it of it right so this is how we move the region the airport is how we move the region how we work and connect to one another is how we grow and move the region from one of the fastest growing regions in the country. And so for that reason, from a foundational perspective, I'm going to support it based on that. Now, I clearly understand the devil's and the details. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about some details at a very high level. The manager knows where I stand, Mr. Drake's no where I stand as well. But certainly the policy and the perspective of the vision for what we're trying to do unlocks a whole lot right we get the the one cent sales tax hopefully is passed by the voters we get a federal match we get a lot of the dollars necessary to do the infrastructure improvement necessary not only for the city of Charlotte, but for the whole region. I'm a component of consolidation. I make no bones about it. And I don't think that's going to happen, but certainly by creating this regional authority that governs how we connect with one another, it's a small step forward towards that. And so it's really important to me that as we go along this path, that we do it right, and that we hear the voices of a whole lot of people in our region and reference to what we're doing. As the former State Senator who represented Davis and Coneeus in Huntersville who fought for the red line for many, many years. I'm so excited for their patients and they have one, right? They waited a long time and they finally got what I think they needed. And it's a great need for the City of Charlotte because it brings a connectivity between those towns to opt-town Charlotte in a meaningful way. And I think that's really, really exciting for everyone. But we got to make sure that everybody feels that they're getting something out of this. And so that leads me to some of the political decisions that were made along the way that impacted other communities like E. Charlotte and Matthews. The changing of the percentages between roads and transit created the deficit to do a transit to Matthews. I record the supporting transit to Matthews. Not a bus, I think transit provides more economic development opportunities. It carries more people. When you look at Matthews and Charlotte in 2050, 2016, not 2024, a bus may be an out-use model for moving people around. And so I think we're going to make this big investment and public transportation and investment in our future. I think we need to think broad and wide and expansive. And so hopefully the conversation about the type of transportation mode to Matthews is not over. That we have not decided that this is what they're going to get. I believe that there's more conversations to be had. I mean, for an example, when I chaired the Transportation Appropriation Committee, it was a 50 match where the City of Charlotte gave 25% the state of North Carolina contributed 25% and we got the federal match under this scenario. I don't see any dollars coming from Raleigh to support what we're doing. And so hopefully as we move further we love that they will be on this hypothetical authority and that they're bringing their expertise by their appointment powers. I hope they will bring their pocketbook too because it is mechman for accounting that creates many of the tax dollars that support other communities outside of our area throughout the state of North Carolina. So hopefully they will also look at this as an investment in themselves. And so hopefully Mr. Manager, as we have these further conversations with our state partners, I'm not sure of those conversations we already had because we weren't participating in those that certainly state funding for a regional transportation network on authority is not a foreign concept and it shouldn't be a foreign concept. And it's so hopefully having those conversations as we move forward, understand there's other hurdles that we have to clear first, right? By getting the legislation for them to approve in 2024, which may be problematic. If this is going to happen at all this year, I'm cautiously optimistic that it will, but I'm not sure. Then, McLeanborough County has to pit it it on the ballot and then the voters have to vote in favor of it. And so there's a lot of moving parts with this. A lot of this conversation for me is like, and talking with others is like when we were in college and people read the cliff notes and not the book. And so people have a really surface level understanding of what we're doing. But when you read the, and it goes more Mr. Dragg's than just asking for one sentence, lays out the complete authority. And the roles and responsibilities and the appointment powers. So it's a 31-page document. So it's very detailed and as a state senator, you never read the clip notes, you read the whole bill, right? And so I think it's important that everyone, even this community, begins to understand each and every word, sentence, phrase, period, and what we're asking the legislators to do. And I guess I'll ask the open question. They can do anything they want to do, and what if the bill comes back in the way that we don't like. And whether we do here locally, right, just don't mean all the question they can do what they want to do. And lastly, it's process, right? I'm a process guy. I like watching track and field, especially the hurdles, because you've got to clear each hurdle to get to the finish line. And there are a number of hurdles that we still have to clear. And it only can be clear that we have great processes that advise community engagement, that advice councils impede, that provides a space for council to exercise. It's the authority to negotiate with our regional partners and not be ashamed or bashful to say that there are things that are important to us. The goal line is important to me. I don't want to leave that up the chance and reference to whether or not West Charlotte, East Charlotte, that goal, the street cars going to be continued. Right? Now we're spending $4.8 million for preliminary engineering design. I want to know that that's going to be done. Right? The Opton Gateway Station is really important to me. We've been talking about that for years and notwithstanding the funding is tied up to this, we just made a big investment in Bank of America, stadium where we have to get people to games. We got to move people there. And so rather than not this pass us a nut, we still have to keep our eye on what it is that we're doing, right? And we still have to operate to system on the day to day basis. And so while I understand that we need just one cent, I support it. I'm extremely happy that we're going to buy the train set. I think that's really important, but we cannot create winners and losers. And we have to respect the jurisdiction of others in terms of what they see their future is, right? And I'm not saying that we shouldn't say that math. You shouldn't advocate for what they believe they want, which is a transit. And they should be thankful that they're hearing a bus. I'm not sure that's the message we want to send. Right. So and then lastly and I'll close on this and I'm using my time now in Victoria for our usual. I'm on my time now. I just you know we can't have any more surprises as a council, right? I can't wake up and listen to the radio and hear that there's an authority that's already been written on paper. There's a 31-page document that's out there that's talking about legislation that no one is seeing as a council. We just cannot have that happen again because again, I think our constituents are expecting us to be leading the process and not following the process. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Mayfield. Thank you. I have some questions. So well really not a question, a statement, Mr. Manager. I do agree that we need to start somewhere. The only thing that I ask and I am stating this mainly for the record. I do want to go on record to ensure that my request is for future councils to be in the position necessary to make the necessary decisions. Mainly, I do not want them to be in a position where we move forward today. We have the support of Raleigh and they give us the ability to go to the community. I don't want a future council to feel like they need to rubber stamp. Yes, we need to move forward with this without asking whatever questions they need to ask. I do agree with the comment that was made by Mr. Wallace regarding a direct labor force. That's a different conversation. That's a conversation we can't even have to let us so whether it is members that are currently sitting here or future members, I want them to have the ability to have that conversation and be clear with what we're taking to the community. I also want to make sure that that community engagement is very intentional. We have done community engagement a number of different ways. I would personally not like for future council or any members of this council to be in a position that we were earlier this year with a very important decision. It was also a very costly decision. There was community engagement but it was limited and it was in a short window of time. We had a number of people that spoke today but we've also had a number of people that have reached out to us during just this council cycle regarding bus access regarding bus breakdowns bus delays. If we are going to go to the community once we move forward from this discussion and ask the community to support this additional cost I want to have it on record that my request is to ensure we have as much community engagement in multiple ways as possible. I looked up over the weekend what was shared with us regarding where conversations were held and trying to utilize the mobility map when you scan it. That's not as accessible as you would think it is. There's a spot in there where you put your address in you. The idea is when you put in your address in that map, then the map will tell you it should direct you whether you're Northwest Northeast whatever and when the meetings happen. That's not necessarily how it works. So for those who know how to work it, it's great. Well, we have a number of members in our community that still do not have access to internet or that are learning how to use the internet through some of our partners. I want to ensure as we move forward, because we need to have the conversation and we have to get started somewhere. I just want to make sure that it is very clear that in this decision tonight to support how we move forward, we are not making any commitments of what the final ask is going to be to the community and that there is a clear path for the community to be engaged and for any future counsel going into 2025 have the ability to ask the questions and or look at making adjustments on what is proposed so that it aligns with our community needs because we are rapidly growing and rapidly changing community. I want us to have the flexibility to make the adjustments as needed. Thankira. Thank you. Mr. Anderson. As an Eastside resident, a former District File Council member, and a product of public bus system, this has been a difficult decision for me. Especially with a 40% cap on light rail projects. And we all know, even though the decision has not been made about the silver line, we all know that there is a math problem here. That silver line from uptown to math use will not be delivered as it was promised. While I understand the political reality here, I've talked to a number of legislators. And I've been told the choices between nothing versus what is presented. And that's a difficult decision to have to make. But I think about a young woman, a 16-year-old, whose family did not have a car for many years. And woke up at 6.30 a.m. took the bus, went to the college, did work study jobs, then went to the classes, and took the bus back home because there were more frequent bus system in Rancho Cucamonga, California. And then, took the bus back, connecting bus back to work, came home at 11 p.m. All of this was possible because of the public bus system that ran every 15 to 20 minutes. So when Mr. Walker, when you in your speech, when you talked about people carrying perishable food. You spoke to me, because that was my story. I remember when my parents were carrying grocery bags, number of grocery bags from the store, my little sister would actually wait at the bus stop to help them take the grocery bags home before milk will go back. So when I think about that, 16-year-old, I think about how our public bus system will get a huge boost that will drastically improve our service, especially in our local bus system. So when I make decision today, I think about that young woman who couldn't have gone to two jobs, who could not have had multiple classes, and whose parents would not have been able to bring groceries home without the public bus system. So I will be making a decision in support of that even though this is a tough one for me on the East side, Carolyn Millen, Jordan Lopez, Moira community, former representatives, John Archie. And I understand and I actually share some of their frustration because many of them have participated, including myself in the silver line discussion, which is a billion dollar, billion dollar plus investment. So I share some of their concerns and they are valid. So what I would like to see is when we have our 12 board appointments from the city of Charlotte, that the east side has equal and equitable representation on that board. And that decision is up to the council to make. And I hope that as we make decisions on that, as we make decisions about those appointments, we are ensuring that there is strong voice and representation from Charlotte East, from East Wayshawfield, and from Murak community leaders who have long waited for Silverline how participated in numbers and numbers of forums. Because I think those voices are very important as we continue to find an alternative. When you talk about BRT, that it is bus rapid transit, that it is that BRT that is going to truly address traffic and congestion issues. Also, I don't want to miss out on this opportunity where we leverage $6 billion of federal funds. So while this decision has taken me weeks to arrive at, many sleepless nights, I'm only making this decision because I have been in the situation, where I have benefited from public transportation. And I look forward to supporting both items today. Red line purchase as well as the legislation authorizing a referendum. