City Council Business Meeting on 2025-10-13 5:00 PM - Oct 13, 2025

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Charlotte City Council 2h 58m 7 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 4 days ago official recording ↗

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What introductions and consent agenda items are presented at the beginning of the meeting?

Vi Lyles 4:50

Here first. Let's see w if we are ready. So we can't know we didn't do that, I wouldn't have to do that. Okay. All right, are we ready, Amanda? Thank you very much. Um so we're gonna start and call this meeting to order. This is gonna be a really um I think We're pay attention to this agenda because we have three closed session items today in addition to all of the materials that we have that we will be doing um in our regular business meeting. So we're gonna start off with our consent and action review um and call the meeting to order. Are we gonna do introductions? That was the very next thing on this list. All right, and now we're gonna do introductions. We'll start with Miss Watlington.

Victoria Watlington 5:46

Good evening everyone. My name is Victoria Wallington. I have the pleasure of serving you as a member at large. Good evening, Lawana Mayfield, Councilmember at large.

Marcus Jones 5:55

Malcolm Graham, District Two. Marcus Jones, City Manager.

Vi Lyles 5:58

Five Lyles, Mayor. Good evening and happy birthday, Councilmember Melina. Dante Anderson, Mayor Pro Ten, District One.

Unknown 6:07

Good evening everyone. Jane Smith at Lodge and happy birthday to my colleague. I hope you didn't do nothing I wouldn't do.

Marjorie Molina 6:15

Colleagues, um good evening, and um I'm Marjorie Moline, I represent District Five. Thank you, colleagues. And

Unknown 6:22

Alice Burke.

Marjorie Molina 6:24

Oh yeah.

Vi Lyles 6:27

Well she'll tell you the stories later on, right? Exactly. So I want to say good evening and thank you to I'm sorry.

Anthony Fox 6:35

Anthony Fox, interim city.

Unknown 6:36

Anthony.

Anthony Fox 6:37

Interim city attorney.

Unknown 6:39

Billy Tons, deputy city clerk. Ik zou apart zijn.

Vi Lyles 6:44

All right, thank you very much. Um we have started this and we will move on to our next item and that I want to make sure that we appreciate all of you that are joining us and we'll be be here. Um especially there are people that I hope will be watching us online for our October thirteenth. Council business meeting. So we have had our introduction, so Um We would not. Um I'm sorry. Ms. Renee Johnson just came in. Councilmember?

Unknown 7:15

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Renee Johnson and I'm honored to represent District 4.

Vi Lyles 7:19

All right. Thank you very much for the time that you're here today. So um let's start beginning with our consent items on tonight's agenda. Um we do have a speaker for our consent item. I believe it's item twenty-three. Um and so if we could recognize Ms I'm not sure that I can get it, Mr. Evan Schultz Shall if we would please if you would like to come to the dais. Um this is on action item number twenty three. For the council members, right.

Unknown 7:54

Thank you. Esteemed counselors, tonight you will vote on approval of the expenditure of nearly three million in federal grant money on an engineering firm to address road and traffic safety in the city. I am here to raise the point that this is the fundamental problem with transit costs in Charlotte, that having little to no in-house staff with the technical knowledge to direct consultancy or engineering firms, much less actually manage and execute projects themselves, is the largest contributor to cost overruns and long delivery timelines for infrastructure in the United States. A 2023 study by New York University identified a lack of in-house expertise due to a desire to offload risk results in higher bid prices, conflict with other agencies, and low standardization, all of which significantly raises total project costs.

Unknown 8:46

For example, the New York MTA gutted its in house capital projects management group from sixteen hundred to one hundred and twenty four employees between nineteen ninety and twenty eleven, resulting in nearly twenty percent of total project costs being paid to consultancy firms, double the average in West Europe. The CRTPO has just fifteen employees. The reality is that outsourcing endless studies and even core design guidelines to firms is pointless when the transit agency does not have the expertise to absorb and utilize that information. The study compared ballooning project costs to that of nuclear power plants, where the loss of expertise and lack of standardization has resulted in comparable multi billion dollar costs.

Unknown 9:27

Whereas countries with successful transit build programs have used a large