Mayor's Office
Mayor's State of the City Address 2007
February 5, 2007
Durham City Council Chambers
Welcome. It is my privilege to continue the practice that I began upon becoming Mayor in 2001 and that is to deliver the State of the City Address. Tonight represents my fifth state of the city address. As your mayor, it is always interesting to look back at what the City has accomplished or not accomplished against our projected goals. The State of the City address allows us to do that. It obviously is impossible to capture all of a year's activities in a 20 to 30 minute address, so as we have done in previous years we will attempt to highlight the most important.
I want to thank all of you for taking time to be with us this evening, and I'd especially like to recognize my colleagues on the City Council, who are here with us tonight, for their support and leadership of this City.
As in the past couple of years, I have chosen to deliver this year's "State of the City" address at the beginning of our regular City council meeting to ensure that it would receive as wide of an audience as possible, in person and via cable television. This year, thanks to the leadership of our City Clerk Ann Gray and Technology Solutions Department director Michi Wagner, and their staffs, our council meetings may also be viewed via the internet. This means that this year's state of the city address may also be watched at any time. Welcome to everyone joining us tonight.
In the past addresses, we have chosen various themes to reflect the City's status and the environment in which we have operated. Last year it was, The Power of Partnerships -- Driving Durham's Future, a theme to which I will refer many times tonight in my remarks.
I have chosen to build upon that theme, which, last year was directed at downtown revitalization, and expand that theme to begin to focus more heavily on some of our inner city neighborhoods.
With that in mind, tonight's theme is: Re-building Inner City neighborhoods: a win-win for Durham.
It is a theme that is driven by the fact that some of our inner city neighborhoods are beset by such factors as poverty, crime, boarded up houses and poorly lighted streets, among other distressing factors.
As we look at the accomplishments for 2006, I don't think that anyone will doubt that we have been very successful over the past five (5) years in the revitalization of our downtown. One of the major driving forces behind this success has been the successful engagement of "Public/Private Partnerships". Many exciting and promising developments are occurring in our downtown.
- Some existing downtown businesses are expanding;
- Small businesses have opened, new restaurants have opened and expanded;
- Parrish Street Advocacy Group and the Historic Preservation Society have opened their headquarters signaling a stronger focus to attract new investment and visitors to downtown through a celebration of history.
- The American Tobacco Campus continues to grow and is a continuing focal point for civic and cultural activities;
- The $150 million West Village Phase 2 groundbreaking occurred and construction is under way;
- Brightleaf Square and near by businesses continue to prosper and are a destination point for shopping and dining;
- Groundbreaking was held for the 2,800-seat Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC);
- Construction continues on the downtown streets, sidewalks, lighting and landscaping with completion scheduled in May of this year;
- Although they are not a part of downtown Durham, our two (2) major regional shopping centers (Southpoint and Northgate) continue to be major shopping attractions with Northgate Shopping Center undergoing extensive redevelopment last year.
We obviously have not completed the downtown revitalization process but we have made tremendous progress and the momentum continues.
However, I do believe that we are at the point where we can begin to turn our efforts and attention to more extensive planning for the revitalization of our inner city neighborhoods. When I say "turn our attention", I don't mean to imply that we are going to forsake our downtown revitalization efforts. What I am suggesting is that, in my opinion, downtown has matured to the extent that it may require less attention and use of our limited resources so that we might focus more extensive attention and resources on our inner city neighborhoods. In fact, it may be time for us to look at establishing a special downtown overlay district with a special tax to provide a higher level of service for downtown -services that may include additional police coverage, street clean up and other infrastructure improvements.
Of course it would be necessary that we engage in full discussions with all of the downtown property owners as much as possible, who potentially might be impacted by a special overlay service district before deciding on whether to pursue this special downtown tax levy.
As we focus on inner city neighborhood revitalization, it is again going to require in many instances, that we turn to public/private partnerships. However this time the element of community input and involvement is going to be much more extensive and inclusive as compared to what we saw in our downtown revitalization projects.
But why should revitalization of a neighborhood that you don't live in be important to you?
You've probably heard that the strength and character of a city can be measured by the vibrancy of its inner city. That is a key reason why we've seen so many cities, over the last decade, turn their sights to making their downtowns a destination point. But let me tell you why it is important that we invest equal attention and forethought to making inner city neighborhoods just as vibrant as downtown and in particular those neighborhoods surrounding the downtown.
First, some of our neighborhoods surrounding downtown Durham are in distress. You see more boarded up houses, houses that may be rental property and houses in which the value has decreased, and is continuing to decrease every year. It also makes sense for Durham to look inward to revitalize our inner city neighborhoods, because as a city and county we have limited space to grow outward due to land that is off limits for development because of our watershed limitations.
