--------- Tina, do we sign in four to 04:00 meeting or two? Yeah. Just let him. Yep. Hello. I called the Charlottesville 08/18/2025 meeting, to order. Madam clerk, will you please call the roll? Councilor Asharin? Here. Councilor Payne? Here. Vice mayor Pinkston? Here. Councilor Snook? Here. Mayor Wade? Here. Is there a motion to approve or amend the agenda? So moved. Did we make that change? Yeah. Okay. Second? Thank you. So my, computer's updating, so I can't Oh, same thing.
Okay. We'll do the same. Yeah. Voice over. Yes. Yeah. So all in favor, please say yes. Yes. All opposed, please say no. K. Great. So this meeting will be divided into, three sections. The first one is a work session now, where we hear and discuss presentations that do not require a vote. And then we'll have a closed session, and then we'll come back for a regular meeting at 06:30. And so today, we have three reports. The first one will be from the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitor's Bureau report.
And Courtney will make that presentation. Thank you. Thank you for having me this afternoon. I really appreciate the time and, the opportunity to year since I, gave you an update, so I'm excited to do that. I do wanna take a a minute to recognize my chair and vice chair who are in the room, and, our new director of marketing and PR, and then obviously, Chris Singel also sits on our board. So, well supported today.
And I represent the city on the floor. And you too. Thank you so much. So at at any time, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to stop me in a presentation. I'm gonna go through, most of it fairly quickly and I'll stop in a couple of different spots, but don't, hesitate to stop me if you want to know a little bit more information. Alright. So we, passed our, first strategic plan based on our tourism master plan in October. And I'm going to be showing sharing with you what we plan to do over
the next three years based on our tourism master plan and the progress that we wanna make. I always include the mission, vision, and values because it guides what we do. The mission comes from the operating agreement between the city and the county, so that's not something the CACVB board puts together, that's something that the city and the county jointly have tasked us with doing. We also have, we really wanna model welcoming for our community. We are the official welcoming committee for the City and the County, so we take
our job in welcoming very, very seriously. We also take our economic impact very seriously. We plan, we expect that we will have the updated numbers for 2024 next month. They usually come out in September from the so you're seeing here, the most recent data that we have from 2023, almost a billion dollars in direct visitor spending to Charlottesville and Albemarle combined, supporting more than 7,000 jobs, 47,000,000 coming back in local taxes
to the city and the county, and, $350,000,000 in job payroll. We always have to do some parts of our jobs, so it doesn't matter based on our tourism master plan, based on our strategic plan. There are things that we always have to do. We call those our critical business imperatives. We always need to generate overnight visitation. The transient occupancy tax is the sole funding source for our organization. So as that increases, so does our budget. As it decreases, so so would our budget.
So we are very focused on generating paid overnight stays here. We also generate a large amount of visitor spending. Visitor spending is anything that is not spent, in accommodation. So when people are going to our attractions, our stores, our restaurants, and spending money here, we're generating taxes through other means as well. And we take that that responsibility very seriously too. We focus on mid week business generation because we have really healthy, leisure weekend business,
during the spring and the fall, especially. And mid week tends to be softer the entire year. So, that's a, an area of growth for us. We we generate a lot of research such as in the tourism master plan and we share that with our industry and with our community. It's important to us that we, are transparent in our governance. We know that we are spending taxpayer dollars and we need to make sure that we are accountable for those funds. And we are the, entity that promotes Charlottesville media, owned media, which is through our
website and social media, media, owned media, which is through our website and social media, and paid media as well through advertising. We also engage with our partners, we call, any organization, a non profit, a business that is in the, tourism industry a partner of ours. And we define that very broadly. Anybody who could serve a visitor and a visitor would be interested in that service is part of the tourism economy. And so we wanna be inclusive in who are welcoming into that and helping them develop their businesses and get access to the visitor dollar.
We also provide visitor services through our mobile visitor centers primarily, which have 10 different locations throughout the city and the county weekly. Here are the tours of Master Plan goals. So, moving away from our critical business imperatives, we are here to amplify the amplify the visitor experience, foster a welcoming community, strengthen community partnerships, enhance the local quality of life, and boost sustainable economic growth. And I'll go into each of these separately as we move forward. Amplifying visitor experiences is really about promoting and enhancing the visitor experience, through targeted marketing.
So, knowing who is coming here, who has the possibility to come here if they would would receive an invitation, and making sure that we are intentional about who we're inviting here, both from a, inclusivity lens, but also from the lens of who is going to come here and spend their money here, and hopefully stay for at least a night or two. So our strategic plan goal is to make progress on this in the next three years, started with year one, which started July 1. And right now, we are developing a brand, we haven't done a re rebranding process.
I, celebrated six years with the CACVV August 1. We haven't done, a rebranding since I've been here. It was done just before I arrived, and we are overdue for it. Our partners said that we needed it. Our tourism research that we conducted through the, tourism master plan said that we needed it, and so it's time. So we're gonna start there. And then over the next two to three years, we'll be, getting the website up to date based on that new brand. And then, really thinking about where we're going with visitor services in the in the
the future and years three and beyond. For each one of these, parts of the strategic plan, we have these guiding questions for equity and inclusion. These are questions that we ask ourselves on how we are doing a good job representing our community. Not gonna read through these, but we, you'll see this slide as we go along. So, I talked about the rebrand a second ago. This summer we held seven different, community workshops where we listen to the community to see what stories they wanna tell and what they want the visitors to know when
they come here. We held those, in, there were four in person, you'll see in Charlottesville, Pan Tots, Crozet, and Esmat, as well as three virtually, during evening, daytime, and weekend hours. This is a six month long process, over that so it started in May. It'll end in November. We we we were seeking community input through, press releases, several interviews on the local, TV stations, publishing of an op ed, flyer distribution, went old school on that, and
then we got online survey with, 439 responses and a lot of personal outreach from us. And what we learned from that has been really exciting, and we'll be able to share more of that, with the CACVB board a week from today at our office from one to three, and the public is always invited to all of our, meetings, they're they're public. The next up any questions about our rebranding process before I continue? Cool. The next up is Sorry, I might have missed you saying this.
What's the timeline on that? It is May through November, so it'll be complete the November. Okay. Thank you. And then we'll have the roll out this winter, it'll take us a little bit of time to put our, make our website up to the date and all of that. Okay. Great. Thanks. Yeah. The next part is fostering a welcoming community. As I said earlier, it's really important to us that we are, extending the welcome mat for anybody who comes to town. Very much see that as our job and so we are, in the years one through three, really helping people who have, disabilities make sure that they get access to
our destination. We have had a lot of success with this so far. We I'll get into that in a minute. We'll be developing an ambassador program, which extends our tourism for all programming. If you're not aware, for the past two years and we're about to enter our third year, we've had a tourism for all cohort where we bring in, up to 20 partners and work with them to create, better policies around, attracting and retaining employees, exemplary customer service, meaningful community partnerships, and intentional promotion.
And then finally, on this slide, we'll be, working on the DMAP accreditation. Our organization hasn't been accredited or at least not as far as I'm aware by Destinations International, which is the organization that represents, organizations like ours internationally. So we'll be under, going that process and we were referencing that process as we are creating the strategic plan so that we know that we're working towards it. So we'll be working on accessibility initiatives. A couple of years ago we, onboarded 61 of our tourism partners.
We were the second in the country to do this work through through Wheel of the World. We got a really good deal. This time was a lot more expensive. So we only got seven industry partners this time, but we're happy to have them included, and live in the Wheel of the World's website. We have also participated in an organization called Travel Ability, on on making sure that we're hearing back from our partners on how they would like to, be supported in their accessibility journey. And then we've been awarded about $10,000 from Virginia Tourism Corporation to build, and market
a more accessible experience. And we'll be inviting an influencer here, this sometime over the course of this year to to experience, what we have to offer and, and test it out. We did that a couple of years ago with Candace Welch. We learned so much from her experience, and so did our partners. So we wanna continue to do that annually if we can. So I mentioned we have an ambassador program starting. So the cohort is what I was talking about a minute ago. We've had a conference every year following the cohort. That's when we graduate the people who participated and we get all of our, tourism
community together to to think about the future of our, destination and where we wanna go. And what we've heard from our tourism industry partners is that we want they want to get to together more frequently. We wanna do a better letting them know what services we have to offer. And so we'll be, starting an ambassador program, which is a little bit of a lighter engagement with networking and some trainings online. Did you have a question? No. Awesome. So that is, fostering welcoming communities. With strengthening community partnerships, one area that we really saw is that, we can be
very siloed in our industries in Charlottesville and Albemarle County and trying to get people together as part of what that ambassador program is is focused on, but it's also trying to create these cross sector partnerships so that we're able to really advance, the tourism industry here. We haven't had a major attraction come here, in a long time. We aren't creating massive tourism product here, and that's alright. But we have to think about ways that we are reorganizing what we have and telling, people about what we have in a different way that makes it more compelling.