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Eddishmira. Mr. Bakari. Thank you. There are three reasons why I cannot support tonight's items at this point. And I'm finding consensus and rally on a lot of these, which should give us all pause. The first one is the thought of raising taxes in our current economy on the heels of just having raised taxes. It doesn't mean that that is not something that we can contemplate. It just means we have to be precise and very thoughtful with what we do as we're doing that, because the stakes are very high with this kind of regressive tax. Which then leads me into point number two, the lack of defined roads of the future plan and that planning, actually existing at this point. We think about it in context of where we've been. We have spent decades and decades with armies of professionals analyzing things like the blue and the silver line, all on light rail. Yet when we sit here and look at how much time we've spent on not compiling a backlog list of roads, but what are we going to do with this massive sum of money that is going to be dedicated to our roads of the future, it's a promise at this point. And I think that this is an item that whether you are kind of on one end of the spectrum or another, I think no matter where you fall in that, if we're going to spend this amount of money on roads, we don't just want a backlog of roads that need to be addressed. We should envision what the future of that looks like, and we haven't done that yet. Now, the reality is this won't happen before if 70 things happen in consecutive order of of miracles this goes to vote. So there's no reason in sitting there and saying okay well until we get that we're not going to do it we have to make a jump forward and it's something that I can jump past even though it makes me very uncomfortable but that leads into number three, the third reason why I can't support this tonight. And that's a governance model that has been made before us right now more as a product of interlocal negotiations than strategically setting this community up for long term sustainable success. This governance model is everything right now. It is everything and how we decide to go down this path. And we don't need dozens of friends of politicians being appointed to govern the spending of $20 billion. We need a smaller group of our best and our brightest, those with the exact skill sets that we need, and we need a re-engagement of the senior business leaders of this region today like we used to have in decades past. That is a recipe for success. So there is one thing that nearly everyone, including myself, agrees on. Charlotte is in desperate need of a transformational investment in our transportation. That goes without saying. But I'll just kind of mention several people that I have great respect for, kind of summed up, the sentiment of perfection is the enemy of progress. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. But then you have to put the right lens on that as well. Getting the money is not the finish line. It's the starting line. And how we spend it will determine the ultimate progress or failure of this entire mission. So while perfection is indeed the enemy of progress, I would probably say in this spirit here, precision is the enemy of failure. And right now we are setting ourselves up for failure by not being precise in our design of this governance model. So I plan on working closely with and holding out hope that the General Assembly can fix the flaws that exist in the current governance structure, and bring forth an option that those with my concerns will be able to get behind. And in doing so, help the majority caucus in Raleigh potentially support this as well, which is not a foregone conclusion. Thank you, Mr. Baclarit. Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mayor Proton. I really appreciate it. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to address my concerns until I echo Councilmember Mayfield on Community Engagement and making sure that our community is fully engaged. Before I get started, for people contemplating on what I'm gonna do, I will be supporting, but I want to share my concerns with transparency, concerns in the past, being the person to stand out for community and making sure that we move forward the agenda in their eyes. Authentically, they put us in these positions so we need to make sure that they're engaged. But my heart is open when I see cats, drivers out here, three of them, my recollection serves me correct. Fight for them all the time in our agenda and our meetings and things that they do. Their position, when they go out and drive every day or if they're working behind the scenes, we have to do something different for someone. I know I lived in Charlotte for 53 years, specifically in District 3. I can definitely relate to Council Member Eschermir, public transportation, that's all we had if we had that. But I remember when Kat Shusu come in front of my grandmother's house on the corner of Remout Road in West Boulevard. And we just walked out the house and the bus stop was there. I'm going to be a part of the big picture. As Dr. Watleton said, she's going to allow the constituents to make their decision. That's what my vote is doing. Truly standing in support. I'm going to be a part of the bigger picture. Dr. Watleton said she's going to allow the constituents to make their decision. That's what my vote is doing, truly standing in solidarity with District 3 and all of the city of Charlotte. I also hear Mr. Garland loud and clear. I learned a lot from his emails responding to him and communicating with him on every detail and aspect of how he felt. He stood in front of us tonight and expressed his concerns or not having a small window for community to express their concerns when we're voting on something as large as this. Charlotte is going at a very rapid pace. I don't know the number someone said 117 per day. Looks like to me 300, 400 people moving here daily. The roles I congested, 160 is congested. I drive from downtown Charlotte to 160 everyday, going to Steel Creek, passing Remount Road and West Boulevard, which is my foundation, my upbringing, which a lot of my family still live there and still use public transportation. It is my foundation, my upbringing, which a lot of my family still live there and still use public transportation. It is my hope when I listened to Mr. Weardardin who was just amazing from Urban Promise Charlotte. And then I did my research sitting here. That is who I can identify with when it comes to serving and upliftlifting community. He didn't leave anybody out. He touched basis for every single person in this city. And that's what I hope this transportation would do. I hope that it will allow the little children that rise to catch us now with their parents. And that's the only method of transportation that they have that it will sweep down through West Boulevard, Remount Road, Nation 4 Road, Columbus Circle, all of those areas that I serve that are oppressed and low income, as well as going down to Steel Creek where a bus just goes past. I think the outlets that may be in Rivergate, but I'm going to be a team player tonight. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to vote to move it forward, and I'm going to be adamant in community engagement, and making sure that we're authentic and transparent. And if you don't believe me, try me. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brown. We will move on to Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I'm a father, Councilmember Brown, I'm saying right off the bat, I will be supporting items one and two, so this is, don't guess what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna start off the first part by thanking some key people. One is our city manager for taking this type of bold leadership and not being determined all the bumps that was in the road along the way. I want to think Liz Batson, Brent K. Go Jason, and I called him Professor McKinley for Ed's leadership and out his mobility investment. Then as I call Lee, Edger Eggs, Councilman Graham mentioned you call everybody in the Mechaburg County and surrounding town. They've already spoken to Ed Dries. Ed, I want to thank you for your passion and your strong leadership in spite of some bad days that you had. Let me thank the citizens that were here today to give your passion testimony. And for the business community who's always been there for us in Raleigh and here locally to clear the city's a priority for our community. And there's something unique about this opportunity I think we have to pause and think about. In the short session, it's hard to get stuff voted on in Raleigh. We have a unique opportunity in the short session to get the authorization to put this on November 20, 25 ballot. I saw the vision in 2015 when Michael Smith and Jennifer Mayor Jennifer Robbins took about 100 of us to Denver, Colorado. And I saw a regional transit system there, and that reason the transit system had the biggest city Denver had been an intricate part of a regional discussion. And when I left there, we coming back first thing, I said, why can't that be us? Why not Charlotte been a big city part of a regional transportation system? And I think we're going gonna look at this differently. I think Denver really was about moving people to all my colleagues mentioned earlier, but we're gonna do something different. Cause I know council member Mayfield's gonna be passionate about affordable housing at those stops we have. I know that councilman Johnson gonna make sure in district four, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure is gonna be placed there. Then my past has always been about minority participation in economic development. So don't look at this as strictly a transit system. Look at us of being transformative if we be proactive in the city we love and call Charlotte. I had a conversation with one of my dear colleagues on the county commission of the commission of Lee Alkman and Lee and I were talking about how do we move this forward and I say Lee I'm looking for people that are for progress. That's how we move this forward. People who are committed for progress in our region. So thank you all, it's not over, but I'm here to say let's move this forward. Thank you, Mayor Protein. Thank you, thank you Mr. Mitchell. And I will say it's been a pleasure to work on this effort with Mr. Mitchell and I will say it's been a pleasure to work on this effort with Mr. Driggs and Mr. Mitchell on the small group. We've dedicated a good chunk of our summer to this and we've been working on this for months. But we're at a historical moment. This is a historical moment for both of these agenda items that we're facing tonight. And I've always said that growth is a privilege and we need to be great stewards of our growth. And unlocking a revenue source of this kind that could really activate our transformational transportation plans and allow along with us the rest of the towns and the county to do the same is just a tremendous moment that I know many, many council pass council members are excited that we're here. There's a lot to be done. Of course, we have to have tremendous public engagement and I'm fully committed to that. But to have the opportunity to put forward something to our community to say, we really have to invest in transportation. Do you agree? Let's get started is wonderful and I'm happy to be a part of it. The other thing that I would like to just point out is, you know, years ago when we had the Chetty study and everyone was shocked and surprised that we were 50 out of 50. And now we have the update on that study and we're at 38 out of 50, which is progress. But Chetty himself has been very clear that the way you really drive inclusion and equitable outcomes is to have a robust public transportation system that's multimodal. It's something that is a national understanding and for Charlotte to be the 14th largest city in the country and we know we're only going to continue to grow. We need to do all of the heavy lifting to ensure that we are standing up as robust of a public transportation system that will remove people to jobs out of job deserts that will allow families to save significantly on their monthly economic pie by not having to invest in a car, in the maintenance and insurance and all of those things that come along with car ownership, but they can invest those dollars as they see fit back into their family. So this is a transportation vote, but I view it more as an economic development vote. And I think it's incredibly salient for our community that we be great stewards of how we stand up this public transportation system. And we're a big city and big cities make big decisions. And we need to have the intestinal fortitude to make big decisions and represent our residents in a way that we know will benefit them moving forward. So I think we have had everyone speak on this particular agenda item. I did have a motion by Mr. Driggs and a second by Ms. Molina. And so unless there is anything else, I believe we're at a moment where we can go ahead and vote. So all in favor of adopting agenda item number one as it stated in our agenda please raise your hands. Any opposed? Okay that is merely unanimous. Yeah, poor town. Yes Mr. Drinks. I appreciate that we have come together like this. I think it's appropriate to point out to our friends in the legislature. They have made very clear to me and to us that trying to get this done this year is a big lift, okay? So I look forward to engaging with them, but I just want to be sure to send the message. We are hopeful, but we're not taking anything for granted as far as being able to get something done this year. I think if it's not possible, we will work on the legislation with them. Maybe we'll have something ready in the beginning of the long session. And yes, they may very welcome back and say no, we're not going to do that. But we would be willing to do this. At that time, we will look at whatever this is and decide whether that's something we want. So the important thing is to get the conversation going and I appreciate the willingness of legislators to engage with us. Thank you, Mr. Driggs. And I also would like to thank the public for coming out in particular, our cats drivers. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your time. Very, very insightful statements by all of you. So thank you. Was there something Ms. Brown? Mr. Driggs. All right. Mr. Driggs is highly intelligent. though he and I often don't have some of the same views. This is an example of teamwork. You owe me. You did a good job. You did a good job. All right, so we are going to move on to agenda item number two and it it is the Norfolk Southern corridor acquisition for cats red line communal rail project now I'm going to read the entire motion of spoken with the clerk. I need to read the entire motion and then we'll have the motion and again We will hear from the public Before we have our comment period. So is there a motion to approve the purchase of approximately 22 miles of the O line railroad right of way? Track improvements and other real property rights from Charlotte to the Mecklenburg County line in the amount of $74 million. I'll move. Second. Let me, let me, thank you though, being approved the purchase of approximately 1.6 acres of real property and any associated real property rights located near the Charlotte Gateway Station in the amount of $17 million. See, authorize the city manager and negotiate and execute the comprehensive rail agreement. E, authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute an escrow agreement for the transitional self insurance coverage in the amount of $10 million and F. Adopt a budget ordinance appropriating $101 million from the municipal debt service fund to the general capital projects fund. Second, I have a motion and a second. Wait a minute. For items A through F. And with that, we will go ahead into our public comment phase. And Miss Wright, did I understand that you did not want to speak again this time around? Okay, because you were first on the list. Okay. Mr. Ackendale, did you want to speak again? Mr. Corbin Smith? Absolutely, you're on the list. And- And- And- And- And- And- And- And- And- And- And- And- And- And just as before you have three minutes. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, so obviously I'm wearing a red line out. I'm very excited to see this project go forward. And just thinking about that, $93 million for 20 miles of ride away. That's a great deal. It's a screaming deal. A deal you should would be nuts not to take. But just in addition to that, I think it's remarkable because it's one of the first examples at least that I can see where we have a shared right away between freight and passenger, because I understand the Norfolk Southern will be retaining some of the freight rights on this line. Now we're of course here not just to talk about the proposals that are on the table today, but the doors that they can open for tomorrow and some of the possibilities that can open up. We often talk about why the fact that the trial is growing. We don't often talk about why it's growing. Texas right now is the country's economic heart. A lot of that is because of integration with Mexico. Mexico is going to be the largest trading partner of ours and through a lease of 2040s. And that has created effects all throughout the South, especially including here. It means that we are probably gonna see a lot more freight moving through this area. A lot of it's probably gonna move by train. We have a lot of train lines, in fact, the Chris Cross Charlotte, a lot of them that are gonna have to be upgraded. And in that, looking at this, there is a potential opportunity. For instance, currently Amtrak Service runs right past the airport. That'd be wonderful if we could put a station there if we had agreement with the relevant railroads. Or let's talk about Matthews. There is the seaboard airline, which now on by CSX, which goes directly to their town center, in fact, they used to have a station there, used to run, train, service, and to Charlotte. So if we can get this deal with Norfolk Southern, I am very excited about the prospect of what other deals we can make with other railroads. Can we make some negotiations with them saying, hey, we'll help you build out the rail capacity you need for tomorrow if you also allow us to run passenger trains along that. I see a lot of possibilities in that. I see a lot of possibilities for us to do that in a very cost effective way. So obviously I am in support of this acquisition. I think you should all vote for it. But I'd also like to open up the possibility for others if we can in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Mr. Horms, did you want to speak again? Okay, thank you. Mr. Bowen, would you like to speak again? You're on the list. You see, present? No, now bowing. Okay. All right. Next on the list, Mr. Walker, author Walker, would you get to the podium, you'll have three minutes. Thank you one and all for allowing me to be here tonight and put in my two cents worth. I'm Jim Fetturo, a long time resident of Charlotte and a long time supporter of public transportation. I'm speaking behalf of the purchase of the old line and turning it into a red line. One thing I want to bring out is the dollars of the situation. So recently, Norfolk Southern bought another rail line that ran from Chattanooga to Cincinnati. 336 miles and they paid $1.6 billion for that. That worked out to 4.7 million per mile. We're under contract, I guess, to pay for 22 miles, only 3.36 million per mile for a total of 74 million. That's a bargain in anybody's book. And I think we need to jump as quick as we can before Norfolk Southern changes their mind. When I saw the price I was flabbergasted knowing that Norfolk Southern doesn't give away anything cheap. If we wanted to create a right away, parallel I-77, because we could not purchase the oil line, it would be in the billions of dollars and wouldn't be feasible so I think it's a great opportunity and we need to jump on it I also know that the state of North Carolina has reached many benefits by owning the North Carolina railroad and by the city of Charlotte and Mechemburg owning the O line we'll to read many similar benefits so I urge us to proceed with all haste to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next little Mrs. Ruth Darden, Ms. Will Prenner. Okay. All right. Russell Wingard is next. I've been preparing for this since noon today, so excuse me if I'm a little scattered and have ideas coming here there and everywhere. I know I'm not pretty enough to break up this wedding and say don't do the red line. What's going to go through? So let's get on board with the future. Using this for 200 and 20 year old technology is going to repeat history. We need to look back what happened a hundred years ago. We had a train line that ran from downtown to the edge of town. The automobile came along and buried it. That train had been in operation for 40 years. A better system came along and that thing went away. Charlotte was built on the backbone of automobiles. It came into existence during the 20th century. We now live in the 21st century, we're a quarter of the way through. My grandfather was born 125 years ago, back when there were carts and trucks on dirt roads. So what we need to do with that right of way and it's a beautiful piece of right of way It can be used to create the future Tesla is in a tunnel Give that right of way to the people that know how to use it most efficiently because what's going on is We are going to be competing with the automobile industry and technology. They currently are spending $35 billion a year to automate driving. Five years from now, they will be investing $93 billion. What? They are trying to bury the system that we now have in place. When cars can zip up and down the center line of i-77 and those toll roads at hyper speeds, what are you going to do? Are you going to drive to a train station? No, you're not going to do that. I've been to Singapore. They have micro buses that take you from place to place. There you get on something that takes you faster. These things can actually integrate using what is it? Artificial intelligence. Our artificial intelligence can create things that currently, have you ever seen a drone swarm? There are a thousand flying vehicles forming things in the sky. They're flying. They're not just driving on a two-dimensional plane. They are coordinating thousands of vehicles in the air to think that we can't do that five years from now or 10 years from now is you're betting our money against all the greatest minds at Google, the car factories, there are a medic in auto-tomorrow's autonomous vehicles out on the streets today in many cities around the world. That's what we're competing against. Let's make a good system. Thanks for coming. No one heard you. I speak from experience. My friend. Thank you. Our next. Thanks for coming. No one heard you. I speak from experience. My friend. Thank you. Our next speaker is Chris Wallace. Good evening again. Good evening again. I'd like to first say, wholeheartedly, I do support and agree with the idea that this acquisition is a complete bargain and a no-brainer on the money front. I would like to point out a slight contradiction with the previous speaker that we won't be using 220-year-old steam engines for this. We'll be using modern diesel engines going above 90 miles an hour because the track will be largely rebuilt to be double track though as much as possible. And the reason why the automobile buried the train in this regard is not because Charlotte was built for cars. Charlotte, like pretty much every modern American city, was built along railroads. The southern railroad from here to Gastonia, the NC Railroad Company mainline from here to Raleigh all the way to Morehead City for our Deepwater port. Nothing in this city was really built along highways except for a few casino towns. And we're not rolling back any innovations, we were correcting mistakes. When you have to dedicate a 10-foot by 14-foot area to transport one, maybe two and a half people on average, they're not going to be zipping down anything. They're going to be stuck. They're going to have to get stuck in funnels as they move from these hyper-speed lanes to our city streets. Nothing is going to move at hyper speed on Charlotte streets without, you know, turning pedestrians into mush. Having, trying to spend this money on technology, we don't know if or when it'll exist, is it's a ridiculously unsound concept. We're talking about technology has been proven and refined for 220 years, not something that is in concept state by marketing executives. So I would say that wholeheartedly rail is the way forward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Parker Garrison is next. