All right, if I get everybody to take a seat, please. We're going to go ahead and get started. >> All right. So, good morning. >> Morning. >> Morning. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> Morning. >> All right. Come on. Nobody's watching. >> Just want to welcome you all to the wolf factory. I know you've been here before
and done things. But welcome to your council retreat. Mayor, I'll turn it over to you to convene yourselves and we'll get started. >> Yes. I I I call the Charlottesville City Council um special meeting for retreat to order. Um we have a role. Everyone is
here and counted for Madame Clerk. So, we're good to go. >> Thank you, sir. So, today is August 15th, and I've been thinking about this day for a long time. So, I'm so glad that it's here and I can't wait for August 17th when I move it on to
something else. Uh, but just again wanted to thank you for patience uh and your cooperation and coordination for getting to this day. Um, I think this is an important moment for council uh and being able to talk about priorities and strategizing together. It's important
for us to do that as we move into a transition uh as we start the new year. And I think it's just a good opportunity for us to just check in and see that we're on the same page and where we may not be so we can try to get back to the same page. Our peanut gallery in the
back made up of staff members from various positions that are here. One wanting to see what y'all talk about, help if they can, but also just interested in seeing how we're doing some of the conversations that we're uh doing right now and moving uh the city
organization forward. I uh engaged an individual who you'll be working with uh to help me work in the city manager's office. Uh and he came in about 4 months ago, I think it was, and he's been helping us to focus on us, the team that
is the city manager's office team, top of the organization, working with council, setting strategy and vision in motion to implement your vision overall. And it's been an interesting ride. And if you don't know Joshua, you will soon get to feel what that's like. Uh, but it
has been quite a ride. It has been extremely informative. It has been challenging. And it has been all the things that I probably could not have thought of at one time is what I found in the experience that we've been able to have. And what I also did was ask him, can you come and bring that to
council and let them feel what that is and work with us to help us set ourselves on a path that we can deliver more of what it is that we're trying to deliver in service to our larger community. So he agreed to do that and the goal would be that we continue to find ways to integrate them into
conversations that we have with staff so that then it gets down through the workforce and we are implementing with this larger vision of human centered first cuz that's what he's going to talk about a lot. Human centered is about the people process is important. It comes and y'all know that's not me. I talk
process all the time. People first and then you get into the process world. So I'm going to invite Josh to join us. Josh is the head of the spill team. He is a ball of energy as you will soon see and he is here to help us and he's
helping us by challenging us to think and to consider and not today to decide or tomorrow to decide but to help inform the decision and how you even make the decision. So I think it's going to be important for us to appreciate what
comes to light through this conversation. So All right. How y'all doing? >> Great. >> Good. All right. I'm excited to Thank you for that, Sam. I was like, is it was it heartwarming? Was it a dig? I don't really know which one it was. It was probably a mixture of both. Um, but I'm Joshua. I'm a part of the spill team.
Kind of want to talk about a little bit of who we are and that is going to play a big part in how we function. Um, absolutely. So, they are who we are and what we do should go hand in hand at all times. Um so as a group of designers for a group of speakers, strategists, facilitators and workshop designers, uh
it is a lot that went into designing your experience uh for the next like day and a half. A lot of them raise your hand been a part of that. That's like it has been a lot of work to design the space. Um the conversation, the content, everything matters. Uh but design sometimes can be like an over sexy use
word. I kind of like hate that it's sometimes untouchable. It literally just means to create stuff. That's it. like to create the strategies to create the conversation to create um the the tools that we'll use today. So, uh that's kind of what we do. Um what's in design? It's
it is people first and process second. The best way I can explain it um is a little bit of shifting the way that we think and you can either create a process and stuff people into it or you can learn enough about people and create a process around them. One is faster, one is easier. Um but those people most
likely at the end of the day say I don't feel like this was created. um it wasn't tailored in any particular way. That's because we created a process when we mostly just stuffed people into it and we got commitment. I we got compliance versus commitment. I think we're wanting commitment. I think we can all agree
that. Uh so there's a process to actually create commitment just like mom's favorite recipe. Um she has an actual process for doing that recipe. If we shortcut it, it does not taste like mom's no matter how far we we want it. There's a process for it. Uh so you're probably like, "What does that even
mean?" Um, let me ask you if I usually introduce you this way. If I were to say that I do something for you, what comes to mind? If I do it for you, like if I do it for you, what comes to mind? Look, look what I did for you. >> It's a favor. >> Favor. Okay. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you. Okay. What comes to mind? >> A gift. >> A gift. Yeah. Look what I did for you. Absolutely. What else? What comes to mind? >> I do something for you. >> Could be obligation. >> Okay. Okay. Absolutely. Obligation. Thank you. A gift. Um, those are great words. Kind of like you were in my mind.
Um, you were in my heart. You were making reference. All very good intentions. Like look what I did for you. Like Lord, look what I did for you. Look, look what I did for you. Thought about you. Look what I did for you. And you're like, man, that's super thoughtful. Thank you. I think you said thank you. Right. Um, all right. Let me ask you another question. If I do it
with you, what words come to mind? >> Partner. >> Partner. >> Together. >> Together. >> Cooperation. >> Cooperation. >> Friendship. friendship. What else? What? What else comes to mind? Anyone else? What do you think? I'm always going to kind of like, Lena, what do you think?
What if I come if I do it with you? We do it with each other, what come to mind? >> I mean, I think what others said just together, like joint effort. >> Yeah. Yeah. Joint effort. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, you're alongside in collaboration, shared, contributed, you are partner. Those are
completely different words, right, than for I mean they're your words. Your words are absolutely completely different. You didn't use these words to describe poor. Um, you were there, you were involved, you were part of the actual process there. Are we at least clear on the difference between doing something for someone and doing something with someone?
>> Yeah. >> Right. Per your words, right? Um, it basically means bringing people in the room. That's kind of why you're here. Um, and also believing that one size does not fit all. It has to be done with indiv. If I change the people you do it with, we have to learn about them. One
size does not fit all, right? Um, so it's the value of influence of the right people in the right room to treat me in the right way. And the right people is something I want to like really double stamp on. Um, it is you just can't bring people in the room to bring people in the room. It doesn't really work. What are you trying to achieve? Why am I trying to achieve it? Where are we
trying to go? Then you select your people to do that. Um, but the right people mean with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities. Uh, if you've seen anything so far, it's kind of why I why you're in the room. Like you're the right people for today. uh it human centered design also makes
sure that what we create doesn't collect dust. Why? Because you contributed. You were a part of we did it alongside. So accountability looks a little different because if something doesn't happen that's like hey we built that. I think already you heard me tell you there were your words that you used with versus for
like accountability. It's like you described it this way. They were your words. So accountability looks different when we look at things sitting on the shelf or not. Right? So with comes with a deep level of pressure as well because you're like I do have to contribute. I do need to be a part of I actually am
part of the building of the actual thing. Um so with that's what it means. Uh but you have to be good at navigating facilitating and cultivating people's experiences. It's all you learn think and do. That's actually how you're you're skilled at with u but is human center design is a way of thinking valuing working that challenge is doing
for someone versus with them. You gave me completely different words of what that meant, right? Uh, but I kind of I want to break it down for you for a moment. If I removed um your ability to have a deep understanding, this is a little bit of the process of human centered design. Let's just say I put a challenge in front of you and I put something for you to solve and I removed
your ability to have a deep understanding. And so I was like, explore some ideas and materialize and bring them to life. But I removed your ability to have a deep understanding. What would be the outcome? >> Floundering. >> Yeah. It wouldn't be sustainable. >> Would it be sustainable? Floundering. I
removed your ability to have a deep understanding. Good enough. with a deep understanding. >> Cold. >> Cold. Yeah, we're exploring ideas. We're bringing them to life. Exploring ideas, bring them to life. Let's play with something else. What if I removed your ability to explore multiple ideas? So, you got your deep understanding and you
just land on an idea and you bring that to life. And I removed your ability to explore multiple perspectives, multiple ideas, creative solutions. So, got a deep understanding. Let me land on my idea and bring it to life. What would the outcome be? >> I'm right. >> I'm right. Bias, right? Naturally leaning in. I would agree. Yeah. Yeah.
First thing we thought of, first idea. Yep. >> What else? What would you say? >> Leaving people out. >> Leaving people out, right? Yeah. Who's not here? Right. Asking the question. Yeah. What else? If I remove your ability to kind of explore multiple ideas, >> what would you say? >> You might get something that didn't
work. >> Yeah. >> If you've not gone through the process of thinking about it and you're just focusing just on let's do something. >> Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I agree with that. Let's play with another idea. you have deep understanding and you've been able to explore multiple creative
solutions, multiple creative ideas, but we're not really materializing anything. We're not really like bringing anything to life. What's the what's the outcome? Great understanding and deep multiple perspectives and multiple creative ideas, but we've not implemented or or materialized. >> Going around and around and around. >> We're in a loop. Okay.
>> Lack of action. >> Lack of action. Yeah. Yeah. >> Budget constraints. >> Budget constraints. You're about to name everything, right? >> The Belmont Bridge. >> Okay. All right. So we have examples apparently. Okay. Okay. Um but at the end of the day they play a big part. What I have a deep understanding about
allows me to explore multiple ideas. Those ideas allow me to materialize something. And what I materialize is check to and against what I understand. Thus a cycle. Cool. It kind of looks like this. There's a deeper level of it. But I'm going to ask you all to just hang out with me in the space of um confusion.
No, I'm kidding. Um, but I actually want you to hang out with me in the space of here. Just understand, explore, materialize for the next day and a half. That's where we're going to live. We're going to live in exploring, understanding, materializing. Okay? And I'm going to unclutter it. Um, it's not about what we build, create a solution center, design for stress on how, which
increases sustainability. And you just explained to me why it's important to have a deep understanding. Then explore multiple ideas. Like you just explained how we should go about solving a problem. And if we didn't go about it that way, you explained also some potential hiccups and some actual projects and examples that you you have.
Um so just hang out here in these three with me for the next day and a half. Cool. With me? >> Y cool. >> Um so how we do it? It looks like this. How we implement human center. What is this? Anybody know what this is? >> Workshop. >> Workshop. >> It's a workshop. What happens in a workshop?
>> Anybody have dad, uncle, aunt, mom, whatever had a workshop? Anybody? Yeah. Okay. What happens inside the workshop? The sword is like the curse words where you hear someone yelling like doing the thing. >> What happens? >> Hit your thumb sometimes. >> Yeah. >> Problem solving. >> Problem solving. >> Repair.
>> Repair. Hurting yourself sometimes. Breaking stuff. >> Yeah. Ideas, thoughts, >> creativity. >> Creativity. Sometimes dad wants to go away or uncle or mom wants to go away into the workshop. Uh but workshopping is how we strategize. All the things you just made me mentioned is how we're
going to actually strategize. Um and so we're going to learn, think, and do all at the same time. in that space. That's what happens in a workshop space. There's learning, thinking, and doing. It kind of looks like this. Actually looks like this. You might see some of your hometown heroes in here.
Might see some people you recognize, but this is what it visually looks like. These some cool people we've been able to work with throughout the years. Been in this community for well over 11 years. Um, and so been able to work with some pretty cool people uh locally,
internationally. um and be able to do some fun stuff, host some really, really great conversations in this community, specifically the leadership. Uh but it's been a good time. You might even see some people that you know, look how young Chris looks there, right? Like it's a baby picture of Chris, right? Um like Chris, I think I saw you, you know,
15 years ago. Um but uh yeah, we're able to do a really good a really good work. This impact, this conversation we've already started having um has been uh pretty fun. It it's usually at the end it's going to be a good time. There's smiles at at times. I promise. Uh I will even do this pose for you when we're when we're done. Um I promise. Um but I
am asking this while we're in the room together. We're going to shift the way that we think about some things. Hopefully in this conversation alone, you've already experienced that a little bit that you're like, man, I can see where this is going and Sam is the window unlocked cuz I want to bail or um I see where this is going and this is probably going to do this in our time
together. Um anytime we work with a group, there's usually a challenge, a question that we ask. And so what would it look like if the city council used human centered design to better inform and direct the city manager's office towards strategic impact? This is the question I hope to solve by the end of our time together. Cool. With me?
>> Yeah. >> Is that a big question? Anybody's like, "That's a big question, dude. Like, I'll even know. That's a huge question." Um, but this is what we're going after for the next day and a half >> with me. >> Yes. >> Cool. Um, I have this up on the wall so we will be able to stare at it. and
remember how we're here. So, we are going to stare at this big design question throughout the next day and a half just so we can remember what we're solving for. So, if by any chance you find yourself detouring, getting off track a little bit, this is our northstar. We are going to solve for this question.
Um, at the end of the day, it's about direction setting to help inform decision-m and I want to kind of explain what that is. And so, thank you for hanging out with me because we're setting the tone for the next like day and a half and then we're going to rock and roll. Um, so direction is around you understanding where it is. And you're going to hear a lot of its. You're going
to hear about budget. Um, you're going to hear about the community. You're going to hear about strategic priorities. I said, I'd like to know where it is. It is all about current place and the status of those things. I really, really, really highly encourage. I think I asked them to tell you to bring three things. Comfortable shoes
and a p a sweater and paper pen. Like take notes. Take notes. Capture your notes. Categorize your notes. It's going to be really important. I promise you with as you understand where it is, we're going to use that on day two. Okay? Remember, everything's connected. Understand, explore, materialize. It's all actually connected. What you
understand will be used. I promise. Uh so take notes. Um and you're also going to get to explore what is and what could be within those categories as well. So we're going to understand where it is and then we are going to explore um what is and what could be. Cool.
>> And that is about opportunity and possibility. All right. All right, here's what we're going to get into today. First, um it's a jam-packed day. I promise you it's a pretty high intense day. You're going to understand where it is, strategic priorities, community survey, financial budget. Uh we're going to do a reflection and design exercise. So, I'm
going to ask you to reflect on that information, which is why it's important to capture notes. Um we're going to have lunch about 12:15ish. Is that okay? 12:15. I don't know anybody's regimen at lunch time, but 12:15ish is okay. Um we're going to talk about some top priorities as well. Uh we're going to
have another reflection exercise. Um, and then we're out about 440ish. Is that okay? >> Yep. >> Make sense? That's what we're going to accomplish. Uh, while still pursuing this beautiful nurse target. Um, all right. So, the way we're going to use human center design to accomplish this is we're going to understand where it
is. Day one. Uh, remember we are heading this is what we're going for direction setting, right? That's kind of like to inform and to direct. Direction set is what we're going to try to materialize. We'll start with day one around understanding where it is. Um, and then what is and what could be to help with
directions. Make sense? Yes. Cool. All right. Um, so I want to talk about bookends for a second. If you're a dog person, you have these bookends. If you're a cat person, you probably have these bookends. Uh, but I want to talk about bookends for a moment. Um, direction setting to help inform decision-m is around where we're
going. This is the actual direction setting as a whole. with where we're going, getting there and how we know which is around focus, strategy, execution and measuring. So why I said bookends is because um it is these might be your book ends but it is important to understand this. These are the book ends
to that whole process where we're going and how we know measuring it strategy and execution is a CMO's job. Their goal is to figure out how how we're going to make this happen. strategy, that's where you budget, that's where you see all those other conversations. But direction setting, you're the north star, like you
said, the direction where we're headed and how we know we got there. Um, with that direction, we hand that off, pass the baton to the individuals responsible to for strategy and execution. So, you all are direction with me. Cool.
>> Yeah. Awesome. All right. Um, and that's why we don't want to we don't want we want to hand all this in between stuff to CMO's office. Okay. That's what we're going to do. Unless you all want that, let me know. We can we we got strategy documents we can hand you. Uh but I think for the most part CMO's office like be the book ends for us, please.
And we will do strategy and execution where we're going council and how do we know we got there. Cool. Awesome. All right. Direction uniform decision-m as long as we agree on the same page, we're going to go. You're going to see this a million times. Uh but here's the ground rules for workshopping. Uh ask you what
is the purpose of a retreat? What is the purpose of a retreat? >> To get away from the hurly burly day life. >> Yes. Can we get like snaps or or poetry snaps? What else? >> No snaps. >> Yeah. To get away like I feel like there
was a breath in there like to get away. Um retreating is around it's supposed to be comish supposed to be some planning and some strategy that kind of go in it. Um so I want to kind of talk about some of the benefits. So you get to basically retreat from the demands and chaos of
the everyday. Absolutely. Uh virtual high five for that. Um especially if you plan to plan and strategize. I think it's really impossible to do that in the middle of chaos to think clearly to set direction. I think that's super impossible. Um if I played a lot of noise right now and I tried to talk to
you and give you instruction, you would say, "I can't hear you. Can't hear what? I can't hear instruction. I can't hear direction. I can't think about what you're saying, Josh. I can't even absorb it. Why? Because it's noisy. There's a lot going on. So, this retreat
is to Yes. get away. And to be able to affirm the demands and chaos of every day. Uh retreat is a place where direction and decisions are made. You see what I see what I did there? See what I did there? Where direction and decisions are made. Um is to assist in closing the gaps between who we are and who we want to be. The ability to sit
and think of those things. Who we are and where we want to be. let's go retreat and think about that and plan around that and strategize around that. Um, retreats should be a first response and not a last resort. When there is chaos and when there's something big, you should be able to say, "Hold on a
second. I need to go think, plan, get into the calm where I can hear um, and strategize." It should be a first response and not a last resort. And a retreat, a successful retreat um, needs both hope and discipline to focus.
So hope where we're going and focus. Let's get there. Let's let's focus on that. So uh where it is is around current place and status. I want to remind you that um I want to talk to you uh really quick about some of the ground rules. When we start talking about where it is, you're going to hear a lot of distorted things. You're going to hear a
lot of past tense. You're going to hear a lot of things that have occurred or where something is. I want you to know that if you hear that and it is not the easiest thing, um this is called the rubber band effect. A rubber band, you would know you pull it back to shoot it further faster. So if by any chance you are pulled back to remember something or
you are pulled back to experience something, the purpose of that reason for that in any presentation today or even tomorrow is to shoot you further faster. Okay? We are not pulling something back to stay there. That's called being stuck in a moment. We are pulling something back to uh so you can
be encouraged to shoot further faster. Cool. Um this is going to be huge huge especially in day one. Understand to listen. Take notes. Please, please, please take notes. Um, I don't know. You're going to hear me say that a lot probably. Um, write notes. Not these types of notes. Like this is like call
me slide across the thing. Um, but you ever took notes before and you haven't took notes and you went back and looked at it like what did I write there? Like what in the world? So, please take organized notes. Please take notes in a way that you can reflect on them and know what you have. I'm cuz I'm literally I'm giving you a heads up. I'm going to ask you to reflect on your
notes to pull out some answers. Um, hold loosely what you know. I think Lori you said at the very beginning that if I don't get an opportunity to explore then I land on like the first technique right hold loosely what you know hold it but hold it loosely uh we are going to share out at times
there are moments we're going to hear each other and that's going to require a level of respect this type of respect the only person that's saying it the best uh but we're going to talk about respect in the room in a sense of when we're hearing each other as well is sharing out uh what could be is obviously day two and uh that's where
we're going to workshop that's where it's going to look like this In day two, you're also going to see a lot of working together alone. What that means is collectively that we are independent but not independent of one another. There going to be moments where I ask you to do some independent work. That independent work, I promise you, is connected to the whole. Human center
design was not linear. It was in a circle. It was understand, explore, materialize, and keep going. So, if I ask you to do something, please, please understand it is connected to something else. That's why I keep hinting uh take notes because it is connected to a bunch of other things as well. Okay. Uh, we're
going to idea dump. I I'm going to ask you to do that. We're going to ask you to come up with some ideas. Any overthinkers? Who would be anyone openly admit that they're an overinker? Right. Okay. So, if you hear like the tapping like that's like someone kind of overthinking a little bit. Just let them like you got this. You got this. Um, so
encourage your overthinkers. Um, we're going to go deep and wide as well. Um, there's ability to think and participate in a process that allows you to go deep in thought and also cover a lot of ground as well. So, we're going to go deep and wide. uh we are going to decide quickly. I'm going to there's a visual
timer and I'm going to have that going on and there's something to be said around visual time. It's saying I have that much time to show up with my idea, my strategy, whatever it may be. Um so we're going to decide quickly. Uh I'm going to ask and stick those ideas tomorrow. We're going to move around the
room and I'm going to ask you to put them in certain places. Uh anyone nervous? >> No, I'm good. >> No, you're good. Okay. All right. All right. I love it. Um All right. I don't think we should be nervous because you, I think, are the right people to be in the room. I think you have the right knowledge, skills, and abilities to do
this work with with me and with each other. Uh, so I wouldn't be nervous. You're the right people. Um, we're going to finish strong. I promise you all. Uh, here's my participation expectations. Okay. Um, one, my promise to you and my ask of you, I'm going to give you everything I have in a day and a half. I'm going to like to the point where
you're like, dude, you gave it, you laid it all out on the court, all out on the wooden floor. I'm going to give you everything I have in a day and a half. I'm just going to ask the same for you. That's it. I'm going to give you everything that I have. And I'm just going to ask the same. Show up. Show up
for me. Show up for you. Uh I'm going to show up for me and I'm going to absolutely show up for you. I think I was thinking about you before y'all even entered the room. I had a lot of hours dedicated to thinking about you before you came in the room. I'm going to give you everything that I have. Okay. Um tech on the table. Uh I think you're
taking notes in that situation. Super cool. Uh, but keep your devices out only if you have this laptop. If you have this laptop, keep it out. I want to see it and we all want to take pictures with you and and with it. It's an ancient artifact. And from a phone perspective, use your phone only if you have this phone cuz I also want to like document
you and post you and say like this person has this phone still working. Um, but just be respectful with it. We're going to have breaks where you can actually take breaks. Uh, restrooms here, be able to go out and take a phone call, email, things like that. But I'm going to actually try to honor that break as well and preserve your brain power. Uh, but at the end of the day,
I'm asking you to lean in. What is this, by the way? >> Trust ball. >> Trust ball. Absolutely. This guy hopefully has got the strength to be able to do that. Um, I'm going to be this guy, okay? I'm I'm going to be the the person that uses all creativity and strategy. Um, and my hope is that you lean in and you you trust Paul with me, okay? Uh, that's the only way this will
work. Absolutely. Uh, so he's going to be a superhero at the end of all this. Um, but lean in basically be curious, be aware, and be attentive. I'm asking you to do those things in the room with me today. Cool. All right. Um, when you get breaks, I'm going to ask you to be present when
you're present, and I'm going ask you to take a break when it's time to take a break. We, everyone in the camera as well, or we'll say we're taking a break and then go work. It's not taking a break. Taking a break is being able to put your brain on pause. Retreating, so to speak. You're going to want to retreat from the retreat. Um, at a
moment, take your break. Honor your break. Don't put your brain to work here and then go out and take a break and put your brain to work there. Breathe, walk, sit, relax, enjoy laughs with someone as well. Okay, try to at least please. Um, and just a reminder, this is what we're
going to be working through. Um, all right. Where it is, uh, you're going to, first thing you're going to hear about where it is is around the strategic priority refresher. You're going to hear from Sam. Um, he's going to walk through. So, please, if you, if you're taking notes and you're taking a header of anything, say, I'm about to hear where the strategic priorities are.
Um, or at least a refresher on them. And then take some notes underneath that. Um each item on the table I'll tell you what to do with so we'll have an experience with those but from a note perspective please categorize your notes. This section of where it is is around the strategic priority refresher got some notes. This section where we're
around the community uh survey take some notes. This section we're around like the financial update categorize it. Take some notes. It's really really important for you to know where your notes are. I'm going to ask you to look at those. Cool. Um all right Sam. Back to you, sir.
So throughout this moment we say I told you it's going to be a lot a lot going on there. Um myself, James and Ashley will be participating through this retreat and Josh put me in a very tight spot and sit down and be quiet. So I'm practicing
too. All right. What my section is is just to remind you of what are the strategic priorities that you set. You have nine priorities and a commitment. and I'm going to remind you of what those are. And I chose to do it in a way that I'm just giving you your words
back. So that's the refresher part of it. The goal is to just take you back to where you were in 23 2023 when we had you approve the strategic framework, which are the nine uh strategic outcome areas and the commitment to Jedi. All of
that I'm going to throw back at you, but I've done it in what I consider to be a creative way. And I did not leave you out because I know you were here when that was done. Gotcha. So, just to remind you that council's vision is to be a place where everyone thrives. We are saying that often. We are saying it
everywhere. We're putting it up in the building so that people can gravitate to it, that they can appreciate it because you said that is the vision for the city organization and for the city of Charlottville. Here are your nine strategic outcome areas with your commitment. just
reminding you of what you said were important things that you wanted to make sure that when we put a budget together, we don't lose sight of this. When we're working on uh projects that we don't lose sight of this when we're thinking about what is it that will help us understand if this city organization is doing its job, it's in the frame of
looking through these strategic outcome areas. That is what the conversation internally has been about. That is what I have tried to make sure that I stress and impress upon the team, the leadership team at the top to hear this is where we focus because this is what council has asked us to focus on. This
is the things these are the things that we need to do to help our community. So, I'm going to give you quotes from you to me. I decided not to do a whole lot of work. I just went back into my notes. See how point out the fact that Josh says take notes. Notes are important. I
found notes because when we were doing the work of the strategic outcome areas, I made sure that I found in each of the conversations where we asked you what is your priority on that subject over and over and over. You might begin to remember some of those moments where I
was asking you that I kept all of it. I didn't know why I was keeping all of it until he gave me this assignment. So, I'm just going to run through these. I'm not going to read all of them to you, but they're going to pop up on the screen just so you can see this is what you said is why these became strategic outcome areas. And Natalie, I Googled
through your campaign as you were speaking to the public as to why they should elect you and I matched you into some of these so that you could be reflected in this just the same. >> Cool. Thanks. >> All right. So, remember hopefully you don't remember.