And part of that is, is really through com strengthening our community partnerships. One area of opportunity for us is our food and beverage partners have typically, not necessarily seen themselves as part of the tourism industry. Like, a couple years ago with the wine, recognition, the winery started to see us as more of a tourism partner, and that's been something that's been able to grow. And we really wanna bring the restaurants, food trucks, and and all the other, food vendors into that conversation too. So we are building our relationships with them over the course of this year with
the hope that with a new brand, we'll be able to do, a marketing and promotion that really helps push that, narrative forward next year. We'll talk about the the two fiftieth efforts, shortly. I am the, the committee chair for Charlottesville, Albemarle, and Scottsville for the two the local 2fiftiethcom committee. So we have been meeting as a joint committee for several years now. We're also working on building, a closer relationship with the University of Virginia and the foundation, as the Virginia guest house comes online.
It is going to be, a bit of a disruptor to what we have here. And when we, they wanna be really good partners with us, in in ensuring that it's a positive, disruption for our hotel community and something that's moving us forward in the industry. And then finally, we're gonna create a partner guide book so that we can really help our partners understand what we offer them for free, and, get that word out better. So the mobile museum was out at Highland a couple of weeks ago. I know, mayor Wade was there, so thank you for that.
And, so this is a picture of Carla who's on our team, and the mobile museum in the background. Before you Yeah. Go on, I think we're gonna, you know, over the next year, we're gonna try to get that on the downtown mall as well. So Yeah. So while they were here, the staff for the VA two fifty have came and checked out the downtown mall to see where, it could be safely played. We weren't sure that, we weren't sure it was gonna work, but they think that it's going to. So I'm not gonna guarantee it. Right. But fingers crossed and I'm glad that they took the opportunity while they were in
town to to come downtown and and scope out a site where, it could possibly be. So thank you for that. We have also, launched a so we this has been an unfunded, partnership locally, which is fine. But the CACVV put $10,000 towards the VA two fiftieth and got that matched by Virginia Tourism Corporation. And what the the committee asked, us to support was, the Seaville Puzzle Hunt that happened in March.
So they made a puzzle that was around the two fiftieth and they've turned that into an itinerary. So, that it we supported a sponsorship for them, and that activated the Downtown Mall. And then a podcast series. So we'll have eight episodes of Founding Footprints, which, is a really accessible way for people to, experience local history, and not just from the revolutionary war period, but, throughout the history of this area. And I think I've probably talked enough about the food beverage campaigns, so I'm gonna
move forward from this. Anything on either of those before I move on? Cool. Fourth is enhancing the local quality of life. Obviously, we want tourism to be something that really gives back to our community, that's enhancing our economy. And that those dollars that are coming in are really helping to pay for the services and make businesses succeed here. And so the first part of that has been, to develop a crisis communications plan in coordination with the city and the county. The city hosted, a conversation about that last winter and we were able to participate
in that and I'm excited to see where we move forward with that conversation. We'll also be spending some time on our outdoor recreation assets. People come here for the Blue Ridge Parkway. They come here for Shenandoah National Park. They don't always understand what we have here locally for them to explore. And so trying to get those people, who are coming here for those major assets to understand the connectivity of the outdoor recreation space in inside the city and county is is something that we really wanna foster. And then crafting a destination stewardship plan simultaneous to that is also really important.
We don't want, visitation to be something that degrades the environment that we have here. The other thing, so I said it was in coordination with everybody. That's fine. The last piece is boosting sustainable economic growth. This is, after all, what we are trying to do here, so that we can, make sure that we're generating tax revenue that can go back to the city and the county so you all can pay for essential services. And also, as I said, supporting the businesses that to thrive here. I mentioned midweek business earlier.
We have known that that's a weak area for us, but we haven't, fully studied that. And since I got here six months before COVID, didn't really have a great opportunity to do that until recently. And so we have been taking this year, to to do some more of that setting. And we'll talk about that in a minute. With the possibility of leading to a convention or a conference center feasibility study, one was done in 2018 before I came here. And then when, the foundation announced the Virginia guest house, and that they were going
to build a conference center, it no longer seemed like something that, they wanted to pursue at the time. And so we have been waiting for the Virginia guest house to open to see how that affects the the local hotel supply, and what demand is generated from that before we continue the conversation. So we're trying to put the pieces in place in the meantime to see what that looks like. As that opens, we have, been working on, workforce, with a handful of folks. I'll talk about that in a minute.
And the the downtown mall's fiftieth anniversary. I am sure you're all aware that the fiftieth anniversary of the Pedestrian Downtown Mall is because it was, put into place for the bicentennial, so it's very much related to the, the history of the two fiftieth. So we are working towards having a dashboard with daily accommodations data. So that is occupancy, average daily rate, revenue per available room. I believe I have those charts, later on to show you what that looks like. We have been receiving daily data from Virginia Tourism Corporation, but didn't have a great
way of putting that into a visual, because it's so much data. It's not something that we can map easily in an Excel spreadsheet. So we have a data science, intern who just graduated. He's been working, for us this summer on putting that information into a dashboard so that we're able to maintain that information and track it over time. We have also been, just started a relationship with AirDNA for short term rental data, that we've shared with the city and with the county staff to make sure that, the information that you all have is the same information that we're seeing, and make
assumptions based on that. I have a chart on that moment. Really assessing how our sales, our efforts are working. So we go to trade shows and we try and generate business during the week and seeing how which sectors are working and which sectors aren't working in, in that space for those trade shows and continuing to adjust our strategy there. Our Cvent is, a solution that, meeting planners use. It's a website that you can log on to and you can, do request for
proposals through that system and put that out to whatever hotels or cities or counties you want. And people can bid on your business. We've always had a Cvent, we've always had access to Cvent, but we're paying for greater, visibility now and we've seen a major uptake in, midweek business, which is great. For the Downtown Mall's fiftieth, I attended a meeting with, with city staff, this spring. I understand that, you all are planning a three day Downtown Mall celebration from July,
this following summer. We're gonna really support that with mobile visitor center efforts and promotional efforts. And as we find out more and how we can help tell stories that you all wanna tell, we'll continue to augment that through our channels. And really aligning those efforts, through visibility through the VA two fiftieth at the state level. Here are the hotel occupancy rates. So as you can see, that 2020 is off this chart, things have mostly normalized in occupancy rates, but we are not as high as we have been in the
past. And in part, that is due to the average daily rate continuing to to climb as expenses continue to climb for our accommodations partners. And that's something that we need to keep an eye on. We're seeing a lot more more seasonality than we did coming out of COVID, so that's also something that we need to watch and, and adjust to. And then the real number that we wanna make sure is, is growing as the revenue per available room, because that's the money that our hotels are making off of the rooms. Yes. Courtney, could I ask you, the Looking at this graph, you mentioned the seasonality.
Was that seasonality typical before COVID? It was, yeah. So that's not a change? It's not a change. I think sometimes it it can be more extreme and what we try to do is have it be, we we really focus on the off season for advertising to try and raise that, because weekend in October is gonna be full most of the time, which is awesome. No problem. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. But great question, yeah. This is our, our, some of the data from AirDNA on how many, short term
rentals we have in the hotel market here, or in the market here. In 2024, the short term rental inventory counted for 14%. So what we did was I, I had a theory that the short term rentals come on market when we have UVA football games and other high demand times and then a lot of them go away. And that does seem to be what's happening, is that they open up, people leave town, they put their house, up for short term rentals, and they take it back
down. I'm curious those lines. Yeah. I'm curious if you've seen, like are people who come to Charlottesville and choose to stay in an Airbnb, are they different from the type of person who's coming to Charlottesville and choosing to stay in a hotel? Like, are they really one to one or are they kinda seeking out a different experience? I think they're seeking out a different experience. I don't have research to back it up, other than obsolete observational research, but we're seeing families stay in short term rentals because it's easier. We see, like, a bachelorette party staying in a short term rental so that they
all can be together, instead of in a hotel, and maybe doing some cost savings that way. But, if that was something that you all wanted to know more information about, we would need to do some research on it. Because that's likewise, that's my impression generally. But, yeah, it's just interesting if, you know, building new hotels would necessarily ease Airbnb pressure if it's a different product. But bigger questions, sorry. No, that's it's fine. I appreciate big questions. And, and more, more things to find out for sure. But yes, they're not necessarily an even swap of if you build more hotels and
the short term rental demand goes away. And then these are some of the findings from a data science intern. I know I'm running out of time, so I'll be quick here. Which is really reinforcing what we already knew, which is our weekend, business is doing, better than the mid week business, which is why we're focused there. It's been interesting to find that Thursday and Saturday are, are about even. And so we need to do a little bit more work there to discover why and try and get more people to spend that night on Saturday, and not just Friday night. And this just kind of reinforces that.