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem, Council members and distinguished guests. I'm Parker Garrison and I'm here in favor of acquiring the rail from Charlotte to make more men to run commuter service. So raise your hand if you know that there is four to five times daily service already in North Carolina between Charlotte and Raleigh. In fact, since Fistley or 2019 to 2023, train service has increased by 39% in the state, while many other transit agencies are struggling, and trains regularly sell out two days in advance. In fact, we broke ground this summer on a 125 mile per hour train coming out of Rowling. So first in support of the red line, I would say that it's important to add a camp north end stop. I got to experience camp north end this weekend at the around the Crown 10k etsybo, and I were surprised to see so many people who weren't even there for the 5,000 person etsybo packing the streets around the area. It would definitely pay for itself to add a stop along the existing line. Tutariot commuters, the current plan of having a 30-minute headway should be improved. Studies have shown that with headways below 15 minutes, that people can show up without having to look at a schedule. If we, for example, had two trains arriving just before 8 a.m. separated by 10 or 12 minutes, then even some gaps and then having again two trains arriving right before 9 a.m. Then people would be able to show up and get predictable service. gaps and then having again two trains arriving right before 9 a.m. Then people would be able to show up and get predictable service. Wouldn't have to wait 29 minutes for the nets train. Would be easier to plan their mornings out. And would help us attract ridership. It's also a good feature of this train that they're already planning to have midday and evening service. That's a limiting factor why many people can't rely on existing transit in the city. One other point I would like to mention is the planned terminus of most these red line trains at Gateway Station. Well it's important to get some service over no service at all. I would say that we should look at future improvements on possibly connecting the whole city with one transit hub as we currently are doing at the CTC. In fact, actually the tracks of the blue line train runs on now were the site of a former train station in Charlotte many decades ago and what's now the epicenter would be a great neighbor of getting people to where most of the jobs are in the area could help revitalize that epicenter that was just auctioned off from the original owners at a 20% loss and we also have that space above the Charlotte Transportation Center which there have been many proposals on what to do with it. This could be one of them and it could complement whatever businesses or services are added to that area. Transit experts have said that many cities have two nodes, so building a separate gateway station has been done before, but it's not ideal. Thank you. You've featured time. We greatly appreciate your comments. And if you have anything in writing, you can give it to the clerk. The next speaker is mr. Fred Griffin. Oh no his time was used up. Madam Mayor Pro Tem Anderson and Councilmembers, I want to thank you for your time tonight and your dedicated service to our city of Charlotte. I name Fred Griffith with the EC Griffith Company and Griffith Real Estate Services. I'm 64 years old in a Charlotte TN for all that time, old enough to have cheered for the blue line and watched the explosive growth of the tax basis. And I'm now here cheering for the red line for the second time. This is amazing and more than monumental. Twenty years ago, our company designed and zoned 400 acres that sits at the Harris station across from Davis Lakes. We are presently underway with a relationship with toll brothers. They are building 760 houses and we have 160,000 square feet of retail to go. And there, we also, in 2007, we re-zoned the whole piece and had 80 acres of TOD, transit-oriented development, that sat in mouthballed and we said, you know what? This may or may not come. And I will tell you, nine months ago, it was not coming, right? Norfolk Southern was not saying a word to us and then magically they came around. And I want to tell you that this, the TOD that we have that was owned in 2007 has 1766 residential units in it that we are capable of building. It has half a million square feet of corporate office that global and regional and national companies can come and be located on a red line. And we have 200,000 square feet of retail in that area. And I just wanna say that what we've done is we've sparked something in taking this leap in the regional opportunities of going north to the county. We know our Dale County is likely to join us and go even further and far beyond. But I just wanna tell you that I hope that we can all catch the red line commuter train together. And that's my hope. I will tell you one other thing since the bell hadn't run. When I was cheering for the blue line and spoke for the city council, I was with family up outside of Chicago. I rode the metro from St. Charles, actually Geneva, Illinois, into Ogleville, V. Station, walked with my six and eight year old to the Red Line. It no lie. The Red Line up there goes to Addison to Rigglyfield. And so we were so happy to be on a train and then get on another train. I rest my case. It's all about the trains. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Our final speaker on this item is Keith Stanley. Good evening, good evening. Keith Stowell with University City Partners. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, thank you, City Manager and Council Members for this opportunity to speak on behalf of these items. And thank you all for your leadership and public transportation. We've seen how this billion dollar investment made in the blue line extension and how it's connected to the University City to the rest of the city, as well as positive trends made of a transit-ar rotated development support, what we see as growth in University City. University City's departments actually supports both items as proposed in this evening's agenda and the funny and opportunity that unlocks for the growth and demand of the growing parts of University City and Charlotte infrastructure. University City will benefit from the investment and we look forward to continue to connect Northeast Charlotte to the rest of the city. Thank you for your time and your consideration. Speaking aspect of this particular agenda item and so we're going to move into Council's comment and I will start again with the chair, Mr. Driggs. So I don't think there's a lot more to say. I'll just comment on the fact that we are Charlotte is making a big investment here on behalf of all the members of the MTC. We're taking a bit of a risk. I think it's a manageable risk. I believe the terms of the transaction are fair to us. So I just hope our partners appreciate the fact that we are putting our money out there in order for all of us to be able to proceed. And I look forward to your support for the red line. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Molina. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I echo the sentiment. I think first I'd start with thank you, Mr. Manager. I know that this is a bold move, right? Thank you for your courage and commitment to move Charlotte forward on this journey. You and our dedicated staff members who, for the most part, take really good care of us and, you know, keep us in line. So when it comes to making these types of decisions, so thank you all for your work and the energy and effort that you've put in. Mr. Driggs, our birthday guy. You know, when I came on to our council and I was given this task to serve with Mr. Eddrigs on the transportation development committee, I was like, wow, I don't even know. Like, it was a lot of information to try to absorb, but I cannot tell you the countless hours that Mr. Drigs has offered me to get me up to speed on so many different types of, you know, you know, initiatives and subject matters, including this one. I mean, just an extensive amount of explanation and history and just context around this particular decision. So I want to say thank you to everybody who's been directly involved. I am absolutely grateful for the mayor's trust and my appointment to serve on this committee at this level. To our partners in Davidson and Huntersville and Cornelius, you know, a few that I've actually spoken to, I want to, you want to just offer the sentiment that Charlotte is really investing and looking forward to a transformational opportunity that is regional for our city and our region. And this red line is, the purchase is the beginning of a commitment to show our best efforts as we take this opportunity to have our counterparts in the state legislature consider a referendum for our region. And so with that, and also I just really for context because I didn't even know this. And I don't want to claim to say that the humans that we represent understand the difference between a commuter line and a light well rail line, they're not the same. They're really very different in their orientation. And especially for the community members that are in East Charlotte, a commuter rail is literally about getting you to a destination. And it doesn't have as frequent of stops and it's not really tied to TOD and some of the other things that the light rail with more frequent stops are. So this is really a commuter rail opportunity with the potential for it to become, I guess I should say, and be very clear about that. This is not anything, unless we can secure a referendum right now. It is essentially just a purchase. And I wanna make sure that I iterate that as well, that this is a vote to authorize the purchase of an existing line that would with the referendum being approved, we would be able to then build out what would become a commuter line that would benefit our northern town. So with that, that's all I have, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I want to give a shout out to Keith Stanley. It was nice to see the University City Partners in support. We do work closely together, although you wouldn't really know it. Anyway. So, yeah, so thank you. But it was nice to see him here today. Our first vote was a vote to move forward and allow the voters or the residents to decide on how we're proceeding. This vote was an actual commitment of $91 million. So this one we really had to think about, especially since this is a hurdle that's contingent on the outcome of the referendum or the state legislators. But this is necessary. It's necessary for us to show leadership today and to take action. The time is now. This is a vote that gains the support of the Northern town. I did ask a question about the appraised value as a former realtor. This is, there were some numbers. And according to the statement, this is over the appraise value. However, that happens sometimes in real estate. And the amount over the, and the amount over the appraise was less than 10%, but nonetheless, as you heard, this is a bargain and we have to consider the cost benefit and the cost of doing nothing. So this is an important purchase in the future of Charlotte. So I'm looking forward to supporting this again. It's necessary, the worst case scenario, is that we will own the land. We'll own the land. And we have the opportunity to sell it back to Northfolk Southern or to their competitors. So it's a purchase. It's necessary, I'm actually honored to be a part of such a big decision. And I'll be supporting another thing about the red line. District 4 and North Charlotte is really gaining from this. There are four, excuse me, three stops. There's the RIDA, which is part of District 4 and 1 and possibly 2, also Harris and Eastfield. Yeah, so and I heard you say earlier in the meeting that the blue line is booming. So I'm excited about the gain for District 4. This is good news for the city of Charlotte, but as the District 4 rep I'm really honored to support this. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Johnson, Ms. Watlington. Thank you. I would echo the comments of Councilmember Johnson. I had two had concerns about the opportunity cost and what we where we would be in the event that the rest of the plan failed. I did speak with the attorneys and I feel reasonably comfortable that we have options. Should things not go as planned, I think that essentially it is a risk and I think that we should accept that risk given the upside where we are today. So I will be supporting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Graham. Thank you, Madam Mayor Patel. I too will be supporting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Graham. Thank you, Madam Mayor Prattam. I too will be supporting it. I think it's a calculated risk that we should take. My only comment, Mr. Manager, is again, as I told you in our, our meeting, I would love to tighten up the language in terms of the schedule for repayment from the new authority. It's language is there, but it's open to interpretation when that pay-pack pay-per-it should be, and I think it should be sooner than later. If everything works out the way we think it will do. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bacari. No comment? You have to vote the same way on each one. So you can't vote yes on this one and not support the original one. So I'll be voting now. Or you theoretically can, but it's not a good idea. There's point of order. Understood. Yeah, you have to, again, I hope there's a point in time when we get more engaged with the General Assembly that we can fix some of the governance problems that stack up all these dominoes and tip them over to support both. But right now before that happens, it's not prudent to go forward with this. And there's a big scenario we could be holding a bag if everything doesn't go correctly. And it's one thing to be in the railroad business and buy a rail. It's another thing to be a city, a municipality and buy a rail where you are constrained by contractual requirements of the actual line who will continue operating there. And it doesn't leave us with this blank slate of opportunity. It leads us with one thing and threading a needle. So I hold out some real hope that we can really get the governance model right with the general assembly and pull together the massive investment. We know our community needs and setting up right. Thank you, Ms. Agamir right. Thank you. Ms. Azmir. Thank you. Important. Well, I echo what's already been said. But let me say this is a huge step forward for the city of Charlotte because we are using our transportation funding to support this. This just shows our commitment to building the red line. The promise that we made decades ago, that we are finally, will be closer to delivering on. So I just wanted to give a big shout out to the leadership. I know folks in the back have been working on this for weeks and months to see this. I mean, I remember having conversation about this four years ago, where I thought it was almost impossible. And now to actually see this, I feel like I'm day dreaming. But certainly, I appreciate all the work that has been done. I know we had consultant who worked at Norfolk Southern in the past and