>> Not yet. So, climate action value innovative positions on climate. I think we know that you all appreciate innovative positions because we're having conversations like that. Climate impacts on the city and the region. I love the region word because we have to remember that it's bigger than us. We're just a
small piece in this big overall system. Economic prosperity chances for people who are from here to stay here. We hear this a lot from our community at large. You hear it every time you go knock on a door. I'm sure it's hard. That's why I
reflect on the idea as to why do you think big economic prosperity and everyone wants to wants better than they have had organizational excellence. I have swallowed these two words and I have probably made everyone tired of those two words because I use it all the time.
I love those two words. So those two words, not only is it now my northern star for inside the city manager's office, we're trying to help the team appreciate why you chose that. I know you chose it because you want this to be a strong organization capable of meeting
the needs of citizens of this community. That's what organizational excellence means. We fix things, we make it better. That's everybody's expectation. It's hard. What I also like about it, it says we fix things. It doesn't say we fix everything. >> We can't be everything to everyone. So,
we have to remember that. And that's all a part of prioritizing. And we all know this is a community worth living. I think we have done a lot to show that and I think that's what we have to remember. But I also know that this is here because some of you are on this council because you were worried about this and in the worry about that
you decided to join and help reset that. And I've been speaking to you as much as I can about how we're doing that. And I have another presentation for you on Monday to demonstrate how we are partnerships. We should talk even when we disagree. You don't get anywhere if you don't talk
it through. Even if you're fighting about it, you're still getting it out because you're expressing whatever you feel. Hopefully things work out. We should be willing to give a hand up. I think that comes out loud and clear and the choices that we make and what we want to prioritize and talk about.
Public safety, modern government supports in every way. I think what we're trying to say here is we don't do policing like everywhere else. We want to be modern in our approach. We put people first. It's why we do community walks. It's why we're changing
how we approach various things. Is it perfect? No. What is we're trying to get there and we're doing things differently and we have turned things around and it's just a reminder that's working. So when you say public safety, we start there, but it's bigger than that. For
me, it's really here. 2017 is no longer the barometer. We were better than that then and can be better than that for good. It's a moment. It's something that happened. It doesn't have to be who we are, but there are a lot of people who still talk like this is who we are. It is incumbent upon all of us to change
that. And I think that's again why public safety is there cuz there was a big conversation about that. Recreation, arts and culture, we want to be welcoming, not exclusionary, but we want to be what the magazines actually say we are. We're winning awards left and right. Chris Angel loves giving me the
list of what we just got recognized for. What I hear in that statement is that yeah, we want to actually live that out in every way that we can. We met a set of criteria to get selected for that, but are we really that all the time? I think that's really why recreation,
arts, and culture matters. Housing consumes the conversation. There's a lot going on there. These are the things that you said about housing. I actually didn't limit to just three. I had put five on there because it was a lot. but a home and a place that all
residents will love and cherish. We know that's what we're striving to make possible. But we must maintain focus on those who are struggling, which is why we're not just simply producing housing, we're also preserving housing opportunities and a variety of housing choice because what we know about people
is they don't want the same thing and they don't need the same thing. But the goal of the government is to provide as much as we can whether directly or through partnerships. >> I recognize some of those. Good transportation. I hope everybody is. We can be innovative. Yes, we can. And we
are. Seville is on a journey. That's an understatement. But that's transportation in that that more u strategic visionary way. Connecting sidewalks, protecting bike lanes, improving busy uh will bring Charlottesville into a more just and
sustainable future. It's not focused on one thing. It's focused on multiple things. And that then also becomes and how do you do all of it? How much can you do? Education be a vegan choices employment opportunities for high school
age and beyond. So there's preparing them for what comes after. So we got to make sure that we take care of them when they're in the school and that includes the building in which they learn. Today your top tier is housing, transportation, and education. Our focus
today at this conversation today and tomorrow is housing, transportation, and education. But I just walked you through a list of seven other things, nine other nine nine total things. Sam, is that top tier in these three things? Is that what
we agreed to two years ago or is that your sense of what sort of bones the top right now? So that is what is shaking out to be your top three because that is what you spend the most money on. That is what we're talking the most about and that is what has just risen to the top.
So we're going to focus there because these three right now appear to be driving everything else. >> So you're going to get to hear a lot more about those a little later as well. >> One thing we want to make sure of is that you appreciate that that it is landing with you the way it lands with us. This is what it feels like on our
side. It's these three topics. And what we're wanting to remind you is that there are nine on the list plus the commitment. So therefore, there are 10 things to invest, strategize, and work on. But these three are where we are. Your commitment to justice, equity,
diversity, and inclusion right now is under attack. This gets us noticed by the individuals in Washington DC today. The question is, do we care to stay noticed or do we just
want to focus on the work? So my challenge is in this particular moment is to ask you, does this say those four words or does it say more than those four words? That's the question I senator that everyone can and this
government should see this at all times. No one is disposable. Harmony among your residents. We always do better when we all do better. Those are your words, things that you said as to why you accept your commitment. What I'm asking is this is what I'm telling you. This is
what I hear. This is what we've been working on. This is what you've been accepting at this point as to what a commitment really is for the city of Charlottesville. So that I'm asking you, could we just live with the idea of a commitment to community prosperity and then we can
take the lens of what the feds and others are looking at? Put that aside cuz that's about words. This is about action. Can we live with these actions? Can we live with this focus? Can we live with this as a true series of commitments that we will spend our time
and energy? So that's a question. Not asking for a decision today. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about it on Monday and show you what it actually looks like because I'm assuming that you agree with me. We don't need to play in being targeted. We got work to do. We got people's lives to shape and change
and we don't need to lose the resources just because we're going to stick with justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as the conversation. It's about the work. What are we doing? And that's really what I would like. >> Could I ask a question? >> Yes. It's >> Sure.
>> So accessibility that's not the strict sense of wheelchairs and so >> I wonder if a different word might be access. Y to prevent that. >> Yeah. >> Um I think we don't have to go too far down
this road. >> Write that down as a note. That's why he said right down. >> Yeah. I would be interested and again we don't have to do it today or tomorrow even. I'd be interested in a conversation with you that actually 101
211 whatever. Mhm. >> I completely agree. we don't need to get distracted with words, but those words were picked at some point because they had meaning and now that's become a target and a lot of that's just silly. And I agree with this this notion that
you have here. >> I just would like a little more time to sit with >> the things that were the intent that went behind those ideas, particularly after 2017. >> Right. >> And I think that what you've got here,
>> you want to see what's under each of these. I get it. >> Yeah. And it may not be one to one, but I Anyway, I think you know what I'm saying. >> No, I do. And again, my presentation Monday night is my work plan for 2026. Like, I'm working on this retreat with him because he gave me the assignment. I'm already working on living this out
because I know you have questions. So, I'm going to show you more what that looks like. >> Sure. >> Absolutely. >> Cool. Awesome. Thank you. >> Now, um, so let's work. I told you every time you see this workshop thing I'm going to ask you to work. So um hopefully you've
taken some notes uh again I'm just going to kind of reiterate there will be moments throughout today and I promise today's notes I'm going to ask you to bring them into tomorrow as well. But do me a favor in front of you you have a bit of a note card. You have something like this. Uh grab one of those
favorite pen. Um and what I'd like you to do is uh this is basically it's called the interview and it's around a self interview around understand respect um and value. What I like to do in the middle of that is where you see that box, write strategic refresher, like strategic priority refresher. Just in
the middle of that small little box, write strategic plan refresher or strategic priority refresher, I'm sorry. Awesome. Okay, I want to give you a few minutes to look at your notes that you wrote uh
and reflect on what you just heard. And I want you to ask yourself these three questions. Uh and only write one thing. Write one thing in each of those. Like what do I understand about what I just heard overall high level? Uh what do I respect about what I just heard? Uh and
what do I value about what I just heard? I'm going to ask you this like where it is. You just kind of heard high level strategic priority refresher. Look back at your notes um and write in one of the just turn them turn the beautiful card. Uh but write one thing that I understand
about what I just heard. Uh one thing that I respect about what I just heard and one thing I value respect doesn't have to be agree with. It's it's a level of respect. Um and value about what I just heard. Contribution impact. Go ahead and write that. Look at your notes
and write one thing in each section. Give you about three more minutes. All right, about another minute Now, do I understand about what I just heard? Respect and value regarding the strategic priority refresher.
Okay. All right, I want let's talk about it. I want to ask um regarding understand. I'm kind of work our way around the room. Uh Juan, will you start us off? Um what is something about uh that you understand about what you just heard? >> So something that I that that's really
clear in those comments that we gave Sam and we've said is that the history of this community plays a lot on what we do and where we spend our money. history not just from 2017 and 2020 and but particularly um you know with
vinegar heel it plays a big role >> in everything that we do um in decisions that we make here that's what something to me >> that that I understand yeah >> okay u something you understand >> oh I guess my thing that came to mind
was that we do have a good plan it was a good plan a few years ago go. >> Um, it's time for it to be updated, which is what we're here. But I just wanted to emphasize that it it has been a good plan. It is a good plan. And also understanding that we've made a lot of
progress along it. >> Yeah. >> Um, had some conversations with people last spring and it was like, what are y'all doing? And well, we've done a lot. >> Yeah. So to have those conversations and see this up here, you've been able to connect some of the >> Correct. Yeah. I love that. Love it.
Lloyd, something to understand about what you just heard. >> I I found all of our problems involve money, which means tradeoffs, and and that we have to take time to get that right. >> Yeah. Okay. That's a deep understanding. That is Yeah, absolutely. Something you
understand about what you just heard. >> Um, one of the messages that I received from the presentation is nine or 10 things is too many things. >> Um, but there is a lot of overlap. So even though there's nine or 10 things, they're not mutually exclusive and therefore can be
>> consolidated. >> Sure. Yeah. It's a great Yeah. So you understand about what you deserve. >> Um well, what I wrote down was just very high level just clearly understanding the intent of the past strategic plan and kind of purpose of it. Um what Juan
said made me think something else. um that um these priorities look different to different people in the community, especially depending on how much money you have. >> I think that's like a a big point. >> Oh, it's great. Yeah. What about respect? Something that you respect
about what you just heard. It's different than understanding. Understanding is like information and knowledge and and respect may not have to be agreement, but you pay homage to that thing because you understand it's important. Uh Juan, something that you um respect about what you just heard. So what I heard is that you know from those
comments is that council we value um everyone. You know we talked about this is a place where everyone thrives but what I heard from our comments is we particularly want to um value those who are most vulnerable in our community.
>> Yeah. You saw that and respect that we that as a council we want to do. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I love it. something you respect about what you just >> the work that's gone into um executing against that over the course of the last couple of years and also the um the fact that we've been given
updates every quarter by the city manager and um tracking that I respect a lot of that respect and work what's something you respect >> uh the interconnectedness of what we're trying to do in our big problem areas >> so it's similar to what you were saying
that so many things are actually like connected which is great. They're not isolated in there. Yeah. As well. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Um the hearts and minds are in the right place. People generally want others to have what they need. >> Um which covers a lot of different
levels and like as Michael was saying about the spectrum of what those needs look like are different for >> different pe people with different backgrounds or amounts of resources. And so we all generally are >> looking out for others. What you can't
necessarily be said for >> other uh you know political parties >> but also hearing that is that the characters thereunities >> right like I hear you pointing out like the character and the desire for people to have what they want lives like amongst everyone
>> and and that what that looks like is still different for all of us but we're all generally >> going in the same direction. >> Love it. Love it. something you expected about what you just mentioned? >> Um both from the the plan and its implementation, you know, since it was
developed a few years ago, it's just very clear >> that for the staff and in the document that there's like a clear level of like care for the community and care about trying to positively impact people's lives. Um, >> that's one of the things I took away is
just the intent is clear that, you know, there's there's not an indifference to the >> respecting why we want to do this. Yeah, I'm with you. Um, all right, last one. Um, what is something the strategic priority refresher? What is something you value? Something after hearing it and reflecting on it, what is something that you value about what you just heard
from Sam? So, um, what I got is that we as a council and as a community really value people and the environment. And, and the second part is something that I really had to um, come closer to when I
ran for council that for some people in the community, the environment is not as strong, is not as a high priority, but others is really strong, the climate and environment. Um, but anyway, I saw people and the environment.
>> Yeah. Got it. That's something we value is people and the environment. Love it. >> I just had people. >> People. Yeah. Love it. You saw that through and saw in the quotes and in the refresher that you saw people all the way through it. Yeah. Love it. Lloyd. Oh, what I what I would doubt it has
actually has nothing to do with uh what Sam said when he was speaking to us, >> but it was the insight that jumped out. >> Yeah. That that what I value about this particular group and I mean the counselors and city central staff and for that matter basically everybody that
I have met and have some some sense of is that I think we all have trust in each other's good faith. >> It's good. which makes it so much easier to get to decisions.
>> That has not always been the case on >> hear that. It's been a lot I've been around for a little over 11 years. I would agree to all of that. Absolutely. Seen some things. >> Uh so two of my biggest issues are transportation and housing and
those are crucial drivers of this conversation. And so I'm I'm happy to see that they are of value to the conversation and the list and everybody else. Um because that is kind of at the I would argue that that those
two are at the basis of kind of everything else. So having them be prioritized in our conversation is um I think I value that. >> We're going to have some more conversation. By the way, we're going to dive in together. We're going to roll our sleeves up and and live in that
value with them cuz they the thing why something's valuable because it's important and it's important because it's got a lot of potential impact and things like that and as well. So we're I love that >> they're the they're the loadbearing features in the community. >> Yeah. >> Something you value after hearing Sam's
presentation. >> Um I would say that all this, you know, can lead to, you know, actual policy changes that positively impact people's lives. um it's not just, you know, words on paper. Um it's like driving change.
And then also being able to like measure the impact on people's lives because intent isn't enough. >> Um just because the city thinks it's doing the right thing doesn't mean that it turns out it actually harmed people. So how do we measure that impact? And I
think there's a reflection in organizational excellence and other things as well in the implementation of trying to actually measure and not just accept that our intent is good enough. >> I often say intention and execution are two different things. So I would agree with you. Absolutely. Uh awesome. Look, thank you all for reflecting and sharing
on that. Uh I want you to take a break. Okay. So remember, honor your break. Um and then when we get into what is uh we're going to talk about the community survey next. Um so please go ahead and take a break. We're going to probably land on about 10 minutes. Take a 10-minute break and I I'll see you back in 10 minutes.
>> Hello everyone. Thank you all for coming back, enjoying your break, taking a break. I was very excited to see people talking and not scrolling. So, good job. Um I am very pleased to be able to present to you all um as additional
information during this time of your reflection and thought process the latest uh administration of the national community survey. We have with us Grace Arniston from PCO who is the organization that administers the
survey. The city has done this survey for several years. So I'm also very excited. She's going to show you data that builds upon itself. So, we've got some really good longitudinal data. Um, I want to uh encourage you all to please take notes. You will be able to also ask
questions as well. Everyone should have a copy in front of them for you to mark up, scribble, dog ear as we go through. Um, and there also is a larger uh document as well that we will be making available not only to the public but to
you all as well. Uh, but Grace, if we can just test you coming off mute to make sure that everyone can hear you. >> Yes, test. How's the volume? >> That works wonderfully. So, Grace, the floor is yours.
>> Thank you so much, Ashley. Hi, everyone. My name is Grace. I've been a project manager here at FCO for about four years now, and I've worked with hundreds of jurisdictions across the US. So, I'm happy to be here to present the findings of the Charlottesville National
Community Survey. And before I want to begin, I do want to thank Ashley Marshall. She was our primary contact throughout the survey process and she provided really thoughtful feedback every step of the way and helped to organize this presentation. So, thank
you so much, Ashley. As she mentioned, this presentation will be about 25 minutes long with 15 minutes at the end for questions. All right. So, before we dive into your results, I'd like to share a little bit about Polo. PCO is an online community
engagement platform providing local governments with resident and employee feedback. The acquired data can be used for budgeting, strategic planning, and empowering resident voices. So, you may have heard of NRC or National Research Center. HCO merged with them back in
2019, and NRC has been around since 1994. They're best known for developing the NCS survey along with the National Employee Survey, the Community Assessment for Older Adels, among others. Um, we also partner closely with
ICMA and NLC along with many other local government and academic leaders. So before we dive into results, I want to emphasize that there are a variety of ways that these can be used. So most commonly the folks we work with use their survey data to monitor trends,
which Ashley mentioned, you have amazing trend data to look at here. Um this monitors trends and resident opinion and informs budgeting and strategic plans. Our results also allow you to benchmark your community specific characteristics
against all of the communities in our benchmark database, which I'll cover in just a few slides here. So, we hope that these findings will spark ideas of where you may want to explore further. So, a little bit about the NCS
instrument. It is a standardized five-page survey that measures resident opinion about community and local government. It focuses on these 10 facets of livability shown here. Um these are all related to overall quality
of life and they often align with municipal departments as well so that it's easier for staff to find um results most relevant to their work. So um you'll see these here. We have a few additional questions in addition to
these 10 facets including demographic questions and a couple of participation questions like um have you voted, have you campaigned, have you carpooled? So the survey primarily focuses on these 10 facets here.
And with that, we'll dive into Charlottesville specific results. This is where I really want to spend a lot of time. Um, so we're covering the methodology here and this was Charlottesville's sixth time conducting the NCS with the previous survey
iteration in 2022. So you'll see throughout the report some trend data. That trend data is all referencing between 2022 and 2025. Um, you can look back in the full report at those full
trends, but today we'll primarily be focusing on the most recent trend. So to sample um we purchased a household list based on updated USPS listings from
Charlottesville zip codes and from that list we use city provided GIS files to remove any addresses that were not within Charlottesville. And then from the remaining lists 3,000 addresses were selected to receive survey invites. So
during the survey administration, mailings began about April 15th and the survey remained open for 6 weeks. So that first mailing was a postcard. This included instructions to take the survey, a QR code, and a link to the
survey. And it also let folks know that a paper survey was on the way. So the second mailing was a survey packet. This contained a cover letter, postage paper turn envelope, and paper survey so that everyone had the chance to reply via
paper. Both mailings did include a web link for completing the survey online, so that was an option as well. And the survey was available in English and Spanish. And all of those letters and postcards had bilingual instructions.
So from our process, we received 386 completed surveys for a 14% response rate and margin of error of plus or minus 5%. Uh responses were also weighted to match Charlottesville demographic makeup and
that was based on data from the census and ACS data. We also during our data collection period conducted an open participation survey. So this was a link that Charlottesville shared. It was open from
May 13th to 17th. Um and this was an opportunity for all community members to participate even those who haven't received an invite. So 664 responses were received there. However, this presentation and the report are based on
the 386 random sample responses since those were gathered using scientific methods. So, open participation results are provided to you in the full report if that interests you, but we'll be focusing on the random sample today.
So I mentioned our benchmark database earlier and one of the big advantages of participating in our community surveys is the opportunity to compare ratings given by your residents to those from communities across the nation. So our
benchmark database is the largest of its kind. It currently has over 500 communities um and that represents over 50 million voices. So, um, we were one of the first to develop this, uh, benchmark database and we're very proud
of it and you'll see these benchmark ratings throughout your report and this presentation. So, overview of survey results. We will dive into some general results and then go into a some areas where we might dig
a little bit deeper. So to start off here in the survey, we have two questions that ask directly about those 10 facets of community community livability that I mentioned earlier. So the first asks residents to rate the
quality of each and you can see the resulting comparison to the national benchmark in the shading on this chart. Um, so you'll notice here education, arts, and culture is highest in quality and tired of the national benchmark,
followed closely by natural environment, parks and recreation, and health and wellness. Um, some notable lower scores, safety and community design did fall below that national benchmark, and
mobility was the lowest in quality. We also asked about those same facets of livability, but we asked a question centered on how important it residents think it is for the community to focus on these 10 facets over the coming 2
years. So, as you can tell, um importance is, you know, important to residents. So, we have higher ratings here. Everything for the most part was similar to the benchmark with the exception of utilities. Um economy being
the most important topic for residents followed closely by mobility, natural environment, safety and uh community design. The lower score was health and wellness. Here um this data is very
helpful, but it's even more helpful when you put it together with those quality assessments. which is this gap chart and this is included in your report. So this is comparing the quality and importance of
those overall facets of liability. So this chart is one of many ways to interpret your data and can be used to help you determine focus areas or areas where you might um allocate some additional resources.
And the largest gaps here were mobility with that 39% quality and 82% importance followed by community design, economy and lastly safety. >> Could you just provide maybe examples of
what community design means? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, absolutely. So community design is the overall design of the community. So, um, looking at new development,
growth, um, residential areas. This was, I don't believe it's in the presentation, but it is in the report. Um, and I can dive into that a bit deeper towards the end. I can pull up that report and show you what the
community design section looks like. Um but mainly yes development um overall design of the neighborhoods of the commercial areas and also pres preservation of the historical um
elements of the community as well with a few others in there. So um comparing to the national benchmarks of the 123 survey items for which residents provided ratings four received ratings that were higher than
the national benchmark. 97 were similar to the benchmark and 22 received lower ratings. So, these ratings are considered similar if they're within 10 points of the national average and higher or lower if they are more than 10
points different from the average. Sorry, not however trend data adds some additional context here. So, when comparing Charlottesville's NCS results in 2022 to the 2025 results, 23 received ratings
that were higher than the 2022 results. 86 were similar to those results and 14 received lower ratings. Moving now into the highlights of our findings. I just want to point out here that these are things that we as survey
researchers found interesting, but there is a lot of additional data in the full report that we won't cover today. Um, so we'll focus on a few key areas we found to be most noteworthy, but please do if you have a chance read through that full report because there is much more robust
data in there. So our first key finding here, most residents experience a high quality of life in Charlottesville. So about 70% residents gave excellent or good ratings to Charlottesville as a
place to live, the overall image or reputation of the city, and the overall quality of life in the city. In addition, seven and 10 residents indicated that they plan to remain in Charlottesville for the next 5 years and would recommend living in
Charlottesville to someone who asked. All right. Ratings for Charlottesville local government also increase since 2022. So, we asked residents about the local government performance in Charlottesville and results across all ratings were similar to the national
benchmark, but as you see here, we had many notable improvements since 2022. Actually, all of the ratings on this slide were um statistically significant increases from 2022 results.
So in looking here about 56% of residents rated the city treating residents with respect as excellent or good followed by 51% for the city's efforts to be for the city's efforts to welcome residents and 49% for being
honest. Just under half positively rated the general performance in the best interest of the community at about 48% communi communication about issues transparency and overall confidence in local government.
The lowest rating was for treating all residents fairly. Yet this too has increased since 2022. Safety also continues to be rated positively maintaining strong levels of satisfaction. So in terms of community safety about
88% of residents indicated that they feel safe in their neighborhood during the day and 86% feel safe from flood, fire or other natural disaster. Just over 8 in 10, about 82% report feeling safe in the downtown or
commercial area during the day. And perceptions of safety dropped a little bit when it comes to crime. So about 64% feel safe from property crime and 63 feel safe from violent crime. Safety from violent crime was rated lower than
the national benchmark here. So scores for safety services tended to be a bit more positive and a few items did increase since 2022. So fire services received the highest rating with almost all residents 95%
rating them as excellent or good followed closely by ambulance and emergency medical services at 90%. Fire prevention and education also scored well with 82% satisfaction. And although a little bit lower than
other safety services, police services and crime prevention both saw an increase since 2022 results. Police services experienced a 9point increase and crime prevention experienced an 8 point increase here.
Affordability remains a concern for many residents in the city. So, the economy has a lot to cover, so hang in there with me. But when we asked about the local economy, about 84% of respondents rated the city positively as
a place to visit and 72% were satisfied with the overall quality of businesses and service establish establishments. Um it's worth noting here that the overall quality of business and service establishments did decrease slightly
since 2022 results. Um ratings for Charlottesville as a place to work. The variety of bis of service and business establishments and the v vibrancy of the downtown and commercial areas are also in line with the national averages here.
Um we had a few items fall below the national average including the availability of affordable quality child care and preschool, the availability of affordable quality housing, cost of living, and we also asked a question on
the survey. What impact do you think the economy will have on your family over the next 6 months? Only 8% felt that that would be um very or somewhat positive. However, these downward trends are
certainly not unique to Charlottesville. We've been seeing this across many, many reports. Um so, we wanted to include this national data here for context. And the data used to create this chart comes from our national benchmark database. As you can see here, some items like the
availability of affordable quality housing, which is our pink line here, that has been declining for some time. But others like the cost of living, the availability of affordable quality food and child care, those have shown large
declines in the post-pandemic economy, especially as we've been navigating very high inflationary times combined with increasing interest rates and relatively lower consumer sentiment about the overall health of the economy.
