More than 60 Durham residents from a variety of coalitions made their cases for how the city should allocate money in its 2024-2025 fiscal year budget at a public hearing Monday night.
City worker pay was a prominent issue going into the meeting. Last September, members of the solid waste department walked off the job for five days in protest of low wages. Their efforts were rewarded with one-time bonuses in October ranging from $500 to $5,000 for full-time and part-time employees, but the concerns over permanent wage increases still lingered. At the time, solid waste employee George Bacote told the INDY that he didn’t spend much time engaging with politics before September, but because the wage issue hit close to home, he said he’s “here for the long run.”
Bacote kept his word. On Monday night, he walked to the podium as the first in-person speaker, still wearing his neon work vest.
“How can our job be so important but we get paid so little?” Bacote asked the city council.
Bacote says solid waste employees do their job in harsh conditions, in snow and extreme heat, but are not appropriately compensated for being “essential” workers. Other city workers, including Durham firefighters, and residents spoke to the rising costs of living in Durham and to how many city employees feel as though they can’t afford to live in the city in which they work and serve..
“Who are our neighbors?” asked Kevin Georgas, a pastor at Jubilee Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, in a question directed to the council. “You all have an opportunity tonight to give your own answer to that question through this budget. Do you think the people who pick up our trash, who clean our streets, who keep our city beautiful, are your neighbors, or do you think they are just human resources?”
Wages were just one of the motivating issues for residents on Monday. The first proposal to come before the council concerned funding a three-year pilot for an Office of Survivor Care, which would offer support to survivors of gun violence and their families using restorative justice methods such as facilitative listening circles and peer support groups. The new office would fall under the city’s Community Safety Department, according to the proposal.
Earlier this month, the city council voted 4-3 not to renew its contract with SoundThinking, the company behind ShotSpotter. Many opponents of the technology suggested the city find alternative methods for spending money budgeted for public safety. The cost to pilot the Office of Survivor Care in its first year is about $220,000, roughly the same amount as the one-year pilot for ShotSpotter that city council approved at the end of 2022. Funding for the second and third years for the Office of Survivor Care would cost $820,000, more than a third of which would be used to cover funeral and burial expenses for homicide victims’ families and would be reimbursed by North Carolina’s Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund.
Unlike Durham’s other publicly-funded survivor support services, which the police department and the DA’s office provide, the Office of Survivor Care wouldn’t limit its services to survivors who are involved in ongoing trials or investigations.
“Survivor support cannot focus merely on the survivors of violence where an arrest was made and a criminal trial ensued,” the proposal for the pilot states. “For one thing, many harmed by violence never report the incident to crisis response or law enforcement. For another, only a fraction of the violent incidents reported to law enforcement result in arrest. Of those, only a fraction result in any criminal trial. Even those criminal trials provide little healing to violence survivors and their families.”
The pilot has already had its own pilot of sorts: from 2022 to 2023, the Community Safety Department collaborated with NCCU, Duke, and Restorative Justice Durham on a program called Prescriptions for Repair that encouraged survivors of gun violence to share their stories during a series of listening sessions.
The first speaker to champion the office was Frank Stasio, former host of WUNC’s The State of Things and a volunteer facilitator for Prescriptions for Repair who used his years of experience on the radio to capture the audience with a compelling call for support.
“Hurt people hurt people. Healed people heal people,” said Stasio. “And without healing the trauma that is rampant in our community, it is unlikely that enforcement is enough to do the job to make the public safe.”
Other big ticket items that residents recommended include stronger commitments to road safety from bike and pedestrian advocates, remediation of the lead and other toxins in Durham parks, and a small area plan for residents to better manage growth in their neighborhoods.
On May 20, the city manager will present a budget proposal to the city council for consideration. Council members will have the opportunity to give feedback and make recommendations before residents weigh in a second time during a public hearing on June 3.
The city is legally obligated to vote on a final budget by June 30.
INDY Staff writer Lena Geller contributed reporting to this story.
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