So I will stop here. Any other questions for me? No. Thank you. Yep. Any questions or or comments? Or go ahead. Yeah. I appreciate the report. Thank you. Could you say a little more about what's going on with Virginia two fiftieth or something at the state level, I guess, that we're connecting with? Yeah. There's something at the national level. So America's two fiftieth, and then Virginia two fiftieth, there's a commission that has been established at the state level. And they have a minimal staff, they have an executive director and I think most
of the rest of the staff are connected to the mobile museum. There's also a mobile display that is going around that would be something more that, like the library could host. It's something smaller. And it's somewhat related to tourism in that, you know, it might attract visitation, but it's going to be the same, you know, mobile museum throughout the commonwealth. So I think the, the bigger draw is for the local, audience, especially school groups. So trying to get the mobile museum back during the school's, year would be really helpful because we don't know how many students may have seen it at the county
fair. They aren't, they have also supported grants, so we have helped our tourism partners. I know that the number for, partner support for up through Virginia tourism that we've helped with over the past year is about $200,000 And I'd have to look the exact number, for how many of those were two fiftieth grants. But it's probably been at least $50,000 worth of, financial benefit to run programs, for the two fiftieth here, in addition to creating some brochures and things like that.
Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Michael? Yeah. Thank you. And my question probably won't shock you. But, obviously, through the agreement, we spend about Charlottesville, about 1,300,000.0 to the, CACVB, in not the biggest amount of money of anything, but, I mean, it's a meaningful amount. And, I don't mean this in a negative way because I think every investment we make should have, like, cost benefit analysis. But, I mean, what what is the metrics for you said about half the budget
is marketing. What are the measurements of trying to evaluate, like, cost benefit analysis, or is it the biggest bang for the buck? Or would there be more bang for the buck if, like, investment went to creating a new community event, something like Richmond's Watermelon Festival or expanding an existing, event like the film festival or Advanta River Festival, would one of those things, you know, actually draw in more tourists? So, because of the hotel inventory that we have here, a lot of our major events sell out the hotels that we have.
So to put a whole lot more money towards an event during a peak time wouldn't generate any additional tax revenue here, outside of what we'd spend. So if our hotels are already full, full, like in a, on an October weekend, maybe when the Virginia Film Festival is happening, for us to spend more money from a visitor standpoint to try and generate overnight visitation, if we're maxed out, there's no room to grow, right? And so so really having an organization keep track of where we're succeeding and where
we need work and how we can bring our businesses and our non profits and our community into that conversation so people can benefit from the visitor dollar, it brings an incredible amount of value. I would say that we, have there are organizations like ours that spend 70% on advertising only. We we have a larger staff because we're trying to bring more people in to the conversation. We're trying to support more sectors of the economy. And we're really intentional about how we do that.
And I think that is, is a huge amount of value. You know, metrics are we have a ton of metrics. So depending on what metrics you wanna see, we can probably grab a lot of those for you. And then some of those metrics cost money and that's something that we've talked about with the CACVB board. We used to pay about $20,000 to track, how effective our advertisements were in generating, overnight visitation here. And it only was able to track about 10% of what we were, able to
produce. And so trying to weigh those those pros and cons of how much money do we spend on tracking versus how much money we spend on trying to make it happen, is something that we take into consideration with the CACVV board. But it sounds like maybe there's opportunities for, like, new community events that could draw people here off season or maybe try tap into that market, like, a very random example. But, like, Richmond's Watermelon Festival, I think, brings in, like, day trip people, not overnight, but a lot of people coming from surrounding counties. Maybe there's opportunities there. No. I I hear I'm just, like, across nothing about CACV specifically.
I'm just often very skeptical skeptical about how much social media advertising, like, works and how much, like, the view metrics translate into, like, people coming here versus, you know, the inherent events or amenities that are the primary draw here. But, anyway, sorry. I'm done. Yeah. No. I just wanted to add in, that I know we had we had some extra money during COVID, some COVID, and we did some very targeted. When I say we, the the tourism, bureau.
Gotta change the the name. But, anyways, and we did some very targeted and, you know, with, you know, individuals, groups during the week. And, and I know that we saw some impacts from that and comparing us. And, and I see John over there that we often compare ourselves with, Asheville, where, where you you come in there really. They're much larger, but, they have a much more, impact, you know. People have to know where we're we're here and, a great selling point, but a
lot, you know, some groups don't don't know we're we're here. But, so I know we have to get going. Did did were you finished? I might have done. Okay. Natalie, then I'll come back down. I just have a small question about if we keep track of how people are getting here. I know, obviously, we can pull numbers from the, the airport, but, something that I tell my clients when I talk to them is I try and emphasize, like, we have a train. And so, especially because it comes right downtown, you know, like, the Richmond, South Streets
or whatever that one's called. That's, like, kind of in the middle of nowhere. The station in Charleston is, like, way up River Road. It's, like, kind of not pleasant, but ours happens to be right downtown, which is great. You're within walking distance of the hotels of of the university. And I know we Virginia is driving Amtrak numbers, on the East Coast, which is great, and they're expanding all the way down to Blacksburg, which is great. So I'm just wondering if we're able do we know if we get tourism from train travel versus just students coming back for school or how are we about to
start? We don't have that level of data, but we have, a a building relationship with Amtrak. For about the first half of the time I was here, it was really hard to get a human, to engage with us from Amtrak. But we have been working on that relationship, and we've hosted a couple of influencers via Amtrak. Amtrak is a huge selling point, especially to the European market. So when I would talk to European, tour operators, they would say, oh, we can just go there from DC, and just be in Charlottesville, and we can roll our bag right to a hotel and just get around.
And it's amazing. And the location of it is is ideal for sure. But I can get back to you to see if we can find a little bit more data on what might be a transient, somebody who's coming back and forth, as as in a student or who's a visitor and see if Amtrak has that information. Or do we do we advertise especially, like, hey, we've got trains. Like, how do do we let people know that it's easy and convenient? We do. That doesn't mean we couldn't do more. But but we do. And I think as Amtrak has been building up their advertising portfolio a little bit
more, we're, our team is also working on the interior of the, Amtrak station to, to make it more welcoming and friendly, and, the content on their website as well. And they aren't doing that in a lot of places. So I'm really excited to see if we can really start to move the needle on that a little bit more. Cool. Great. Yeah. Thank you. The first question I had was, a couple years ago, there was a significant effort to market Charlottesville specifically to African Americans, and it seemed to have worked very well.
Has that experiment been repeated? We continue with our Discover Black Sea Bill work. It is part of the suite of the things that we do. We, did, when we had ARPA funding, we were able to, work with an agency, Charette Agency, which is actually the same agency that won our business for the rebrand, to do an action plan for Discover Box C. Ville to see how we can keep moving the needle forward. It is a committee made up of volunteers, and it's pretty obvious that this can't be the face of Discover Black Sea Bill.
And so it it it sometimes is a little bit slower going, because it's made up of volunteers, but those, efforts continue and we still have social media channels, for that as well. And the other question I had was, you you're the convention and visitors bureau. How much new convention business are we able to attract? Not a lot. A lot of, organizations like ours have gone to more of a, like, a Visit Charlottesville model on how they talk about themselves because Convention and Visitors Bureau, well, doesn't
roll off the tongue. And it also doesn't necessarily, reflect what we have here. And because the convention convention and visitors bureaus were set up to, support convention centers, but then, there's one of us in in every community in The United States now. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Do you have any more? Thank you guys so much. See you. Thank you. Monday, we have a meeting next Monday. So see you at see you at one. Is that all? Thank you. The next, presentation is the, David with the library.
How are you doing, sir? Good. How are you? Great. Good afternoon, counselors. Good afternoon. My name is Thanks, y'all. Take care. My name will be here. Thank you. Take care, miss B. Sorry, dude. No problem. My name is David Plunkett. I'm the director of JMRL, and I'm joined here today by Meredith Cole, one of the council appointed, city representatives to the Jefferson Madison Regional Library Board. You all also have representing you there Anne Hemingway and Siri Russell. Meredith and I have been JMRI users for our entire lives. The other two trustees are power users and they're looking out for the interests of
Charlottesville and the Library Board. The Library Board, manages JMRI in Charlottesville, Albemarle, Green, Louisa, and Nelson Counties. It's eight branches and bookmobile service. So in Charlottesville, you've got three branches in the urban area. There are two more branches in rural Albemarle. Well, Crozet is is not exactly rural, but it used to be rural. One each in Nelson, Louisa, and Grain, and bookmobile service in Charlottesville, Albemarle, Louisa, and Nelson. So I'm here today to briefly talk about where J. M. R. Has been, where we are today, and this does what I want.