So although although we do see declines in some of these ratings related to the past survey effort of 2022, many of them relate to these broader national trends. And this isn't to say that the city should or shouldn't do something to address these issues. But hopefully this
helps to place them in a broader context by taking into account the other jurisdictions we've worked with over the past decade. Our fifth key finding here, residents identify mobility as an important area
of focus. So mobility was rated the second most important facet by residents. If you remember one of the first slides, we asked residents how important is it for the city to focus on these over the next two years and moility was the second
most important there. Um so that was the um I believe biggest or second biggest gap as well in our quality and importance chart. Um but looking here at the results the highest rated aspect
related to mobility was ease of walking at 55% excellent or good followed by ease of travel by car. Um so ease of travel by car, ease of public parking and ease of travel by bicycle were falling below the national benchmark
this year and ease of travel by car experienced a statistically significant decline since 2022. The ease of um travel by public transportation was also a little bit
lower here. Um, so we had 27% rate that as excellent or good and that was on par with 2022 results. Traffic flow on major streets was similar to the benchmark at 31% which doesn't surprise me too much.
Um, as you can imagine, we have a lot of strong feelings about traffic. So, um, not too surprised to see that that is a relatively lower rating, but yet still on par with that national benchmark. So I just had a clarification for the
previous slide. Um the second ease of travel by car. I just want to make sure I understand 51%. What what does that mean again? >> Yes. So um 51% rated the ease of travel by car as
excellent or good. >> And the fact that it's a decline shows that it used to be more people thought it was excellent or good. Also the fact that it's a decline is a good thing. >> Okay. There's >> all right. Um in terms of mobility
services, some did see improvement since the last survey iteration in 2022. So um again this is percent excellent or good. Here you'll see that 61% rated street cleaning as actually for good
followed closely by street lighting at 59%. Snow removal at 56% and both of those experienced statistically significant increases since 2022. Um traffic enforcement
fallen closely at 48% positive and about 41% appreciated bus or transit services. This was also increasing significantly since 2022. So all categories here did perform on
par with the national benchmark. Um and we had quite a few improvements which is a contrast against the overall mobility. It's obvious that the um mobility services are doing their best to correct
some of these potential focus areas. So last and not least, educational and cultural opportunities remain highly valued in Charlottesville. So in terms of education, arts and culture, we asked residents to rate each
of these items um on a scale of excellent, good, fair, or poor. And we have 88% appreciating the public library services. This was the highest rated item in this facet. and that was on par with the national benchmark. Community
support for the arts falls closely at 80%. Along with opportunities to attend cultural arts and music festivals, both of those items scored higher than the national benchmark here. opportunities to attend special events and festivals
and adult educational opportunities along with K through 12 education um were a little bit lower but still relatively high in comparison to all of the ratings throughout the report and all of these were on par with the
national benchmark as well. We didn't have any trends to note here. So um these were also stable with 2022 results to give you consistent satisfaction. So additional special topics in addition
to the standardized fivepage survey instrument, we had a little bit of space left to include some custom questions that were unique to Charlottesville. Um so this is our question here. I know it might be a little bit hard to read. We'll have it more clearly on the next
slide. So for this custom question, we asked residents whether the city's current service level should be increased, kept the same or decreased for various services. And looking at this chart
here, it has a ton of data for your review, but about 60% would like to see increased efforts in both bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and traffic system improvements. Um while about 34 and 37%
respectively support maintaining the current service levels in those areas. Um so just looking at those first two items there you see traffic system improvements about 60% um wanted to increase while about 37% said that we
could keep the current service and only 3% there said that they would decrease the service. So, looking forward here to um street and sidewalk repair. Just over half of residents support increasing levels of
street and sidewalk maintenance and repairs. About 51% and a nearly equal share would like to maintain the current levels. So, about 48% were happy with the current level. Communication about city programs,
services, and activities also received calls for more investment with about 50% favoring an increase and 45% preferring to keep service levels the same. So each of the remaining items here um
once we move past the communication about city program services and activities um had fewer than 50% of respondents saying that services should be increased. However, for a vast majority of these,
over 50% did want to maintain the current service level with only downtown parking management, police patrol, and investigative services, and support for nonprofits seeing doubledigit totals for those hoping to decrease the service
levels. Of the items here, which could be compared to the 2022 survey, three saw statistically significant increases with more residents saying that the service should remain the same or be increased
in 2025. And those were communicating with residents about the city program, services, and activities that saw a 7oint increase in terms of either increasing the service or keeping the same service. Providing competitive
grant funding to local nonprofits saw a whopping 17% increase in terms of increasing or keeping that service the same safe and police patrol and investigative services saw a 10 point increase there.
So a quick summary of concerns here. Most residents experience a high quality of life. The local government uh ratings increased since 2022. Safety continues to be rated positively, maintaining strong levels of satisfaction.
Affordability remains a concern for many residents in the city. Residents identify mobility as an important area of focus and educational and cultural opportunities remain highly valued in Charlottesville. With that, I know that was a lot of
information at once. So, I'd like to thank you all for your time and open up the room for questions. I will just scoot back to this summary of conclusions so we have those as a quick view here. Um, but happy to hop around to any other slides if there are
relevant questions. Um, >> Grace, I have one question I had about your methodology. You had said on the page talking about the 386 total responses received, 664 responses to the
open participation survey, which you said, if I interpreted you correctly, the that you did not factor in those responses into the the data we saw right at the end there. What was either the purpose or the value of that open
participation survey if you weren't going to use it? >> Yeah, great question. Um, well, it does provide some interesting context. So, a lot of jurisdictions will look at their open participation and random sample
results side by side and they'll see, okay, so we had 664 residents respond to the open participation survey. Those are likely very engaged and vocal residents and you're able to see are they feeling
more confident in the city or less confident. Are there any big disparities between our random sample and open participation survey? So that is one way. Um another benefit of this is we have the opportunity to reach out to
people who have signed up on PCO um to conduct additional outreach. So during future open participation surveys, we can invite those who have participated in the past and provided their email address to participate in those growing
your online panel for future surveys. So um there are a couple of benefits and the third I think I left the best for last. It's just giving the opportunity to everyone in the community to participate. So, um, we've had feedback that, you know, I didn't get a mailed
invite, but I'd still like to give my feedback. Gives them the opportunity to provide that and communicate with the city. >> Are there any different lessons that one might glean from the those 60 and some responses different from the the
statistics generated by the 386 responses? >> Sorry, I couldn't quite hear you there. >> Okay. I I'm just wondering is there anything that any conclusions that you gleaned or any trends that you gleaned
from the 664 open participation responses that either couldn't be discerned from the 386 or might have been different from the 386. >> You know, I haven't looked into that
personally. Um but we certainly could. Um, let me follow up on that and compare those um, open participation in random sample results and we'll follow up with Ashley to circle back and answer that
question. Well, again, I'm not asking you to try to pull out something that isn't a valid cons a valid conclusion, but I'm, you know, for example, if it turns out that the 664 responses are
largely the same as the 386, okay, that's fine. If we know that we have very different results out of the 664 than we had out of the 386, there might be something worthwhile noting there.
>> Yeah, absolutely. >> I agree. >> Comments, >> Nat, >> thank you for asking that. That was one of my questions as well. Um, you mentioned uh having the survey sent out. >> I'm sorry, I can't quite hear you. Could you speak up a little bit? >> Yeah. No. Um, I just said that uh
Lloyd's question was was one of my questions as well. Um, but also um you mentioned having the surveys sent out in English and Spanish. Um, Charlottesville is known for having a very diverse
language population and I'm wondering if is there a way to get more languages out there or is that nationwide the only two languages that you have available? No. Um, our list of languages is ever growing. So, I think last time I checked
we were at either 15 or 20 languages. So, those are programmed on PCO. Um, so we can do the online survey in many languages. We can also provide a paper survey in a different language as well.
Um, that gets pretty expensive because the printing costs are high. Um, so I would recommend doing those online translations. One thing that's worth mentioning too is a lot of folks who don't speak um,
English primarily at home, they use like an extension on their browser to translate that and go is compatible with that uh, Google Chrome extension. We're not able to track that on our side, but
we have a really strong suspicion that a lot of folks are using that to translate the survey and respond in their own language. >> Yeah, I'm more concerned about them knowing if you know you get a postcard in the mail that doesn't have that
automatic translate feature to know that that's what the postcard is asking them to do. >> Um, >> absolutely. So, I don't know what the problem solve for that is, but it's something to keep in mind, especially for Charlottesville, is we might be missing some data there. >> And the reason why
>> Yes. And there there are some options, too. Um, outside of translating the survey online, we could even just include a note in different languages that the survey is compatible with that translation feature on Chrome as well. So, I've seen that done in the past, but
I think you can definitely include um additional languages in the future. And Grace, I was going to share part of the reason why we've selected for the second year in a row to make sure it was available in Spanish is is previously it was not presented even as bilingual. And
so this helped me to get trends and all of my data shows that while we do have a large variety of languages, if I am looking at the prevalence of a foreign language, at this point it still was Spanish. Um, I think that that is a wonderful opportunity for us to expand
into that, but I also wanted the uh, city manager to be able to have two years of us even introducing it in Spanish to see if that made a difference at all. Uh, because again, previously we did not introduce this as uh, being compat or having any other language in
the statistically uh, significant survey. and the open survey, we did know that people can use that Google translate button if they so desire to be able to engage, but that's some uh reflection and recommendations we can make for the next administration. But it
was honestly a a bit of a test to see where we are and then thinking of that expense for the printed copy, looking at our most prevalent language, which still is Spanish. >> Yeah. Okay. Thanks. And then my last note is on this page here, the number
one point, most residents experience a high quality of life in Charlottesville. Was the question about the respondents or was it about how you perceive people in the community? Like are they answering on behalf of themselves? >> Mhm. Yes. So it's about their own
experience in the community. >> Okay. >> Um I can scroll back to that slide here. Um I believe the question is included. Oh it is not but I can also
um let me stop my share here and read the exact wording of that question. So um in the report of results here it would
me share again. >> So Michael, did you have any questions or comments? because I know we get some time. >> Um >> well the reason why if if I could the reason why I asked that is because I would rephrase that to say most respondents experience a high quality of
life in Charlottesville and that's something that change that changes the kind of value of that bullet point. I think it becomes a little more accurate because we know there are people that have challenges and those are probably going to be the hardest people to get to
respond. Um and so residence feels like it encompasses more than might actually be um represented even if it is statistically significant. And then in line with that um the seven out of 10 respondents who said they would remain for the next 5 years and recommend it.
One of the follow-ups, I don't know if this is captured in the study, but I would, one of my questions was, how long have they lived here already? And does it capture long-term residents or short-term residents, and how does that change, did that change their responses?
>> Yeah. So, can you actually dig into that in the report, too? Um, actually, do I have time for like a two minute demo here? I don't think >> how much time. >> Yeah, I wanted to get everyone's questions because we have to move on. So, I don't think we have
>> But if we get follow up on that, it would be >> Yeah, I will follow up on that with you. There is a way to compare length of residency um against the answers supplied. So, basically all of the demographic questions we ask, we're able to break down the questions by those
categories. So, >> residencies in there. Any other questions, Natie? >> Uh, not right now. Thanks. >> Might try try to be I'll try to be quick. Um, similar to other questions, I'm sure the people who actually respond to this survey are very different from
they self- selected, either they're more engaged with local government already, maybe they're just psychologically even different. Um, does your waiting address that bias of like who is more likely to even respond to a survey they get in the mail?
Yes. So our rating, we actually wait both surveys. So we wait both the random sample and the open participation survey to make sure that that is still representative of the population. Um and we do see tend we tend to see um older
women respond at a higher rate and younger men at a much lower rate. So, we tend to give those a um those younger men a higher weight so that it matches the community makeup. And we as long as
we receive at least 100 responses to that open participation survey, we do weight that as well. >> But I guess you you just can't wait if even across all demographics people are self- selecting. There's a correlation between self- selecting and and and responding. Um, if
I can help, they weight all all of it looking at multiple demographics from age, Hispanic origin, housing, tenure, housing type, race and Hispanic origin, sex and sex and age in various groups. And so I have that larger data for you, but remember this was this is more of a snapshot, but it I love that you all
want to be wonky. Let's do it. I love it. >> Sure. No, I mean it's definitely it's it's um useful useful data for sure. Still um and then just quick thoughts. one, it jumps out to me that our parks are maybe the only area of government that it seems like people like to praise
rather than just criticize. And that kind of jumped out in the responses. Um, not shocking, but that we're 20 points lower than national average for availability of affordable housing, cost of living, affordable child care jumped out were substantially lower than
national average. And then the lack of access to affordable child care jumped out at me um because so much of our population growth has been driven by older residents. Our school population over the past 20 years only increased by 17 students. So what can we do to make
it more feasible for people to actually start families in Charlottesville was something that jumped out as well. Uh, Brian, >> no. >> Yeah, I just had a couple of comments. Is the 14%
is that within Is that okay that responded? Is that like, you know, about what we expect? >> Yeah, that is a great response rate. They actually just ran the 2025 average response rate yesterday and it's opening
at 11% on average. So you are certainly above average there. >> Okay. And do we know um and I assume that when you mailed the the paper survey that it it included a self
envelope to send it back. Yeah. And my last question, my last question is, do we know like of the people that responded the the um demographic breakdown of them? Like how many do roughly how many African-Ameans
responded? How many of our new Afghanistan community do we know just generally speaking what that is? >> Yes, sir. >> Yes, we do have that information. >> Okay. >> Go ahead, Ashley. >> Oh, good. If you have it at your fingertips, I'm I'm trying to find it. But I also will share that in part of
the reason why we look at the statistically significant survey is we are also able to weigh how they how they deploy those 3,000 original invitations. So we look at communities that maybe
have lower responses. Maybe it's socioeconomic or various other options. If we can find that in census data and they can push a few more surveys to that group to give more people an opportunity to answer than in a section of a community where they are very apt to
answer questions and like love filling out the Neielson survey, right? Um so that's another way that they can weigh to try and get the best responses from our totality of community than just people who like to fill in bubbles. >> Got it. I got it. So it was it was factored in. So yes, sir. Good.
>> So, we're we're going to get a second to reflect together, but is there any more questions? Actual questions? >> Cool. Thank you. Can we celebrate, Grace, and just thank you for your time? >> I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you all for your time and um my email is on the last
slide there. If you have any questions, please send it my way. Um but I look forward to hearing how you all utilize these results and thank you so much for your time today. We actually have Jason's email.
>> Oh, um, my email is on the version, so I can get it to you. Remember, grace us. So, just replace Jason Newmire with Grace. >> Thanks. >> Awesome. >> Thank you so much for pointing that out.
I appreciate it. >> You all >> Thank you. >> All right. Hang tight with me for two seconds. group. >> You got it. >> The group of >> All right. All right. Um, do me a favor. Grab your
other grab your other herb if you could. I'd like you to grab a blank one inside the middle of that. If you can write community survey, that would be great. Um, and then take five minutes from everything you just heard. Uh, what do you understand? What do you respect? And
what do you value? Right. community survey in the middle of that. We understand we respect and what you value with confidence
value. trans everything you just heard. High level We understand. We respect. What is that value?
All right, just about another minute. All right. Um, well, will you start us off? Uh, this time what we do is go through it all. Tell us like, you know, after hearing what I just heard, here's what I understand. here's what I respect uh and here's what I value. >> Um yeah, so what I understand is that I
believe that we're headed in the right direction as a council, as a city, but we still have a lot of work to do. Um what I um respect is um I respect um council and staff for their service because what we saw was a lot of that
was whether it's the police, the library, whatever was the efforts of staff um working M >> and what um what I value is um that you know that our efforts to for um
increasing mobility that is having an impact on residents and our you know you know our commitment um and our love of library and books in this community is phenomenal. It's a lot of bookstores and and libraries here in this community. So
that's that's >> appreciate this. >> Brian, what what do you understand respect and value? >> Um I don't mean this in any way to be discouraging or anything like that, but
just it generally um reaffirms my skepticism of surveys. >> Okay. Um, not that I don't >> disable >> perhaps.
Skepticism is too strong of a word. I just >> know enough math and seen enough people at their front door that um I feel like surveys particularly when she was going through all the various numbers, it gives you a sense of precision that's
just not doesn't reflect reality. Yeah. And even if 400 people in the city somehow turns out to be statistically representative of the whole city. Um I mean I just find that hard to believe. >> Yeah.
>> Um not that on the other hand I think the trend data though is valuable >> and survey is a tool right the idea is how we design and create that tool to better try to do. >> Yeah. I know there's a whole theory. I mean I I get I took statistics in
college a long long time ago. But um the thing that I respect was just the flip side I guess is the time and attention to detail that went into to it. And I respect that it from a professional perspective. There's a world of surveys
and I'm sure they know even though they've struggled with political hardistications lately. Um the thing that I value frankly is what we actually hear from our residents. Um, again, I wonder I've always wondered
uh when I when I've knocked on doors versus what people fuss at us with over email or whatever. Um, you know, Heather Hill always talked about the difference between the signal and the noise. What are we hearing about that's actually representing something real in the
community versus people who are just annoyed? Yeah. >> And so, um, >> okay. Anyway, >> yeah, look, understand, respect and value about the community survey. >> Well, the the first thing I took away from the various uh poll results, even
recognizing the difficulties with trying to draw too many broad conclusions out of what is still essentially meager data that I was glad to see that the respondents and city government are largely aligned in our perceptions of what the problem areas are. That's good.
Um I um note that some of the work that we have been doing seems to have been working and appreciated by the respondents. Uh and finally I was gratified to see uh that respondents think that government
is doing better than it had been. Value that. Love it. >> What do you understand respect and value? >> Um I understand that a lot of weight is being put on 386 people. True. >> Um I respect that the survey tries to
get at important questions. You know, it's a tall order to try and assess the community. Um but yeah, in the context of designing surveys, this seems like it was covering the bases as intended and and well. Um, and then even though it's
a small sample and I can't pick and choose the responses I like and give them more weight, I I acknowledge that I still am gratified to see that the bike pad infrastructure demands are going up and the ease of travel is going down. Both of those are good sign. Ease of car travel is going down. Both of those are good signs.
>> Sure. >> Um, well, I would agree with others broader point like I feel like community engagement is really hard for the city. It reminds me of like the Cherry Avenue small area plan where when it started the city expected people to come to us
and it didn't work at all and we had to go to people, knock on their door, meet them where they're at. Um, so it just made me think of that. But from the responses, I understand it was not surprising that Charlottesville is very hard to afford and particularly hard for people to afford to start a family in.
Um what do I respect that trust in local government and the functioning of local government reached a very very low point you know sometime after 2017 and I think um a lot of rebuilding is happening and there's an increase in trust but that
takes a lot of time it takes time for the narrative to change and to rebuild um what do I value um that what was in the survey that people cared most about the city is taking very substantial
action on. Some of that will take a while to materialize or maybe people don't know everything that's happening, but all of it is um met with very significant investments and staff changes to like try to implement these things. >> Yeah, I agree. No, thank you for that. I
appreciate you all you all sharing. Um what I'm attempting to do is build you a toolbox of understanding as well as we go through this information cuz again, I'm just going to you'll hear me say it and probably get tired of me saying it. going to ask you reflect on your notes for tomorrow. Uh so please continue just to take your thoughts, your beautiful
insights and the things you write down. Um and just kind of hold it. Um I'm going to ask you leave it here as well cuz we are tomorrow. I'm going to ask you to dip into that toolbox you built today. So thank you. Do me a favor. Um if you already take a break, take a 5m minute break. I want to kind of get a little bit of us some time back. But do
me a favor, take a fiveminut break. Try to take a real break. Um grab something to drink. Go outside if it's not too hot. Breathe for a second. We'll see you back in 5 minutes. Uh and we're going to talk about the financial conditions. You'll again where it is. So so far where it is regarding strategic priorities, where it is regarding
community and then we will look at where it is regarding the financial conditions and and economic context. Cool. All right. Take five minutes. Yep. >> All right. So we are back and Josh focused on the idea that we were talking about where it is. So, we
started with your priority areas, why you selected the priority areas. I went through what you have said about them, why you picked them. Uh, and now you've heard a little bit about how some members of the community is actually reflecting on them. Hope hopefully
helping you see that you're on the right targets, might not be hitting all the targets, might be missing some of the targets. That's kind of the point of what the survey is supposed to do. you let it in form and then you move on from it and get back to work. So, in order for us to
do that, we got to always check in on the money side. And if my friend Chrissy Hannah was here, who is on the beach right now, enjoying herself, but stressed out that we're having a conversation about money without her. >> If Chrissy were here, she would be sitting up in her chair now and watching all of you as you start to talk about
spending money. So, what we decided we would do was make sure that we gave you a financial checkup. and Vienn Leang is with PFM. They're our financial advisor. Uh Vienn has been instrumental in helping us get through collective bargaining. Y'all don't always get to see the sausage making and the behind
thescenes stuff, but there was a moment when I was on a cliff ready to jump. And it was Vienn who said, "I got you. We'll figure this out. We've done it before." And Chrissy and I both took a side of relief and said, "Okay, Ven, let's go." So, we were able to get through that process and come to appreciate how she
has uh done analysis work. She pitched this to us and after seeing the proposal, we absolutely wanted to make sure that we provided this kind of context for what does our financial picture look like today and give her a chance to be able to answer any questions that come up.
>> Well, good morning everyone. Thank you for inviting me and uh being here. It's a pleasure. Um, so as Sam introduced, I am uh for the PFM public financial management. It's not clear what we do. That's who we are. And uh I've been working at PFM for 12 years. And I
started my career actually working on the city government side. I was a budget analyst. This was my first job. Um but then came over to the government consulting side. So what I'm going to do today is three three parts presentation. One is step back a little bit and say okay where where are we economically in
the current economic context? I know that we see the news every day. More data is coming out every day. but step back a little bit and say where we are economically, but then kind of hold in a little bit in terms of like what does that mean for Charlottesvilles on the revenue side and on the expenditure side
um and then wrap up with the next steps in terms of how do you take that information in and help you with the rest of your decision-m process uh for the rest of the day and tomorrow. So with this, let me start off with the first section which is the economic context. I know this is a little small
but um hang in there with me. Um so when we talk about when we look at the headlines and look at the recession risk you know there are a lot of numbers out there a lot of data that we look at and one of the figures that I have always looked at or at least one of the data points is the leading economic indicator
released by the economist board. So when we talk about you know the economy and what does that mean often times they're what they call the leading economic indicators which are kind of all these data points that tell us is a recession in order to come and there are bunch of data points you know I think nine or 10
and so what the conference group does where they do economic forecast every quarter is that they combine all these data points into one single leading economic indicator and for me it kind of consolidates a little bit and so what you see here is the blue line there is a leading economic index essentially to
tell you what the data points and that includes stuff like you know the stock market uh interest rates, building permits, new orders, those kind of leading economic indicators and that is the blue line. The black line up there is the coincident economic indicator and
those include things like uh personal income, employment, right? Those are kind of like the you know if a recession happens that n that black line is going to come down. So if you look at kind of the past couple recessions here, which is a gradiated area, you see the blue line usually comes before the white
line. So what the blue line does is it essentially is a leading economic indicator, right? It should tell you at least when something's coming. And if you look at today here, right here, you can see kind of those divergent point, which is why we have we're don't know whether or not we're in a recession
right now. has not been any announcement but you can see these the blue line the e leading economic indicator coming down and if you look at this chart um I'm not an economist but if you look at this chart here the the red line is essentially what they calculate as a recession signal um what that tells us
is that even though as of today I think our star portfolio is still doing okay um there's just that much economic uncertainty today um and what is interesting about this is that you have to remember that you know these shaded gray areas
was um decided later on, right? We don't know if we're in a recession as of today. We might be one, we just don't know it yet. And so that is a tricky thing about kind of the economic situation right now. All this to say and I think we all know here that there's a lot of recession uh risks as of today
and more to become. Um you know when we talk about recession if you Google that word you know the top is usually you know if the GDP falls for two successive quarters although the actual definition of that is a little bit more nuance than that if you remember co the recession was only two months so clearly a
recession can be you know shorter than two successive quarters but essentially you know a recession is a drop in GDP and as of today we're in a very um unusual territory why do I say that I remember giving make this presentation
back before co if you look at the 2008 recession right that was the longest deepest recession that we have ever had and then the next recession here is the deepest but the shortest recession we have so whenever clients ask me well if I were to model a recession scenario what would that look like well what's
really hard to model that right now because there's no normal the last recession was a co recession which is unprecedented and the one before that was a great recession and really so the last normal political recession was back in the early 2000s and that is kind of
why it's so hard to predict right now. Um but you know if you look at Charlottesville and I look back at your numbers back in the last two recessions you were actually doing pretty well. We'll talk a little bit about your strengths and your risk of your profile, but you actually did pretty well in both
of these recessions in part because you established a downturn reserve back in 2008 and because you made s decisions like halting your capital uh spending in the co era. You did pretty well the last two recessions. Um but those you did really well in part because of the
planning and the thoughtfulness and the actions that were uh taken back then. We want to make sure that you are well positioned for the next one. This is a lot of numbers. So, let me walk you through this. But remember when I said that we're in an unusual
territory, you know, this is the historical recessions uh showing the expansion duration and the contraction duration. So, if you look at this 18mon all to the way to the the right column, that was um the longest um recession
that the US had. That was a great recession. That was the longest recession that the US had ever. And then after that came the longest expansionship period of 180 28 months. And again I said you know I remember doing this similar dissertation back
then um saying like love this is the longest expansionship period while researchers are not driven just by time just know that you have to be prepared and of course the next day co hit um and that became the shortest uh contraction ever. So anyway, um nerds like me
probably like this term, but this is just again to to reiterate the point that we are in a very unusual time right now. You know, there's no road map. There's no kind of status quo. There's nothing usual about what we're experiencing right now. I made an earlier point that we don't
know and we're in a recession today and I just kind of want to hone in on that point a little bit uh with this in the next slide. So this is fascinating. Um this was this chart is the survey of professional forecasters uh released by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve and
they essentially you know survey different economists and say well what do you think GDP will grow next year how much do you think GDP will grow and at the time when they surveyed them you can see this bell curve by the time when they surveyed them most of them were thinking between two to 3% in 2009 now
this survey was released in February of 2008 and guess what at that time and point when the economist responded to this survey we were already in the 2008 recession and at that time when they were saying it will be plus 2.8% the
actual number was -2.6%. And again I found this fascinating because even the economists didn't know right that they were already in a recession. Um, similar story here. This is the last three recession timeline. If you look at, you know, what I just talked about,
right? In December 2007, we entered a recession. February of 2008, they were still projecting almost 3% in GDP when that year we had a negative 2.6%. Now the here is important to note that like the National Bureau of Economic
Research, they announced things um late because they want enough data. They say there is a recession. So sometimes a recession could have ended before they announced that there was one but that was a co one. The co recession was only two months long and they actually
announced it in June when the recession ended back in April. Similar thing happened in the early 2000 recession. Um the the US ended the recession in March 2011. They they actually announced it much later than November. So that's why I said earlier that we could be in one
right now we just don't know about it. And that's highlights the importance of planning um and and that what you're doing today is that you need to we all need to anticipate kind of where we are economically before the data is actually coming out.