The second key reason we should care about revitalizing our inner city neighborhoods is appearances - and what a run-down looking neighborhood can lead to. Durham is not proud of the number of boarded up and dilapidated houses we have. You've perhaps heard of the broken windows theory that says that how a neighborhood looks has a strong impact on whether crime is likely to occur there. In other words, making our inner city neighborhoods look better with improved street lighting, sidewalks and streets in good condition and other needed infrastructure improvements can possibly help to reduce crime.
Third, and perhaps, the most important reason that we need to focus on our inner city neighborhoods, is for the citizens who live in them. Throughout my three terms as mayor, I've listened to residents talk about their living conditions and incidents that occur in their neighborhoods. Many of us cannot imagine the obstacles many of our fellow residents face. Fixing up these blighted and distressed neighborhoods is simply the right thing to do and it can be, and indeed, it has been done in some of our neighborhoods. However we can do more.
We have demonstrated and gained experience in inner city neighborhood revitalization over the past five years in the revitalization of Barnes Avenue which has been renamed Eastway Avenue. Eastway represented another example of Partnerships working. It does no good to redevelop a neighborhood and no one wants to live in it. The Durham Board of Realtors has worked with the city since before these homes were completed in finding families to become homeowners in Eastway. Some of the families and realtors are here tonight and I'd like them to stand and be recognized.
Of course, the dynamics of neighborhood revitalization are somewhat different than the revitalization process of downtown. It necessarily requires more extensive involvement by the community because of individual property owners, who may be homeowners, or absentee owners whose property may be vacant or occupied by rental tenants.
You are also speaking of neighborhoods where the total land may be larger in acres than what we see in downtown Durham. In the downtown redevelopment process, generally the large properties were owned by a single individual or corporation and therefore you didn't have to deal with as many persons to reach an agreement.
It is important that we listen to the very people who make up our neighborhoods, and that means that rebuilding distressed neighborhoods may be a more formidable task than downtown revitalization. However, we can't let that deter us from the city's goals of ensuring that:
- Every citizen in Durham has access to adequate, safe, and affordable housing;
- Durham citizens enjoy sustainable, thriving neighborhoods with efficient and well-maintained infrastructures.
- Durham citizens enjoy a City rich in aesthetic beauty
Over the next month I will ask Council members to join me in asking the city manager to begin to preliminarily identify neighborhoods that may be candidates for revitalization. The next step would be to engage neighborhood property owners and residents to establish a partnership in the revitalization process.
Revitalization of our blighted neighborhoods, if done correctly, will not happen overnight. It will require fortitude, determination and patience as well as resources from all stakeholders to make it a reality.
As part of the bigger, long-term picture, we can start by stepping up our program for street and sidewalk repairs and street lighting in those neighborhoods, in particular, where there are high incidents of crime and poverty.
On the issue of street lights, I am requesting the city council to ask the city manager to form a task force, to also include members of the Durham Police Department, to begin to visit our inner city neighborhoods at night to assess the level of street lighting. I would request that this be done in time to incorporate his recommendations in our city budget for the council's consideration.
I'd like to now turn our attention to the safety of all our citizens, an area of key importance to our City Council and Durham residents.
Last year, my comments about reducing crime focused on the high number of homicides that we experienced in 2004 and 2005. We identified some key issues that we asked the community to focus on in an attempt to reduce the number of homicides in 2006.
Those issues were: Parental Involvement, Guns, Drugs and Economics. I am pleased to report that, last year, many people and businesses throughout this city and county stepped up and got involved to help conquer the root causes of crimes and homicides.
Underlying many of those root causes is the issue of poverty. Poverty is a factor in our community to which we are not immune. It was also a factor in our approach to addressing some of these root causes of crime and homicides. We focused on providing mentoring, job placement and training for many of those persons in poverty or close to the poverty line.
Project Strike represented an innovative way to help gang members re-direct their lives through jobs. We also focused on providing jobs for ex felons who demonstrated a sincere and serious desire to gain lawful employment.
Project Restoration Institute for Leaders (RIL) was an exciting and innovative educational and leadership enrichment opportunity for over 40 of Durham's youth in crisis. It emerged to provide academic credit, vocational options and incentives for youth 13-18 years old who were entangled in pathways that could lead to failure and destruction. Low academic achievement, truancy, disruptive behaviors, gang involvement and those in the Juvenile Court system were the targeted population. They attended school for seven weeks during the summer at the Durham Public School System's "Durham School of the Arts". Certified teachers, teacher assistants and vocational instructors worked collaboratively to equip them for academic improvement, real life work preparation and keep them off the streets in a positive environment. One of the students stated "but not for RIL he very well may have been dead over the summer". Numerous individuals, companies and the public sector partnered to make this program possible. The leadership provided by Judge Elaine Bushfan, Jim Goodmon, Barker French and the program director Phyllis Joyner were exceptional.