Okay. Very grainy, picture of JML's mission and values here. So this guides all of the strategic thinking at JML and our our service models as well. The mission of the library is to foster personal growth and lifelong learning for all by connecting people with ideas, information, and each other. And the values are we serve our community. We provide free, equitable, open access to information. We inspire lifelong learning, and we cultivate a welcoming environment for community engagement. So everything you hear today should be driven by those. So where Jamerrill has been.
A little bit, history lesson about library service in Charlottesville. Charlottesville's first public library opened in 1921 in the newly constructed McIntyre Building in Downtown Charlottesville. I say public because, of course, it was a segregated facility that was not open for black families for the first several decades of library service in Charlottesville. In 1934, the Fourth Street branch was opened as a segregated facility inside the Jefferson School. This was closed fourteen years later when the downtown library was integrated, thanks to the advocacy of Reverend Benjamin Bunt.
Bookmobile service started a few years later in 1948 as the first cooperative library service between Charlottesville and Albemarle. Prior to that, it was all library, service in Charlottesville. The Scottsville branch, Crozet branch, and Gordon Avenue branches all opened in the 60s. JMRL formed in the 70s when the state incentivized cooperation and told jurisdictions to get together, and we will provide more funding to share library resources. Louisa Green and Nelson opened branch libraries shortly thereafter. In more recent years, the Northside Library opened in the nineties, moved to a new location in 2015. Gordon Avenue had a renovation in the children's room a few years ago in 2018.
They also added drive up service in '23. So in 2021, JMRL, spent a year looking at kind of the history of library service and how to tell that story while being honest about the first twenty years of a segregated library system. We worked with Lorenzo Dickerson. There's a link in the, slides here to to view his, film that he made about library service in Charlottesville. It's available on YouTube. So Charlottesville, was was the home for Jamerrill for the first forty years, and, Jamerrill was born out of the city. We maintain those close bonds today and rely on the city for support and funding,
and many, many other ways that I'll get up to. I include this slide, because library staff, joke that I'm probably in this picture, and that, I'm there with the other relics like the card catalog and the bell bottoms. But more than anything, it's just to show the the cramped headquarters there where children services were provided in the basement of the McIntyre Building, where we were fifty years ago and where we are today with eight libraries serving the entire region. This is the central library, which you're all familiar with.
The library moved from the McIntyre Building on Second Street to the old Federal Building and post office, in the eighties. That was the last major renovation to the central library. It's also the administrative headquarters for JML. So every day there are trucks coming in and out of there that bring in some of the 40,000 plus new materials that go around the region for throughout the year. It was a post office in a federal building and, probably most of you are familiar with the, courtroom upstairs, which is the name the Swanson case Courtroom after the Gregory Swanson case, where Mr. Swanson sued UVA to be the first African American admitted to the admitted to the
school, and he was represented in that case in that building by the NAACP legal defense fund, including Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill, and Spotswood Robinson. That was actually seventy five years ago next month. So you're all invited on September 5 to a commemoration of that event in the afternoon. We've got some speakers here. Fifth to a commemoration of that event in the afternoon. We've got some speakers in the courtroom to talk about the importance of that case. We're gonna talk about the Central Library quite a bit over the next few years. I think I've got one slide later to discuss it. I included this Scott this, particular slide because, I was unaware until about ten years ago that the portico on the front of the building was picked up and moved.
There was an original building that was on the corner of Second And Market, and that was built in, nineteen o six, nineteen o seven. And then, the the park that reaches Third Street wasn't added until the thirties. So a third of the building is twenty years younger than the rest of it. At that time, they picked up that portico and recentered it. So, whenever somebody talks to me about how difficult this project is gonna be, I said, well look, you can you can move the the portico. We can do anything. Yeah. I'm sorry. What year was that? That the portico moved, 1936, '37. Thanks. I wasn't there.
There. Of course, the Gordon Avenue Library is also, co owned by the city of Charlottesville in Albemarle County as the central library is. It, was built in 1966. It was the first library in the region that was opened as a desegregated facility. So when it opened in '66, it was the first library that was designed for all families in Charlottesville to use. The city coordinated and cofounded a major renovation of the children's room in 2018. So if you haven't been in for a long time, go take a look. It's lovely and inviting. The holds lockers right here were added during COVID.
So we had some, a share of ARPA funding from the state library, and our friends at the library supported these twenty four hour mobile lockers. So you can place something on hold and go pick it up after the hours that the branch is open. That was added in 2021. And then 2024, the library system added drive up service at Gordon Avenue too. So a lot's been happening there in the last few years. Of course, the Northside Library is the busiest library at the regional library system by far. It's located at the corner of 29 And Ryle Road. It is an Albemarle County owned building solely, but about 20% of the usage comes
from Charlottesville residents there. So the city, as part of Jamerrill, pays for part of the use of this building. You may have mentioned this, but what's the percentage of the downtown library, generally speaking of? Between Charlottesville residents and Albemar residents? And Louisa or whatever. Just Roughly roughly between Charlottesville and Albemar, it's about about fiftyfifty. Okay. The last piece that the, that the, that serves the city of Charlottesville is the bookmobile. So, here was the original bookmobile, I think. You can tell by the name McIntyre Public Library. The library system was the Charlottesville Library, then the Charlottesville Albemarle Library, then the McIntyre
Library for a few years, then JMRL. This was probably in the early fifties, served Albemarle County. It's one of the oldest continuous operating bookmobiles in the country, actually, but now it's a much more friendly looking, colorful, vehicle. A lot of library systems, public library systems have moved away from bookmobile service in the last ten years or so, but Jamerrill has gone the other way and leaned into it, especially during COVID, really seeing it as a way to bring library services to places that they wouldn't otherwise be or where people have transportation issues getting to the library.
So there are scheduled stops located on our website. You can see throughout the city and and Albemarle County, and then on Fridays in Louisiana and Nelson Counties. Go ahead. Why have people been moving away from it? I think that it was a way to cut, to cut expenses in the early aughts, basically, into the early teens. So not like a systemic efficiency thing, just a And I think it was low hanging fruit when budget decisions were tough around Okay. But it's still useful people still. Oh, yes. Yeah. Still I think it's a core service. So to me, I believe I I can't speak for our library board, but I
think our library board also agrees that it's a core part of what we're doing now. And then if we were in a situation where we had to talk about a reduction of services, it would no longer be the The low hanging fruit. Yeah, the low hanging fruit. Okay. Great. Thank you. So it has a scheduled route that it takes throughout the week and then also attends community events there, just, at the Westhaven Day and, back to school nights, Siva Subrosa, things like that. Okay. So where are we today? That's kind of where JAMREL has been. Here's some data and performance measures. JAMREL's geographic footprint's about the same size as the state of Delaware. I got fact checked on this in the worst way a few years ago.
I used to always say it's bigger than the state of Delaware. Well, it turns out that it's bigger than the land mass of the state of Delaware, but there are some pesky lakes in there. So now we say about the same as the state of Delaware. There is a truck that drives the whole route, six days a week, basically, in order to get library materials across the region. There are about 93,000 cardholders at the end of last year at JMRL. About 20,000 of those are from Charlottesville. Almost half a million physical volumes checked out about 1,900,000 items last fiscal year. It's about a quarter of that from Charlottesville residents.
600,000 of the total were digital checkouts. Almost 500,000 visitors in fiscal year twenty five, at the Charlottesville area branches, 750,000 overall. What is a digital It's, an e book that you can check out using library services. The most popular version is an app called Libby. You put in your library card number, you check out a book, it gets sent to your Kindle. It also is audiobooks too. And audiobooks. Thank you. And then it goes away after two weeks or something? It disappears automatically. Yes. No late fines. But you can renew it as long as you feel it. And it's kind of like the old timey Netflix where you have a queue and
you can get the next one as they're available. Uh-huh. I'm a big I can't believe you just said old timey Netflix. Remember that? You know, when you got the DVDs sent to you? Yeah. Anyway, I'm I'm a Libby superuser, so I'm a big fan. Yeah. Big fan. So even though a large portion of usage was was, digital, it didn't impact the visits coming into the library. As you can see there, almost 750,000 people overall coming into Jamerrill branches. Those 50,000 computer sessions, that's somebody coming in to use a public use computer at
the library. 35,000 of those from Charles Fillary branches. So the majority of those coming from Charlotte, Central Gordon or Northside. Over 3,000 programs with over a 100,000 people attending. Seventeen eighty nine of those with 63,000 people at Charlottesville area branches. So the bulk of those are in the Charlottesville area. Any way of knowing whether the computer sessions are the same 5,000 people over and over and over or whether it's I mean, how many unique individuals are Yeah. That's a great question. We might be able to dig that out. It's not something these are these are, numbers that we have to report to the
state as part of a data collection project annually, and I don't think they asked that specific question, but I think we probably have the data on that to dig out. Security. Me too. Now they mentioned it. Almost 60,000 Wi Fi users with most of those at the Charlottesville area libraries. Libraries. I mentioned the holds locker. 3,100 of those, items were checked out from that locker. The Gordon Drive up had 7,800 people come through in their cars to pick up materials, but that's not even close to the Northside Library, 57,000 checkouts there. JMRI was the Virginia Library Association's twenty twenty two Library of the Year, and the
JMRI Friends of the Library, the twenty twenty three Friends of the Library of the Year. So we took a year off last year from winning awards from our friends at the Virginia Library Association. So that's a lot of data there, a lot of information, but basically, we're gonna get into some services that Jamerrill offers, and and our our brand is books. What we do is connect people with books, but, our our real business is So, David, just curious. I know you I know that we love our books in this community. Another bookstore just opens open up, and it sounds like we use it the library
a lot as well. But, what do you think allows us to win that, you know, it's, library of the year? Is it a particular service or just the amount of the volume? Do you have any idea? I think it's really a story that gets told, to the selection committee, basically. So in 2022, Jamerrill's story was about the year long, commemoration we did of a hundred years of library service here. So it it included submitting Lorenzo's film. It included the the display that's up on the Third Floor of the central library
to talk about the history of library service. So it was more based on, it was it was not a strictly metrics thing. It was based on, the work that the library system was doing at that time to meet the needs of the community, basically. So, a smart person once told me to replace books, the word books with the word information when I'm thinking about the modern public library. So instead of providing books to everybody, we're providing information or connecting them with information. Books are still the number one way that we do that, but there are a lot of other ways to do that. So here's I mentioned the circulation numbers.