Okay. So what does that mean for Charlottesville? Obviously the economic activity the economic context that we're in have a lot of um impact on the revenue side of things. And so I want to step back a little bit and say okay you know just give you an overview of the economic context. What does that mean for Charlottesville on the revenue side
of the um the financial equation? Uh this is a fascinating chart. This is um this is not new. This is a national cities. This is a release in 2022 by the National League of Cities showing all kind of their their survey of national
cities. And I wanted to show this slide because we are in I keep on saying we're unprecedented times from an economic perspective but also from a local government financial perspective. The the orange line here is expenditures and
the let's call it blue. The blue line here is the revenue and what you see here is I haven't seen this before is this divergent of the line where the expenditure goes up and the revenue goes down. Now why is that the
case? Much of that is in part driven by the armor money, the co cares act money, all of that, right? That that is what is in part driving up and what we're seeing is that nationally across cities, the
revenues are coming down. Yes. >> I ask a just a picky question. Is this uh the expenditures and revenues of national government, state government, local government, all of them? Uh it's
uh all cities across the state. >> All cities. >> Yeah. Only cities is a cool. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Um so this is something I just haven't seen before. I mean look at the chart before, right? You have seen the line diverging kind of not lining up but this is something that to me is
unprecedented. I mean when was the last time you know local governments got the kind of money that we got from our cares and stuff, right? So this is truly unprecedented. Um, and I say when I look at this, you know, if all cities and counties, if you're not paying attention
today, you really need to start right now, right? This is not good. Um, the line is diver. Okay, that was national cities. Like I said, let's look at Virginia. So, this is all Virginia counties is blue, city
is yellow, and all is white. And what you're seeing, this is the local revenue average yearover-year growth from a percentage perspective. What you're seeing is you know it was going up and down up and down and of course CO hit and then look at what happened after uh
after co it really shot up from a percentage growth perspective but then in FY 2024 across all local governments um the revenue growth was slowing down and I I want to be clear this is revenue growth so revenue was still growing but
it was growing at a lower rate uh in FY 2024 across all Virginia counties and cities alike. And I think you see some of that during the FY2026 budget process where you see a lot more uh jurisdictions, even the Northern
Virginia jurisdictions increasing tax rates, making tax rate adjustments in part because the growth is slowing down again across all Virginia cities and towns. Let's talk about Charlottesville. Now, we talked about the kind of national landscape. We talked about Virginia.
Let's hone in on the city itself. uh you also experienced some of that right the chart previously uh included Charlott and what you see here and this is back you know all the way back to 2016 so this is a decade long low and what you see here is you know from 2016 to kind
of co your revenue was growing moderately at about 4% each year and then the postcoid era like the f 22 and 23 those revenue growth was growing by 10% and you see that revenue growth
moderated in the last two years to between 5 to 6%. So that chart that the growth coming down shows also experience that again it's not negative growth is still positive growth but the growth has come down significantly you know this is the typical kind of
your general fund pie chart and I want to show it now because you know all of you know this but this to me really highlights Charlie's strengths and risks. So if you look at your revenue makeup right half of that is your property tax including the small size of
personal property but half of that is your property tax another about 20% is a combination of me sales and other taxes and the rest is what I call other which includes financial capital fees charges and so on
this slice this 50% property tax is your biggest strength right property tax is generally viewed as the most stable stabilized nonvolatile revenue and the fact that you have 50% of your revenue that comes from this very stable source
even in economic recessions that is your biggest strength. You also have diversity, right? This whole thing is not all just property because you also have diversity diversity and that's good. Revenue diversity is a good thing and you have some diversity here that represents about 20%. But when you think
about Charlottesville total revenue, you know, the way I think about it is almost 3/4 is from taxes, but the rest is from the other. And we'll talk a little bit about how these tax bases behaving because that at the end of the day drives your ultimate revenue.
So I said that the half of your tax base is good as the real estate tax base is nonvolatile uh is one of your most stable source of revenue and this shows you the taxable sales values. Now remember the early revenue line you know slow growth and then high growth and
then moderate growth same you know if you look at the pre kind of back in 2007 2017 that was growing about 3.4% 4% and then the growth was a little bit steeper 5.7% and then there's a 10% growth. I say
coincidentally almost exactly the same as your revenue growth. And then what we're seeing as the growth is starting to moderate. The good news here is it didn't drop right over the last however many years this is
showing. What I'm scared of um is what if this growth starts coming back down to what you sort of back experienced back in the days at a 3% level. If this growth starts slowing down and leveling that has a significant meaning because remember this is half your total
revenue. Um so that's your strength is your risk is that your strength is that half is your uh property tax is by growing very robustly. But what if it comes down in a couple years? Let's talk a little bit about your other kind of nonprofit tax revenue. Um, and
this is good news and bad news as well. Remember I said that there's is a good thing that you have a diversified revenue portfolio. But of course the flip side of the coin, the double-edged sword here is that these revenues are economically low and they don't grow
very much. So these are your meals tax, your sales tax, your logic tax. These just don't grow very much and you can see it flattening already. Uh the final 25 numbers are still not out yet, but you can see that growing. Okay, so that is your risk portfolio right there.
I want to step back a little bit and spend a couple of slides just talking about your tax rates and your competitive advantage here. Um so Charlottesville, right? When we look at the city, we have to think about your regional comp competition uh from a tax
base and tax rate perspective. So this is comparing uh the city with the county in terms of let's look at this chart particularly first. This is a per capita assessed value. In other words, your tax base and it's a little bit on a per capita basis a little bit weaker than
the county but not by much. You can see it's just kind of a hair the county but of course your tax rate is higher and that is always going to be the case. Any city that we you know we look at is always going to be the tax bases are weaker. the tax rate is higher just because of the nature of cities. Um, so
you're not out of the norm here, but just know that, right? You're always competing against that kind of surrounding county. You're always competing against that competitiveness nature of the city versus county competition there. Um, another perspective on tax rate is I
prepared your tax rates with uh Northern Virginia. Um this is a you know in order in instead of kind of showing you all the places uh different tax rate this is a weighted average of all of Northern Virginia. What you can see is that your median household income is about half of
the Northern Virginia jurisdictions. Yes, there's a typo here. >> No. No. Um I'm assuming that medium household income is not taking out the student population. >> Correct. Yeah. I and this is a general
general I I don't even like I just pulled the numbers from the Census Bureau. >> Yes, correct. Yeah. And I understand that student population would certainly skew this number. Um but this would also like include places like Lman County which has 170,000 median household
income. So this is you know including all of the Northern Virginia counties which generally has a much higher wealthier um demographic profile. But you can see that you know Shotozo's medium household income let's say is about half of that but his tax rate is
you know if you look at the real property tax is a little a hair lower uh it is lower but a hair lower at 4.1%. Personal property tax and this is like the vehicle tax rates um that's a little bit higher almost 1% and your meals tax
rate is um is more than double actually um than the Northern Virginia. So so I why do I show this slide? I'm saying you know often times if your revenue comes down you know you always need to adjust maybe look to the tax rate to bring more
revenue and given the expenditure side of the equation here um but there's some room not to say you don't have any room but the room is limited um in order to keep your competitiveness especially in relation to county um even to northern
Virginia jurisdictions you have limited room to increase your tax rates while remaining competitive. And that's probably where the whole prioritization conversation comes in is that you don't have a lot of room on the rate side in order to increase your revenues.
Um there's another way to look at tax burden. You know, we just talk about tax rates. Um but the the Virginia Commission local government, the CFG, they also released data on revenue efforts and it's probably a more precise way to look at kind of burden. Um because the revenue effort figure what
that does is it basically shows you how much juice you can squeeze out of the orange. Um because what it does is it looks a little bit at your kind of base as well your capacity. How much can you get from your tax base, right? If your median household income is higher, there's more juice to be squeezed. If
your median household income is lower, there's just less juice to be squeezed out of it. Um so there it shows you the revenue effort and they kind of do this computation and what you see here is among Virginia cities the revenue a e effort on average is 1.27 27 and shows
as a hair higher at 1.35. And you can see again compared to the northern Virginia cities that we're talking about um you're higher there. And that kind of you know basically illustrate the point that again you may have some room on the rate side to play with that but there's not that much room if you were to remain
competitive. Just a couple more benchmarking exercise. I mean I I do think that you know on as a whole is positioned well. Why do I say that? you know your fiscal um they the the the uh commission on local government they they do this
computation and basically um release this figure called fiscal stress index and what it does is basically saying you know I'm going to they're going to look at meaning household income revenue capacity kind of the base and the revenue effort which is the tax burden they look at these three factors and say
what is the fiscal stress index so if you were to imagine you know a place that has very low median household income and very high revenue new efforts that is going to have a lot of fiscal stress, right? That's what we think about. Think of about you know the kind
of um population declining cities, low tax base but has a high tax rate. That's what this is essentially measuring. And what it shows is that you know not surprisingly shows the fiscal stress is higher than a mar county. Again that's not surprising. And if I flip to the next chart you will see here is actually
pretty good. Why do I say that? So, what I'm showing here is green is low fiscal stress and then red is high fiscal stress. Charlottville is right here. And I say it's pretty good because if you you can't see this, it's way too small. But if you look at this side of it, it's
really all counties on Northern Virginia. If you think about kind of Virginia cities are not the northern Virginia, they're all kind of down here. So, if you're looking at your population, it is pretty good. You can see Richmond is definitely lower. Harrison is lower. A lot of places are
lower than you. So you are from a kind of raw perspective when you pick your paths to compare yourself with. You're doing pretty well even though you're still considered above average festival stress again because much of the yellow and the green most of them are counties
most of them are northern Virginia. Um, so again, all I'm saying is, you know, Charlottesville as a city, you have the identity, right? You have you have the student population, you have the high the property rate is high for the county and all those things. Um, but generally speaking, you've been able to manage it.
And that's what I'm trying to you know let you know at this point that you have been able to manage it to this point and the next step is going to be you know when revenue comes down you know what actions do you take to make sure that you remain competitive compared to your neighbors and compared to the region as
a whole one more thing here um you know I feel like you know because of the ARPA money because of the postcoid strong revenue growth I feel like a lot of places haven't been focused on the underlying trend and like population at the end of
the day is the true economic driver. Places with declining population have usually a higher fiscal stress, right? Your tax base is not there. And just one thing to note here on the population side, depending on what source you you use, your population trend is basically
flat. Um, and so just something to remind yourself of as you think about kind of the economic engine at the end of the day is your population and it is flat right now. um and to continue to manage it um so that you don't start to see that line declining uh in the
future. So that's on the revenue side. Let me now talk about the expenditure side too. Um on the expenditure side, you know, when I think about Charlottville, I think of kind of three slices. The first slice is personal cost and that would include,
you know, salaries, benefits, pension. The second slice is your school's contribution and the third slice is kind of all. So if you think about kind of a bank's area right your your revenue is mostly tax 2/3 of that is tax revenue 2/3 of that is personnel source. That's
how we think about it. And if you look at the schools just for a second here you know as you know the school's contribution has been increasing at a higher rate in the last two years corresponding to the revenue trend. Um, you know, I think when it comes to schools and a lot of Virginia clients ask this question is like how are we
going to sustain that growth in the future, especially given the re revenue picture that we're talking about. You know, one thing I did wanted to show is this is from the William Cooper um numbers is that your enrollment figures is actually projected to come down on
voting. Um, and I, you know, I don't have answers here. Um but I would say here is I think it's important to consider the return on investments. It's important to consider kind of you know what does enrollment trends mean for your contribution and I know that your
contribution has been increasing in part because of the ESL population and the other kind of demographic factor but is not necessarily reflected in the enrollment line here. Um but this is one trend to note as you think about what does the next five years look like given the revenue picture that I just framed
for you. Um so this is one trend to know and again this is because this is oneird of the pie um is a big driver of your cost. Personal costs is the other kind of one-third of the pie here. Um, and I'm going to ask you to not focus on so much
on kind of the words or there, but what I'm trying to highlight here is this is the budget number and what you see here is FY20 actuals and 2025 budget. There was a significant increase and I know that your actual numbers is not going to be the 84.9. I believe you'll have some
savings and all those things bring the number down. But coincidentally, your FY26 budget actually the exact same numbers. While the living wage increases, while healthcare trends and pension numbers continue to go up, what I'm trying to tell you is that there is
just that much less room like budgetary buffer in your FY6 budget, right? Because FSB5 you bud this much, you able to like, you know, hit probably somewhere around here because of vacancy savings. I don't think you're going to have that much savings
because you're not making fun. So again on the personal cost front as Sam said I've been working a lot on the collective bar marketing front. Um there's a lot of good investments there. Um but over time you do have to manage that growth in the personal cost. And I want to talk a little bit about this
just because it's that important. You know this is comparing 20 years difference. This is across the states. This is uh released by the Bure of Labor Statistics. You know across the US what you see is that the compensation portfolio has changed significantly. If you look back 20 years ago, wages and
salaries represent about 70% of the total personnel cost. The remaining 30% is on benefits. Look at it today. The wage and salary number has dropped to close to 60%. Because these slices have grown at a much higher rate over the
last 20 years and these are essentially taking over the compensation portfolio. So when you talk about personal cost, it's important to not just think about salaries, but think about how these other slices have really driven overall personnel cost over time. And this has
been reflected in your budget as well. I mean, this is your healthcare fund. You know, the red numbers just means a deficit. It does your fund still have a positive balance impact. It has a good 30% reserve in there. Um, but just know that because of the reserve, you have
been able to underfund your healthcare fund a little bit and eventually it's going to catch up. I'm not you're in a good shape right now. It's still 30% is in good shape, but eventually what you're going to see is that it will have that much of a pressure on the general fund side. Um, eventually you start to
funding it at least leveling it um if not going back to you know on the pension side that's even going at a higher rate. You know, if you look at the last 10 years, your pension contribution has doubled from almost $7 million to uh to almost $14 million.
Your pension contribution have doubled as a percentage of payroll has gone from 20 to 30%. Um and yet, you know, as you know, you're still not fully funded. You're still in the 70% range. And I understand the goal is to get to 80%. And you should never let up that goal.
Getting to that 80% goal is a good thing. is a good thing because when you don't fully fund your pension, what happens that you have to pay it back over time. I mean this is a pretty staggering chart in the sense that you know 80% of your pension contribution is
to pay off your unfunded liability and hopefully this will shrink over time as you get your funded level higher right so that you don't have to pay back your funded liable liability but that's a consequence of not having a fully function plan and it's okay 80% is a
good go to have you still get there but just know that you know when you think about personal cost is a salary so let's they you know increase hours by let's say 5% just hypothetically your health care cost is probably going by about 7%. That's kind of the national trends here
and your pension cost is going by what 50% a year based on the double last decade. So you can see how these costs stack up and that explains this particular chart here. The different growth rates of these higher these benefits cost is really what drove the
change of this chart on this line. Again, this is not year only. This is national trends. So, this is what local government has to struggle with, right? This is, you know, if a big piece of their pie is personnel cost, that's what they have to struggle with. Um, the last piece of expenditures I want to
talk about is debt service. You know, in from a debt perspective, you have to maintain it about 5 to 6% of total general fund spending, and that's a good thing. uh but just know that every new infrastructure that you put in is another thing to maintain and that will be reflected these kind of steps of
spending at the end of the day. Um so kind of you know thinking about it all you know if if I think about your again three parts of your pie the personal costs right growing even if you maintain your headcount flat that's when it grows significantly because of the pension because of the healthcare the school's
contribution like I said you know that has been growing pretty at a about 8 and a half% and that's something you have to manage and the rest of the pie is the other and a big piece of that is your debt service your capital investments so even at a status quo kind of perspective you still have to fund all all of those
growing costs over time. And you know, in the last couple years, you had the benefit of the ARPA dollars. You know, back in 2020 and 2021, you had the CARES Act dollars and you also have the year end surplus numbers that you were able to take a dedicated to your strategic priorities. Um, but these are going away
across the, you know, the ARPA money is certainly going away. I think because of the revenue trend that we just talked about, the revenue growth coming down, the year- end surplus number is going to go away at some point. And at some point you will have to think about kind of how to manage the inherent imbalance uh
between revenues and expenditures. I mean you can think back to the property tax chart right if that assessed value is only growing over a long-term period by between you know 5 to 7%. But yet your pension is growing by 15%. Your
healthcare is growing by 8%. You can see the inherent imbalance there and that is the struggle of local government these days. uh it's not you like I said if you're well positioned I think um but that's just the reality of the struggle among the
so with that you know I talked a lot about these themes I want to highlight this one last bullet point here is that as we think about going back to the first part of this presentation as we think about the recession that is maybe here that may be coming certainly
revenue growth is slowing down across the border across all Virginia cities and counties you know you as you think about these kind of growing costs for the different pies of the expenditure pie chart. I do think the next five years not just you again across all governments will be about conservation
and prioritization. Um unfortunately that ARC dollar is not coming back right um unfortunately the revenue growth is slowing down and unfortunately the pension cost the cost they will continue to increase uh even if you don't increase head counts. Um we didn't even
talk about collective bargaining where you know those contracts will be in place. You will be committed to provide those wage increases under those agreement regardless of your economic conditions. Um so the next couple years will be about conservation and prioritization and and I sometimes joke
I sometimes joke that you know local government is kind of like the Amazon Prime Day. You know you want to buy everything but all of us can't buy everything. And so we have to find a way um to prioritize our our resources accordingly again given the economic
condition and given the framework that we are in right now. So how do we move forward from that? What I just said to you uh over the last however minutes um the rating agencies also see it. You are by the way AAA
community. You are selling your bonds next week August 19th. I have the date marked on my calendars. You are strong from the rating agency's perspective. You have a trip AAA better rating. But some of the risks I highlighted here, they are also recognizing it. You know,
they are crediting you as I am today for your strong budgetary practices, for the way you have approached government finances. Um, but they also highlight some of the risks underlying risk that you also need to pay attention to. So again, some of these themes I highlighted the rating agency also
highlighted in their comments and reports. You know, if I step back, and I hope I didn't scare you in the last hour. Um, but if I step back, there's a lot of strength there. If I think about the revenue pie we just showed earlier, property tax is most stable revenue
source you can have is half your half of your revenue picture. You know, and that when I think about in this structure as of today, um you know, one of the reasons Virginia cities, counties, and the commonwealth as a whole is actually relatively okay today uh versus Maryland
and DC is in part because Virginia is not funded by uh income tax. If you look at Maryland's jurisdictions, a lot of the revenues are funded by income tax. DC's budget is also a big portion of that is income tax and that's much more volatile in this day and age. So from a
Virginia perspective, like you're in a good place or as good as it can be given this economic condition because of your revenue makeup. Um this is also why by the way credit rating agencies have affirmed the Commonwealth rating. uh but
they have um downgraded DC um so so you know you do have a lot of strength there but you do also have some of the underlying risk right I wouldn't be surprised for instance if we are in in a recession their meals tax sales tax standing tax coming coming down I
wouldn't be surprised if your population continue to flatten over time and that will be a challenge and a risk to manage you know I wouldn't be surprised if some of the you would have struggle with the capital improvement plan because you have so much to maintain as a city But you have a lot of strengths and the key here is to play to your strengths.
Know where your strengths are and play to it in the next couple of years. Um, understanding that you have to manage all these risks. So what are the next steps here? Um, some of that is already in motion. You know, I think it's important to number one stress test your general fund.
Meaning, you know, what is the worst case scenario and can you weather it? And that analysis already shows that I think because of the strong budgetary uh practices because of your fund balance you know your rating agency have acknowledged that you are in a good position to weather the storm that is
coming. Um but the second piece here and I think is a much of today and tomorrow is to establish spending parameters. Like I said you know on the school side for instance understanding what enrollment projections mean for your future contributions right for your personal cost. You know a lot of work is
done on the collective working side but understand how benefits spending for instance is driving your overall picture you know on the debt service side understanding you know how much you're investing in just maintaining your existing infrastructure and how much is actually adding to it and what is that tradeoff there you know and I think you
know prioritization is probably the one word um that will ring throughout um this presentation and today and tomorrow is how do you prioritize your your resources um given that the re revenue you know has slowed down significantly. How do you prioritize the resources
while achieving your strategic goals? And look, I get it. You would not be here today if you didn't want to invest in the strategic priorities. No one wants to join city government because they want to balance the budget. That's not for anyone. That is the most unsensitive thing ever, right? No one
wants to be part of government because they want to balance the budget. Um but part of the role part of the the the the my role is to make sure that you have the resources when you need it and that you can maintain that kind of you know AAA rated um get that kind of you know
budgetary strong budgetary practices I've been talking about. Um so with that let me pause. I know I threw a lot of you >> there you go. Okay. >> Wow. So, we um got about 15 minutes for questions and this was a lot of
information. So, Mike, I'll start with you if we can just just take a couple of minutes to ask questions so we can make sure everyone gets in. So, >> um I guess to me >> we will reflect a little bit. This is
Q&A. Q&A this young lady up. I guess my questions would just relate around like UVA and if we take that into account how this analysis changes like I'd be curious you take out the student population what our median income would
be and how that would change where we are that Harrisonenberg was so low I wonder if that relates to them also being a university town. Um, >> yeah. Just be curious like what exactly UVA's impact is in all this cuz it makes us pretty unique that it's our largest
employer. >> Mhm. It does. >> Yeah. I mean, I don't have any answer to that necessarily. I think about you probably are right. You know, it does impact your median household income and all of those factors is the tax exempt property is also probably another factor here, right? like that you you know if
they I was in New York um earlier this week and I was like walking around Central Park and was thinking what if all this is taxable what does that do to the tax that space um but the fact is you know it's it certainly you know have some of the negative factors but also it's part of the strengths as well right this is in part why you you have your
regional attraction um it's also there are some of your sales tax meals tax lodging tax also comes with that so there I mean with just like any anything really it's a double-edged sword and you just have to manage it. Um, and I I don't have answers, but but I
acknowledge and agree. >> Um, so you said the fiscal five-year fiscal plan would focus on conservation prioritization kind of if everything stays status quo. Um, and then you said
that there's limited room to raise tax rates to increase revenues. So, but how would how would those things be affected if we increased supply >> the new housing supply? >> Housing supply like that would
redistribute that. Correct. >> Yeah. So, by increasing housing supply, you would aim to increase your taxable base, your taxable assess values. Um and you know they you know there are places
that have a lot of green land that when they build houses I'm thinking of like you know LA County for instance right like when they build a lot of housing that would significantly I think that the bottom line that we haven't done the analysis on that we certainly can the bottom line is how much will that
increase your taxable base how much of that is taxable how much of that and how would that move the needle taxables that would be perspective Um and I I haven't done the analysis on that but I I think you know it's all part of it is also
like you know your tax base have been growing by what 5 to 7% the last 2 years. So in order to you know grow it you're looking to grow it beyond the 7. You have to grow it beyond the the base
is already growing. So you're looking at okay can that actually add 3% grow to my tax base. what does 3% translate to in terms of dollars? Um and and you can certainly dedicate those dollars to something else but again earlier point right if your pension is going by 15% a
year your healthcare is growing by 8% there is already an um status imbalance that you have to manage so you do want to make sure that supply is above and beyond right I agree >> okay thank you
>> so sort of continuing on some of these other notions I guess one of the things that I've always in trying to puzzle out. >> Yeah. >> Is uh like Michael raised the question about the effect of university students.