Men of Vision truly made an impact through its many programs last year. I'd like to recognize the accomplishments of the D.L. Forbes Youth Foundation with support from Men of Vision. That group has conducted camps, held gang awareness seminars and held other outreach efforts.
There also have been numerous other initiatives that have made a difference in our community. You may recall that last year, I called on the community to become a mentor. Many of you did. Now, thanks to the leadership of Council member Mike Woodard, the City will be partnering with the Volunteer Center to fund one-third of the salary of a Mentoring Alliance director to make it easier for you to mentor a youth. I'd like to recognize Steven Raburn, the Executive Director of the Volunteer Center. He will receive a proclamation tonight during our Council meeting recognizing February as Mentoring Month.
As a result of this collective action we saw a significant reduction in homicides for the year 2006. There were 19 homicides in 2006 and only 14 or 15 of the 19 are reportable as homicides compared to 35 reportable homicides in 2005. There were four or five homicides that occurred that were considered to be justifiable homicides and are not required to be reported to the FBI as homicides. As significant as these reduced homicides are, we still would like to see no homicides. Unfortunately we have begun the year with one reported homicide in 2007.
Now while we did see a reduction in homicides, unfortunately we saw an increase in the number of violent crimes. And while as a nation we have seen a rise in violent crimes for 2006, it is not an excuse for us to be comfortable that we too have been following the national trend in the rise of violent crimes. We must build on the substantial progress we made in reducing homicides and find ways to make substantial reductions in violent crime.
Total violent crimes in Durham rose 32.2 percent over last year. An increase from 1,473 total violent crimes in 2005 to a total of 1,947 violent crimes by year end 2006.
Again violent crimes are comprised of Murder (14 vs. 35), Rape (100 vs. 85), Robbery (974 vs. 627) and Aggravated Assaults (859 vs. 726).
I am asking the city council to support my request that the city manager present no later than the end of April 2007 a plan to address the actions that our police department will take towards reducing violent crime in our city. I am also requesting that we begin to receive monthly reports on the crime statistics at our work sessions. We need to see the crime trends more frequently so that if different actions are needed we can respond quicker. I am also requesting that we be given a plan that calls for more police presence in those areas that are experiencing higher incidents of crime. The city and county as well as the private sector have made a tremendous investment in downtown. There is more of a presence of persons coming to downtown at all hours of the day and we need to make sure that we are providing an adequate level of patrols to deter and to be able to respond more quickly to possible criminal incidents.
Just two weeks ago, we held a community meeting with the residents of the St. Theresa and Southside, a neighborhood that has shown deterioration through the years. Our police department reported at that meeting that through a targeted effort for 90 days, that neighborhood saw a 15 percent drop in violent crime and 22 percent drop in total crimes. We owe it to everyone to determine if the actions taken there to reduce violent crime could be duplicated in other areas.
I'd like to re-emphasize that the responsibility for making Durham safe is a community responsibility not just a law enforcement responsibility. We all have a role to play, and we all must get involved to help reduce crime in general and specifically reduce violent crime in our city.
I am again calling and appealing to the total community to work in partnership towards the reduction of crime in general, and specifically work to reduce violent crime in our city. I want to challenge our community to work towards reducing our violent crimes by more than 32 percent. This may seem an enormous task but it would, if accomplished, place us where we were at the end of 2005 in the number of violent crimes.
I now want to address another area and that is accountability. Another one of the city's goals is:
Durham citizens enjoy an efficient and accountable City government.
The efficient delivery of our core city services should always be at the top of our goals and there should be no compromise in the delivery of these services. Our citizens and tax payers have every right to assume that this will be done and we as elected officials and city employees should be held accountable to meet these goals.
I would be less than candid if I didn't admit that there have been a few moments in 2006 when this goal of accountability was truly being tested and those moments did not represent our finest. One of those moments was our actions in handling the yard waste fire. Eventually the yard waste fire was extinguished but only after too many days of burning and at additional expense to the city as well as some uncomfortable moments for some of our citizens. As a result of this incident and because of the pending regulatory changes for maintaining yard waste facilities, the administration is evaluating the pros and cons of whether the city should continue to operate a yard waste facility.
The other moment has been in the timeliness of how we communicated both to the general public and regulatory agencies concerning our Lead, Copper compliance monitoring. As many of you probably now know that if your home or building has copper water plumbing that is connected using lead solder there is a possibility that lead could leach into your water from these connections. In Durham, homes that are more likely to have this type of plumbing are those homes that were built prior to 1986. The EPA refers to these sites as Tier 1 classification. My home is one such home as it was built in 1984. We are told that this problem could be exacerbated if the proper water treatment chemicals at our water treatment plants are not used to prevent corrosion. If there is a health issue with drinking water it exists potentially for those Tier 1 sites.
