Durham City Council Work Session - May 21, 2026: Durham Debates Police Tech, Rethinks Local Elections
The Durham City Council wrestles with renewing an Axon surveillance technology contract, weighing AI safeguards, civilian oversight, data control, and competing visions of public safety while hearing sharply divided public comments. The council also reviews rising election costs and considers major charter changes—including ward representation, term lengths, voting methods, and even-year elections—alongside updates on homelessness strategy and industrial pollution at a long‑running Brenntag site. 55mins
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Original Meeting
Thursday, May 21st, 2026
19286.0
Durham City Council Work Session May 21, 2026
Video Notes
Welcome to the City Council Work Session for May 21, 2026.
Agenda: https://www.durhamnc.gov/AgendaCenter/City-Council-4
How to participate: https://www.durhamnc.gov/1345
Contact the City Council: https://www.durhamnc.gov/1323
NOTE: Comments left on this livestream will not be read or entered into the meeting record
In This Video
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City Manager Ferguson outlined existing oversight options for police technology, explaining how the Civilian Police Review Board and the Audit Services Oversight Committee could seek expanded authority or add reviews of police tech use and data practices, even though current jurisdiction and citywide policy did not directly focus on technology or data collection.
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Mayor Pro Tem Caballero explained feeling more comfortable with the Axon technology bundle because the city already used Axon, prosecution offices across North Carolina had adopted related tech platforms that the city needed to align with, and the shift was driven partly by external prosecutorial decisions rather than new council-initiated tools.
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Mayor Pro Tem Caballero and Council Member Cook called for clear written guardrails on Axon’s tools, including defined audit oversight, limits or strict narrowing of license plate readers, keeping AI models in-house, opting out of data-sharing for model training, and requiring future technology changes to return to council for approval.
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Mayor Williams expressed strong support for adopting new police technology, arguing that the city must evolve with modern threats, prioritize lives over costs, treat skepticism as a tool for informed policy rather than avoidance, and recognize that some residents’ opposition does not represent the entire community.
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David Boone reviewed the costs of optional municipal election components—early voting, absentee-by-mail, and radio advertisements—and explained that eliminating any of them could save money, but that repealing authorization for early or absentee voting had to occur at least 60 days before the next election.
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David Boone explained that only the General Assembly could move Durham’s municipal elections from odd- to even-numbered years and noted that several North Carolina cities, including Raleigh, Asheville, and Winston-Salem, had already shifted or sought to shift to even-year elections through state legislation.
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A speaker detailed how changing Durham’s election method and aligning contests with other elections could significantly cut municipal election costs, explaining that the city would mainly pay modest additional expenses for ballot coding and length rather than the full prior amount charged by the county.
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Elections staff reported a 118% cost increase since 2017, and Mayor Williams, joined by Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, discussed pursuing several charter change options—including shifting to even‑year elections, lengthening the mayoral term, revising the ward system, and moving from a primary-and-election model to plurality voting—to improve consistency and reduce election burdens.
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Council Member Cook supported maintaining staggered council terms and a two-year mayoral term, arguing that frequent mayoral elections boost voter engagement, preserve continuity in governance, and have historically not prevented mayors from serving multiple consecutive terms despite the challenges of frequent campaigning.
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City Manager Ferguson explained that ward boundaries were periodically redrawn into compact, equally populated districts based on decennial census data, while a council member argued that the current three-ward structure confused residents and left too many people grouped into large, underrepresented wards.
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A council member and an elections official supported moving to a clearer ward-based system and replacing Durham’s primary-and-election method with a single election, arguing that more wards and eliminating the primary would reduce voter confusion, ease administrative burdens, and cut costs without diminishing voter rights or turnout.
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Assistant Transportation Director Patterson outlined a pilot one-hour free parking program in two downtown garages by extending the existing grace period, noting an estimated $75,000 annual revenue loss and explaining that staff, in partnership with DDI, would monitor usage, collect data, and report back on its economic impact before deciding whether to continue the program.
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A speaker described Durham’s Vision Zero strategy, emphasizing the need to prioritize proven safety countermeasures on the city’s high-injury network and to focus limited resources on the corridors with the greatest crash risk in order to meet the goal of cutting serious traffic injuries in half by 2035 and ultimately reaching zero deaths.
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A speaker explained that development of the street design manual would likely mirror the multimodal transportation impact analysis process, with the planning department leading and transportation staff at the table, and noted that key decisions would need further discussion with the planning department.
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Council Member Kopac confirmed that a funded street design manual was in the work plan, praised rapid street improvement projects set to roll out in 2026, and a speaker outlined the specific city corridors and intersections targeted for quick-build safety upgrades, noting that some locations required coordination with NCDOT.
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Director Smith outlined a unified five‑year plan to make homelessness in Durham rare and brief by 2031, describing current unsheltered and shelter waitlist numbers and setting one‑year milestones to significantly reduce unsheltered, youth, veteran, and senior homelessness so that residents experiencing homelessness could be rehoused within 30 days.
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Director Smith explained that homelessness in Durham had been growing with about 20% more people entering than exiting, and described how the five‑year plan was built as an adaptive, data‑driven effort shaped by an advisory group—including philanthropy, business, faith leaders, and unsheltered residents—to adjust to changing conditions and ensure services met real needs.
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Director Smith highlighted evidence that well-resourced outreach and coordinated case conferencing could rapidly reduce homelessness, citing another community’s success moving thousands from encampments into housing and a local effort that rehoused 15 families in 30 days through intensive collaboration and financial assistance.
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Environmental and Stormwater Services staff member Michelle Wolfwick explained that the Brenntag investigation authority was limited to pollution entering the city’s drainage system, noting that streams, air, soil, groundwater, and public health issues fell under state agencies while the city could only speak to aquatic health conditions.
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Environmental staff member Michelle Wolfwick described how a 2022 investigation into discolored stream water led staff to identify the Brenntag site as the source, issue multiple violations and orders, and require groundwater well testing along with analysis of buried materials and the black substance found in the groundwater-fed stream.
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Environmental staff member Michelle Wolfwick reported that a leaking outfall in violation of a notice of violation was causing a mucilaginous biological growth in the stream, indicating significant biological impacts from the discharge even though the stormwater program could only use stream conditions to infer problems at the outfall.
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Environmental staff member Michelle Wolfwick explained that evidence pointed to contaminated groundwater—not current Brenntag operations—as the source of the ongoing discharge, noting that groundwater fell outside the stormwater program’s authority and that a key creek flow model was delayed until rainfall restored enough stream flow for measurements while other project tasks remained on track.
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Environmental staff member Manager Azarelo explained that the city preferred violators spend money on fixes rather than pay fines, noted that all civil penalties went to public schools, and detailed how missed analytical deadlines and ongoing unlawful discharges at the Brenntag site led to penalties of about $44,000 and a subsequent $113,000 assessment.
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Council Member Nate Baker condemned Brenntag as a multibillion‑dollar company causing environmental justice harms to nearby residents and students, urged full cleanup and compensation for affected communities, and another council member asked when the case might escalate from fines to potential legal action based on demonstrable harm.
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