We know that there are plans underway to house a couple thousand more university students in apartments right around the university which will be in the city perhaps drawing from people university
students who are living in the county. But those student those students aren't contributing on the one hand they're not typically costing us more beds or more desks in schools but they're also not
contributing the same amount of taxable value as if it's a family moving into a half a million dollar home that's that's new. How do we figure out what's actually likely to happen with
with that kind of >> influx? Is there a way or do we just sort of say, well, we'll just have to see what happens. >> There's certainly a way. I mean, if you really want to know an answer like there's certainly we do those two fiscal
impact studies and figure out, okay, if you build a new apartment building here, what is the economic effect of that? and how much actually is the economic effect on government that actually affects local government revenue because they're not exactly the same thing. Um, so there's a way to figure it out. Um, you know,
>> is it worth worrying about? >> That's what I'm trying to that's my basic point is like how much does it I think the key here and to your question to how much does it move the needle? Yeah. >> Right. I think that's the key here and you know as I have I think you know as part of listening to these kind of
economic development projects that are coming online you know those are great news um you just have to make sure that is above and beyond and if they are not above and beyond that is not I'm looking at the one of the weaknesses
that you pointed out is that our population seems to be at least stable and perhaps declining depending on whether you're looking at Golden Cooper or looking at other sources uh and if the answer is that well it's actually likely to increase in the next couple of
years but in a way that doesn't actually help us much in a way that doesn't actually move the needle. What have we accomplished? >> So anyway, that's that's sort of the long the long-term issue that I guess we're going to have to wait and see. I think we do have a really good data point there which is when the apartment
buildings were built on West Maine, school enrollment went up a trailblazer because families were able to move into the houses that were previously occupied by students. So I don't know how many students live in the county that it would affect but there's definitely a lot of students who live in the city that space would then shift.
I would I would just add to me the question of studying the student apartments feels like a huge thing because Welvin Cooper did a presentation in June to the regional housing partnership and not not that they're they could be wrong but they said they looked at that study again and found
that students in single family homes in Charlottesville no longer exist like they did. So they said they didn't predict that new student apartments would open up homes that lead to an increase in school enrollment. Obviously, our school enrollment has been flat over 20 years. So, I am
curious just like what is the effect because maybe it's positive because we don't have to pay for the school cost of students. So, maybe it's even better from a revenue perspective. I I don't know, >> but it seems like we're so driven by that student apartment growth primarily.
Like I don't know what that could mean, >> but >> Well, and also how long do they stay students, >> right? you know, and the more of them that grow, maybe some become just apartments for anybody. >> So, I'm seeing apartments.
>> Yeah. Just a couple things. >> It would be nice if we could actually have the population graphs like we all agree on what those numbers are. I've been on council four years. Sure. >> Um it's kind of hard for me to believe
that the population is going down given the fact that price houses continue to go up. Um but the second thing I would say is if you think about schools every year we go through this process of
they're not criticizing. They're all doing their job to represent the the kids, right? >> They they're kind of funny. They'll they'll bring us what they call the needsbased budget as opposed to I don't know whatever other kind of budget they might have
>> but every year it's significant >> lift and a lot of it is just because of the nature and the history of the city we're refugee home and that is that's expensive and then the final thing I'll I'll mention
is just the CIP and the schools I'm assuming you're including the school buildings within the CIP as opposed to schools proper. >> From my perspective, the city has not invested in building stock like it should have over the course of the last
50 years. And so, we're playing catchup. Um, which is part of what some of these spikes are. >> So, um, did you also have a question as well? Did you have a question? >> That's a good point.
>> It's more just an answer. >> Yeah. questions. >> Yeah. Yeah. I just got a couple of um so um Natie kind of got to this. My my comment was like, you know, in um the new zoning ordinance that we have and I know that you know we're trying to
settle on that now, but that calls for increased population with new housing. And so I guess we would have to kind of just do a a study to see with that increased um uh stock. Yeah.
>> What impact that would have on maybe some on some of your numbers and something that you said that you said that new infrastructure means that we have to maintain it. I'm thinking of of a of a thing like Charlotte Buford Middle School which is
now and so with older building it's a lot of maintenance with that. I know we have to maintain a new building, but you know, things like that. We make those type of >> trade-offs. >> Trade-offs. Is it, you know, is it about
the the the the same, you know? Um um um so and my other question was I know that the city schools are BRS and local government were were self um insured or
retirement. Is that is that >> so if we were with VRS would that mean anything different you know with a bigger pool? Um >> yeah. >> Yeah. Um I can't definitively answer that without you know doing probably
needs to like do the analysis but you know Virginia cities there are places that have you know switched to VRS not like Richmond did that people used to do that a while ago. Um there are places that switch from VRS. the key that drives ultimately the pension contribution is to benefit right so
switching plan may I don't know what changes but ultimately the the savings that if you're looking for ultimately pension savings you're looking at better levels um you're looking at you know there are a couple of levers you play with you're contributing more now right like you're making more contribution
contributions with the goal that you're reducing up liability right that's one way you're trying to manage your contribution but another level to play is level benefits Um and so I I don't think nec again I'm not an actuary. Uh but I would say switching plans per just
you know doesn't necessarily um change the matter. It may have some changes because of the way things are funded but ultimately if you're looking at you would have to look at better. >> Okay.
>> Awesome. All right. Thank you. appreciate. >> Well, you all have that hard copy, so you know what you're finding. >> Um, >> so before we we dive in and then I'm I'm in between you and Lunch right now. So, um, what I'm trying to do at the very
beginning when we started talking, we talked about we you participate in a little bit of exercise of without a deep understanding and all we do is explore ideas and materialize, we would have blank outcome. So, the purpose of some of our reflective exercises, uh, the purpose of you being able to do a Q&A
and get some information, um, is because I'm asking, I'm putting you in a position to get a deep understanding, uh, cuz I will ask you to tap into that understanding tomorrow as we begin to explore. So, thank you for asking the questions. Thank you for participating in this kind of reflective exercise with me because what I'm trying to do is get
you that understanding toolbox. So you're like, you know, we sat through a lot of presentations and a lot of information, been taking notes, reflecting on it. I think I've got a good understanding. I'm like, awesome. Tomorrow we're going to explore some things based off that understanding. So
with that being said, um can we do the interview one more time? In the middle of it, can you write um I think we're calling this a financial update, uh for the most part. So in the middle of that please write financial update and then go ahead and
high level this is your ability to not dive into the weeds really to reflect on just the status and remember uh it's about the the current status and where it is what do I understand about the financial update what do I respect about a final a financial update and what do I
value as I just was presented around where it is Be prepared. That's just A few few more minutes as you reflect on your notes and kind of what you heard.
heard the financial update understand our respect for my value. >> Awesome. Sir, we start us off. >> Yes. >> Financial update. Tell us what you understand, what you respect, and what you value. So, what I um understand is
that there's not a lot of room um for the city as far as financial growth. We don't it's not um you know, we're pretty much at the max of the our options. >> So, what I respect is the city's financial leadership. we, you know, I I
see all of the different things that they have to factor in to kind of get us where we are when we even talk about a half percent or quarter percent or whatever. So, it's a lot to consider. And what I um value is the city's um AAA
bond rating, those things. Um um I know it's hard to maintain that, but I know that also it saves us a lot of money when we have to Is it August 19th? Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. No, absolutely. Thank you.
>> Um Brian, what do you understand respect and value about where the current financial update and stats where we are? >> Yeah, we're in a relatively good position compared to other people, but the risks lie ahead. >> Okay. >> That's your understanding, right? >> Correct. >> Got it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
>> I respect like Juan said, our staff and their attention to our money, dollars and nickels. um value I you know see the importance of prioritization. >> Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. >> Great. >> So uh my understanding it is a narrow
financial path on which we are walking. Uh there I respect the fact that there are lots of smart people who are working on this even though they may not agree with one another. >> Yeah. >> And then finally uh I value the willingness uh to nevertheless dive in
and get nerdy. >> Yeah. Yeah, I love that, >> man. >> Um, I understand that we're doing okay, but things are precarious and the status quo will not sustain us, so change is inevitable. >> Yeah.
>> Um, the parts we can control are generally well managed. Very much respect our team there. >> Um, and then I value our AAA bond rating. >> Yeah, >> I know that's very very crucial. >> Yeah, it's a good value. So, yeah, sir.
say I understand our revenue picture is to me fairly strong. Um there probably is, you know, relatively limited room to increase um some of our tax rates. Um we have a stable primary employer in UVA. Um and
we can't understand our budget without taking into account UVA on multiple dynamics. Um I respect that there is a lot of uncertainty. um federal government funding, even population growth. Like it's certainly absolutely possible new zoning increases
population. What if the market just doesn't respond that way? Or what if population growth is primarily students? Is that good, bad, and different? Um uncertainty um with could we get options for new
revenue sources with sales tax or um a tax for regional transportation? Um What do I value that Seville Charlottesville spends a lot more on priorities that most communities don't? Um like the amount we
spend on affordable housing or social services is substantially higher than most localities and that's part of our budget budget picture because we've made a conscious choice to invest in priorities that other communities don't. >> Yeah. Yeah. True. No, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that.
Um, is lunch coming to us? Uh, >> about 12:15. >> Okay. All right. So, in about 9ish minutes, uh, lunch will be brought to us. I'm going give you kind of the the rundown a little bit of how that's going to work. Um, so you all can There's the
courtyard. There is the actual other large room there. There's also the coffee shop. Uh, take your lunch, go wherever it is that that you want to. We're going to take about a 30-minute lunch, about a half hour. Um, probably don't recommend hanging out in here just cuz you're going to be in here all day. So, I would like just, you know, go, but if you want to, you can absolutely hang
out in here. That's fine. Um, but we have three different areas. You can go to the courtyard, you can go to the large wolf factory room, or the coffee shop that's downstairs as well. And we're looking at about 12:15. Lunch will be brought up. Cool. >> Appreciate you all. Thank you. Yeah. >> All right. So, we're going to get back
to it. >> Still staying in the frame of where it is. Uh this next section of what we're going to do is we took you very high level. That's what this morning's conversation was about with the community survey. So what did our people say about everything? Your strategic uh
priority areas. So reminding you what you've been thinking about what you said in the past couple years. Uh and then giving you the financial outlook. So that's kind of bringing it down a layer. Uh kind of making it a little challenging, a little tough, seeing what some of the realities may be. And now
we're going to dive in. So we're diving in, but we're only diving in to your top three priorities. And that's being housing, transportation, education. And the reason we're labeling them as top priorities is because we talk about them a lot. We spend a lot of money in these
categories already. And we recognize that there's a lot of opportunities to spend in each of these categories with how we frame what we're talking about or allow ourselves to talk about. So, the rest of what we're going to be doing is
spending all of our energy here on these three topics. And the reason for that is because there's stuff to figure out, decide, think about, and consider in each one of these that if we can figure some of that out, it helps us figure out
how to pull the levers on harder things. So, that's exactly why we're choosing to now bring you down level, but we're not asking you to make a decision. So, we're going to keep reminding you, don't go in the weeds. We're just showing you that there are weeds ahead and then we'll get to that because that's what the budget
process really is all about. Cool. Thank you. In addition to Tam kind of communicating that the reason why they're priorities and they take up your time, resources, conversation, money, people, all those things. Uh, but they also um are top priorities for other reasons inside of each of them. They
each have tensions, trade-offs, and and opportunities inside of them. And each of these opportunities alone run the resources, run the time, run of conversation inside of them, why they're top is because they also hold tensions. They also hold trade-offs and they also hold opportunities. Um, so I want to
kind of talk about these definitions, but I am going to highlight some areas that are important. So regarding tensions, what I want us to focus on because I'm going to ask you to listen with this lens a little bit. um tensions being forced between two or more needs, values, or priorities that can exist at
the same time. Um what I'm going to ask you is that you agree with me that that's what we're going to call tensions. Um for trade-offs, uh conscious decisions to prioritize one option, value, or outcome over another. What is the exchange or trade-off? That's a that's what a trade-off is. Um
that's what attention is. and for opportunities um potential pathway insight or moment that emerges what an opportunity is. Um so I want to kind of put these in this context u because this again this is the lens of which I'm going to ask you to kind of listen to
the next upcoming presentations with but I want to kind of put them in this order. Um most of the time whenever we hear something uh we immediately jump into here kind of like going to explore before we understand right. Um but it is good to understand the tensions
understand the trade-offs cuz if we don't have information this understanding how do we ever think about the proper opportunities that emerge it can only emerge from tensions and trade-offs opportunities emerge like in it of itself there is something going on inside of it that um it will produce an
opportunity but I would first need to understand blank and blank. So my hope is that you need to hear and listen with the ears of what are the tensions that I just heard? what are the trade-offs and what I'm kind of hearing and then from those two things what potentially is an
opportunity with me so far? >> Mhm. >> Cool. Awesome. Um so where it is um what's in the what's in the way or could be in the way. So this is kind of where we shift a little bit. We are still in the understanding phase. This is around taking in information
and sitting with it. We will get to exploring, creating, ideulating all that stuff a little later. uh but you're going to know where it is uh what's in the way or what could be in the way all regarding those strategic priorities. Okay, make sense? So, by the time you're
done listening, you'll have known where it is, what's in the way of that strategic priority or what could be in the way of housing, education, and transit with me? >> Yeah. >> Awesome. Cool. Um so, I'm about to hand it over to James. the top strategic
priority number one and where it is and what's in the way. You're going to get to hear from James and Ashley. James is going to touch on where it is, current opportunity status, and Ashley will touch on what's in the way or what could be in the way. So, please feel free to also take notes, shave your notes, build your toolbox. We're going to actually
tap into that tomorrow. Okay. Um, with that being said, James, after you, sir. >> All right. Good afternoon, everybody. >> Good afternoon. Uh so where it is we're talking about housing reminder of the strategic uh priority
area as it was defined by you these are your words defines access to livable housing as a human right and works to ensure housing choices and mobility are provided for all who seek it through the implementation of the affordable housing plan. So, and I'll note at this point we
are coming down one more level as Sam said, but we're still going to be pretty high level. As you guys know, if we actually got deep into the weeds on housing, we could do this for the whole rest of the rest of our time together today and tomorrow. But keeping it where we are, uh just a refresher on the affordable housing plan, right? We we
this was a really it was a really important document, a cycle document for the city that kicked off our SEO plans together process. uh March 2021, we adopted the affordable housing plan that the city of TR build will achieve a local housing market that is healthy,
highly affordable and above all equitable. We have guiding principles of racial equity, regional collaboration, and a comprehensive approach and most significantly our major initiatives uh 10 million annually over 10 years on
affordable housing, building inclusive governance, and adopting progressive and inclusion zoning reform. We all remember those. And the affordable housing plan overall had a lot of different recommendations on it uh related to permanent and
staffing, tenants rights. There was a lot of stuff even beyond those three uh high priority uh uh u uh objectives. Um and in significantly we had income targeting right what were we trying to
get to? We were trying to ensure that 50% of our of our spending would be directed towards 30% of AMI, 60% uh I'm sorry 30% at 60% of AMI and then 20% at 80% AMI. So even in this plan we were
trying to focus on the most affordable level of housing. So where where have we ended up so far in this process? Um we are clearly hitting our uh 10 million annually towards affordable housing uh building
inclusive governance. We're making progress in that space. Uh the housing advisory committee in particular has been uh been thinking about and talking about that where we could go from there. And then of course we made significant progress with the adoption of zoning
ordinance uh back in the end of 2023. But even um at the point where we were adopting this plan, there were a couple things that the affordable housing plan noted, right? One of these things council has already noted that we were making a level of investment in
affordable housing above and beyond what you would typically see for a city of our size. Um that we are, as we often say, punching above our weight class. We are doing a lot more than any other communities. Um so this was the original breakdown um of the of the spending that
we were going to spend. uh 7 million per year on direct housing investment, two million per year on tax relief and housing stability programs, and one million on our administrative capacity staffing that would get us to our ability to to maintain this program. Um
now, the the um the other key point about this that I stretching forward at this point uh spent Well, I'll come back. So, we're Oh, as soon as I was just remember where I was going. See how that opportunity arose in
the middle of that manion. You saw that. >> Don't make me lose it. >> Sorry. Go ahead. Uh that uh the other thing that was recognized uh even as we were adopting this plan right at the very beginning was a recognition that um
already the commitments the city had made within its CIP was meeting our first five years towards this target. This was met the first five years of $7 million per year was already accounted for in our CIP. It's an important point
because the plan was was was was kind of previewing the idea that we were going to be wrestling with uh tensions and trade-offs around this spending going forward. So in the first uh FY22 to FY25 time period on average these are average
numbers and I'd ask you this is casting you back a bit to the update we got from our housing team. Antoine Williams made a presentation back in the spring around the status of our uh of our implementation of the affordable housing
plan. Cass me back to that. The these are uh uh these are derived from his presentation. Right now we are at 9.8 million on our investments. Um 2.4 on tax relief. Of course a reflection that that need has been higher than we might
have anticipated as we work on the plan. and significantly uh at about 300,000 on building that administrative capacity, the staffing support and additional things that we need uh to to advance this planning process. >> Is that okay? Like are we missing out
things because our admin capacity is not what we intended or are we doing >> come back to that? >> Okay. Um, looking ahead, looking at at the commitments that we've now gotten to, similar to when we adopted the affordable housing plan initially, we can look ahead of what we put into our
CFB and see that again um, we've we've we've met this, we've exceeded this objective uh, on the direct housing investment. As I'm projecting forward, I didn't try and guess what this need would actually arrive at. So, I just kind of went back to what the affordable housing plan called for um and went back
to again what the affordable housing plan called for in this to arrive at a a total annual cost of again estimated an averaged what 13.57 million in our uh investments towards the affordable
housing plan. To your question, do we do we need additional staff support? I think a lot of people would say yes that there is work we need to be doing in the monitoring space in the managing space and in particular on how we are
collecting uh data about our progress here. If you kind of think back to the bookends that we were talking about that Joshua was talking about early on around setting direction and then measuring progress, we we there's more that we need in terms
of figuring out how we measure uh well there's more we need in order to support our ability to measure progress in this space. So we've seen that we've seen the numbers but then we also look at our pipeline of units coming on board. We've got uh and and think back to the targets
the affordable housing plan set. We are readily hitting our targets on the 80% of AMI. Um we are uh we are exceeding our target in terms of the 30 to 60% of AMI but in the most affordable category
we are still um uh not quite hitting the goals that we establish in the affordable housing plan. as we look at how the unit how the how the pipeline on portable units is working so far and then um just coming back to the
adoption of the zoning ordinance I think one of the big things we've learned and we talked about this it wasn't wasn't really it's not really a new idea but one of the biggest things we've learned is that zoning was not really the only thing we needed to address as soon as we took away the barrier represented by
zoning. What rose up were all the other barriers that were built in to our regulatory environment. Um, and so we have more work to do in the space. we have to look at other development codes um other uh pieces of our ordinance that
impact the development process and assess them against our objectives in the housing production arena because I think we've talked about a lot of where where that uh where that needs to happen and that work is already uh happening and we need to continue to make changes
to the development code itself. We promised when we adopted it that we would continue to revisit that code that we didn't see it as written in stone and that work is ongoing as well. So then we've talked about the fact that there there's uh three different impact
areas and there'll be three impact areas for each one of uh of these um strategic priority areas that we're talking about. First of these in fact areas is is on the issue of homelessness and we have our unhoused individuals estimated well
over 200 um I think I've heard as much as 245 260 at this point just in accounting of the costs that we're that we're have uh made commitments to relative to this issue um
you know these three million towards Salvation Army 1 million uh for Salvation Army's revenue offset And then recurring costs into the low var shelter, hops and uh wrap in terms of our impact in the production
and preservation of affordable housing. Uh, one of those things and this is where I was coming back to it is ensuring that we have the ability um to build a dashboard that really uh accurately tracks uh the status status of affordable unit production both
straight a number on production but also where we are arriving and AMI numbers um understanding the timeline for when those units come online and those types of things and also understanding when they might actually come offline because we understand right Now, at least we are
aware of two projects with a total of 360 units that are at risk of expiring affordability just in 2026 alone. >> Which ones are those? >> Uh, one of them is Hearthstone, I believe, is the name of it. What's that? >> Hearthstone. >> Hearthstone. Yep. Thank you. And then
there's there's another one. I'm not going to I'm not going to remember the name of it, but it's 160 units. Hearthstone is 200 units. The other one is 160 units. Both of them, the affordability provisions from when they were built in 1996,
uh, expire 2026. They're both 30-year. Doesn't necessarily mean that the the owner of those properties is going to immediately raise that, but it's certainly a risk that exists for both of us. >> But when we think of impacts of
accessible housing for all, um, >> so I'm sorry, Den. Yeah. >> Um, so staff is working on dashboard to track affordable units in and production. So I'm not sure if I can
answer this question if it was as asked directly of me, but maybe you all can. Someone says last year you all the city dedicated $7 million to um affordable housing and 2 million for tax relief.
Could you could we be able to say yes, we got 160. What are we able to now? It seemed like we're doing a good job of tracking what's planned and things, but do we know where the $7 million
what we got for it? >> Well, you remember that production I'm sorry, >> no, the ROI, right? >> Return the the production kind of lags behind the investment. Um the but so one of the things that we're trying to do is
actually build a pipeline that shows a direct relationship when those dollars come into a project and where that project is on the on the on the timeline of approval, construction beginning,
um construction ending and occupancy. so that we can show that direct relationship between the city's dollars coming in and the production of units going forward. Um, we also want to capture more than just what the city is directly funding, but
also capture what else is happening in the marketplace that's contributing towards um housing uh goals. So, uh, I I know it's so much reflect regulatory reform work left to do, and that is a reference to the fact that in terms of accessible housing for all,
this idea that it's not just about the deed restricted, the the subsidized affordable units that we're producing, but it's also about building out a housing market that meets the needs across the entire spectrum of of of housing needs within the within the city
at all income levels. That's the answer there is about our zoning ordinance that our zoning ordinance is leading to a housing market that is that is responsive to the needs of our population. Uh producing units of all types, meeting people at different stages of life, but we just know that
there's more work that needs to happen in order to open up that um more market responsive um uh uh housing system. Um and then going on taking advantage of the fact that this new zoning ordinance creates
an opportunity to build systems and programs that uh that allow more people to get engaged in the housing production uh space. Um that's there's a significant opportunity there for small scale builders to actually help to solve
the problem. uh for people to have new job opportunities contributing towards uh housing supply and recognizing that that marketplace of housing where we move away from not move away from but we supplement the existing system that has brought large projects that are very
much dependent on large scale market conditions and and the state of the overall economy because that's where their financing comes in that that that market production of large scale projects is going to go up and down as
the market goes up and down. As the availability of dollars on the marketplace goes up and down, smaller scale builders are going to be less. They're going to have a a a varied source of of funding, but also less risk exposure. If I'm doing two units, if I'm
doing four units, if I'm doing six units, I've got less risk exposure. I'm I'm more likely to be able to continue and carry forward um despite market conditions. And so the the more we can build out that cohort of small scale builders, the more we can create a uh a
a a housing production system that's meeting the needs of all city uh residents, future and current. Um if if um if uh the more we can build that out, the more
our housing our uh housing market can be less uh uh dependent on larger economic factors. Uh, and part of that part of making that happen is moving into this idea of actually pre-permitting buildings, making it easier to get those permits in place in the first place.
>> Yeah. just just on on that. Um I I've heard that it's definitely gotten better, but I still hear of the red tape that's you know part of change over of staff, change over of the
zoning ordinance, but um it's still preventing some people um developers from building housing. It's just, you know, a part of it is like maybe they remember what it was four or five years ago haven't come back. So,
>> you're right. There's still sand in the development process. Do you want to open it up for a few minutes um on where it is housing in the three impact areas? Um any questions on uh from James and what he shared with you? Um got him for a couple minutes. We're already a Q&A of
what he just shared. Um and these are questions. any any questions to help you gain any information on on what he just presented. You can go back to any slide if if you want it or anything like that as well. >> And the numbers of housing that you kind
of just coming on board is that does that include EVA beds? Does that include that is just that is just the pipeline of city funded projects. >> Just what our dollars have touched, right? >> Yes. So like the bloom and the verb
aren't part of that. Yeah, >> you seem like those would be good numbers to have too. >> Absolutely. Uh ultimately we need we need to be tracking all unit production but that was particularly focused on our subsidized housing production at 80% of
AMI and less. Um so uh those are all projects where the city has contributed in and looking at where is our city dollars contributed. So where where are we facilitating those different levels of >> okay
>> James before before June 30th when Judge Warell's ruling changed the picture uh for the zoning ordinance how were we doing in terms of uh getting proposals into the pipeline or any of them getting
close to getting approved? No, we I I think quite honestly we're the the the number of units coming into the system was low. So, right out of the gate with the adoption of zoning orders, we also instituted a pre-programming uh
a pre-application meeting to as a way to try and facilitate uh projects coming in and we were over subscribed right off the bat, right? uh those were every Wednesday and we had strong interest lots of projects trying to come in the door but what quickly became apparent
was this range of other regulatory obstacles >> like what sorts >> storm water is a is a big one that's that's one of the primary ones um there >> is that a council fix is that something that you've got to fix is it a state
regulatory fix >> little bit of all three of those right so we have a uh a higher standard for storm water management in the city than what the state requires. And that's that's not to say that's a bad thing, but it does incur additional cost
particularly on these smaller projects. Um and and some of the analysis we've done has shown that that is that that requirement is one of the reasons the smaller scale projects haven't been able to get off the ground. And that's where a lot of this activity, a lot of the
interest is in these smaller projects, town houses, cottages, those types of things. >> So, ADU stuff. And so, if you're building a backyard unit, do you really need a retention fund? And is that going to kill the project? >> So, when we're in a little bit of a
hiatus right now with the the overall zoning ordinance, is this an opportunity for us to fill that? >> We are. We are absolutely working on that. You all will see. So, one of if you if you cast back any rights to uh the priority projects that we discussed
um a while ago and that um Kelly Brown has also brought forward. One of those is our review of our environmental regulations um across the board. That that is all of that plays into this conversation is
to to to steal from a future conversation the trade-offs and tensions between the high value on uh our environmental regulation, the high value place on housing production. >> Any other questions uh before we get
into housing? What is in the way or what could be in the way? what if any in-house capacity exists to study some of these questions because housing is obviously very hyper local market. Um how is there a way to
objectively evaluate how much of a barrier is storm water or if the primary supply is large student apartments? Um how do we study the exact effects of that? Is filtering occurring? If so, where? Because it's just going to be super super local.