all the expertise that they have provided throughout this process and certainly manager Jones, thank you for your leadership on this. I think the binder that you had sent us days in advance, that's the kind of details that we need. I wish we had that kind of details that we need. I wish we had that kind of details, even on other big project that we did, that we did not have details on. I think as we have this big investments, I appreciate the level of details that staff has shared. And just that they were accessible throughout this process. Anytime I had questions, I was able to reach out to them. So I hope that we can continue to follow that moving forward, whether it's a smaller or large project. Thank you, Ms. Mayfield. Thank you. Mr. Manager, I want, again, this is more so for the meeting minutes because we know just how important that is to make sure that we have things identified. Although I definitely have concerns with the amount of funds, I want to make sure that we're having a very transparent conversation. We have to recognize that while we tell the community that this good of public access is going to help, I don't want us to create a space where we're penalizing car owners. Whether Council recognizes it or not when we approved the budget earlier this year, that's exactly what we did when we increase the parking times in uptown from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. We have a lot of workers that it is not a option for them to utilize public transportation. If this were to be completed in the next 20 years, this isn't touching those that live out Mount Holly that live on the end of Bookshar. There is a bus, but that bus doesn't run at a time that's feasible for people that have to be the work at five o'clock in the afternoon. That unfortunately in our hospitality industry that are making under $15 or so an hour because they work for a third party. So as we're having this conversation of this good investment is going to help because it's going to help create. Give us an opportunity to create an additional track to get from point A to point B. I want us to be very transparent with our community. And we have to be transparent and honest with ourselves that we can't vote on something that creates a burden. And then turn around and say, oh, but we're going to give you this great thing that's supposed to help alleviate because this is not to catch off of everyone. I personally am not going to be getting on this dog on train. It takes me 30 minutes from point A, leaving my house to get here to the government center or to get to many of the meetings that I attend around the city. This is not a benefit to me. It is going to be a benefit for a number of people, but when we think of a number of our workers that are under that threshold who are our true working class and that are working two or three jobs of town, there will be some benefits, but a lot of them are still going to be driving. So we got to have some real conversations, especially on land that we are. That has parking on it to make sure that we're making. Our total system as accessible as possible. You also know you and I have had multiple conversations as a community. I don't see us comparing ourselves to Chicago, to LA, to California. I grew up in Miami. I know about all the public transportation systems that they have there. We need to be looking internationally. If we're going to, at the rate that we're growing, with the opportunities that we have in the city of Charlotte, we really need to be looking at international transportation ideals, the mayor mentioned in the last meeting, Chicago. Well, here's the thing. When I got off the, my flight, I was able to go and catch a train. That train was slow as I don't know what and it was weary at a bit scary. All that was going on with being on that route, but it got me where I needed to go. This right here is an investment that I do believe will help us get to the next level, but we got to have a lot more conversation. We have to have a lot more community engagement. And we need to be able to present something to the community that's going to be a viable option. We don't want to give them this. Here's the minimum of what we can do versus here's the opportunity of what we can do. Because guess what, we not on this land. So because we own it, we can do something very different and acknowledge. We learn from the mistakes that we made along the current line regarding housing, regarding access. We can do something very different. I just want to make sure again that we are not penalizing those who do have vehicles. For in the same breath that we're saying. Look at this great thing that we're giving to you, because it's great thing. It's not for everyone, but it will be for a large majority. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Brown. Absolutely. Thank you so much for calling me. Thank you, Mayor Perotin. Thank you for Patten. Thank you for calling on me. I'm going to echo the sentiments of my colleagues Dr. Walton, Mayfield, Ashtamir Johnson, everybody really. With a large sum of money that we're going to be putting into it, so I want to make sure that if you don't go through, we own it. We can do something different. I like to think our amazing city manager, you do amazing work. So thank you for that. What Asher Mere said, you got me doing my homework coming in school, so you got me doing double work. But you get me an opportunity to study and learn. So I'm very appreciative of that. To all the staff back there tonight, thank you for all your hard work. We'll see what we get to do. Hopefully we score big with this one. And we'll get people to believe in us again. So that's the goal to move the agenda forward for the people that put us in position. So thank you. I yield to you, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Ms. Brown. Mr. Mitchell. So thank you. I yield to you Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Sometimes you get a chance to serve the community long enough you get to see some special. We've been trying to do this for 20 some odd years. So this is a special moment. So I will be supporting this. What I'm really excited about too is the opportunity now purchased a land for the gateway. Which will really impact district 2 and District 1. So thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, but I'm a yes vote. What, 30 years then? Oh! I'll be rich for all that. Oh, that's right. I'm about to say 30 clubs. Mr. Mitchell was just nine months old at that time. Oh. Oh, we did a deep down. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. You just made me happy. I would say, you know, this is amazing. They have two historic votes like this all in one night. It is truly an amazing moment that has been decades in the making as Mr. Mitchell just spoke to. And it's a fortuitous moment because some stars had to align in order for us to be able to activate like we are hopefully about to do in just a moment. And the key aspect of that was having Norfolk Southern to actually come to the negotiation table. Without that, we would not be in this position. So it really is a fortuitous moment. And I can't think of another action that we can take to demonstrate that Charlotte is a regional player that we believe in regionalism by making the purchase of this online so that we can begin to build out our overall robust transformation, transformational transportation plan. So this is a big move. It's a risk, but it's a calculated risk. And all things related to innovation and transformation always have some level of calculated risks that you have to take. And so I'm happy that we're here at this moment. I also would be remiss if I didn't call out the connection with a derida that sits directly adjacent to corridor of opportunity. And this will unlock tremendous opportunity for the deridaida community as well as the Sugar Creek corridors and those that live along that line. And lastly, being a district one rep, I do also see the importance of Camp North End and having a stop in the north end, again, a corridor of opportunity right there on Graham Street, where we have a swell of transit dependent residents. This could be a game changer to access employment and to reduce burden of cost of actually owning a car. So I hope that we can look into that as we move forward and think about planning of the overall line. And so with that, I have a motion and a second. And unless there is anything else, I would like for us to vote at this moment. So all in favor of voting on agenda item two as it reads in our agenda, please raise your hands. All opposed? Nearly unanimous again. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to the community members that came out and spoke and had your voices heard. Thank you, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so with that, we are going to move into. May I put on? Yes. Could I just say briefly, our mayor and our manager have worked for years on this. And their dedication and vision is why we're here today. I'd love to give them a round of applause. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Driggs. And as everyone is leaving, let's try to leave quietly as we exit the room. We still have our readouts of our committee meetings, but before that I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Jones for a comment. Thank you Mayor Proteman and members of council. Big night for us tonight. I do want to make sure that I set the expectations for what's going forward for tonight. While we have the Council Committee report outs, we also have two presentations or some version of that that's going to be shared with Council tonight because there's going to be votes on the 9th and the one thing that we've learned is don't bring something to you the same night and ask for there to be a vote. So there were some things that came out of accounts committees today that are a little bit more than just a readout. And I think that's important. And before I turn it back over to you, Mayor Pro Tem, I want to thank everybody who's participated in what's happened tonight. One name was not mentioned Sarah Hazel. She's the glue that's been keeping this all together so Sarah, we appreciate you keeping us sane through all of us. Excellent. Thank you city manager. With that we're going to transition into our committee discussion. And I'll start at the top of the morning with Mr. Drake's in the Transportation Planning and Development Committee. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. This shouldn't take more than about 30 minutes. Just briefly, we had three topics today. We talked about cats. We got a great update for Mr. Kagle. Writership is up. The repair of the vehicles is proceeding. We've got three topics today. We talked about cats. We've got a great update for Mr. Kagle. Writership is up. The repair of the vehicles is proceeding. A lot of good news about cats. We're going to get an FTA report soon on the results of their operational review. Community area planning and UD update. We're two topics we talked about for information. And I won't say much about those because I have asked that the full council get the update on what we're doing with Community area planning and how we're trying to reconcile our zoning decisions with our planning process. So unless a member of the committee and that would be Ms. Molina's vice chair Mr. Graham, Ms. Johnson and Dr. Watlington, unless one of you has a comment. That's my report. Okay. Thank you. Let's move on to the job and economic development committee. I'll hand it over to Mr. Graham. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. We had two agenda items. One, dealing with the Eastland Mall renovation. I can't talk, I'm so late. And we have a presentation from staff for that particular project. And there's a vote schedule for September 9. So I'll yield on that point. So we can all be prepared to vote next week. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Graham. We will move on to the budget. No, this is a presentation. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Good evening and thank you for your time this afternoon or sorry, this evening. Looking at the clock, it is a quarter till 8.30. So I'll try to make this as quickly as possible, but let me know if I'm going too fast for the group. So before we get into conversation directly, that's more specifically focused on the east side of the site. I did want to take a minute to talk a little bit about the progress that's being made on the western portion of the site and throughout the whole site itself. Just a couple weeks ago, we sold this piece of property right here to Cross and South East, which constitutes about six acres, which will be for the first phase of the single family development, which will comprise at least 38 units of single family detached and townhome development. A little further to the south last year, last December, we actually closed on about five acres of property with Cross and South East to build the two buildings you see here, which will comprise 280 units of multi-family rental units. And underneath those rental units will be 16,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space. The unique nature of that commercial space is that the city will take on the master lease of that space. It's our way of trying to provide inclusive prosperity opportunities for local small businesses, particularly minority owned and Eastside businesses to participate in the development and be a tenant in this development once it gets implemented. Just to the other side of the street of that, you see the park. Now the county is well underway of design. The park is about a four and a half acre park. We will convey that land to them over the next 30 to 60 days. And we expect them to start construction on that park by December or January of this winter. Lastly, the first project that we actually sold to Crossin South East or the Land of Sold to Crossin South East was for the 70 units of senior affordable housing. That is well underway a construction right now. We anticipate that to be complete by the end of the year. And we also anticipate to have residents living on property on the site by the end of 2024. Here's a quick look at the complex on the east side of the site. Really, as you see in the north here, we have the indoor sports facility to the south. We have the six soccer fields and then a pad here for food and beverage and restaurant opportunities. Just stepping back a little bit to where we were last October and last October, action was taken after the teams had about 45 days to get to know each other, test their concepts, make sure they were aligned with each other. Wanted to make sure that it was something that worked. And at that action, Council endorsed the revised proposal on all five staff to move forward with the new team. It also approved up to 30 million for reversement of expenses associated with public infrastructure. And the indoor outdoor amateur sports facilities, which was outlined in the resolution that was adopted by Council on June 12th, which was prior to when the two teams merged together. That allocation that was outlined in the resolution was 10 million would come from the CIP and then 20 million would come from hospitality funds to support the tourism development activities. Something we want to note here is it was always intended that the city would support infrastructure development along or throughout the site, which is what we're doing currently across in Southeast, and be the same thing we're doing on this side of the site. It was also intended from the very beginning from the earliest proposals that there would be some level of hospitality investment along the way. The 30 million, again, was preserved as part of the June 12 resolution, which had aligned with the individual proposals that we're reviewing at that time where each of them were looking at about $30 million in total from support and from the city. We came back in December for a council update and suggested that the 30 million may not be enough to cover the needed infrastructure potentially mostly due to the increase constraints on the site and the strain on the site given the size and the great challenges and trying to maximize the utility of that site. As a reminder, the partnership team that we're working with on this consists of four different entities, edge sports global, Bolton Ivory Canty, Charlotte Soccer Academy and Southern Entertainment. Edge and Bolton-Ivey-Candy. Kentie will partner on the indoor sports facility. Charlotte Soccer Academy and Southern Entertainment will partner on the soccer facility. This is a bit of a deeper dive into what the site plan looks like. One is the indoor sports facility. Two is the restaurant. We discussed three of the soccer fields. Four is an out building or clubhouse that will be built as part of the soccer facility. This is a bit dated. Do you want to note that that building will actually be moved to front central avenue. So it will be a nice feature coming off of Al Moro and central. And you can actually see it will be a two-story building. It will be a nice addition to the street front right there. And then A and C are the parking lots that are there to support the tourism development. Deeper dive into the programming of the complex, 100,000 square foot indoor facility, which will comprise 10 basketball courts, could be converted to 16 volleyball courts, 30 pickable courts, turf, footsle, et cetera. Food and beverage, concessions, bars, restaurants, fitness center, a limited amount of leasable space that would be geared towards medical or physical therapy types of tenants. And then a community learning center, which would be operated from a local nonprofit. The notable change on the indoor sports facility, which we mentioned earlier today, was in some conversations during the fall last year, there was discussion about inclusion of some type of ice, whether it be one ice rink or two sheets of ice to support increasing demand for hockey and other activities. Based on the demand and based on the cost and trying to reduce everything right now, we are looking at saving the sheet of ice to the second phase if the demand increases to the point where it's necessary, which allows us to move forward a little bit more efficiently. The FMB pad, again, is 6,000 square feet and looking at just under 800 parking spaces. From a land transaction perspective, we're looking at an approach that's consistent with a lot of similar types of facilities around the country, where we would ground lease to each, for the indoor and the outdoor, where we would ground lease to each, for the indoor and the outdoor facility, and that ground lease terms for each of those would be 50 years at a dollar per year. And then for the out parcel, we would be selling that at a market rate in the combined team, which the former LLC, which basically affect as an umbrella or a parent company, that group will have the first rider refusal to purchase that property. Over the last six, eight months, and we've had an additional analysis on the site that's something we talked about in December is the need to do a little bit of a deeper dive, give more confidence, get a better understanding of the scope of work, which required, make sure we're not double counting anything with the cost estimates of considering the work that cross and southeast is already underway doing. The team retained the same engineer, same design firm that cross and southeast was using, which was very helpful, created efficiencies, better understanding what the scope of work actually was. Multiple iterations of the site work, looking at the schematic designs, understanding what those cost implications are given, this site constraints. The other thing we had to do, take a little bit of a deeper dive into determining what our public input improvements that we can reimburse versus those private improvements. If you're looking at this from a private sector perspective, infrastructure, site cost, it's all infrastructure. And we have to look at a little bit differently where is something going to be considered to be public infrastructure that can be reimbursed through our CIP or is that something that might constitute private infrastructure, sort of like fine grading for a site, for a pad to get it ready for development. So each of those cost items we had to go through and make sure that we're appropriately accounting for and putting them in the right bucket. Some other considerations, again, the coordination with Cross and Southeast Design Team and also the soft cost, price escalation and contingency, wanted to make sure we're accurately assessing that and also comparing it to what our in-house design team and our engineering group would actually do if we were the ones responsible for doing that work. It's a bit of a deeper dive on some of the notable costs of infrastructure improvements. So look down on the bottom here we have retaining walls one and two. Look at those being supportive of the infrastructure that's going in, the streetscape improvements along central as well as along Hallefield which is under construction now as well as the retaining walls three and four which is there to primarily to support the tourism activities that are being planned for the site. So based on our analysis and discussions with the team, we look at retaining walls 1 and 2 going into the CIP bucket and retaining walls 3 and 4 going into the hospitality bucket. Similar process we took with the other infrastructure improvements. We had to remove and replace and go to realign a number of underground infrastructure storm drainage pipes because of some of the lot of that infrastructure was actually in place during the 70s when the mall was built. So a lot of it outdated, it's crushed and needs to be replaced and we also want to make sure that we're aligning it properly so it doesn't go under a plain building or any of the fields so we don't have to tear anything out once we actually build everything. Instant long installing the water and sanitary sewer lines and the new streetscape improvements are all notable costs that come into the additional costs that we're looking at. So what does that come to? So overall we're looking at a public infrastructure cost now at $18.99 four million. Again this looks at site grading, water, sewer, storm installation, retaining walls, contingencies, escalations. The soccer complex has come to 15.5 million. Charlotte Soccer Academy and Southern Entertainment will come up with 8.5 million of that. Of that 8.5, their co-owning is to contribute 4 million in equity, Wisconsin's 25% of the total project cost. They are seeking $7 million from the hospitality funds to support the project. The indoor sports facility has come to $32.6 million. Edge sports global and Bolton-Avery canty will come up with $17.3 million. They are reaching to the table $6.9 million equity which constitutes 21% of the total project cost it will be securing about 10.4 million in debt. They are seeking 15.3 million of hospitality funds to support the project. Now just to kind of sum up and bring us back to where we were last year, council approved $30 million for the reimbursement of expenses that are associated with public infrastructure in the indoor outdoor Amnest Sports Facility, 10 million allocator from the CIP, 20 million allocator from hospitality. Again, that was based on a resolution that was adopted in June 12th. How does this all come together with the additional analysis and summing together? So we had 30 million that was approved in 2023. The result of the addition analysis show that the total need from hospitality funds comes to 22.3 million dollars. The total name from the CIP comes to 18.994 million dollars, which equates to an additional funding request of 11.338 million dollars, which is allocated by CIP with 8.994 million in hospitality with $2.334 million. So during the committee today, the committee voted unanimously to recommend approval and refer this to full council for vote on September 9th. Under the following motion that you see here, again, it allocated at 8.9 from the CIP, 2.3 million would come from the hospitality funds. Questions? Thanks for the presentation. And again it came out of committee with a 50 vote. We kicked the tires a lot. It's time for the council to move. And so we recommend Council adoption at the September 9th meeting. Thank you Thank you, Mr. Graham. Let's open it up for questions, Mr. Triggs Thank you. I hope this is a yes or no question. Are you highly confident that barring any changes in the scope that has talked about here the funding that you're suggesting is going to be adequate. Yes, thank you. Unless we don't have any additional questions, we shall move on. Thank you, thank you for the presentation. And we will move on to Ms. Azmera is not here. Let's move on to the Housing Safety and Committee update, and I'll pass it over to Ms. Watlington. Thank you. We had a couple of conversations today. We had a safety referral update from earlier in the year, and then we also spent a good bit of time on our first item, which is the housing funding referral. We do have a presentation. So I'm going to ask Director Havana to come up and just one through what we covered today in brief. And as she gets prepared just to frame this a little bit, we'll also be looking for a vote to move forward next week. So we'd welcome your feedback. Did vote 50 out of committee to move forward to full council with the recommendations from staff. We've had a number of meetings working with a small subgroup myself, Councilmember Driggs, Vice Chair Mayfield, with staff over the summer and Have been to committee twice and what you'll see tonight reflects the updated input from the committee Mepp meppro temp my axe for Becca question for you get started is this a single? Double a triple. Yeah, all right when I saw you in January at the strategy session, I was your lead off batter. That's right. Tonight, I am your walkoff batter. All right. OK. So I'm swinging for the fences. All right. Thank you, Mary. I'm excited to be here tonight to share with you the Housing Safety and Community Committees recommendation for affordable housing funding policy. This is a referral that came from the mayor earlier this year. And tonight we're going to talk just briefly about the Policy Referral Summary. We're going to look at the recommendation that's coming out of committee. That includes the housing goals and outcomes, a set of investment priorities and investment categories and allocation goals. I'll touch a little bit on community input and then talk about next steps. So I'm here because in the FY 2025 budget, you all as a council approved a generational housing investment as part of the budget, a hundred million dollar housing bond. And the question that the mayor posed in the policy referral is, are there opportunities to balance your multiple priorities around affordable housing activities and investments to more strategically aligned community needs to available city resources. And what we heard from council loud and clear is this is double the housing bond, but we don't want more of the same. We heard you asking for something bigger, something more impactful, something more transformational. And we worked this spring and over the summer I have a thick binder, but I'm only