So this is back to 1990 up to 2025. So the the 1,900,000 for the last fiscal year is the second most ever by a hair behind 02/2002. And the reason for that is that in 02/2002, the library system had a barcode on every single cassette or CD that was in a book on tape or book on CD set. So if you checked out a Ken Follett book or or a Harry Potter book, it counted as 20 checkouts. So in 02/2003, that practice stopped. And last year's was the the culmination of a big push up, but of course,
we didn't have digital books in 02/2002, so I can't be too mad. Okay. Programs and attendance, the the red is attendance, the blue is programs. I just include this. The numbers of programs are on the left. The numbers of attendees on the right to show that the library program brings people whenever we have a program, people come. So you can see the big COVID dip there at the '20. It took a while for people to start coming back to library programming, but we're offering more programming now than we were ten years ago, and more people are attending. In fact, our summer reading program this year had a 150% increase in terms of
sign ups over last year. So it was the most successful one we've ever had. Also, the same page community reading program with the festival, the book, poem in your pocket day, those big scale events are really drawing people in to use the library. So the monthly reports are all up at jmrl.org/boardoftrustees. These are supposed to come in one at a time, but, you know, you get them all at once, I think. It includes information about how many books are to each location, what the checkout numbers are for each jurisdiction versus each location, what the budget for the year is, what the current expenditures for the year are.
So it's very detailed and very thorough. The library system tries to be as transparent as possible and be, accountable to our taxpayers for the use of those funds. City code actually requires a report from the librarian, which is me, to the city manager by the tenth of every month highlighting every month, I will turn myself into
that one. Alright. Library resources and services. This is a lot. I will go through these pretty quickly, but I just wanna illustrate the point that, yes, the library is providing books to our community, and that's the number one thing that we do, and we're more well used than many other libraries throughout the country. But that's not the only reason that people come to the library, and it might not even be the most crucial for some users depending on what their needs are. So books, other informational resources are available. Other media, as we mentioned, mister Snook, the the physical and digital, books and ebooks.
Online databases that are free for use in the library or at home for research. The car repair, remember the Chilton's manual, that's not online. You can use it with your library card number at home. Foreign language learning, local newspapers. Jamerrill gets daily access to the daily progress in PDF format that you can check out with your library card to see. Business information, genealogical research, consumer reports, digitization support in the lab on the mezzanine of the central library. There's equipment for turning your, your old slides into digital content or cassettes or VHS
tapes. We check out health literacy kits. We've got book club kits for your whole book club to get together and read the same book. A toy library for families that want to have a rotating group of toys and sensory experiences for their kids. Reader's advisory, STEM materials and programming, early literacy programming, lifelong learning, team programming. Digital inclusion support and programming. Specifically here, I was thinking of, Wi Fi hotspots that you can check out from the library. If you're in an area that does not have connectivity, Charlottesville, they they don't work
as well the farther into the woods that you get, but they do offer some connectivity for families that don't have, don't have high speed Internet at home. Digital navigation and support, workforce development and support, every day somebody comes into the library saying, I need help, I need to have an email address in order to get a job application in, and our library staff can help them or get them started and then refer them to the job center, either at the City of Charlottesville or the workforce center. Public computer use, I mentioned, printing and fax services, public Wi Fi, public meeting rooms, privacy pod conference spaces.
These were grant funded with ARPA funding from the state. They look like phone booths basically, but they're very small either for single use or for two people to sit in and hold just a conference or do some sort of, if you have a a Zoom meeting and you need a quiet place to do it. Notary service, free interlibrary loan with UVA that started during COVID. We charged $3 to borrow a book from outside of JMRL, but worked with the university librarian at that time to arrange for their materials to be available for our community, and that has continued. A seed library at Gordon Avenue, the African American collection and jazz collection at Gordon
Avenue. They have sensory support kits there, so they have tools for families that are bringing in kids that are overwhelmed by sensory experiences, maybe on the autism spectrum. It would include headphones or sensory things for them to use to acclimate them to the vibrant space they're going into. Almost done with those sort of services. Blood pressure monitoring stations, a thousand books books before kindergarten challenge, 100 books before graduation, a whole library of things you can check out, STEM kits, Wi Fi hotspots I mentioned, a bread making kit, foods of the world I love. It's got different spices and cookbooks from a region, so it might be foods of
Afghanistan. It will have some cookbooks and spices and spices and materials, and then you use some and you bring it back in, and then our staff will replenish it. A ukulele, apparently, I just recently learned gets checked out, if you're interested in learning how to use it. Outside of the library. Please take it out of the library. Virginia State Park passes for free access to the parks, makerspace and digital media lab at the central library, cooling and warming centers and other kind of social fabric resources that are are are very important these days. Streaming media with canopy, so that's more similar to new school Netflix where you can
log in with your library card and watch films or or educational programming. Ask a librarian chat, passes to the Discovery Museum, online homework help. It kinda goes on and on and on. Streaming music, we're working on a product now that's available for it's harder and harder to get CDs. We still have a lot of users that want CDs because they're driving a car with a CD player, and they don't necessarily have connectivity. But we're gonna eventually have to find something to replace that if we wanna keep circulating music, which we do. Do. Okay. So meeting people where they are or in my brain, this is called what we learned from COVID. I mentioned some of these already, ways to connect to our community that maybe you
can't get into a building at all times or when we're open. I've got hold to put pick up lockers, book and bill services, digital resources, the drive up windows. We also, started implementing a staff cross training during COVID because to protect our own staff, we wanted to make sure we had enough redundancy where if somebody was sick and couldn't be in, we could send people around more fluidly than we had been able to before. Outreach events, starting July year, we now have automatic renewals for physical materials. So if you check out a book and, there's nobody waiting for it and it's not one of our our lucky day bestseller collections, it will renew automatically twice.
You'll get a notice saying it's due, but we're gonna renew it for you, and it will renew for three weeks so you don't accumulate late fines there and the maker resources that I mentioned earlier. In 2023, the surgeon general released a report, warning of an epidemic of loneliness. I talked about, the real problem that that people in America were having connecting with each other, and I really see the library as being not just Jamerrill, but all public libraries as being one of the answers to that as a community space where people can get together, share ideas, commune, and really treat each other on an equal
footing. As I mentioned, summer participation was up 150% this year, and that included the largest group of adults that had ever participated in our summer reading program. So we're really reaching out to try to make sure everybody's aware of all the resources that are available at the library. Just a few samples of feedback we've gotten in the last year or so. The library is pretty much a cool place, great for people of all ages. I was able to read a 100 books, fantastic pillar of Charlottesville society, numerous resources. These this picture here is actually of the summer reading tote bag that we gave away. If you sign up for summer reading, you got a tote bag, and the idea was to color the different color.
Every week, we had different colors available on each library. You'd sign up and then color your tote bag. You're so helpful. I love this library. Awesome library for resources, books, kids, adults. Thank you so much for taking the time to help me preserve my grandma's voice. Can't wait to put it all together and make my family cry. That's the digitization I I mentioned. Somebody brought in materials and had them converted into a digital format. I live on my loan on my own. Excuse me. Central Library is my closest public library. I use the Central Branch Public Library as my third space. Being there helps alleviate my feelings of aloneness. Being there helps give me a sense of being in community with others.