>> Yeah. Uh I mean on the capacity side I'll say that one of the things we've been able to do is build out a long range planning team and that's where a lot of the work is happening in uh like this new review of our environmental regulations as well as the smaller plan
for page and hill that work is now focused and has a dedicated set of staff to work on it. Um housing is a is a tricky piece right now in terms of our ability to do housing studies and various studies. And just one other
question is um understandably the focus is on regulatory constraints. Um I've heard from developers and organizations like strong towns have really focused on this that the missing middle that we really want the most like triplexes forplexes. One of the biggest
barriers is the financing beyond anything even regulatory even though regulatory is like a part of it. Do you have a sense of how much ability to access financing is impacting the ability to bring those projects online and is there anything we can do on the financing side which I've seen some cities have started to get into that?
>> That's a that's a really interesting question and I don't know the answer to that question here but I'm familiar with exactly what you're talking about. Um, I can I can tell you actually that moving towards this idea of of pre-permanent some of these smaller building types actually
can can help to unlock some of that financing because it reduces risk which makes dollars. >> Cool. Thank you. Um, cool. So, before we dive in uh to what is in the way or could be in the way, remember we're still talking housing and it was really important to track those three impact
areas. Um, these are all my helpful hints by the way. So, I'm like write that down. remember these areas. I promise it's for a reason. Um so it's really good to remember those impact areas. Um and especially regarding uh housing. Um and so we'll talk about
housing kind of you'll still hear those impact areas and a little more and what's in the way and what could be in the way. >> After you ma'am, >> thank you. >> Um you all were taking a little bit of my thunder. So some of the things you just said you're going to see. Um, but
my role here is >> great minds think aloud. >> Love that. Um, but my role here is to help you all think through some things that could be in the way of your goals. Um, and what what is in the way now? So,
when we think about um in housing specifically, we've got this impact area of homelessness. So, some things that are in the way right now. Um, we've talked about that investment in housing stock for 30% of AMI and under. James
just showed you how we're not hitting that target. If we're thinking about our homeless population, they're not even necessarily going to be at 30% AMI. They're going to be at 0%, 10%, maybe 20% depending on if they're bringing in Social Security, disability, if they're
able to work and not have an address. By the way, it's extremely hard to get a job on a job application if you have no address. We're thinking about the um impacts of that lack of accessibility also of a low barrier shelter. Um so we
know that we have some accessibility through our Salvation Army program, but that's what we call high barrier. You need to meet certain points of criteria in order to stay there. But we are a community that at this point in time does not have a year-round low barrier
shelter for adults. We do not have a year- round low barrier shelter for families. And we do not have one that's a little more flexible. Let's say you're an adult and you're a caregiver. We separate by gender, for example. So there are people where even if we had this shelter, maybe they couldn't avail themselves of it because they are a
caregiver of an adult of a different gender. and one person may have to go somewhere, one person may have to go anotherwhere, another place. Um, another interesting point with those barriers can include companion animals as well. Um, and then we also know what's in the
way is some fragmented service delivery um, with our agencies. There's also a lack of accountability for those outcome achievements. You all are investing in this work. James showed you that slide. However, we as an organization, we as a
community have often said, you're doing well and we thank you for it. But are you all getting as uh as Joshua just said, the return on investment for that do those dollars as well? We're thinking about that return on investment by units by preservation. Are you all um thinking
about the return on investment and whether you're getting what you want out of your philanthropic dollars as well? Now, some things that could be in the way. We've got that loss or reduction of federal and state homelessness funding streams. You all have seen that on the news. When we lose those peripheral
safety net benefits, even with LITC, for example, being bolstered, that won't help necessarily your homeless individuals, right? We've got a um a determination or we've got to think about that continuing um continuation or
increases to the city's reoccurring investment in programs specifically to provide housing access to those who are currently unsheltered. Again, you all made some major one-time investments in our Salvation Army. We have some investments in some of our other uh
surrounding programming, but how do you all want to think about that? and if it needs to go up, thinking about that loss of some other revenues that those nonprofits may face. Is that something that would be the pleasure of the city to do? Then we're also thinking about that rising demand due to economic and
climate driven displacement. As Ben shared with us, we might be in a recession. It's possible. And if we are, that certainly is going to have negative impacts on some of our most vulnerable community members. Now, you all didn't think I could leave out social
determinance of health, so I didn't. And when we think about that area of homelessness for our social terms of health, remember that housing stability is a determinant of health. It is very hard to stay healthy if you do not have a home. And those gaps can increase uh healthcare cost. It can increase uh
worsening, it can worsen chronic conditions and it can strain our emergency services. When we think about that production and preservation of housing, again, some things that might be in the way right now, there's limited developer interest. It's really hard to make a project for
30% and under work financially. Little easier for 30 to 50% AMI, a little bit more easier for that 51% to 80%. Right? But it's all still very different than saying I'm going to build luxury condos, right? We've got some aging affordable
housing stock at risk of loss. James shared that we have two projects right now that in 2026 could uh lose affordability. And right now, again, as James shared, we don't really have a good way to collect and analyze that data to um think about the efficacy of
our investments in those available unit production and preservation. Now, what could be in the way? Construction costs. Again, everything is rising. Um and those are going to outpace some of those subsidies, outpace
some of those um those the investment that even we're providing. We've got federal program changes again um which is going to impact some of that uh how tax credit competitiveness and again that exploration of affordability where existing units could be lost. Adding
that in to our concept of those social determinants of health, affordable quality housing directly impacts economic mobility and opportunity, educational attainment possibilities as well as people's physical health.
Now, we're thinking about that third uh impact area. So, that affordability of housing for our whole community, right? So, what's in the way? rapid rent uh escalation in market rate units. So, we
do have individuals here who are not on what we consider low incomes. That still doesn't mean that they can afford housing. And those are individuals that are our teachers. They are individuals that are our civil servants. Um and they are really experiencing a bit of a
squeeze right now and cannot live here. There's a mismatch between wages and housing costs. uh very amazing work that this city that these that as council you all have supported in ensuring that we are paying a good solid wage to our
staff members whether they are affiliated or non-affffiliated. That doesn't always happen in all of our businesses here, right? And so when we've got that mismatch, not everyone can afford housing even if they do not fall under, for example, federal poverty
line. And then we've got that zoning reform legal challenge which creates uncertainty. If you're a developer, you maybe don't know what you want to do. Um, and so with that, that means it may slow down the production of new units, right? And what could be in the way?
We've got population growth. We've got proportional housing supply expansion. We know we're floating kind of in the same way, but people still need housing. If you notice the line that was shown earlier today, it's not that our growth is flat. We're not flat flat. We are
moving somewhat, right? And those individuals still need housing and shelter. And we also saw that daytime versus nighttime residency. What if some of those daytime individuals actually would like to live here and can't? And then we also have that reduction in
state and local rent relief programs. Um, I will tell you our Pathways program has had to continuously change their criteria to make sure they have money to last throughout the year. Your home to hope team, while we say they are not a housing program, they're a housing program because they are doing
unduplicated work. And I recall from Sam's presentation, someone said that our focus on housing is so that regular folks can afford to live here. That's what this slide is really focusing in on. So when we think about those social determinants of health, again, anytime
we have those widening affordability gaps, we're increasing economic segregation, we're limiting workforce stability, and we're heightening health disparities because most individuals, we often talk about those who are on low incomes, but most individuals are about
one paycheck from being unsheltered. So we see these numbers of individuals who are on those certifiable lower income levels. But those in in human services we also talk about money. Those individuals who are in the muddy middle at any time are one toothache, one car
repair, one something away from falling into homelessness and then coming to use our services. >> Before we do that, um go back. Uh I want to give you Ashley for a few minutes. So feel free to ask any questions to help you get an understanding about what's in
the way, what could be in the way regarding housing in these impact areas. >> Can you go back to the slide on this list? >> I can. >> So I offer this as a comment and an observation, not necessarily a question. I don't know if it's too >> I'll allow it.
>> Okay. >> From my own door knockocking this past spring, one of the things that's in the way One of the things that's in the way is lack of community consensus on where to
put a low barrier shelter. >> What was that second part? I'm sorry. >> Lack of community consensus on where to put a low barrier shelter. >> Wow. >> Lots and lots of good liberals. um not criticizing or judging, but are just
as nimiest when it comes to having a all of the unfair as well as reasonable um concerns about having a shelter near their children, their school, whatever.
Um that is real. It's in Belmont. It's in Fville. it's um Martha Jeff. And so there's a real disconnect in our community between people that want to send a lot of emails because we're trying to clean up under the bridge
because they're concerned about the humanity of his people understandably and people's willingness to actually host that nearby. Now I don't have the you know the statistics but I'll just tell you that was a common theme when I did my door knockocking. I think it's
something that the next council is going to have to get in front of and have hard conversations. >> Few more minutes with Ashley. Any other questions? >> I had a quick question. Ashley, Ashley, what is
your many of the unhoused that we have in our community um they um and I don't know the percentage but they need mental health. the um um
what is our capacity to um support them? Do we is it just region 10 or you know I'm not sure of the answer of that. >> Sure. So, one of the things that if I could maybe add a side impact area of of all of
these are the wraparound supports because everything you all have prioritized um as council member Austra noted at the beginning are kind of all interwoven in to care for people whether it's schools whether it's housing whether it's transportation so when we think about individuals who are
unsheltered medical need is paramount period just medical supports But there are some individuals who find themselves unsheltered that do need some mental health care. Um, in that realm, we do not have enough mental health care
options and professionals that are accessible. By the way, not only to individuals who have fallen into homelessness. But remember, I said there's about one in four individuals can fall into homelessness at any time, right? They also don't have access. and that access could keep them in housing
and prevent more individuals from falling into this impact area that you all are thinking about. Um, region 10 does an excellent job with the amount of work they can do with them being quasi state that gives limitations. UVA has
clinics. they still have limitations but there is just a lack of mental health care professionals uh in the nation but also professionals who want to do this work because as a mental health professional I also can for example go work for better health
and listen to someone oh telephonically where I don't have to leave my home or perhaps you know put myself in a space where I'm uncomfortable they have options and so I would say that those wraparound supports I was talking about that fragmented service delivery that
included access to physical health care and mental health care because when we can wrap people with those supports, they stabilize better. But universally, one of the ways that we can also stabilize people is get them into housing because once you're in a housing, getting you to your medical
appointments is a lot easier or bringing someone to you. Getting a job is a lot easier. um all of the things that we need you to do to stabilize is a whole lot easier if you have some sort of consistent shelter option. >> Last minute, please. Yeah.
>> Um I I really appreciate the list that you all came up with. Um but as Brian kind of indicated by wanting to add something to the list, there are things that we've noticed that could probably be added to the list. So, um I don't
know if we're doing that later, but um on this slide, the affordable housing for the full community list, uh wherever that one lives, um for some of the challenges that are in the way, um I wanted to add inclusionary zoning
restrictions. Those can make it difficult for larger scale projects to happen. There's evidence when Portland implemented an inclusionary zoning law, basically cratered their market rate housing. Um, and so that's something that we're going to need to consider. And then I really also appreciate you
pointing out the daytime, nighttime populations and that there's folks who want to live here. Um, when we had our joint meeting with the Alamar County Board of Supervisors, um, someone said, you know, UVA provides all these jobs and there's, you know, 20,000 people a
day who commute into Charlottesville. Isn't that great? And I was like, not great. like that is 20,000 cars or parking spaces or things that we are um trading off for a better and different more efficient land use policy. And if
you're commuting from Wesboro, that's time you're not spending with your family or doing your hobby or whatever. So, um the the population growth without proportional housing supply expansion, I mean, that's kind of why, as you mentioned earlier, we're not actually
seeing a ton of growth in our population because we prices are going up because we haven't built more. So, um just thank you for highlighting that. And then that becomes a um increasing supply becomes part of a transportation solution as well. And so that's where it all ties
together. >> Cool. Thank you. >> All right, let's work. Um so on your in front of you, you have a different stack of cards. Um if you can grab those. What I'd like you to do is write housing
in inside that center column. Um, and what I'd like you to do is we're going to basically use this to kind of evaluate some of the things you've heard and draw some some deeper clarity. So, I'm going to ask you to take a moment and from everything you just heard regarding housing from where it is and what's in the way, what could be in the
way. Um, what's attention? What's a tradeoff? And then out of those two, when you look at those together, what could be an opportunity? I think you might have mentioned one opportunity to add a particular you know um area. So for a moment what have you heard with housing where it is what's in the way? What could be in the way as you reflect
high level um what's a tension you heard? It's a trade-off that you heard and then what could be an opportunity that arises out of those two? And if you took notes, if you like review your notes as well and see if you
can extract anything out of those. anybody. the tension you heard. It's a trade-off that you heard. So, um, and out of out of those two, what's an opportunity that you think could emerge? >> It's harder to get closer.
We're getting a little more, >> you know, a little more specific now. >> And it could just be one, you know, one tension that may have jumped out to you, uh, one big trade-off that jumped out to you as well. And then when you look at those two next to each other, what's the opportunity that you believe could
converge? And and keep in mind also just I I'm kind of going to go back to this. uh when you start to think of opportunity, don't think of strategy. Don't think of execution. Don't think the way up. Remember that when I ask you to think of something, it's to inform and direction. Okay? So, it's almost you being able to
like I think an opportunity might just be that way. Like, you know, we're not even on the journey yet, but you're just pointing that way. That's information and directly. All right. About another minute. All right, sir. We kick us off. >> Yes. >> Let's talk about it. What is a uh
regarding housing? What you you've heard where it is and what's in the way, what could be in the way. A lot of information you've taken in. Um what is a walk us through it. What's a tension? What's a trade-off? And then out of those what's an opportunity that that jumped out? >> Yeah. So um attention I uh attention I
would say is cost. It's the restrictions that you know we we talked about maybe with the um regulations that we might have. And another tension is the gentrification. And this is particularly in the community of color, the African-American community here that
feel like that they have been over elite with um the new programs and things particularly with the new residents here where because maybe African-Americans may have had bad credit because maybe they had a medical issue when they
worked at UVA. I mean, and they went to UVA and they have bad credit. But anyway, >> it's real tension in the community of color. >> Um, and you know, I I am stuck on a trade-off. >> Something that's happening and uh maybe a choice of when you heard the housing
and the choices decision. Is there anything that you think has been prioritized over? >> I'm going to need to come back to that. But I do have opportunities and my opportunities like more housing and I have more >> diversity more diverse in the sense of the type of housing that we have but
also in the the that different types of housing makes our schools and our community more diverse which I think is just makes us >> a better and a stronger community and um so I need to come back to the trade-off that that had me stumped. So,
>> okay. No, it's all good. And that that trade-off is around I'm hearing this is happening and because of that's happening, this is not happening, >> right? >> Um, after you start, what tension, trade-off, and opportunity did you hear? >> Yeah, I I've hit on this earlier and this is a really small part of the whole
overall topic of housing, but I do think it's important people feeling quote safe in their neighborhoods unquote. um with the fact that we need to put a home or shelter somewhere. >> It's attention. >> Attention. >> Okay.
>> Um a tradeoff. Um, yeah, I won't repeat everything I wrote here, but um, I think it's a tradeoff to some degree about who in the city we're going to quote put out, whether
it's the people in the downtown mall or if it's the people wherever. >> Yeah, >> I think that that's real. I think the opportunity and maybe this is polyianish polyanish um is that it's an opportunity for the
community to genuinely come together you know maybe we split up these units maybe we go something smaller versus this is getting into strategy but maybe there are ways to address the need such that one part of the community doesn't feel
completely put upon. you know and and I want you to know that that thank you for that and that's not strategy those are great highlevel thoughts of like here I want you later to go explore these those are great great ideas thank you thank you Lloyd tension tradeoff and uh and opportunity that you you heard and experiencing while hearing about the
update of housing >> well I sort of chickenened out on the tension >> don't do that to me Lloyd I know it's after lunch don't do that >> what I said is everything okay >> you know the fundamental principle of economics is there's no such thing as a free lunch. >> Sure.
>> Today, >> uh, and when people come before us and say, "Well, this decision is a no-brainer." >> Yeah. >> That just infuriates me because it wouldn't be in front of us if it was truly a no-brainer. >> Uh, so I I I got off sidetracked by that
rant. But anyway, >> but I'm also hearing you say that the fact that this is a priority alone is just pay attention. >> Like, yeah. I mean, we've got all all kinds of things that we have declared to be high priorities and we've declared three different high priorities that
we're discussing right now and unless something very dramatic happens, we won't be able to fund them all. >> Sure. >> Anyway, so but in terms of a trade-off that we heard about just just today is this question of the storm water issue versus housing costs. Uh and maybe one
of the opportunities is that we find a way to simplify our regulatory framework as a government storm water prevention. >> Sure. Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you for that. Absolutely. Um tension that you've heard in the updated housing, a trade-off you've heard and an opportunity that may emerge.
>> Yeah. I mean, um the tension is between change and the status quo. I mean, there's nimi attitudes and that's not just towards homelessness services, but to change in general. I mean, we've got the lawsuit. You've got people who are afraid of height. We've got people who are afraid of
a lot of different things and a lot of those problems are solved by more housing. So, there's that kind of need to resolve that tension. Um, my tradeoff was um a little different than what people have said so far, which is um
>> having the political will to do something which may be useful but but unpopular for a section of constituents. So trade off on kind of the support that we have maybe is is how to frame that within a trade-off >> mindset. Um but that's really
>> yeah spending money and then just generally like spending money on this versus other things is the obvious trade-off. There's always going to be an opportunity cost to everything that we do. Um and then my opportunity um that I'm suggesting is allowing and encouraging private investment which
doesn't cost the city much or anything at the outset. And then we gain real estate taxes against the area transportation benefits in the end. >> Great. Y tension that you heard in the updated housing, a trade-off you heard in the opportunity.
>> Um the tens there were a lot of tensions. The one >> Yeah. Yeah. >> The one I wrote down is just that housing is very complex and it's very hyper local in terms of assessing the impact as well as what can happen. Um, so what came to mind and I think some of
these, for example, a sevenstory apartment building with, you know, $3,000 a month rents, that impact looks very different on a piece of vacant land or in JPA versus we heard about Hearthwood losing 200 affordable units. That development
happening there has a very different impact than in JPA or on a vacant piece of land. So, how do we engage with the nuance of that? Even though like it's accomplishing a necessary goal of market rate supply, what does it look like if we encourage displacement of
a mobile home park? Like, does that benefit distribute to that income level? >> Um, >> and just yeah, how do we engage with the the the complexity? Um, tradeoffs, money. Um, it's extremely expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars for 0
to 30% AMI units. I think it's $100,000 in subsidy just to go from 60% AMI to 30% AMI to make the project financially feasible. >> I think for a project to break even on the rent side, just land construction costs, you break even at around 70% AMI.
And obviously developers to get financing are going to need a profit not to break even. So if we want to reach those deep AMI levels, there's no way around spending a lot of money and that will compete against other budget priorities as
construction costs go up. Um, another trade-off is just um how do you how do we evaluate the trade-off of something like allowing a community benefits agreement like in Cherry Avenue where you can get to a lot of things a
neighborhood cares about, but that necessarily will involve a discretionary decision point and we can't have that everywhere in the city. But where is it warranted? Where do we want a community benefits agreement that is getting to >> Yeah. >> addressing, for example, the legacy of
Vinegar Hill? What would that look like? I don't. And then >> opportunities. Um I think there's a huge opportunity for us to really engage with a lot more of the complexity as we we were so consumed by the zoning conversation. Maybe we will again the
lawsuit, but um I was excited by revisiting the code because I think that's an opportunity to really get into the weeds on like some of these trade-offs. Um >> I think there's also opportunities to study the impact of our investments and figure out is a land trust model more
effective than some of what we've been doing. Is CRA more effective than PHA or what's the ROI of our different strategies? >> Yeah. Well, these are fascinating. This is amazing. I love this. Um, one, I just want to thank you for sitting in the tensions, trade-offs, and opportunities
and us not going into like, let's do this thing yet. Uh, so I appreciate that. Um, and we're going to tap into your writings uh, a little later. So, you're building your own toolbox. So, thank you for that. Um, I want you to take a break. So, take a 10-minute break. Uh, stretch, get warm. Um, and again, thank you for the cooling, by the
way. I'm I'm keeping it cool. If not, this will all come down. Like, it will all fall. So, I appreciate that. Um, thank you so much for sitting in that exercise. I know it's it's not easy to sit in tensions and tradeoffs and tons of complexities. Um, but I I admire your
first like super cool. So, all right, take 10 minutes and uh we'll see you back. >> So, we've been talking about the top strategic priorities. We're wanting to give you a deeper understanding on them. Uh, you're going to hear the next one which is around education and u again
Jake is going to kind of present where it is. Ashley is going to come behind and talk about what is in the way or what could be in the way regarding uh the strategic priority of education. Um and listen for again listen for the tension, listen for the trade-offs. Um listen for the opportunities and definitely take here to those impact
areas. Um cuz we're going to talk about them a little more tomorrow. Cool. All right. And then none of that tea coffee. You want me to give you I need you. I need you. But no, James, take it away after you, sir. >> Thank you. Uh so right off the bat, education there
a lot of slides. >> Uh education. We said Charlottville supports a broad and well integrated set of educational opportunities including Charlottville city schools, other youth serving organizations, career technical education providers, and Pont Community College. But we're going to be focusing
in really this conversation on CCS. Um and just diving right in the numbers embedded writing the impact it is just uh focusing in on on each of these financial operations and uh listening to Vienn's conversation's
presentation I guess she and I were were averaging different dollars because I think her dollar figure was higher but we'll call it over this uh 5year period an average increase of approximately 5 million per year in new money. Um I
think in a in a shorter span of time I think manager said 8.4 um going backation the message is the same whatever dollar figure you put in there is increasing um spent per year in new money for uh
operating our school system. And then uh on the facility development and construction, don't have to cast back as far this time, but our most recent uh presentation to you all. Um well, at first kind of looking
backwards, we've in this space in recent years, we funded the acquisition of KC. They were over $5 million. Um Charlottville Middle School, we just had a fantastic ribbon cutting on an amazing building. uh but acknowledge the cost of
that building is $91 million. Um and we have uh as our next ribbon cutting to look forward to the Walker PreK School uh anticipated now at $42 million. Remember that was previously around 30. In fact, I think what we have
um set aside for that is 30 but as was mentioned during that last presentation that cost um it's now around 42 million. Um as we highlighted in that presentation the other day, the overall condition of our school facilities is
good, right? We have done a a a really amazing job um over the last probably decade to two decades in really upping the standards of our maintenance of these of these buildings. But they are old buildings fundamentally
um uh as as Dr. Gurley I think uh notably highlighted the last notably highlighted yes uh in his in his comments of the ribbon cutting the other day. The last uh ribbon cutting uh in Charlottesville was for Charlottesville
High School in 1974 uh for a new school building. Um and then uh we have been spending uh annually on our modernization program 1.4 million. Now in the presentation we gave the
other day um we talked about what I'm calling the state of food repair investments. That's meeting the required capital maintenance, HVAC, roofs being big ticket items in there. Uh addressing the bathrooms hopefully in many cases upgrading them to the type of bathrooms
we're now seeing in in Schultzville High School, Schultzville Middle School. Addressing ceiling and flooring, those are the places that where the wear and tear and age of the of these buildings is is most apparent. Addressing and upgrading lighting, and we came at you
with the cost of approximately hund00 million for that. But you all recall where that conversation immediately went to, which was that that number represents, as I said, state of good repair. But if we if we're getting into the idea of modernization, if we're getting into the
idea of of of again more similar to what we saw at Charlesville Middle School um uh yesterday, um we're looking at at larger numbers. So these these are just estimates based on prior studies of the schools in terms
of just the basic idea of increasing the square footage of each of these schools. Now we're not looking at that from a pop school population. I think we made that clear. We don't see a school population need to increase the size of these schools. But when you think about the additional space that's necessary for
breakout rooms for uh special special um uh uh special needs type oriented classrooms um for meeting the needs for gym space, for cafeteria space, for meeting space. Um there there there is a
sense that we need to be looking at expanding or at least thinking about the idea of expanding the footprints of these schools. that number when you look at the elementary schools very very rough estimates can't estimate enough I can't emphasize enough that these are rough estimates but thinking of that in
the $132 million space and the same then when you layer on Charlesville High School 176 um all of this is anticipating that we're still using our existing schools and not actually replacing a school but all of these are anticipating that we
are making use of space in order to do a full-blown modernization of a school um all at once. >> Is this in addition to the 100 million on the prior slide? >> No, this would not be an addition. This is this is two two pathways if you will.
