- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- This week in "Off the Record" a new year means new ridership numbers for the future CATS Silver Line.

But do those numbers really add up?

Also, uptown and underground, the transit system digging in on plans for an expensive new Charlotte Transportation Center.

Duke Energy has some explaining to do this week about those Christmas Eve power outages.

And is change coming to the Charlotte City Council?

More council members, longer council terms, fewer council elections.

Plus, we'll take a peek at where the economy's headed in 2023, the future of the arts in Charlotte, and what's next for what used to be called Latta Plantation.

Lots to talk about next on PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat music) And from our PBS Charlotte Studios in Historic Plaza Midwood, I'm Jeff Sonier.

We're Off the Record, talking about the stories you've been talking about this week.

And if you watch the news, read the news and listen to the news, well, you'll recognize the names and faces around our virtual table.

Ely Portillo from WFAE, Danielle Chemtob from AXIOS Charlotte.

Tony Mecia from the Charlotte Ledger, and Genna Contino from the Charlotte Observer.

You can join the conversation too, at home or from your phone.

Just email your questions and comments to offtherecord@wtvi.org.

Well, new year, but still talking about a lot of the same topics we talked about last year, starting with CATS.

And a busy week as city council right off the bats addresses some decisions that have to be made soon regarding some major CATS projects.

Let's talk first about the CATS Silver Line, the East-West light rail project that's planned for the future.

But the exact route is still a little bit up in the air, although we've got a little bit more clarity, I guess, this week on what at least CATS wants to do.

I know all four of you have taken a crack at this particular issue, anyone wanna start us off today?

- Yeah, so one of the big questions about the Silver Line is how exactly it's going to get through or around Uptown.

CATS has suggested that they wanna go kind of around to the north, skirting it, skirting uptown along 11th Street and 277.

But a lot of transit advocates think that it would be better to go straight through the heart of uptown, either by sharing tracks with the Gold Line, maybe even tunneling, although that's not really on the table, or sharing tracks with the Blue Line for a portion to get to the heart of Trade and Tryon, and the heaviest employment centers.

This week, the City Council's Transportation Committee voted unanimously to support building the Silver Line Light Rail around uptown.

So kind of taking that northern route, skirting it, which a lot of transit advocates worry will attract fewer riders, and kinda make it more difficult for the system to grow long term.

- Not a surprise.

- Yeah, we- - Go ahead, I'm sorry, Danielle, please.

- No, we did get some ridership numbers from CATS that showed that the route that they did end up endorsing would have the highest ridership, which is interesting because that differs from what was presented, I believe it was around the summer of last year, when they were first kind of presenting this idea of sharing the tracks with the Blue Line and the Gold Line.

That came up when they were working with the Urban Land Institute, which was sort of this idea, and that it would help get federal funding for the project to go through uptown.

And so you saw them kind of, basically after that, start reverting to the original idea of skirting around uptown.

But we hadn't had these new updated figures yet.

So it's interesting that they're saying now this is the highest ridership because there has been some debate around kind of whether ridership or development of that area is the biggest goal.

- Does it surprise anyone that the numbers suddenly kinda support this original decision, or this original preference by CATS?

I mean, how do the numbers change for a project you know, that hasn't started yet?

And they kinda changed conveniently, didn't they?

For the folks who are supporting this more circuitous route around uptown, right?

- Yeah, I mean, all of it is somewhat of a guess, you know?

We're trying to project out ridership for something that's not going to open for 20 years at the soonest.

So it's really hard to say exactly.

Our reporter Steve Harrison asked Andy Mock, who's leading this project, what changed, and did these numbers change kinda conveniently.

CATS, they said that they are always refining their projections, that they updated the models, and now the route that goes along Brookshire Freeway and 11th Street would carry the most passengers according to their new analysis.

We haven't seen all the inputs that went into that new analysis, and what exactly changed to make their preferred option now the highest ridership option.

But you know, I think that the upshot of all this is that it's really kind of cleared the way for city council to feel comfortable endorsing the more circuitous route, because those lower ridership numbers were the biggest roadblock before.

- Yeah, let's- - You know, one of the other factors though, Jeff, I think, and Ely's reported this and Steve Harrison of WFAE, is there's a question of the funding.