When they interest me, I attend the Central Library events. Thank you for what they do. And the last one is grateful to JMRL that partners with Meals on Wheels to bring books and materials to folks that are homebound and can't get out. So Charlottesville, shares some of the financial burden for JML, although I consider it a privilege. I'm sure you feel the same. Here's what the, Charlottesville tax dollars pay for. Branch and staff salaries. It's split with Albemarle for the branches in the urban ring, and that's split along usage. You know how many are used, how many it's a three year rolling period for how much usage comes from Charles Hallam, which is from Albemarle.
Facilities, the city co owns Gordon Avenue in Central with Albemarle County. A share of regional costs based on circulation, so that's shared amongst all five of the jurisdictions that make up Jamerrill. That includes, like, administrative costs of my salary, technical services. Those are the folks that are, ordering, processing, cataloging materials, and a share of the regional reference services. And per Jamerrill's regional regional agreement, the library contracts with Charlottesville to pay 2% of our operating budget for some high level IT support. So networking support from City of Charlottesville IT, HR support from the HR department, and
then the City of Charlottesville is the fiscal agent for JAMRL. It's a great deal, and it's a great example of cooperation amongst the regional partners. So what's not paid for by Charlottesville tax dollars, local tax dollars, are books and materials. So, that state aid that I mentioned, the incentivization that the state gave for jurisdictions to to cooperate and share library resources, JAMRL gets either the top or the second most in the state. We are constantly jumping above or below Central Rappahannock around Fredericksburg depending on population shifts. So last year or this current year, it's 1,100,000 about, and we entirely almost entirely
that budget goes to, books and materials. Some of it this year is going towards salary support, and you might have to carve out some of it for equipment moving forward. I mentioned equipment here, including IT hardware that has been paid for by fines and fees entirely for fifty years at JML. Most libraries around us are no longer charging late fees. Our library board is talking about it and looking at it. The American Library Association finds late fees to be, a punitive and non equitable means to try to get materials back, and they don't think it works. So our library board's been talking about it, but, somewhere we have to pay for
IT hardware. So, that's a discussion happening right now. The other issue is as as mister Snook figured out, the digital materials don't have late fees. They are coming back automatically. So over time, that pot is gonna get smaller. Programming at Jamerrill is entirely paid for by Jamerrill's friends of the library, including the friends of Library Endowment at the CACF. They've allowed Jamerrill to do things that the library system never would have been able to do. They paid for some of those holds lockers. They, special maker equipment that I've mentioned, specialized furniture, new teen area at the Gordon
Avenue Library. That's entirely supported by our friends at the Friends of the Library. We have a book sale coming up in October, if you haven't already been this year. I just learned that this is called a Sankey chart. I think, mister or missus Sankey did a a wonderful job, but it takes some explaining. It's kind of money coming in and money going out. You see the total at the bottom. This is JAMRL's entire fiscal year twenty six budget, $11,300,000 coming in, $11,300,000 going out. At the top there, you can see the jurisdictional funding, which is Charlottesville's share, and
then Albemarle's, Greens, Louisa's, and Nelson's accounts for about 9,600,000.0 of that. The rest is largely state aid, 1,100,000.0 from state aid and then about 500,000 from other sources. And if you look on the right hand side at the green there, you can see the majority of those costs go to salaries and benefits for library staff. About $2,000,000 in operational costs for, eight branches, and a book a bookmobile is not too bad. So, people ask me a lot when the Institute for Museum and Library Services was shuttered this spring what the impact was going to be locally on their library.
That was the federal organization that provided funding for libraries across the country. Jamerrill did not get any direct money from IMLS. The State Library of Virginia got quite a bit and supported local public libraries in a lot of ways, including a lot of those databases that I mentioned. We might be looking at those going away or JAMRL having to make choices about how to support those locally. And then the staff that was there that would help in our training of new staff and kind of board preparation, things like like that. Okay. When I mentioned the state funding there, I have one caveat.
It's about 96% funded now, that $1,100,000 There's a formula in state code that says if you have this this many square acres and this many people and this many jurisdictions, then you get this amount of money, 96% funded, which is great. It hasn't been fully funded since 02/2001, and that's the only year it's been fully funded. So this has not been the most stable source of revenue for JAMRL over the last twenty years. It's been predictable, but it hasn't been where it's supposed to be. We've made great strides in the last five years statewide.
It was only about 60% funded about five years ago. So to get from 60% to 96% is great, but there's still advocacy that needs to be done there for state support. And this is where JMRI is going. This is the strategic plan that, began this year using the four core values of JMRL, making up some goals there and strategies. So the I won't read it all to you, but I encourage you to go to jmrl.org/future. This is the very broad strokes library board level. Here's what we want to happen in our communities, and there's also a document that's
an implementation plan that goes along with this that states how myself and my staff are gonna implement that for the library board. We're also thinking about, you know, expected challenges and opportunities in the next few years. Same things that a lot of people are are thinking about, of course, the funding concerns that I just mentioned. As the pie gets smaller for local government, for state government, you all and our other jurisdictional partners are gonna have to make tough choices. So the library board is gonna have to work with you all to to figure out how to do that moving forward. Of course, everybody's concerned about AI and what that's gonna mean for any industry, and
libraries are not, immune from that. I kind of look at it as I said. It's the library's job to, to connect people to each other and to information. We're gonna get the questions from your average person on the street that comes in and says, I I keep hearing about this. What is it? That's what we got when when the first PCs came out. People came to the library, and I said, What? Can you show me how to use this? The first e book readers, the first iPhones, we still get these things where people are coming in saying, I'm familiar with this technology. I've heard about it. I don't know how to use it. So it's the library's role to kind of connect them to the resources to help
them use it. Oh, look at that beautiful portico right in the middle of the Central Library. I have spoken with most of you about this project, Central Library renovation project. The building is co owned by Charlottesville and Albemarle, last fully renovated in 1981. The city has done the majority of the work and project management on upkeep in the building, with funds provided by Albemarle County for their half of it, but the city does the lion's share of the work in terms of the the project management. There's a new chiller in the building. There are renovated ADA, restrooms, which actually happened during COVID.
It was kind of a one silver lining there. But the building is desperately in in need of a face lift. It needs to be able to have space to match modern library usage. There's degrading infrastructure. There are safety and security issues, that need to be addressed. So, the Friends of the Library commissioned a design study in 2015, went around to the city and the county at that point. And didn't get a lot of movement. There was a lot of conversation about it. Working group was commissioned in '23 that really went to talk to each individual elected official and staff to talk about what would need to happen.
And we're able to kind of get the city and the county to align a vision for our CIP, which would include architecture and engineering work scheduled for fiscal year twenty seven, meaning starting next summer, hopefully, because it should take a while. So that means that you'll see me probably this fall to remind you that this is a commitment to the county, and JMRL is interested in pursuing with the city, and they'll see me as well saying the same thing. Full construction then in fiscal year twenty nine, I believe, so three years later. So there's a there's a long way to go in this project, but I'm glad to see both the city and the county looking at it together about what do
we need to do here. There's compounded value there. Every Charlottesville dollar is matched by an Albemarle dollar, and the friends of the library are prepared for the scale of fundraising that we expect this project will take. So the main concerns are modernizing systems, plumbing, electrical, security as I mentioned, providing a twenty first century experience. And, over 150,000 people came through the doors of that building last fiscal year. So there are 2,500 groups that use that meeting. As we're thinking about this upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the downtown mall, a 150,000 people
walk through the door there. So and I'm some repeat users. I'm sure we see some of the same folks every day, but still, it's a vibrant part of Downtown Charlottesville that brings people to the area. I think a renovation is really gonna shine a light on what the Charlottesville area has to offer and bring people in to use that resource. So we just need to keep up with the times. We're gonna need council support for this, and you'll hear more from me and from the library board moving forward. So if you haven't been to the library lately, come see us, this week at Central. There are two author programs, author Rachel Kessler Pawn talking about her book, The Badass
Women of Charlottesville tomorrow night at 05:30. Pulitzer Prize finalist Deborah Baker discussing her book, Charlottesville, an American Story on Saturday at 02:00 this week. You've probably heard the news that Bruce Holzinger is a local author. His newest title is the Oprah Book Club novel, and he's coming to the Central Library in September to talk about that as well. So a lot of activity there. If you can't make any of those, head on over to Gordon Avenue on Wednesday night at six to join tea tasting, explore the rainbow of teas, which I'm looking forward to. Or head to Northside tomorrow to learn about navigating Medicare with with confidence and partnership
with Java. Those are just a few of the things happening this week at your library. So check jmrl.org to hear more, and I'd love to answer any questions that you have. Thank you so much, Jay. It was a lot of information. Thank you so much. I learned a a lot about our library system. So we're really, short on time because we have another presentation. We've got about fifteen minutes, but I want to give us all opportunity to ask questions or comments. Lord, I'll start with you, sir. I would just make a comment that one night last week, the Democratic party was having a meeting on one side of the hallway, and the Republican party was having
a meeting on the other side of the hallway. So lots of usage of the facility. Fair enough. Yeah. And I'm just confirming, Sam. My recollection is that the CIP project is is definitely programmed in for a couple years now. '29. And you and you and the county have been working to make sure we're aligned. So I think that's gonna be okay. Looking forward to it. Yeah. Natalie? I so I've I have toured the the library with you and got to see the the spaces in the backstage area of the jail cell that holds books and
everything. So thank you again for You're welcome. That tour and for this great presentation today. I don't have any questions, but I did wanna point out that quote that you, mentioned, where the person said that this is their third space. That's super important because it's one of the few third spaces that is air conditioned and free. We we've heard from the community about how, they like to be on the downtown mall, but there's not enough seating. And so they feel like they have to pay for something in order to get a chair. But the library provides that without having to pay, and then you can have access
to all these wonderful programs and and books, as well. So, I know that's something we can do better about creating third spaces, and making them more accessible for people, but supporting the the library is one of the key things that we do in that front too. So it's hard it's hard to to not be stoked about library things. So I agree. Thank you for your presentation. You're welcome. Michael? Yeah. I think, as others knew it stated, not just the access to information, but as a public space where people from all economic classes can come together and interact without
needing to spend money, is a really important community resource and speaks to the power of publicly owned and funded spaces and institutions. I feel like if you already have libraries, they probably would have been created now with some bizarre public private partnership. And your buildings would have been sold off by a private equity firm by now. But, all of that to say, two questions. You so that at this point, the impacts of changes in federal funding, you're only anticipating potentially losing access to databases that the state funding supported.