It is important to note that for the sampling periods of 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 2001 and 2004 the city was in compliance. We did not come out of compliance until later years when for some reason the water treatment process at one of our water treatment plants was changed by our water department. The obvious questions are: why did we make the change; who authorized the change; did we know or should we have known that the change could possibly have contributed to the leeching of lead into the drinking water lines of those Tier 1 sites? The other question is: were we following the correct regulatory sampling procedures and if not, why not?
As a result of these questions we are working first with the NC Department of Environmental Health Public Water Supply Section to validate our corrosion control program, to include monitoring our distribution system for the presence of any lead and copper and the replacement of any lead service line locations within the system's distribution system. We also will be doing whatever our regulatory agencies require to ensure that proper lead copper monitoring is performed in accordance with the regulatory agencies that are responsible for establishing the regulations and guidelines for testing. We also will be communicating as quickly and as efficiently as possible to those homeowners whose homes will be tested and to the general public on lead public education.
All of this is being done, as we await the results of an independent outside audit of our compliance procedures leading up to this time.
I am also of the opinion that all things in life happen for a purpose, what you do as a result of these happenings becomes the defining moment. We all can make and have made mistakes in our jobs. If we haven't made mistakes it probably is because we aren't doing anything. Honest mistakes are one thing, intentionally disregarding regulations or giving misleading information is a different thing and a more serious matter. Whether or not the intentional disregard of regulations or giving misleading information occurred has not been determined and it needs to be.
I remain confident that the city manager understands the seriousness of this matter and that he will take the appropriate actions to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. I am also confident that if it is determined by the city manager that other city employees were negligent in their responsibilities they will be dealt with appropriately through the city manager's chain of command. It is important for us as a city council and the public to remember that for the city council, the chain of command ends with the city manager. He is the person that we ultimately hold responsible for managing the day to day operations of the city. He, along with the city clerk and city attorney, is the only city employee whom the city charter authorizes the city council to direct, hire or fire. If at any time the majority of the city council determines that either of these three employees' services are no longer needed, the city council can take the appropriate action to relieve them of their duties and hence their responsibilities. As Mayor when I come to the point that I no longer have confidence in the city manager to perform his job, he along with the city council will be the first to know. Tonight I am not at that point.
As I conclude my remarks, let me close on a few reasons why Durham continues to be a place where great things happen: We've already addressed the economic strides we are making in the city with downtown development and the forward movement of our performing arts center. I'd like to thank our local delegation to the NC General Assembly for providing the authority to levy the additional hotel/motel tax to fund the DPAC. I want to equally thank the county commissioners for taking the leadership and levying the tax. This is another example of partnerships working together for the common good of the community.
I am proud to recognize the partnership the city has with our youth. Our Youth Council, thanks to the leadership of Mayor Pro Temp Cora Cole-McFadden, received its official state charter, enabling members to vote and serve on committees at the state level.
I am also proud to note that just two weeks ago, out of over 450 applicants nation wide, Durham was selected by "America's Promise - The Alliance for Youth" - as one of the top 100 best communities for Young People in the nation. Only one other city in the state received that designation. Mrs. Alma Powell wife of General Collin Powell who serves as Chairperson of the Alliance presented the awards. The "US Conference of Mayors" is also a member of the Alliance. This honors our community's commitment to provide healthy, safe and caring environments for our young people.
Thanks to the voter approved bonds parks are being upgraded; streets and sidewalks are being repaired, and efforts are being made to accelerate the opening of Herndon Park. Although I can tell you that families already are making use of Herndon Park now, in a passive way.
The City's Triple A Bond Rating from all three ratings agencies continues, with Durham being one of 16 municipalities across the nation to have such a distinction.
- Citizen Engagement Remains Strong and our communications with them are improving through our award winning programming for government television.
- Durham One Call has taken more than 500,000 calls, improving our ability to serve our citizens in a more timely way.
Finally, although this may seem counterintuitive to most as being a positive accomplishment, I must recognize what I've called the "true grit" shown by our community over the last year with regard to the lacrosse situation. While we are being portrayed by the media as a city torn by racial strife, we have seen our universities, Duke and NCCU, under the leadership of President Brodhead and Chancellor Ammons, come together; we've seen leaders and members of our community call for calm and urge us to await the findings of the judicial process. We must continue to work hard as a community to not let this one issue divide us or take away from the great events that are occurring in this community. Our ongoing partnerships in different forms have been a blessing to this community, and we must not let a single issue, such as the lacrosse incident, distract from all of the positive progress that we have made as a community.
In closing, we truly are a city where great things happen. Thank you for your time and your continued support as we work together to make this a great city for all. God bless you and God bless Durham.