How do you get funding for this?

Remember, this is all a little bit speculative.

in the sense that there is no funding stream that has been secured to build this.

And it would be, I think as Ely mentioned, you know, 20, 25 years or so.

The other question is how do you get federal funding?

Because federal funding is gonna be an important part of any type of building out of the Silver Line.

And the Urban Land Institute had warned, look, if these ridership numbers are not, if they're not good, if the projections are not solid, you're not gonna get federal funding.

So there will be separate assessments of these numbers.

I don't think...

The city council might take them and say, well, this route has the most riders.

But I don't know that the federal government is going to.

So there's still a lot of analysis.

There's still a lot of modeling and projections, I think to be done in the future.

- Yeah, the feds will confirm or not confirm any numbers, I suppose, that CATS comes up with.

It gets back to that same old give and take, development versus ridership.

Obviously, they'd like to use the Silver Line as a development tool to go through neighborhoods that could use the investment, you know, kind of duplicating what happened in South End.

And a lot of critics of CATS say that they should be talking about ridership first, since it's a transit organization.

That ridership versus investment or development issue came up on another CATS issue this week, the new Uptown Transportation Center.

Genna, you wanna talk a little bit about where CATS and Council are headed on that particular project, as well?

- Yeah, so the same committee, the Transportation Planning Committee with the city council, they voted to recommend moving it underground, like getting rid of the terrace option.

So they had narrowed it down to two options, building a new CTC kind of on two levels, or moving the bus hub underground.

And the transit committee ultimately kind of voted to move that forward.

But I believe the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that meets January 25th, will make kind of a more formal vote on that.

And then I think that just means that's how they'll move forward with the design, as that is the option.

- But here we are, again, a project that will cost more.

based on what they're recommending right now, and will do more for development.

But you know, there are critics again, that say an underground uptown transportation Center doesn't best serve the needs of the folks who are riding the bus and riding the light rail that's provided.

And is that again the case?

And again, how is City Council reacting?

I guess they're falling in line with what CATS is recommending.

But it kinda raises that whole question again of, is it a transit agency or is it a development agency that uses transit for development, right?

- Yeah- - I also think there's- Oh, I'm sorry.

- Oh, yeah, I was just gonna say- - I was gonna say, I think there's a theme of kind of this Transit Planning Committee seems to be on the same page, and they vote for it to move forward.

And then when that committee comes back to city council and they say, hey, we're moving forward with underground, the rest of the city council's like, whoa, I still have concerns about that.

How did we get to this point?

So I still think there's a lot of controversy surrounding that, whether it's safety, whether it's environmental, having all those buses underground.

And I think a lot of council member, or council members not on the committee still feel like they don't have questions answered.

Sorry to cut you off, Ely.

(laughs) - Ely, go ahead.

- Oh, that's okay.

I was just gonna say that Tracy Dodson, who is the city's economic development director, is one of the leading forces pushing this particular option of the underground bus station.

And I think that when you look at the city departments that are involved, and what arms of the bureaucracy are pushing this, economic development is really driving this project.

And you know, the city looks around at that area, and they say, gee, we've got a lot of undeveloped land here.

The epicenter, RIP, went under, the arena is still a thriving venue, but it's old.

The Hornets want improvements, they want a new practice facility.

So this presents kind of a nice one-stop solution for them.

The biggest question, though, is does it serve bus riders best?

And you know, frankly, there is a racial element to it as well, I think.

Because something like 75% of bus riders in Charlotte are Black.

And you know, there have been concerns raised about these riders who are generally lower income people of color, putting them underground, and building a shiny new apartment-office tower, mixed-use complex on top of it.

You know, it is a concern for some folks.

- Yeah, go ahead Danielle.

- And to piggyback off of that, I think that the biggest concerns that they have stated wanting to address at the current transportation center is, of course, crime.

And you know, with this underground bus center, also saying this would be more weatherproof.

Of course, we generally have pretty good weather here.

But those are two things that they say would be better.

But we haven't really seen... Obviously, on the weather aspect, you know, being underground would likely help.

But we haven't seen necessarily like specifics around like how putting it underground would help with the crime, or like, as Ely was saying, does it sort of push things like out of sight, out of mind, right?