going to go through a few of the pages for you tonight. But many thanks to the staff and the Council working team and then to Housing Safety and Community Committee for moving through this so quickly. So in the past, when we've talked about affordable housing, we've tended to focus on how many affordable housing units can we provide and how much money is there in the Housing Trust Fund. And so the fundamental shift in the recommendation that you're going to hear tonight is that there is a much more holistic focus on resident outcomes. So the count of housing units, while it is important, is not the end game. It's what happens to the residents who are supported by that housing. Focus on residential stability, neighborhood affordability, and economic mobility. So you're going to hear tonight an overview of the housing Funding Policy itself, which is a two-page document, and that document is the document that you will be voting on. The key differences really that you're going to hear are that housing activities are aligned with the new Housing Funding Policy goals, with a focus on evaluation and outcomes. There's a significant increased investment proposed in home ownership. Investments are proposed in new anti displacement programs that have been recommended by the NEST Commission and others. There's a requirement in here to link housing investments and resident services with an emphasis on workforce development and economic mobility. There's a focus on partnerships and innovative models of delivery and it includes an allocation plan for the bond programming. And all of this starts again from the foundation of a set of housing policy goals. So we had a substantial amount of conversation about what are the right goals, how do we know if we're achieving them, and the committee landed on these three goals. And I like to start on this slide from the bottom and work my way up because it's a little bit of a ladder. So starting with residential stability, residents will access to safe quality affordable housing and supports to help them maintain stability. We want neighborhood affordability, residents of all incomes will have access to diverse housing options and thriving neighborhoods, and then all building towards the goal we have for all our residents economic mobility. Residents will have access to services that increase employment, income and wealth and reduce barriers to housing stability. So we got pretty nerdy in the working group, had a lot of fun this summer. Warren Wooten who is here helped work on a logic model for how do we really measure these draft housing policy goals and we put together some information about what some example outcomes might look like. The important piece of that is that measuring these outcomes is an integral part of the funding policy. So really thinking through this bond cycle, also having funding that's allocated to develop and track these outcome measures for residents and households. But given the late hour, I'll spare you the fully detailed model. So this recommendation also includes a set of bond investment priorities. And I'll set this in committee and I'll say it again, $100 million is a historic investment, but it is not sufficient to meet the needs of our growing city. And so we still need to prioritize. So the set of investment priorities that are in this recommendation include priority populations, location priorities, resident services, partnerships and leverage and innovation. And I'm going to go through each one of these tonight. And I like to acknowledge when I do this side council member Mayfield who always asks who is affordable housing for and affordable housing is for everyone. Everyone who lives and works in our city needs an affordable place to live. And we have a lot of critical workers here in Charlotte who are in important jobs that happen to be lower wage jobs. We also have a number of households who are with fixed incomes, veterans, and seniors. And so we have to think about the whole range of the neighbors who help us every day when we're thinking about affordable housing. For reference, we talk a lot about area median income. For reference, the area median income in Charlotte right now for a family of four is a little bit over $100,000. So we're still close enough to do the shorthand math, 80%, 80,000, 60%, 60,000. So we're still close enough to do the short-hand math, 80%, 80%, 60%, 60,000. And again, that's for a family of four. So I'm going to talk just a little bit about priority populations. This next set of slides is actually the language that's in the proposed policy document itself. So under priority populations, we're focused on home buyers, lower wage workers, households at risk for displacement and vulnerable populations. So the committee's recommendation includes these specifics with the intent to really focus in the affordable housing investment on particular households. This of course includes home buyers because there is an emphasis in here on home ownership. Home buyers would go up to 120% AMI but would that focus in on 60 to 80% again workers and lower wage occupations and that would include public sector workers and also households at risk for displacement. And then in addition to the housing funding policy itself, the recommendation is to develop a prioritization policy that would require set aside units for vulnerable populations. So this would be an additional policy that would come through committee that would identify a certain percent of units that would need to be set aside in any given development for a set of vulnerable populations. And that could include populations such as elderly veterans, disabled persons, households that have experienced a displacement event, students experience homelessness, youth aging out of foster care. There's a whole list here. And this, the important thing about this list is that these are populations that can be identified as having one of these situations. So this would require having a partnership with a partner who can help the city identify who fits into these categories and therefore would have access to set aside units. But this is an important innovation within the Housing Funding Policy. I've had to do a lot of work with the folks at the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency to figure out how this might work. But this has the potential to really help you as a council ensure that the investments that you're making are being utilized and support the people who need it most. And then the last piece of this is continuing to provide 20% of units at 30% AMI. This is part of your current policy. And this is really looking at within tax credit developments and large scale naturally occurring affordable housing. So that's priority populations. One of five. OK. Two of five. Location. Let's go. Incentiveized locations where investment increases housing choice and creates the greatest impact. So we had quite a robust conversation about aligning housing activities to the comprehensive plan, place types and policy maps, that as a foundation in terms of location priorities and then three additional components to location that there would be a priority for areas vulnerable to displacement. This also in alignment with the equitable growth framework. Priority for transit oriented development areas. So this is following on from the conversation that you've just had tonight. This would be in alignment with both current and planned transportation investments. And then the last piece of the location priority is sites with high housing location scores. So you have a housing location tool that helps you identify development sites that have proximity to services and amenities that have good access to jobs that are in places that are undergoing rapid neighborhood change in places where there's a need for more diverse housing options. Now the trade-off that comes with high housing location scores is a higher cost typically per unit because high opportunity areas tend to have higher land costs. So there's good robust discussion at the committee meetings about that inherent tension. And one of the adjustments that was made to the recommendation is this one that high location scores would be prioritized over financial leverage. So in the past, if you had two proposed developments and one had a higher cost per unit than the other, the lower cost per unit would typically fare better in the scoring because it had that better financial leverage. But in this case, the recommendation is that in the high location scores would actually be prioritized. And this is a way to incentivize the proposals of the development proposals in these higher opportunity areas. The next component of the recommendation is resident services. This is the idea of linking housing and services to create stronger outcomes. And we've talked about this a couple of times. We refer to this in shorthand as the housing and strategy. And thankfully, I've got great people in the communications and marketing team who said, you know, that's not that catchy of a name So they have proposed that we start calling it beyond the bricks Which I think is which Convey it conveys much better what we're what we're talking about here But the idea is really that housing by itself is not sufficient that we want to ensure that residents that are supported by that housing are also supported by relevant and meaningful services that support your housing funding goals and support resident mobility and stability. And so examples of these services may include things like workforce development and employment services, health and mental health care, childcare, supportive services, financial wellness. You have invested already in a lot of projects that do a great job of incorporating resident services. And this part of the policy is really making that a requirement and asking developers to bring those partnerships with them to the table when they're making proposals. So it doesn't have to be that they actually also provide the services but that they've developed the partnerships that make those services available to residents. Another component then we're at 4 out of 5, stay with me, partnerships and leverage. So building partnerships and leveraging the market. So this is the idea that priority will be given to proposals that incorporate broad partnerships. This could be leveraging a combination of funding sources, often near affordable housing investments take public, private and philanthropic funding to pencil out. But it's also partnerships that provide resident services and investments that improve quality of life. So a couple of pieces of this one is priority will be given to proposals that you utilize development allowances and incentives and leverage other investments to maximize affordability. So this, this comes out of our conversations with the Council work team and the planning staff that there are a number of development allowances and bonuses and incentives that are currently available in the unified development ordinance. And we wanna pair those types of allowances with your financial investments to maximize affordability. So when developers are able to do both that will be given priority. So example partnership models that are already in place include the faith-based housing partnerships, so the Faith and Housing Initiative, that Council Member Mayfield is leading, Team Force Housing, which is our short hand for employer-supported housing models. We have one example of that already in Charlotte with the investments that Atrium Health has made, but also things like staying in place and comprehensive place-based initiatives. So there's a lot of different types of partnership models where that we have already been able to fund here in Charlotte and this is taking that further to say we're really looking for these creative partnerships and prioritizing those within the housing funding model. In the last piece here it's not actually part of the housing funding policy but it's an important note to make is that it's important to create incentives that activate private market participation. So there is never going to be a level of bond funding that'll fill the gap for affordable housing. In order to, in order to do that, we need better incentives that activate the private market. So if we can create those incentives that help our private market. So if we can create those incentives that help our private market include housing at 80% or even 60% within their market rate developments, then we're getting better mixed income housing, and we also have more funding to support the more expensive housing that other households may need. And so this is a note within the policy that just acknowledges there's more work to do. And we've started some of these conversations with development partners and we will continue that as part of advancing this work. The last priority is innovation. So really looking to activate bold ideas that have potential to scale. There was some acknowledgement by the committee that we don't know everything about how to solve this problem. And we want to leave some room for innovative approaches or the opportunity to test new ideas that address emerging and unique community needs. And the idea here is that those new ideas should be something that we can test that would be potentially repeatable and scalable and then serve to advance other city priorities. And so some of those options may include things like innovative models of home ownership. We've been doing a lot of conversation with the Nest Commission about social and cooperative home ownership for example or underutilized housing typologies or new construction techniques that reduce the cost of construction