Is that accurate? Correct. At this point. And then it sounds like it'll be one or two years before we actually know the full cost of the renovation. So we have placeholders, but we can anticipate that number could very well change. Yes. There's, so I mentioned the design study from 2015, and that that was the cost estimation that JMRL was using in resubmitting this project every year with a 10% inflationary escalator. I brought those numbers back to that, architecture group two years ago, and they confirmed we were in pretty good shape.
But, yes, cost of construction projects and you look at other local construction projects, I think we'll know much more once the project is done. Right. And I think we are, but we'll just be in a place of anticipating, you know, we're not locked in. But thank you. Thank you. David, thank you so much, sir. Appreciate you. Thank you. Have a good day, man. The next item we're gonna hear from is, strategic outcome areas on economic prosperity. Miss Marshall. Thank you all. I'm gonna grab a quickie. Alright. Good afternoon, mayor, council, city manager Sanders, and members of the public.
I am going to speed through a presentation on the economic prosperity update for the city. So just as a reminder, the city council has determined that economic prosperity is one of its strategic goals, thinking through what it means to ensure that residents not just survive, but that they thrive. So I wanted to take a moment to remind you all a little bit of some city led initiatives and city led funding that already exist. So specifically, again, this slide is just a reminder of existing programs that the city
leads. It's meant to be busy to show you all how much we already do. Those city led initiatives can work to help people stay in their homes from the commissioner of revenue, access financial support to remain in their rental units with human services, and help people afford heat to heat and cool their homes from utilities. They allow community members to use our transit system for free for teens to have paid internships to expand their resumes and to gain employment and get resume help from our downtown job center, as well as to, gain the support to reenter our community
from being justice involved with our Home to Hope program. This work keeps with our use of the social determinants of health as well as a way to, as a way to ground our work to being fair and just while serving the whole community. The city also works to invest in our partners to help provide that economic prosperity opportunities to the community throughout the area of affordable housing, nonprofit programming, and supportive services, as well as direct sponsorship of key program opportunities that impact financial mobility.
This shows that prosperity is not just in economic development, but also social equity and action. However, speaking of my friends in economic development, the team there works diligently to ensure that many of the key, focuses established within their own strategic plan lead with economic prosperity in mind. They do this through supporting intentional and innovative growth, creating pathways for opportunity, and ensuring access to equitable entrepreneurship. We'll touch on some of their successes and successful programs that help our community continue
to achieve the council's strategic goal for economic prosperity. This work can include, supporting companies like Luna Labs, General Atomics, and Dural, which have all brought new jobs, significant capital to the community. Programs like Civo Match help bring in additional employment, investment, and increase wages to our community, and the business visitation program ensures that leaders of businesses in any size are heard from and their needs are worked towards. The office provides key workforce programming like their growing opportunity or go cook, go solar,
and ready to work program, which provide training and job readiness. Further, programs like go higher incentivize employers to bring city residents into living wage work, and coffee and conversations help job seekers feel connected and part of the community. The team also deserves some kudos along with chef Antoine of Culinary Concepts AB for pioneering the Go Cook or Growing Opportunity Cook program that's receiving statewide recognition this fall. And then we can see a focus on entrepreneurship come to life through their partnership
with Beacon Kitchen, as well as the Go Startup Course, which also serve to take the lead in supporting small businesses, minority owned and led businesses, as well as women owned and led businesses. And adding in the work of critical resource directories, the city is supporting entrepreneurship, which for many is a wonderful access point to increasing their economic mobility and opportunity. Taken together, these efforts to prepare residents attract investment and lower barriers to participation. But even with these programs, some challenges remain.
Too many families in Charlottesville are caught in what we call the muddy middle, earning too much to qualify for many forms of assistance, but not nearly enough to keep up with the rising cost of living. To put this challenge into a perspective, the average rent in Charlottesville, according to apartments.com, is now more than a thousand $700 a month. That means a household would need to earn nearly $69,000 a year just to meet standard affordability guidelines. And when we look across rental our rental market, only about a quarter of all
rentals fall in between the $700 to $1,500 range, while 40% cost more than $2,000 a month. These numbers show just how limited affordable options are and why so many families are caught in the muddy middle. But if it takes $7,000 a year just to afford average rent in Charlottesville, that leaves more than 4,000 households who simply don't earn enough to make that possible. The good news is that this is exactly why we're focusing on economic mobility so
that more families can find stability, access better opportunities, and move closer to being able to afford to live and thrive right here in our community. Council's given us a clear vision that Charlottesville should be a place where everyone has the chance to thrive. Yet today, more than 5,500 households in our community are not thriving. Many of them are part of the Alice population, asset limited, income constrained, but employed. These are working households that continue to access our community every day, contribute to our
community every day, but too often lack access to the supports and resources they need to achieve stability. And that gap is exactly what our economic mobility and equity work is designed to address. In Charlotte school, about 30% of our households fall into Alice category. These are working families that are doing everything right, but still struggling to make ends meet. For these households, it takes nearly $70,000 a year just to cover the basics and to keep up with average rent.