Uh and then just as we as we think about that facilities maintenance, I did a very good job of highlighting that there's a cost associated with ongoing maintenance of all of our assets. Uh I think Mayor Right, it was you pointed out that the older assets sometimes cost us more to maintain over time. Uh but
some of the things that we're working on um are where the other places where city funds are going into our schools. Uh we have contracts for buildings and grounds maintenance. Um we have pupil transportation and um and then
increasingly our human services department is involved in youth programming in partnership with the schools. There's a lot of different places where we are working in partnership and of course there's a cost associated with all of those. So I am but I'm going to go right you
got a few minutes here a few minutes >> and feel you can go back to any slide ask any questions specifically point to anything >> and this was a lot about numbers and dollar figures in this one >> if if we did finally get authorization for the sales tax for school
construction is that 10 million a year >> uh I I think it's yeah it's estimated about 14 >> yeah and it's about $und00 million in in bond capacity. >> Okay. So, at present costs would cover most but
not all of the modernization >> by these estimates, >> right? Which >> I'm sure they'll go up. >> Okay. >> And using the using the allocation that has been described as the type of sales tax allocation that you could devote to that.
But then there's the other tension of do you use some of that for something else like transportation because they're both in the same space. >> Any questions to absorb information understanding? >> If we in fact got that extra scent uh
let's say we were getting 14 million from that. Is there anything that we're presently spending that we would not then have to spend? >> I think that's a that's a very good question. I think we would look at without having somebody from uh our
facilities development and maintenance team here next to me. Uh I but what I think we would look at in that space is we have major investments planned for uh HVAC and roofs in particular. One of the things we might be able to trade off is
if the timing is right, we don't do a roof replacement because we're getting ready to do a full scale renovation of the school or at the same time. So, those are out there. We might stop doing the $1.4 million every year on kind of
uh surgical inserted modernization projects and instead just go straight to this this approach instead. So, yeah, there's some dollars in that space. Okay. of the um 91 million through uh Charlottesville Middle, some of that was
grant funded, right? >> 17. >> 17. Okay. Thanks. I just can't remember what that number was. Thank you. >> So, so um sorry, Michael. Um, I know that I'm just recalling my time on the school
board when I was on the other side that some of the questions and comments that we had um as a school board member was like you know and Sam talked about this is is um you know the the you know that
a lot of these things they had not been done before. So, we kind of paying for not doing some of the things maybe we should have been done doing all along. And where does Charlottesville kind of rank or not not necessarily rank fall within as far as um this type of
commitment to um other localities? >> How do we compare in terms of uh you know what I keep going to is the time frame that's gone by without a major investment in the schools, right? The last major event uh investment I believe
inside the middle school was the um the performing arts center at the high school in 1983. Um and then before that the last major investment is building the high school in 74. Is it that the length of the time without deep investment in a school building? Is that comparison you're
looking for? >> Well, no. I think that what we were looking at and this I'm trying to put myself in the school board six or seven years ago. or it's like um where does Charlottesville rank as far as like its financial
commitment to the school district like I I'm just going to say Manasses cuz manass city they say that I think that you know we're going to give them 10% I'm just throwing out a figure or something like that. So, of course, I don't need to know it now,
but as we move forward and have these probably what I'm hearing within the next 5 years, have these conversations with the schools and profits in the community that we're going to have to what's that what she said prioritization and >> conservation.
>> Conservation. Yes. Anyway, sorry. >> Any other questions? >> Um, obviously this was all focused on buildings. Is it known future costs of the people of like new instruction uh tutors as well as collective
bargaining? >> We don't know the specific cost at this point in time. You don't specific cost. >> No, but tomorrow you're going to talk about that exact part of the scenario cuz you're you're headed into what's coming up >> because that's a that's a financial
operational line item that we have as the tension trade-off discussion. I feel like he's setting us up, man. No, I I the amount of times write that down. >> Writing that down.
>> No set up. >> Thank you for writing that down. Remember this. >> All right, we're going to hear uh what's in the way and what could be in the way of our education goal, strategic partner. Cool. >> Back to you, ma'am.
>> Me again. So for education, when we start thinking again in that impact area of what's in the way and what could be in the way for financial um operations, we know that there is significant capital that is competing for limited CIP investments.
As I like to remind uh staff as well as members of the community, the city has five apples. How we cut up those apples are decision points, but we have five of them and that is all we have. I cannot conjure a magical apple for you uh any anyone of us. There are um deferred
funding for critical projects that we have all just talked about as well as there's that um impact of the result of that flexible nature of the school funding formula process. So, we know we have a dollar amount theoretically because we say we're going to give X
amount to the schools, but then there is that additional amount that we give and you all flipped in your VN packet. She gave a very nice chart to show how that growth is changing as well. So, keep that chart in your mind when I'm talking
about what's in the way with that kind of growth with because again, you all have five apples. So any additional part of apples you give to one place can't give to another. Pin tension trade-off. What could be in the way? We know that there's going to be rising construction and maintenance costs that can exceed
projections. Um unfortunately as much as we would love to say that we in-house produce all of the widgets, nuts, and bolts that we will need to do all of this work, we don't. So we are at the whims of the market like everyone else. We know that there is a possibility that if we hit that economic downturn, we're
going to we might have to uh see a reduced bond capacity or reduced revenue. Um all of that is something that can come down the pike as well as we know that there's going to be some changes that probably will come within state and federal funding allocations to the school system as a whole. Maybe
perhaps mentioning a little bit of what council member Payne was just saying. If there are less dollars that are invested for the general operations of the schools, the education, the tutors, English uh as a second language supports, uh supports for those with
neurodeiversity and other learning disabilities. Are we going to be asked to step into that space? And then again your five apples. Thinking of those social determinants of health, school funding stability can ensure equitable learning environments that promote
long-term health and economic opportunity. For example, I hope everyone here had either has a lovely realization right now or has already had one. Our littles by the time they hit third grade, you stop learning to read
and you read to learn. So if you have not gotten a quality education from early learner through second grade at third grade we stop teaching you how to read. We expect that you know how to read and that is how you will learn for the rest of your time in any educational
process. So all of this matters with that economic opportunity because those youth that hit that moment of third grade and do not know how to read proficiently have just limited their income earning capacity. I think that also includes um people at any age if
their families have the resources to choose a different school and they choose the public schools that adds to kind of everybody's educational experience. >> Yes, absolutely. >> And that diversity of correct >> having that diversity within a classroom
getting those thoughts out as people raise their hand always is going to be really great whether you are a little learning or an adult learning. So when we think about facility development and construction, what is in the way? We have limited project management capacity during largescale
projects. So for example, when you're doing a larger scale modernization like uh Charlottesville Middle School, that is taking some of our project management team off the deck for any other projects you all may want to see, whether they're within a school or within another facility. We also have some coordinating
challenges between wants and needs. So if we start thinking about when we're thinking of facility development and construction, what is a need for a building or a facility, whether it's an upgrade or redo or full new build, and what is something that's just really
lovely to have, right? And then what could be in the way? Project sequencing delays can affect modernization timelines. So uh choosing to do X may mean we cannot do Y and vice versa. We're thinking of that market volatility
impacting that material availability and pricing. Again, love to say we would make all our widgets, but we don't. We've got some changes in accessibility of supportive funds for development and constructions with green lenses before. We could look at some of the uh work
that have been done under some of the uh inflation act work with Biden administration and say, well, maybe we can add this thing because we can apply for this funding that does not really exist anymore. and also reconciling the desire for modern amenities and facilities that can be limited by
physical plant and cost allocation. So, as we've talked about a lot, we have older buildings. Even if we can modernize them, there may be limits to what we can do within that actual physical plant structure. Thinking of our social determinance of health, again, you we know that modern and safe
facilities can enhance student engagement, reduce absenteeism, and support mental well-being. We have a school that has no windows. Windows are amazing because humans are complicated house plants. We need sunlight and water university.
And then we've got our impact area for uh facilities maintenance. So already in the way as we talked about, we've got that aging infrastructure which leads to increased maintenance backlog. And we have um some coordination challenges between Charlottesville City School and
City Facilities/Public Works and Parks and Recreation because those teams are providing the assistance for facilities and maintenance not just for our school system, but for every city-owned building and in the case of parks, every piece of parkland and trail you see. So if they're mowing a lawn for a school,
they're not mowing a lawn in a park. So keep that in mind. What could be in the way? We've got that of course deferred maintenance that is accelerating our asset deterioration. Even though we have some of that maintenance in your CIP right now that's planned. Anything can happen with a roof. And if a roof is not
set to go until 2028 and something happens to it in 2026, where do we go from there? And then we've got competition for resources with new construction priorities. Again, if we're thinking about that facility's maintenance, but we decide we want that new basketball court and just picking
out something, then we have to make that decision that we're going to dedicate and allocate the space, time, talent, and materials to the basketball court and maybe not to what was planned. When we think of our social determinance of health, again, we know that those well-maintained facilities can protect
students and staff's health. They can reduce injury risks and ensure equitable access to learning spaces. And as a point of privilege, when we think about reducing injury risk, I want to give you all a actual visual picture. Our uh
juvenile detention center, its largest area that caused the most medical cost is their gymnasium. Because as the youth would play, it used to be a concrete floor. And can you imagine getting checked in basketball to a concrete
floor? So that was where if you looked at their line items, the most money they were spending on medical recently through uh all the jurisdictions, we were able to replace that floor with a bouncable rubber floor that will reduce those injuries. So, not only are we
protecting the health of those uh students, of those youth that are learning and growing there for the time they're there, but we also are reducing that injury risk. So, that's just a visible example. If you all ever want to go see the new gym floor, I know that Mr. Bolan would be happy to show you
all, but just wanted to give you a visual for that social determinative health. >> Cool. You have Ashley for Q&A. uh dive in, ask some questions, gain some understanding. >> So, I did have a a a comment, you know, um >> she ask a question and you want to say
>> the first thing I say, well, it's actually a question. So, >> it's a question now. It's a question. >> Right. So, but you mentioned the um the you know maybe the economy downturn >> but a lot of times that's an opportunity
to you know construction companies are like looking for work even to keep the workers >> you know employed and the machines going and they a lot of times they you know I hear they just want to do it at cost just you know maybe make a little so
it's and I know we have to or localities have to be in a position to do projects at that time. So, >> you know, I don't know. Just it could be a time that maybe instead of 20 million, maybe we may get it for 15 or whatever. But >> I see how you added that there question.
I see how you did that. I did. I see how you did. >> I did. I did. But I I will help out. You're correct. But remember that we did have that presentation from Ven where she kept enforcing that we're in those unprecedented times. So even if right now we have it where the construction
costs and maybe the labor for construction may go down, that doesn't mean that the materials that perhaps have to come from someone else are going to go down because even if those uh places might want to reduce their cost, there are they're now an additional cost that they cannot mitigate. So we may
have less costs here but more cost somewhere else. Again, just bouncing back to the end presentation. Any other questions around what's in the way or what could be in the way regarding education and some of these impact areas? >> What is a school? >> I appreciate your question. I appreciate
>> that some questions a little. >> It is. We're we're at a moment of is this a pipe? I get it. Um, schools can be lots of things, but again, one of the things we're talking about is even on this, green space. We know green space is a part of our schools. It is a
learning part. We have had learning gardens, all of those things that take facilities, maintenance. >> Yeah. >> See what I did there? >> Um, let's dive in. Let's go ahead and, um, you all have another card in front of you. Please grab that. Do me a favor. Write education on the
inside of that. And uh James kind of gave you some insights a little bit about where it is and Ashley gave a little bit of insights around what's in the way and potentially what could be in the way. Um right what you heard what tensions did you hear? What trade-offs did you hear?
And what opportunity could could emerge? All right, another couple minutes. I need to see if it is actually textured. >> Feel agree. It is. >> It is. >> All right. About another minute. Diego, will you start us off? Kick us off.
>> Yes. Yes. So, >> all right. So, regarding education, >> yes. >> What are some tensions you heard some trade-offs that you heard and out of those two? What's an opportunity that could could emerge? >> Yes. So, the tensions I have rise in cost. >> Okay. >> And just the school needs both on the
kind of academic and and capital side. >> Okay. Um the trade also is is um you know delayed construction which will rise I mean increase the cost and the opportunities I have is for you know is for high performing well attended
schools. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I had tension the investment slashreinvestment in their capital stock versus spending money on operational and programmatic needs.
Um the tradeoff is is it better to have a modern facility or an older one where it's yet to have better teaching? So >> I
Oh, sorry. Opportunity. I apologize. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> The opportunity is kind of >> Were you about to show your hand right? you know, the opportunity is basically for the community to have conversations about this. I think
>> as the thing I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance. >> Yeah, I think I think there I I might be biased in that sense, but I am naturally I think facilitating conversations to be able to do the deep work is really important, especially as the tensions and trade-offs and things, right? Um
Lord, after you, sir. >> Well, I I tend to conflate the tensions and tradeoffs. >> Okay. Uh because and in this particular instance, I start from the proposition that we're going to do 15 to 20 million in
renovations to schools and the tension and the tradeoffs become what we sacrifice to make that happen. And we >> you see anything regarding attention? Is there anything two things you could think of that just pull against each other? Well, >> regarding that,
>> you know, I what Brian was saying about may maybe we don't increase the the capital investment, we spend more on better teachers or something. I I don't really see that as a a viable tradeoff. I think the school buildings are what
they are and maybe we don't need I mean, frankly, when I took the tour of of Charleston Middle School yesterday, I sort of had the feeling that I wonder whether they could have done $10 million less. Yeah. >> I don't know what the costs actually are actually were. Uh it was it was mighty
nice. >> Sure. >> But could it have been done a little bit cheaper? But that's not something I've heard here today. >> And then so that's sort of my both pension and tradeoff >> and the opportunity is I really think this this is going to give us great
opportunities for some really amazing schools for our kids. >> Okay. Yeah. >> And and the pool is it's there's no that's the idea. there's no like end goal to the pool. It's just two things pulled against each other and the trade-off is something that I hear is being done and something's not being
done, right? You know, as well um with the two things that just competing or pulling. Um and the trade-off is something that's existing though because that's happening, something's not happening. After you, man. >> So, I mean the there there's obvious tensions of constrained resources,
people, capital, and materials. Um the tradeoffs are order of operations, prioritization of projects, and you know the opportunity costs. If we're spending it on Jackson Via, well then Trailblazer is getting deferred or whatever. But you
know, that's something that we can work out as needs arise or you know, as we do triage basically. Um, and then the opportunities, you know, this was something that was missed with the huge project that was just done at Charlottesville Middle, but if we're going to do some huge projects at some
elementary and high school down the way, um, I mentioned this the other day. Um, if we allow for greater density by letting some private developer put homes on top of the schools at the same time as we're doing a large scale construction project, that can help defay costs and provide workforce
housing and um, housing in general. So, I think that's something that shouldn't be off the table. >> Sure. Yeah. Interesting. >> Thank you, sir. >> Um, like others, people versus buildings as
a tension. Um, um, another tension is school board and city council. I don't say this as a negative thing, but school board doesn't control any revenue sources and doesn't have to make financial decisions. So their incentive is to always advocate
for as much spending as possible which again is their role but how do we set expectations for what we are able to do? Um is there a way to reach there? Um >> if you could sum that I mean that's great that's great insight. You could sum that up. It's the tension between
the advocacy of the school and the responsibility of the of the council. Is is that what I'm kind of hearing or >> Yeah, I think so. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Trade-offs. Um, again, buildings versus staff. Um, I don't know if it's a trade-off, but
enrollment, um, it's possible it increases. It's been flat for 20 years. It's also possible it doesn't. What's going to happen there? Um, maybe it increases enrollment, but who knows? I don't know. I think there's uncertainty there. Um, obviously it runs
up against any other budget priorities. Um, opportunities. I think in Arlington there's an elementary school with a planetarium. So we could do that opportunity. Um but I think um the state sales tax is a big
opportunity as is I think kind of reaching maybe a new funding agreement with the schools that's setting out what the expectation is and kind of laying it out clearer than it is now because I don't think there's a alignment of expectations currently.
>> No, super helpful. Thank you. Those are I mean great reflective thoughts and insights. I appreciate that. Um I want to give you a break and then when you come back we're going to hear that third priority and then we're just about done. Cool. All right. While you all are wrapping up
[Music] top, um we are going to talk about transportation. Uh the strategic priority areas. Charlottville provides a regional transportation system that increases mobility options and is reli reliable
and affordable for all. But for the purposes of today, we're going to focus in on transit specifically. Um and you recall there was a Yeah, on the our for this strategic uh uh
opportunity, we had uh a goal that spoke to restoring transit service to its precoid service levels. So, uh, back in July, we at, uh, one of your work sessions, we dug into both the
state of our, uh, transit service today, what improvements we've made, and some scenarios looking towards in the future. Uh, this is reminder of the transportation system status, description of our 12 routes in the trolley, um, and service that we offer.
I'm not going to read all of this, but it's there in case we need to reference back to it. The changes that we've made in FY25, uh, route 11 is extended to the center of uh something that we've been working towards for a while. Uh, Routes 4 and 9
were approved to 30 minutes frequency between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. on weekdays. Route 6 approved to 30 minutes between 6:00 a.m. and 6 p.m. weekdays and Saturday. Um, and then we've added this recovery time to every route. Um, because this is getting to one of our
core issues on transit, which is, uh, not just frequency, but reliability. Right? This buffer time ensures that our buses are able to, uh, stick to their schedule and reliably be there when somebody wants to be picked up and taken to their destination.
Uh not going to read every bit of this slide, but just noting if we go back to FOY 2018, we're close to um uh 2 million R 2 million riders. Uh we we
are now at about 14. Um so we saw obviously a significant drop off for CO and then we've been steadily increasing since then. Um I love these charts. I I think this really captures a lot um in one one
picture. Precoid frequencies. All I'm going to highlight on this is that we had weekday, Saturday, and Sunday service pre-COVID. That number of our routes went to 11. Some of them even went to midnight. Um those are kind of the main things to highlight. The
trolley uh was the primary route that was running at a 15minute service. But we have, as you can see, there's some red in here. Those are the those are the services that are coming in at an hour or more. Um, uh, just for refreshers sake, the the
blue is, uh, under 30 minute service. The green is your 30 minute service. Your yellow is your 60-minute service, and the red was anything over 60 minutes. So, obviously getting rid of the red has been a major goal. Really getting us to the point where the only
colors that show up on here are the blue and green, which Conveniently enough, our cat's colors. >> You said blue was what? Sorry. >> Blue is under 30 minutes. >> I was crunching on a pretzel and I heard 130 minutes.
>> Under 30 is better. >> Under 30 is better. >> Thank you. >> Sort of hearing 130 now. Also, like as you said, riding. >> So, uh yeah, getting us down to uh to blues and greens, right? because those
are cats logo colors. So that's what we want. >> All right. I I thought there was some some significance to the color choice. Uh current frequencies at 66 operators. Uh see we've gotten to green
and yellow. So, we are on our way, but notably still Sunday service and much fewer fewer of our lines extend to 11 p.m. Uh, so then we talked with you all a lot about some different scenarios uh what
what uh what it could look like uh to reach some of these policy objectives that we've been talking about. Uh we talked about the 82 driver scenario and that costing about $17 million. That's the all-in cost. So I'm not taking out
at this point any federal, state, or county funding funding. That is just straight up all-in cost. 17 million. Uh to get up to 108 drivers, 108 is significant because that's returning us to Sunday service. Uh 22.5 million. >> Question. Quick question.
>> Yep. Is that additional or inclusive of what we already paid? >> Uh this this is the what would be uh inclusive of what we're already paying. This is the all in cost to provide that service with that money. >> And what are we currently paying?
>> Uh 12 million or something. >> Yes. >> Uh so then we have these service expansion models. Uh what I'll note is each one of these prioritizes a different uh
combination of policy objectives. Sunday service uh frequency of service particularly those 15minute rides and extending service into the 11:00 or even midnight range. So each one of those kind of played with those with those
policy objectives. Scenario one is the one that maximizes all of achieving those policy objectives. And so when you you achieve all of those policy objectives, four routes of 15 minutes, uh all lines extending to a minimum of 11 p.m. and Sunday service, that gets
you to kind of your highest dollar figure of 28.2 million. So when we think about our impact areas, so this is coming back to the impact areas that we're going to be talking about again. Reliable service access.
Um some of actually this was also in fact reliable service access. Sorry. Um so those are the scenarios but to get to those scenarios the other thing we have to think about is our facility expansion. So right now we have some
conceptual plans that are looking at what kind of expansion we would need to do to meet the multitude of objectives we've identified for our transit service. Um this adds it all up but it's 97 million all in and again that is not incorporating what would be federal
share cost share of this um of this of that total. And then again in the space of reliable surface access the cost of the of the bus is the rolling stock. So we know diesel vehicles cost come in at around 560,000
the electric come in at 1.2 million hydrogen 1 a.5. So if we take those system uh those scenarios that we were looking at previously, the 82 driver scenario, six more vehicles, those are
your costs. Um as you go down by the different bus types to to get six additional vehicles into the system, the 108 driver uh scenario, 15 more vehicles and those costs down the line. I apologize if those aren't lining up. Um,
and then the the the service expansion scenarios that we talked about before, depending on the scenario, it's 14 to 20 more vehicles. These numbers reflect the 20 more vehicles option just to give you a kind of a different scales of what
those costs look like. Um, >> that's again, this is total cost not inclusive of backing out state or federal cost share. So the other impact area we think about on our uh transit service is the climate
climate impact reductions. We have the zero emission transition plan which calls for ending the purchase of diesel vehicles in 2027. Uh transition the fleet entirely over to zero emission by 2040. Um
this of course requires full purchase of buses and the entirety of that previous facility upgrade um in order to achieve these. So if I go back to facility upgrade you can clearly identify the portions of this cost that are solely
about meeting those climate objectives. Uh but then there's there's additional costs built in to particularly the new maintenance facility which for example in order to be hydrogen bus ready would have to have some retrofits associated with capturing um uh uh escaping
hydrogen gas if anyone remembers our tour uh and that issue as being part of their facility loss. And then lastly in the impact areas we think about regional system creation. Uh our objective to see uh a regionally
responsive transit system and we've made significant progress in that space with the establishment of Carta in the last year. Um we are working right now on a regional priorities plan to help us set up for the next big question which is
the need to identify a revenue source to fund that new regional system. So any questions on this? I understand this was this was a very high level look at our transit compared to the presentation you all received from
Garland and his team but trying to highlight the issues that we all talk about >> when because I think it does directly connect to all this when will we reach an agreement on
possible funding mechanism that that we then would go to the general assembly for for Carta. Yeah, I asked that at the last Cardiff meeting. Um, last >> I was the last one I missed.
>> Yeah, it won't be this year. I mean, they're they're still talking about like maybe Ben was the one speaking. Ben and Christine and Jacobs. Um, they're still seeing us not just baby
steps. I won't say that but maybe training wheels or something to get um basically we in their mind a we need to do some more work to be able to before we can even go to senator
deeds or uh delegate call center delegate law firm to say this is what we want or what we would like the general assembly to do for us. I was like, why can't we just come up with a piece of paper and say this is, you know, but I
was told that that was, you know, somebody's naive. Um, >> but they realistic. >> Yeah. They presented a chart with like this is what other groups have done. This is their funding sources. These are some models we're looking at. So, the research is underwayations.
So, let me just jump in and say there's both the research happening, but also conversations happening between the city and the county um to see what level of agreement we can get to to to bring back to our respective uh board and council for that conversation.
>> To me, that a lot of that was hashed out during the governance study. >> Sure. >> And it wasn't decided. I guess fair enough to me it's the sort of thing you could get the people in the room let's talk about what are our options
>> how long this is continuing conversations to just randomly answer the question I don't know when >> it won't be this year so at least in a year it seems to me overly complicated
but I'm not a professional in this line of work but seems to me that you could get the boards of supervisors and city councilors, the relevant professionals have a joint meeting and say we did all this governance work, what is the will
of the group and I and then move on. Ongoing conversations about both revenue source but also whether we whether we just are making a straightup ask for funding this year. I all I can offer at this point
confidently is that we are not letting go of the issue that there is additional revenue that potentially necessary if we're going to pursue expansion of service. Um and we are having those conversations with the county and I hope the mayor will bring something to both
the council and the board. >> I'm confident it will happen but I'm thinking it's going to be a couple years. >> Yeah. But we are trying to have those conversations with a life of choice as quickly as we can >> and hopefully with a more receptive state government and governor.