Like, I don't know that we've seen any kind of concrete evidence of what they would do that makes that a better situation.

- Yeah, solving the problem is different than hiding the problem, obviously, whether it's crime at the transportation center, or any other plethora of problems.

Hey, quickly, the third leg of this CATS stool in this discussion is a report on CATS management, which I guess we shouldn't be surprised, is lacking according to the consultants the city hired based on a lot of these discussions we're having.

Ely, you wrote about that this week.

Tell us what the consultants are saying.

- Yeah, they dropped this report on Christmas Eve Eve, the Friday before the holidays, with very little notice.

And the consultants that the city hired basically found that CATS management structure is a problem.

That there's all kinds of overlapping lines of responsibility.

There are concerns about transparency, especially around how the budget is developed.

And you know, CATS has this weird structure, where it reports to the city council and city manager, but it also reports to a regional governance board.

So in addition to the operational problems they've had, this report really highlighted a lot of the kind of structural challenges that are baked into how this organization has been run.

And you know, it seems like the structure of management is not really conducive to efficient, transparent, and really clear decision making.

And I think that's a big problem for this agency as they're trying to dig out of a big hole that they've gotten into with COVID, and also plan for these multi-billion dollar expansions that we're talking about.

- Yeah, my sense is that the city spends $70,000 to have confirmed what a lot of folks already felt about CATS and management.

Again, we've got a void at the top of CATS right now, several top executives either retiring or resigning.

So a lot of changes will be coming to CATS both in leadership, and also those projects we've talked about.

Something I'm sure we'll be talking about throughout the year 2023.

But let's change gears for a moment and talk about the end of 2022.

In particular, the Grinch utility that kind of followed up a lot of folks' Christmas Eve.

Duke Energy answering for what happened on Christmas Eve, rolling blackouts that affected hundreds, over 100,000 people here in Charlotte.

Again, everyone's kind of written a little bit about this this week.

But Tony, you wanna kinda bring us up to date on what Duke is saying, and how the state is reacting to what happened on Christmas Eve?

- Sure, a panel of Duke Energy executives made a presentation this week to the Utilities Commission in Raleigh, in which they attempted to explain exactly what happened with these rolling blackouts, which they refer to a lot of jargon in these committee meetings as load shedding where they said the demand for energy on the morning of Christmas Eve outstripped their ability to supply energy.

And you might recall that initially when this came out that weekend, the Christmas weekend, that Duke came out and said, well, it was unprecedented demand, we're working on it, please conserve energy.

That was sort of all they said.

Then it came out over the next few days, well, maybe they actually had some problems generating electricity, that sort of dribbled out.

Duke didn't say a lot about that, didn't give a lot of specifics.

But the hearing this week gave a lot of specifics.

And basically what happened was, you know, Duke portrayed it sort of as a series of unfortunate events, nothing to do, they said, with their planning or execution, just sort of a freak scenario, freak episode, in which they did have a few of their natural gas plants that went partially offline.

They had some problems with some of their other tools.

Some of the lines of the plants froze.

They had some, what were wound up being errors in communicating what was happening to customers.

They had a problem with an automated tool.

It was supposed to reliably shut down a part of their energy production, energy transmission.

That didn't work, they had to do it manually.

But they said that it's not anything that they did, that their planning was actually very good.

They wished the models had been better.

They wished the weather had been warmer, but that nobody in particular is at fault.

- That's kind of unsatisfying, isn't it?

(laughs) - We'll let them make that judgment.

But you know, one of the other things that did get headlines was that they did say, they came out and said, listen, we own this.

You know, we are sorry.

You saw some of the headlines that Duke says it's sorry.

It was really one of these apologies.

I'm sure nobody on this panel has ever been in an argument with a spouse or a loved one.

But it was more of a sorry, like a, I'm sorry you feel that way.

I mean, the quote was something like, "I'm sorry that our customers experienced this."

It wasn't, I'm sorry for here's something that we did.

It was more, we are sorry that this happened.

- Which I guess is better than, sorry, not, sorry.

I mean, you know, there's a lot of sorrys you could invoke here.