or reduce maintenance costs for residents. So we're really looking at ideas that can be tested and also have potential to scale. So that takes us to the draft bond investment categories. And so we're adding up here to $100 million. And you can see that each investment category has an allocation goal. And one of the things that was important to the committee as part of the recommendation is that these really would be considered goals, that they're not set dollar amounts. We need to maintain some flexibility to allow the market to respond. But the allocation goals would be as stated here. So starting with rental housing production. And this is your standard multi-family rental that you have done a lot of with your housing trust fund. But it would also include mixed use and mixed income. It would include accessory dwelling units and missing middle production that can also be rentals with an allocation goal of 35 million. Now if you think about your housing trust fund historically, out of the 50 million 35 is about what you have been investing in rental housing production. So it's not a decrease, it's not a significant jump, but it's maintaining the investment in rental housing production at a level where you can really continue to take advantage of the federal tax credits, 9% and 4% tax credits, and such. The biggest jump really in the investments is in home ownership. So we talked in committee earlier today about home ownership that the, in the last bond cycle across all of your funding sources, you invested about 14% of your housing investments in home ownership. And in this model, just within the housing bond, is set at 25 million for new home ownership. The categories and the recommendation still includes funding for rental housing preservation and anti-displacement. That includes your NOAA acquisition and rehab work. But also investments in small and local landlords for rehab and multifamily rehabilitation and redevelopment. At 14 million, there's a continuing support for supportive housing and shelter capacity at 9 million. And then a couple of things that are new that have not been funded within the housing bond previously but are indeed eligible. We absolutely have been working with our partners and finance and the attorney's office and also looking at what other cities in North Carolina are doing. So there is a allocation in here for housing rehab and emergency repair, which is a programmatic funding that's used to support residents who need repairs done either urgently or larger housing rehab. And then there's also $5 million in here for an innovation pilot fund. And the idea here is really to set aside a small amount of the funding and ask partners to bring us these new ideas. So not just having innovation as a priority within any given category, but actually carving out a small amount of the funds and allowing partners to compete with their best ideas for this portion of the funding. Finally, site acquisition, current and planned transit areas, there's $5 million in here. This is to help make that explicit tie to the investments in here. This is to help make that explicit tie to the investments in transit. And currently this is funded through your TOD fee and Lue and you have about $1.7 million left in that bucket and an open RFP. But this would be adding to the funding available for site acquisition and then the last piece in here is funding for administration and evaluation and that's primarily two things. It's it is partnerships to help administer components of the policy that the city would would need to partner, for example, if you had a prioritization policy, it would require a community-wide wait list and a vetting process and some technology, so there's funding in here for that, and then the evaluation component. Because the committee's recommendation is founded on goals and holistic resident outcomes. We wanna help show you what you're getting for that investment and if you are indeed reaching those goals so that they can be adjusted as needed to make sure you're getting the best outcomes. So I would say where, it's already September, we're fairly late in the process with the bond referendum coming up, but we have been working on community input. For part of this is that the recommendation itself is based on a synthesis of all the previous community input that you have received. So the affordable housing goals and the comp plan, you get feedback every year through the budget engagement process. This year you had the people's budget proposal and all of the work that the NEST Commission is doing. All of that has fed into the committee conversation and the result in recommendation. But just to be absolutely sure, as we don't want to leave any stone unturned. We have also launched a community survey and so it looks like I don't have it on here but we'll get this out to you so that you can help us get it out to your constituents and stakeholders. PublicInput.com slash housing priority. It's a brief survey to collect feedback from residents about their priorities related to the affordable housing funding policy proposal. And that brings us to next steps. So this is tonight your opportunity for full council discussion following the committee recommendation and vote on the funding policy as early as next Monday, September 9th, depending on your conversation tonight. And then we are going full speed ahead to the November bond referendum. So this is council's opportunity to communicate what it is that your priorities are and the programming for that $100 million bond. And with that, I will pause for questions. Ms. Watlington, did you have anything to add? Just that it passed unanimously for the committee and Councilmember Driggs has already committed to support. Okay. Excellent. Mr. Mitchell. Pro-Term and Councilmember Wallerton. Instead, I remember doing the discussion we had at the teachers village. And then we talked about doing something similar for why city employees. So is that part of priority population? So the teacher village would be funded in a different bucket, not this housing bond piece? I was saying the most. Remember we had a lot of discussion around the teacher village by doing something similar for our city employees. So my question was, was that priority population? Oh, I see. So we would accept projects that would cater to city employees. But I don't know that we didn't call out that we were gonna take something specifically out of this $100 million and say, we're going to do city employee housing with this. The way it's been framed within the policy itself is that one of the priority populations is public sector workers and so because the housing funding policy actually includes a broad range of activities that you haven't necessarily funded out of the bond before, including things like home ownership and downpayment assistance. When we think about the alignment with priority populations and those kind of programs, so for example, we just launched the next round of how Charlotte plus about two weeks ago, I think. And there's funding within how Charlotte plus for city of Charlotte employees, as well as Mecklenburg County and CMS. So it's not tying you to a specific type of project, but it is saying that within your investments public sector workers are a priority population. Don't disagree I just think it's as strong a message though if we say city of Charlotte employees part of the public sector I think it's just sends a message because I think you kind of brought up doing that discussion I like maybe we can create a model for I think we say that same time solid ways of some of our employees who looking for affordable housing. So just, I'm sorry, just want to raise that. I'll look over to both Rebecca and Sean. Let's not forget that we have city owned property and that's similar to the teacher village where there was CMS property. So let's not lose sight of the city owned parcels that are eligible for housing. Thank you. Any additional comments, Mr. Graham? Just one. I just want to thank the committee for the work and you know, land affordability, land purchasing, and such an important priority to affordable housing. Could you kind of give me just a little bit more content in terms of why at $5 million notwithstanding that it is next to transit line when that combined just a part show, right? So, it can be the thinking along land acquisition and the dollar amount acquitted to it. So there's a couple of pieces to that. One is that the housing bond, while it's your largest funding source for affordable housing, is not your only funding source for affordable housing, is not your only funding source for affordable housing. And so when you think about site acquisition, in addition to the funding that's proposed as part of the bond, you also have other funding sources for site acquisition. So the TOD fee and lieu, for example, there's currently around $16 million of commitments for TOD fee and lieu that would come back to the Housing Trust Fund for site acquisition around transit-oriented development. Those funds don't come into play until building permits are pulled, but those funds have been committed. And then in addition, we also have opportunities to leverage other land. So whether that city owned land or the partnership with the faith and housing that gives us an opportunity to leverage land owned by faith partners and then the other pieces that there's also site acquisition in other ways that are sprinkled throughout here. So for example, within home ownership, site acquisition for home ownership would be an eligible activity within the home ownership bucket as well as our acquisition rehab, resale revolving loan fund, which is an acquisition program. And so when you break it down by something like site acquisition alone, it's more than $5 million total, but there's a specific line item for a site acquisition for TOD areas. Most of those programs are targeted away from where we need, where there's a lack of affordability like in district 6 and 7, right? So how do we begin to purchase land in areas where there is a need for affordability? So it depends on the program, but they're, are you asking where the land cost is high? So Rebecca if you don't mind let me let me jump in if I thank you. Thank you. Okay so it's late. Okay. You're killing it. So what I'm going to propose and I call call it the bubble chart, and I think that Julia made the first one, there's so many different buckets that relate to housing. And so we're talking about 100 million. But if we just isolated to this 100 million, it causes all of these questions. There are even opportunities around purchasing land around light rail stations that also could be utilized for affordable housing. So I think if we can pull together the bubble chart of all of the different opportunities to help us reach this outcome that we want, I think it'll be helpful because when you just take one look at one line on this and say, if that's it, it seems like it's small. Yeah, and I get it, it goes beyond the five million there. And so I was just curious about why that number. Obviously, there's more dollars, $3 available for acquisition. And so I'll take the bubble stuff that you mentioned, that you want. But I'm more really in terms of actualization. I'll be buying land. I'll be actively seeking going to the market, looking for land, for affordability, and areas where there's a lack of. Thank you, Mr. Graham. And unless there are any other questions, we have one additional committee update, the budget governance and intergovernmental relations committee, and Mr. Mitchell's gun that did that one. Mayor Pro Tempe show me love. Always put me last. That's okay. She don't wanna be quick. So I like to thank Councilman McBrown, Councilman Mayfear, Chair, Asmire. We had a great discussion today. We had two items. One was around our financial partners policy. We will bring that back for full council. I have the Dane Council member Brown for helping us change the language. So now organizations are a nonprofit and those who are actively pursuing five or one of the three status Can apply so councilman Brown and Ash mirror was very Adam and let's be inclusive and give everyone an opportunity So the second item we receive was from Tina Adams review the FY 2025 audit plan those are the two items councilman Brown leave anything out. Hey Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. You guys did actually have a really good meeting. Really good meeting. Before we close out, I just wanted us to just take a moment with the historic votes that we've done and talking about the structure of this draft bond, this evening, you know, sometime ago we were talking about, we had this concept of boulders, rocks and sand, right? And how we don't wanna focus on the sand allows staff to do what they need to do, but really begin to move these, some of these large boulders that are gonna impact our community. And if you think about what we've done this year, record investment in the arts, right? A panthers deal that was big. Historic investment in potentially our transportation plan, right? We made some huge steps this evening. And then now looking at the structure of this draft bond for housing, we are really focusing on some large boulders that will impact in Eastland, absolutely Eastland. So we are focusing on some large boulders that will have direct impact to our residents lives so Thank you all for the commitment. I know there was various small groups lots of work going on and we're just in September So more to be done If there any any other comments if we have a motion to adjourn. Second, let's go. All in favor, go home. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.