>> Um I have a question. Um we got the presentation from Garland that had the menu options and I think we all had some questions about are those all of the menu options or are we being kind of given an edited version of what's possible? Um, so I just kind of
want to bring that up again, which is, you know, the FTA has standards for equity, but equity is different than equality. And so the priority that we are hearing and have been hearing from the community for years at this point is
15 minutes on the five and seven. If you want to toss the six in there, that's fine, too. um and how we could theoretically for state the case for the FTA of okay, we're doing 60 minutes as equitable as equal service and now we're going to find some equity with
increasing service times or decreasing service times, increasing frequency on these three lines and that's not a menu option that we've gotten and I just want to kind of emphasize again we would like to maybe see that. >> Yeah. And so, uh,
I haven't looked at it yet, but my understanding is we got it this week, the additional, uh, scenario, but I think to the point of of kind of our conversation today, we we are not digging that deep at this point in time. Um, and
um, I think really at this point there's kind of we're we're we're at the point think about those book ends, right, where we started. What's the what's the pleasure of council? What's the what's the direction? And we can build those scenarios based on
where where we where we hear the priorities are. Is this the time or maybe this is a hard exercise to um to also discuss because at some point we're going to need to re-evaluate
our interest in making a massive fuel shift investment when our federal funding is not going to be the way it probably was. when we can get so much more frequency in number of buses for less money and all of that if we don't
make that switch at this time. >> Taking my section. >> Okay, I'll bring that up again in a couple minutes. >> I got you. Thanks. >> How much certainty or uncertainty is
there over the federal funding and state funding for new buses? Is that something that's on the chopping block? Is it something that's probably not on the chopping block or does anybody >> know that is also >> your favorite harbinger of doom is
coming? >> That's cool. Ashley, um, what's in the way or what could be in the way? >> All right. So when we think about transit, we're going to talk again in in our impact areas and we're thinking about that reliable service access. So
right now we already know that in the way are operator mechanic and supervisor shortages that can limit frequency and reliability. We also know that there are underserved routes and high need neighborhoods. So those are what we already know are in the way. And what could be in the way is
that threat of loss of federal transit funds. Uh to piggyback a little bit off of what uh Council Member Snoke was just asking, every city and community in the nation received a letter from the Secretary of Transportation that
outlines some ways where you might possibly not get funding using the executive order focused in on diversity, equity, and inclusion. They're really broad. So there are it's a possibility that something that you do might trigger
it. It's a possibility that it may not. It's a possibility that it's defensible. It's a possibility that it may not. That's what makes this what could be in the way instead of what is in the way because we don't know and we can't tell you when or if it will happen and we
can't tell you what they may end up maybe identifying in a community that they believe is illegal DEI work or maybe they don't identify something. So that's why I said a could. Could I ask you is does it seem that the potential
loss of funding is related to possible DEI issues as opposed to Doge issues for example? >> It appears from what I've seen and I'm only going to speak on the document that I've I've seen which is that Secretary
of Transportation document. It was very much focused in on um enacting the uh pleasure of the president through his executive order and aligning funding to that executive order >> around DEI.
>> Correct. Around DEI. Um >> could there be more forthcoming because we have had so many executive orders? That is absolutely possible. But the one that I have right now that I think is the the strongest uh visual tangible
moment of you could lose funding is um for transit specifically is in that secretary of transportation letter. We also know that what could be in the way is a fair free funding clip after fiscal year 2026 without identified
replacement. Right now this is grant funded but we are out of the ability to apply for that grant. So, it is not that we've lost the grant. As a matter of fact, we've kept the grant for quite some time. We just may not reapply for that funding source anymore >> because we've done it so many years. >> Correct.
>> Yes. Yes. We are time bound. >> We're maxed out. >> It's not that we cannot. It's that we may not. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Mhm. >> We have continued staffing challenges that can delay service improvements potentially and potential costs for additional system optimization planning
scenarios and the timing of those improvements. Right? that can all get in the way. When we think about our social determinance of health, we know that that reliable transit service, that reliable transportation access gets people to jobs, gets people to healthcare, gets people to education,
and it reduces inequities in mobility. When we think about those climate um impact reductions, what is in the way is we do have some limited infrastructure to support fleet electrification. For example, we have an aging diesel fleet that is contributing to emissions and we
have a reduction in federal funding support for green infrastructure which might have mitigated some cost of replacement repair. What could be in the way is that there are high electric bus maintenance costs and downtime risks and there are
requirements for the implementation of climate focused transit al alternatives. So, the cost for those bus replacements, as James just showed you, there's costs for facilities expansion depending on what alternative fuel source is uh determined. And there are also other staffing costs. Do we need uh more
mechanics? Do our mechanics have to go to school? Do we need more um access to training, for example, and more supervisors? We think about the social determinance of health under this one. We do know that cleaner transit reduces respiratory illness rates especially in communities
adjacent to hight traffic corridors which most often are communities that identify as low income or our communities of color. >> So looking at this when you say high electric bus maintenance costs is that possible we don't know but there might
be or we do know there are higher electric bus maintenance costs. I thought the whole idea of electric buses was there are fewer maintenance costs. >> I think that what we then we need to keep in mind the data that we have. We do have data from other systems that do
show that there are some electric bus maintenance issues. Those are with the buses that they have. Technology is always always reinventing itself, innovating themselves. I'm a person that has an electric car that I know is a test. I am driving a test car where
Acura is like, let's see if it works, right? They're never going to make that car again, by the way. I already know it. It's their test run. Um, they're working out the bugs. So, we what the evidence we have is that yes, there are some transit systems that have experienced higher electric bus
maintenance and then downtime because if that bus goes dead, you got to get a new bus. There's things, right? um could this while it's in the could be in the way as buses evolve technology changes this may very well reduce
>> but right now the evidence I have is to be able to tell you this could be in the way and then we've got our regional system creation so again we know that what is currently in the way is that Carta is in its early stages the governance and funding structures are still being built
and we need to continue to secure alignment between the city and the county stakeholders. What could be in the way is a slow roll out of regional service integration and also there could be some political or funding disagreements with limited shared investment. When we think of
those social determinants of health again that regional mobility can expand access to employment to education and to essential services across jurisdictional bounds. Um, so we know that we do have individuals, again, go back to that image in your head, of daytime
population and nighttime population. Um, so we know that there are individuals that are coming into our community from other places that maybe might ride transit if it was available to them. Um maybe perhaps we may have um other opportunities for our own residents to
go work in another locality in something that really matches their needs and helps them move up in economic mobility and opportunity if they could get there. >> Now I'm at the point where you all can raise questions or statements in the
form of questions so Josh doesn't look at you here. Where where does UVA and their transit system fit into all this? >> They are here, but not here. So, my our role was really to look at what we can
tell you that you can control. I wish I could tell you you could control that one. I can't. >> The goal is to pull them into Carter at some point. >> Look at them as an opportunity on a contract bas. But that would be in kind of the this part. I think it's as slow as everything else is with them and
particularly getting changes waiting on that is not prudent. The biggest thing we can get from them is their their wrership, >> right? >> But I would not wait. >> One of the things that they have the
opportunity to do that we don't because they're not FDA funded is buy whatever bus they want. All of our buses have to come from Americanmade manufacturers. So, they were able to buy smaller Turkish electric buses that can um that are really useful and adorable and also
can fit under the railway bridge and make and extend their routes and services. And if we were to to access those as well, we could fully fund the purchase of them, but also we wouldn't be able to spend FTAs on the maintenance and mechanics needed to operate them.
>> So, sounds like some tensions, some tradeoffs. >> It's like they get to do that, we don't. I think they would probably be loathed to give that up if they became fully integrated with our service. >> Yeah. I just I know when we visited Champagne Orbana the their university incorporated and their wrership doubled
and it transformed their ability to do everything. >> Same with Cornell and >> they have the K through 12 education too as part of Champagne and Brandon. So >> and I believe here just as comparator no one hate me I am a hokei and but
Blackburg transit is black transit. you get on that bus whether you are leaving Pritchard to try to go to class or you are you know leaving a workplace trying to go somewhere >> and that's also funded that's their payment in li of taxes program is the
university funds their transit network questions for Ashley >> okay let's work um you have one more card in front of you down some tensions you may have heard uh some trade-offs
You may have heard together what it's an opportunity for us to slow down. Right. Right. A minute. Let's switch it up this time around. Will you kick us off? Is that okay? >> Absolutely not. >> Thank you.
[Music] Tensions. Um I mean obviously the big one is funding. Um the Charlottesville Almoro UVA coordination relationship I think is a tension. Yeah.
>> Um I think there's tensions between different possible paths to increasing ridership or improving service. Um trade-offs obviously it's expensive. Um so it competes against everything in the
budget. Um as others mentioned with the loss of um inflation reduction act and infrastructure law funding. Is there a trade-off between um zero emission bus plans and our practical
ability to afford that if that those funding opportunities are gone? Um opportunities, I would agree with Brian that partnership with UVA is probably not going to happen soon, but it's still an opportunity. Um Carta funding at the through the general assembly, which I
would also agree like we've seen the options, we just have to figure out how to choose. Um, I think there's an opportunity to create a plan for our zero emission bus. Um, because even if that funding is gone, is there a way for us to kind of keep that plan on hold if funding does come back rather than saying we're just going to totally
abandon this? Um, and I'll go a little off script. Um, but obviously this is a big climate policy, so there's maybe an opportunity to have climate like organizational excellence suffuse all our priorities, especially climate
resilience. Um and then it's transportation related. Um the downtown mall is an example of transportation infrastructure at pedestrian level that went way beyond VOTE and was very intentional. What would it look like if we did that on Preston Avenue or the parking lot off the downtown mall or
West Main? How can we think as innovative as we did with the downtown mall again? >> Oh, a lot of lot of good you ma'am. >> All right. Um so the tension that I wrote down was responding to demands uh
demands of users versus capacity limitations and also um being aware of the accuracy of the FDA regulations. What what how are they being framed to us versus how are they actually requiring the implementation and making sure we're aware of that. Um my
trade-off is um kind of frequency and and ability to easily get diesel buses versus green and wanting to be climate friendly, but also acknowledging that at a certain point enough people are out of their cars to
make even a diesel bus climate friendly and having the patience to get to that tipping point. >> Yeah. >> Um but also the amount that we need to have enough buses to get to that tipping point. Um and then opportunity um that I
noted was to install 15-minute service on 567 in the trolley first to boost ridership numbers which then increases our funding that we can use to spend on the other routes. Um and then also on kind of a larger a little more um
expansive scale is we're also simultaneously increasing our bike and pedestrian infrastructure. And um if I can get across town in 12 minutes, I'm not going to wait 15 minutes for a bus. And so if we see that kind of shift on a larger scale, how is that going to
affect our bus routes and where the demand is? And so then there's an opportunity to kind of tailor the bus routes on those with the highest need for buses, not just for getting around town. Um because you need a bus in a different scenario than you need your
bike. So how does that look if we get a big enough cultural shift there? >> Yeah. >> Which is >> Yeah. Awesome. Very good. Thank you. Tensions, trade-offs, opportunity. >> So the the first tension I noted is simply climate action versus the diesel
bus cost advantage. How how we're going to shake that out. uh in terms of tradeoffs, that same trade-off, diesel versus hydrogen versus electric vehicles, but also the the tradeoff of I I don't think we could
sustain with the voters both a tax increase uh sales tax increase for school construction and some other dedicated funding tax for it's going to turn out to be one or the other. And then finally, in terms of
opportunities, um I would look forward to trying to figure out what we can do to get UVA involved. And I would also like to figure out uh what the opportunities would be for outlying counties such as
Green County and Louisa County that have a fair amount of fair amount of traffic coming into Charlottesville for computer purposes. Uh, every time I drive up 29 north at 8:30 in the morning because I'm trying to get to Porton Green County by 9, I
see this torrent of vehicles coming south on 29 and I see all these new apartment complexes going up 129. I'm thinking, where are these people working? How are they getting there? I see where they're how they're getting there. They're on 29 South stuck in
>> in a private vehicle. in a private vehicle and and that's an opportunity. >> This reflects what others have said. I would pose attention as wrership versus environment. Maybe that's a false thing
to but just kind of on a bare the bare face of it. And do we focus on having more riders pulling people off the road and on buses versus making
frankly massive investments in exquisite technology that is the greenest. The tradeoffs maybe there's no trade-off in environment. If someone does the analysis to say that we pull off this
many riders off the road at an average trip length of every how many miles with this much CO2, you know, if someone did that calculation compared to what would be removed from, you know, the buses being on hydrogen versus diesel, someone
consultant, probably Miss Rivervol could do it. um can tell us that and that would be a piece of information that would I think make it very clear which one to prioritize >> and that that has been done and I think it was roughly triple ridership from our
historic high. So you need to triple from our historic high. >> I'd be interested. Okay. >> Yeah, fair enough. >> To get to what? >> Break even on the emissions when you look at the number of riders you need in a bus to compare with a car.
of tall order. >> Okay. So, that has been done. Well, then the rest of my card is not >> Yeah. Yeah. Um >> Yeah. I like to mine is kind of the same lines. I like to see those numbers. My
my um tensions are, you know, the the cost increase for the increase in frequency. um the cost for battery electric buses and and hydrogen buses. Um the tradeoff I see is on um diesel, you know, that have more diesel buses
um and have more frequency than high cost of the um battery electric and hydrogen and the more frequency in the high use um routes. I think um Natalie mentioned those that I think that you
know no matter what how the bus is running that you know we know the routes that are high frequency you know make it every 5 minutes if we know people will use it instead of making a route that's not used as much every 30 minutes or 60
minutes. Um and the opportunities will be less traffic and a more more efficient service. But um I didn't know Michael that analysis had been done. >> Uh it was during probably when we were
discussing the bebs in depth and it's based on um >> this last few years. >> Yeah. I I'll share. >> I just won't pay any attention. Yeah. So >> yeah, sounds like that's an opportunity as well to kind of pull that back open and take a look at it. to be running the meeting.
>> Yeah, super reflective. Thank you. Um, >> here's what I'm going to do. I am going to ask you to take a fiveminute break. Um, there's no more absorbing information today. So, that's like amen to that. All right. There's no more I'm not asking you to absorb anything. Uh, I will ask you to do one more thing. Um, but it's going to more be reflecting on
some of the information you took down regarding education. Okay? Uh, but you will not have to absorb any more information for the rest of the day. And by the time we're doing that, I'm still going to get you out early. So, a win all around. Sounds like some good trade-offs, right? Um, so good. Take
five minute break. Um, I'll ask you to come back. I'm going to ask you to do something with some of the information you took down regarding education. You'll not have to absorb any more information and I will get you out of here early. Awesome. Enjoy. All right.
What I'm going to ask you to do is um remember at the very beginning I was like, "Write this down. Write write this down." Uh what I'm going to ask you to do is I want you to reflect on what you've heard about education. Um and I want you to write down uh per and I'm going to ask you this question. I'm
going to ask to you three sections per impact area. So education one of the impact areas was financial operations. And you all heard where financial operations is what's in the way and what could be in the way. What I want you to
do is regarding financial operations um if you could write down and this is where we work together alone. So I'm going to ask you to review on your notes, reflect on your notes and I'm going to ask you to write one answer down. Okay. um is one thought and one idea on a rectangle post-it that's in
front of you with your Sharpie and I would like you to write down what is one tension that you heard regarding education specifically around financial operations going back you all heard where it is
what's in the way what could be in the way what is one tension you heard regarding education in the in the impact area of financial operations. What is one tension that you
heard? If you could Sharpie, rectangle, post it, do your best to write legibly. Just do your best. Um, but it's regarding financial operations under the strategic priority of education. What is one tension you
heard? And when you have it, just hold it up. All right. Awesome. Great. I'm going to ask you um to think of let me ask you real quick. Do you all want to go left and right or do you want to go down? So, do I talk about the
trade-off of financial operations or do we go into the tension of facility development and construction? Would you like to go this way or go down? >> Down. Sticking with the same category. All right. So, financial education, financial operations. What was a
tradeoff that you heard regarding financial operations um around financial operations and with the strategic priority of education? What was a trade-off that you heard regarding financial operations? remember one thought, one idea,
and you're doing two shard work allegedly, but also in a way um where others could understand uh what you're what you're saying. What was one trade-off you heard regarding financial operations in
connection to the strategic priority of education? The one word I can literally never spell, it's pure. Well, I have to use it in emails more than I think U A C
>> one more. >> Two more. Two more. >> One tradeoff that you have heard regarding financial operations. >> You would >> in connection to the impact of education. A trade-off that you heard. Wait, was that We were
just supposed to write a trade-off. >> Yes. >> One tradeoff. >> Yep. One trade-off. >> Yep. >> I'm losing track of it. >> It's all good. >> Look, don't you worry. I'm getting you out of here soon. Um, >> you know, I'm losing track of tensions
versus trade-offs. Got >> it. And and so feel free I have mine up here as well. Like feel free to also like reference. It's why I wanted to have the the definitions up here. So feel free to take a look at that. Um I have it up here as well. Um again reflect on your notes as well. Not only reflect on the definition but
maybe something you wrote that sparked some interest. Um okay strategic priority uh education um regarding the impact of our financial operations. What was an opportunity? What was an opportunity
actually? Actually no don't write that yet. Don't write that yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. Yeah, I'm going to move you on to the next thing. I have an idea. Um, so it's not going to make you do anything today, but don't worry. Um, all right. Regarding uh strategic priority education, I want you to think about the
tension you may have heard around facility development and construction. Regarding the strategic priority of education, it is a tension tension that you may have heard regarding facility development and
construction. paper airplane. Um, regarding the strategic party of education with the impact area, facilities management and construction, what was a trade-off that you heard? Feel free again review your notes,
reflect, write. One thought, one idea regarding education, the impact area of facility development and construction. What is a tradeoff that you heard? You don't remember what I put like
>> as a trail >> or you don't remember? >> I don't remember the ones I've already sent up there and so I feel like I've written a couple of them twice. >> This is facilities for the pension. >> Yes, >> everything is financial >> and is the trade-off of facilities. This
is kind of your target your topic area right now. facilities development and construction. Again, feel free to review your notes, reflect on, write something.
This is your tradeoff regarding facility development and construction under the strategic priority of education. I'm just waiting. >> Okay. All right. We are in the third impact area of facilities maintenance
regarding the strategic priority of education. What was attention? Review your notes, view your notes, reflect on your notes, and then write one thought or idea regarding facilities maintenance.
>> You already you already done. I also did that thing that little kids do where they start writing too far in the center and they run out of space by the end. >> Sorry about that. >> The impact area of facilities
maintenance under the strategic priority of education. >> What is the what is the intention that you heard? Let's look over here. I'll be able to determine which sticky notes are.
>> All right, I was preparing you for the next one. Education and back management. What's a tradeoff again? And if those two definitions are are still are getting a little blurry at this point, feel free to look at this card. I look at your notes also.
Do your notes reflect on them? Do the definitions reflect on them? >> What was this one again? Education. >> It is education still and the impact area of facilities maintenance. What is a tradeoff that you heard or when they
wrote down regarding facilities make and again I I really urge you to don't reinvent the wheel. You all took some amazing notes. You wrote down. You absorbed some great information. Just
find your answers in there. Hey, Perfect. I want to try one more round of this, but I want to try with homelessness and then we're done. Um, regarding homelessness, um, housing, one of the impact areas of
homelessness, what was a tension that you heard or wrote down? U, I'm not going to I don't have these up because I'm asking you to do it on flap. Um, so one thought, review, reflect uh on your notes, strategic priority of housing, the
impact area of homelessness. What was the tension that you heard in the room? Be afraid to your notes. Do not want to reinvent the wheel. Don't do that to yourself. You took some great notes. Strategic priority of housing impact
area of homelessness. What was a tension that you heard? strategic priority of housing. >> A little circle. >> So those have to do with housing. And then James and Ashley kind of what is and where it's going. They kind of talked about these areas.
>> There you go. >> Okay. Um, >> okay. Strategic priority of housing impact area of homelessness. What was a trade-off you heard? Again, review the card. Uh, review the
definitions to help. Do not put yourself to work where you don't have to. What are the definitions? Again, don't even ask yourself that question. They're right in front of you. What's the trade-off you heard? Great homelessness. We didn't talk about that.
All right. A trade-off you heard regarding the impact of homelessness. All right. What is a tension that you heard regarding the impact of affordability of housing for the full community? That was one of James and Ashley kind of spoke to it. James like here's where it is.
Ashley's like, "What's in the way?" um regarding housing as our strategic priority and one of our impact areas is affordability of housing for the full community. What is the tension that you heard? The pull between competing needs, values
or priorities that coexist and require thoughtful balance. It's the tension that you heard regarding affordability of housing for the full community. Yeah, I was thinking whoever wrote that it's a it's a neat way to capture information as well. I've seen where
people just write the two things that are like pulling against one another, you know, as well. Um like it's these two like um so good good. All right. The impact area of affordability of housing for full community. What is a trade-off
you heard? Trade-off being a choice to prioritize one thing over another knowing something is gained and something is given up. What's a trade-off that you heard when we were discussing the affordability of housing for the full community?
What's a trade-off that you heard? the choice to prioritize one thing over another knowing something is gained and something is given up. There's a trade-off you heard regarding the affordability of housing for the whole community.
There's a tradeoff that you Okay, last round the impact area regarding production and preservation of affordable housing. This is regarding our strategic priority and we care about housing in general. One of the impact areas reduction and preservation of
affordable housing. What is a tension that you heard in the room when we were talking about its current status? Tension being a pool between competing needs, values or priorities that coexist and require thoughtful balance. A tension you heard when we were
discussing the production and preservation of affordable housing. If it's helpful, just write the two things you think are pulling at each other. The two tensions. [Music] >> This is the tension category. >> Yes, ma'am. Yep. Yep. This is tension
regarding production and preservation of affordable housing. And these would have been illuminated during the where it is and what's in the way and what the tension regarding production and preservation of affordable housing.
All right, last category. Um, still talking about the production and preservation of affordable housing. What was a trade-off that you heard mentioned? Trade-off being a choice to prioritize one thing over another, knowing something is gained and something is given up. What is a
trade-off that you heard when we were talking about the production and preservation of affordable housing? This is the tradeoff that you heard when we were talking about where it is, what's in the way, what could in the way
regarding production and preservation of affordable housing. Thank you for these thoughtful answers, thoughtful notes. Perfect. Okay. Love it. You all just got a huge jump start on
tomorrow. So, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Um, huge jump start. Um, all right. Before I let you go, two things. Okay. Uh, one, thanks for that. Uh, I want to rewind a little bit on kind of what was what you all did today. Uh, so we're I want to remind you where
we're after this question, right? What would it look like if city counc design to better inform and direct the city manager's office towards strategic impact? Uh, these beautiful groups of humans are going to have to create some strategies to make this impact happen. Uh but there's some information, some
direction and some measuring that we need from you in order to do that. Where are we going and how do we know we got there? Um the book ends. So we are in pursuit of this and we are not answering today probably by tomorrow. Um but it's all about direction setting to help inform decision making. You all are
helping set direction. Where are we going and how we know we got there to inform strategic decisions um as well. So uh again today is around where it is and uh here's what you did today. Okay. So you are deeply intentional in
receiving and internalizing where it is. It being strategic priorities which is what you said you care about. Right? So you are deeply intentional in receiving and internalizing information around our strategic priorities. What we said we care about. Um our community survey how
we know we're doing it well or not. The community will tell you right. You absorb that information as well. You're deeply intentional with absorbing that information. Um the financial budget resources for the impact of on what we care about. You absorb that information.
You're also deeply intentional with receiving and internalizing where it is. It being the top strategic priorities, which are impacts that need immediate attention. It's a lot. But then you used um and completed six different design exercises to do some things as well. Three of them
you used to synthesize your insights into understanding, respecting and valuing and to concisely share those observations with your peers. Then you use another design exercise and it was to help identify tensions, trade-offs, and opportunities related to
the top strategic priorities that need immediate focus. That's a lot. You all like that's that's a lot. You all did that. You did it in about seven and a half hours, but we've had breaks. We've had lunch and I'm letting you out early, so you did it in like 6 and 1/2 hours.
>> That's a lot in a little bit of time, right? I would agree. Do you agree that? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. You should celebrate yourselves. A lot of processing of information and maybe you're just too tired to clap your hands, but that's the thing. I will celebrate you. That is a lot of information to deeply internalize,
synthesize, and communicate out loud. And you did it in like 6 and 1/2 hours. That's that's no joke. Um, it can be done. Remember I told you we're going to go deep and wide quickly. That was a lot of information and we covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. Sounds
like we went deep and wide. So, last thing before you go, um, tomorrow is going to be about what is and what could be. We're all about exploring. you captured a lot of understanding today. Uh that's why I was like review on that, reflect on that, write that down. Um because I need to I
need you to understand where all of these things are. Um so we can potentially explore what is and what could be, right? To explore what could be in these areas and not have a deep understanding about them. We remember we talked about that at the very beginning.
What would it look like to go explore a couple ideas and not have a deep understanding? Today you spent that time deeply understanding to help inform as we go and explore what potentially could be. Cool with me. Awesome. Um and it's tomorrow is about
opportunity and possibility. All right. Uh lastly, remember we are going for direction setting. Day one where it is. Day two will be about exploring what is and what could be. eventually helps us with you being able to material last some direction for uh
these beautiful people. So day two is exploring um is built on day one's understanding you built the toolbox that was all your understanding. We're going to use that tomorrow. Okay. Um so I will see you tomorrow. But before you go Sam, close
us out with any thoughts uh charges to action. Um, you know, tell everybody get a good night rest and wear some comfortable shoes. >> I did say that for the last night, so I'll say it again. Say that tonight. Um, definitely just want to just react to the idea that we got through a lot of
information. I took a lot of notes as I usually do whenever you all are talking. Uh, so I'll be able to use that with you later on and it will help frame where we go next. So when we wrap up tomorrow, I'll talk to you a little bit more about that. So thank you. >> All right. Absolutely.
So, can we leave these things here? >> Please leave that. Yeah, because I'm going to actually ask you to dig into your understanding toolbox again. >> So, please leave a note before. >> Yep. Do we need to close the meeting or >> is there a formal closing recess until tomorrow? Yes. Okay.
>> So, move recessing till tomorrow. Yes. All in favor? I >> Yes.