But I guess the biggest fear is that...

I mean there's, I guess you could call it no harm, no foul for the most part on Christmas Eve.

Everyone ultimately had power restored, and you know, life goes on.

But remember what happened in Texas last year when folks were off the grid without power for weeks at a time.

Similar situation, where they had deep freeze temperatures, unexpectedly so, and no way to kind of generate the power they needed.

I guess the long-term concern is what happens the next time?

Whether it's a deep freeze or another situation where you know the utility can't generate what it needs, and can't get the power from other utilities.

Are we any closer to what the future holds for Duke with these sorts of situations?

Danielle, I see you chomping at the bit.

- Well, I think that the long term is, you know, we're gonna have more of these extreme weather events with climate change.

And we have to be prepared for them.

You know, one thing that is happening concurrently to these hearings of basically at the very end of the year, a couple of days after the blackouts, the state released its carbon plan for Duke Energy, which is part of this state law passed in 2021 that says Duke has to become carbon neutral by 2050 and reduce emissions by 70% from 2005 levels by 2030, which is of course right around the corner.

And so in this process where we're talking about reliability of the grid, they're also really shifting a lot of the resources of the grid to become more clean energy.

And you saw the state in its report put a really big focus on reliability and making sure that Duke has a good mix of resources that are prepared for these kind of conditions, that will be able to be clean energy, but will also be a balance.

And as Tony said, these were natural gas resources predominantly that were having problems.

And that is a big part of Duke's plan.

And that's something that environmental advocates have been critical of, not only from the reliability standpoint, but primarily from an environmental standpoint because it's not a 100% clean energy source.

But I think that you're gonna start to see sort of questions around what is the right mix of cleaner energy, right?

Natural gas isn't fully clean.

But you know, they're also talking about solar and wind and all of these other resources.

And so it's important to kind of see how they balance them, how they get to these goals, while also making sure that customers are not impacted.

- Yeah, nobody talks about the power company until the lights go out or the bill comes in, I suppose.

And that's the case in this situation as well.

But we'll see how Duke proceeds going forward with future planning, and hopefully better planning for its situations like this.

You know, it's the first week of 2023.

But the most confusing story has gotta be James Mitchell, right?

City Council member James Mitchell, and the ongoing saga of whether he does or doesn't own a share of a construction company that does business with the city.

I guess we heard kind of the last word this week about that, unless you talk to Council Member Mitchell.

I don't even know where to start on this.

Anybody wanna take first shot?

(laughs) - Yeah, I'll go for it.

(laughs) So the DA and and the State Bureau of Investigation have found that he has no ownership stake in RJ Leeper, the company that he once presided over and that has ongoing contracts with the city.

Councilman Mitchell himself, as you said, still claims he does.

And the DA acknowledged in his report that he could take this to court to kind of get a determination of his ownership stake.

However, if the court was to find, yes, he does have a ownership stake, he would be violating criminal law of North Carolina and putting his counsel seat in jeopardy.

And he said...

They asked him, it's in the report, an SBI agent asked him, "Well, what if that happens, and it comes back?"

And he said, "Oh, well, I would just "bring my stake down to below 10% and abstain from council."

- Whoops, I think we froze up there with Genna.

You know, I'm not gonna blame Duke Power for that.

- Oh no, sorry.

- There you are, okay, yeah.

- I don't know where I cut off.

- Yeah, he says he'll sell the stake, the stake doesn't own, to get down to the level he needs to get to, which he wouldn't have to get to if he didn't own the company.

Again, I'm still really confused.

Where does this go from here?

Obviously, Mitchell says he is gonna take this to court.

Or at least he'll decide next week.

Is this much a do about nothing?

Or is this something that we should be more concerned about, whether he owns this company or not?

- Well, it's just a bizarre story because he's been saying for months and months and months that he still owns 25% of this company, from which he was either terminated or resigned.

The DA and the State Bureau of Investigation have looked into this.

And you know, I think the DA put it best in his report this week when he said, "It would be a peculiar position "for James Mitchell to pursue a civil claim "to try to get back or retain this stake "that he doesn't own, because if he succeeds, "he'd be exposing himself to criminal liability."

At this point, I don't expect he would do that.

He said that he's happy this is over, and he can go back to, "Serving the people full-time" were his words.

But it's just a really weird story.

'Cause even at the end of it he said, he's glad that the district attorney disproved his own statements.

(all laugh) - It's such a bizarre story, Jeff.

You know, a lot of his colleagues, they are not saying very much about it publicly.

But I think behind the scenes there's sort of this, they just would like this to go away.

I think they consider it to be a distraction.

And a bunch of people talking about DAs investigating council members and ownership stakes and conflicts of interest.

I think they're behind the scenes sort of rolling their eyes at this a little bit, and would just like to kinda move forward.

- Yeah, maybe we should do the same.

I just keep getting more and more confused.

The more we talk about it, the less I understand it, which is not unusual for me on a lot of subjects, but this one in particular is one we'll leave on hold for now.

But we will talk a little bit about council proposing some changes in the way, in the makeup of council itself.

A committee this week looking at a possible plan to expand the council and lengthen their terms.

How realistic is this actually happening?

We've been talking about it for years, at least council members have, right?

- Yeah, you know, it's a little bit of an early "Groundhog Day" here.

This idea has come up a lot in the decade plus I've been reporting in Charlotte.

But I think that there's a little bit more of a serious push for it.

You know, some members like LaWana Mayfield, who was on council previously and is back now, are big supporters of these ideas.

Going to four year terms with staggered elections, adding an eighth district seat.

You know, ultimately, I think that voters will have a say if goes anywhere.

It could be on the November ballot for a referendum, if city council decides to move ahead.

I think that there is a good chance that this Groundhog Day, they'll see their shadow, or whatever the metaphor is, and try to actually enact these.

- I like that- - I mean, this has been voted on before.

I remember voting on this I think 10 or 15 years ago.

So it does come up every now and then.

There was a Citizens Committee a couple years ago that came up with some recommendations.

And this was one of 'em.

Now it's interesting, they had a series of recommendations from the Citizens Committee.

And the city council has sort of cherry picked the ones that they liked, and ignored the ones that they don't like.

You know, there was a recommendation, I think, to go to nonpartisan elections again.

And there were several others.

But they picked the ones of, we would like to increase pay, and we would like to make four year terms.

And those are the ones they're driving at.

- Yeah, what a surprise, right?

(laughs) - Well it's always kind of the balance, I think.

You know, the idea is you're campaigning less often, you can get to more actual governance and work, which is a benefit.

But at the same time, I think anytime you're asking voters for higher pay, longer terms, it's always a bad optic, and it is an election year.

And as Ely said, It'd have to go on the ballot.

So you know, it's sort of that balance for them.

- Yeah, Genna, you want the last word on this?

- Yeah, I know this is a little, going back to Council Inside Baseball, kind of this dynamic between the committees and what their full role is, and that kind of being a misunderstanding among council.

But at the, I think it's the Intergovernmental Relations Committee, I don't know, the names have changed, but it was like Dimple Ajmera and LaWana Mayfield were really kind of campaigning for this.

They were on the same page.

And they were saying, you know, we don't have to even do a bond referendum for this if... Like, the legislature doesn't say we have to unless I think 5,000 people petition.

And then they bring this to a city council, and Tariq Bokhari's like, "Well, I will personally ensure that 5,000 people "sign a petition so this goes to "a referendum if we move forward with this."

So just trying show us again that dynamic between what role do the committees have, and are they on the same page with the full council and is this the best system.

- Yeah, a lot of the committees they operate, not necessarily in the dark, but they're not on television.

So they can talk about things without the glare of publicity that will come once these discussions are held by the full council.

And I guess we'll have to wait a few weeks or a few months before that happens.

You know what, we're out of time already, with lots more to talk about.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to talk about the Ledger's economic outlook panel this week.

or the cultural report or Latta Plantation, excuse me, Latta Place.

But those are topics that I'm sure will be back on the agenda as we move forward through 2023.

In the meantime, thanks panel, for joining us on the first show of 2023.

And thank you for joining us at home as well.

Anytime you wanna send comments or questions, just get in touch with us at off the record@wti.org.

Thanks for joining us this week, and we'll see you next time on "Off the Record."

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