That reality shows why many families find themselves stretched even when they're employed full time. What this really means is that more than 52% of households in Charlottesville, over 9,500 families are at or below the Alice threshold. And these families are surviving but not truly thriving. And too many can't make ends meet for even a basic need like housing. That reality forces impossible choices, deciding whether to pay rent or pay for childcare to cover food or medicine, and many of these families do not qualify for traditional safety
net programs. But this is exactly why our national partnerships matter, because they give us new tools, resources, and strategies to close the gaps and help more families move from surviving to thriving. To truly support economic mobility and opportunity to the nine thousand five hundred and eighty four four households in Charlottesville who are at or below Alice. We've engaged in three national incentive initiatives since 2024. These competitive opportunities give the city staff a chance to bring forward forward data driven,
evidence based, and person centered strategies. And they allow us to explore new ways of helping families move from simply surviving to thriving. In 2024, Charlottesville was honored to be selected as one of just 15 local governments nationwide for the ICMA economic mobility and opportunity peer learning cohort. The first question that our team asked was simple but powerful. What's missing in Charlottesville School that prevents our residents from moving up the economic ladder even when opportunities exist? And as we explored that question, we realized we didn't quite have the data we
needed to fully talent of our UBA master student, mister Anthony Moderna, we connect conducted a service gap analysis where we asked both financial partners and non profit partners who work everyday with our human services and equity programs. What do you see? So a couple interesting findings for you all quickly. Out of our financial partners, a 100% of them indicated that they believe financial insecurity
had increased in the city of Charlottesville. Their reasoning include inflation, housing prices, and lack of savings. So remember, these are our banker friends. 75% of respondents did not believe adequate accessible services existed for individuals who earn more than 50% median family income. For our non profit, 76% of them, so they were slightly more optimistic, believe that financial insecurity has increased in Charlottesville. And their reasons were that their clients were leaving to try to find economic mobility and opportunity. They couldn't afford housing and food and secure employment that meets their costs, and working
with cuts and reductions in eligibility of critical benefits. Some top factors we identified as contributing to financial insecurity includes cost of housing, generational poverty, lack of paying jobs, poor medical and mental health, as well as simply being older. And our non profits found that some factors causing or sustaining economic immobility included child care act access, systemic bias and racism, lack of access to medical and mental health care, and lack of early childhood education. So we took this data and moved into our next national program, the National League
of Cities Southern Cities Economic Initiative, where Charlottesville is selected this year as one of 20 Southern communities alongside our companies in Harrisonburg. For this initiative, we proposed a project called building economic prosperity and inclusion through access to quality child care. We designed it in direct response to feedback from our nonprofit partners. The goal is to address the shortage of affordable high quality child care by also tackling its greatest hurdle, a lack of stable workforce. The challenge is clear. Projects like PHA's Kindlewood need more than a dozen new instructors just to open their
classrooms. Families may qualify for subsidized slots, but without teachers, that classroom stays empty. And since the city has not traditionally led efforts in early learning, we're especially excited to partner with experts at United Way Greater Charlottesville and their Ready Regions team. Together, we see this as a chance to test our new model and move the needle to, on council's economic prosperity goals. Our hope is that this childcare workforce pipeline will create impact in three ways. Career pathways, so training community members as classroom leaders or future teachers, expanded access, opening
more early learning classrooms so parents can return to work or advance in their jobs, and early success for children, giving our youngest residents the strong start they need, knowing that by third grade children shift from learning to read to reading to learn. And this initiative is about building both family stability and community resilience, and we're hopeful that it will serve as a foundation for long term prosperity. For this particular program, we are in the first phase where we're building a business plan. Should that plan be accepted, there may be some additional investments and we'll test it
out. But right now, you'll notice there's no data slide next. Finally, we're really excited to be able to announce our acceptance into the ICMA Economic Mobility and Opportunity Special Assistance Program or ICMA, EMOSA, because that's a whole lot of words. And we were accepted into that program just this month. This program is a two year opportunity, supported through funding from the Gates Foundation to have an executive level leader here thinking through how we can plan to do more
work for economic prosperity, specifically tasked by ICMA to lead a community engaged co design process during their two year tenure and then to help implement or design policy or programs that work for our needs and that match what we hear from the community. This one, again, is extraordinarily brand new. In August, they had their first office hours today. You get to pick one from this week. So more information will be forthcoming, and we are very excited to be in this
program with 16 other communities, including our colleagues in Staunton. So as we look ahead, our focus remains on the residents most at risk, our Alice households and those living in poverty. With support from ICMA and National League of Cities, we'll continue to strengthen strategies around childcare, financial empowerment, housing stability, and workforce development to suggest to our city manager who will bring what he believes works best to you all. What gives me the most hope is that we're not starting from scratch.
Again, Charlottesville has already has strong programs in place. And now with these national partnerships, we're bringing in new resources, expertise, and momentum. By weaving our local investments together with national best practices and grounding it on social determinants of health framework, we're positioning Charlottesville not just to grow, but to grow in a way that is fair, that is just, and sustainable for all of our residents. And with that, I went one minute over. Thank you so much. Brian? Yeah. I I really appreciated that because it shows, you know, all the different things that
we're working on, but the goal isn't just necessarily to give people money, although that might what it act looks like in practice perhaps. But the goal is to help people prosper and and grow and have something that's self sustaining and all of the things that, the initiatives that you just showed us, I think, support that. And I also really appreciate the initiative that you and others and city staff have taken to go after these these programs with, you know, your various professional organizations.
I think that that'll bring a lot of, new thinking and fresh blood. So thank you. Yep. Now. I was curious about the partnerships that we were talking about at the program. So on the program. So the both ICMA programs, the one that Chris and I did, it is the second class, and I believe they're on their third now, so still pretty shiny. The ICMA, Economic Mobility and Opportunity Special Assistant, this is the first time they have
tried something like this. So we're we're in with the inaugural class. The Southern Cities Initiative has had several administrations, but it is about a one and a half to two year long, program. So, you don't see, a lot of churn in that. But outside of our current cohort that has ourselves in Harrison Burg, the only other Virginia community to have gone through it before us is Danville, Virginia. Okay. Great. The reason why I was asking is I was trying to figure out, like, are
we now in a better position to take advantage of these than we have been in the past, or were they probably that plus the fact that they're new. But it's great that we are going out and seeking these opportunities in a way that I don't I don't think we've done before. So thank you. Michael? Yeah. I appreciate the update and the new initiative. Obviously, as you highlighted, the city already does, you know, a tremendous amount of things that do make a positive impact. You highlighted it though, and, you know, it's reflected in the community survey. It's just one data point that, you know, the number of people who report thinking
that there's, adequate economic mobility in Charlottesville is, like, 10%. And we see that in data about the wealth gap, economic mobility that we're very, very far away from actually having true economic mobility in Charlottesville. And, you know, this presentation just made me think I think one of the things the city still is lacking that really needs to happen is following the model some cities have moved towards of having a real strategy of community wealth building that's not just having scattershot programs, but thinking about how does this all connect systemically to create
more systemic change. And I think, you know, the downtown mall was created with a ton of intentionality. There was purchases of land. There were partnerships to get things like Live Arts and the Pavilion. If we're really gonna create a black business district in Charlottesville, it will require that level of intentionality for wealth building at that level or to build a pipeline of training, areas of employment that are having rising wages and rising demand. So it's not counter to your presentation at all, but I think we still need to get to a place where we're thinking and planning much more systemically if we're
really gonna change the wealth gap. Because as you highlighted, you know, the average black family in Charlottesville is at 50% of area median income. So a lot of things we discussed aren't even reaching the average black family in Charlottesville. You know, how do we change that? One of the one of the things that we we know, or at least we think we know, let me put it that way, is that a lot of the the better paying jobs that are coming to Charlottesville are are coming in ways that
we end up, hiring people from out of of the area to come live here. In other words, they don't actually manifest themselves in opportunities for current residents to move up. Is the and that touches on the economic mobility issue that was referenced before. Is there a a way that we can or should be thinking about how we go about economic development and economic prosperity in general that that move is better in
that direction? And I think that's what I appreciate about having the opportunity to highlight the work that the Office of Economic Development is doing. That is based in their strategic plan, and it's extremely intentional. So for example, with their go programming, they really are looking to help train people in jobs that have a living wage. And so any of the programs that they're running, minus something like a go startup where you might start off maybe, you know, not making that living wage, but moving forward is really focused focused in on that. And I think that there are opportunities within their existing work and within relationships that
the city manager is establishing with PVCC as well as the university to see how we can continue to move people up and forward towards the goals that they wish to reach. And I will share that from, the information that we got in that survey as well as some, data that's been shared with me. Having access to quality early childhood care is really important because that would allow a caregiver to go to school, to go to class, depending on if you ever had
a second shift opportunity for care or even a third shift. That could allow someone to take a shift differential, maybe move up, in some programming. But also here within the city, we're thinking about that. I know our public works team has, looked at journeyman programs, apprenticeship programs to get people into those skilled trades, that are needed. As you all hear often from the city manager, we are waiting to do a project, for example, because we need to wait to get the right construction crew, the
right team here. So that's something that we can do in house, but I think that that is definitely something that, Chris' team is thinking about with intentionality and sharing, and some of this work will help us to think about that as well. Thank you. Would that involve, like, KTEC? Yes. It can involve KTEC as well. Absolutely. And so I know that they're they're still continuing to define what where they wanna go, but I know that, you know, there was nursing there, there's been automotive there, being married to an automotive mechanic.
I know I can't fix my car, and so those are all still really wonderful careers for people who want to use their hands and maybe choose not to go go to college. I think also sometimes we talk about trades as a you don't have a choice. You do. There are plenty of people who choose to go into trades who would have been excellent college students, and there are plenty people who choose to go in trades because they simply don't want that experience. So absolutely. Thanks. Yep. So, lots to talk about, but we really have to move move on.
I'm so sorry. So we're gonna go into closed session. Thank you so much, Ashley. Yeah. This is a really long motion. So motion for city council closed session pursuant to section 2.2 dash thirty seven twelve of the Virginia code. I move that the city council closed this open meeting and convenient to close session is authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as follows. One, pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2 dash thirty seven eleven a one for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates to be appointed to the following boards and commissions.
Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee, Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee, Community Development Block Grant and Home Task Force, Housing Advisory Committee, John Advisory committee, Jefferson Madison Regional Library Board, local building code board of appeals, minority business commission, personnel appeals board, Piedmont family YMCA board of directors, planning commission, police oversight, police oversight board, retirement commission, Sister Cities Commission, Social Services
Advisory Board, SPCA board of directors, towing advisory board, tree commission, vendor appeals board, and youth council. Is there second? Second. Okay. All in favor? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Once, five it passes five to zero. We'll go into closed session. We'll be back, about 06:30. Thank you. Part: 2
We're gonna, come reconvene to a regular meeting. I apologize for a little delay. 04:00 meeting got a little bit delayed, and everything got pushed back a little bit. We had some interviews, for some committees. And and so can we be called out of closed session, please? Please? Sure. I move that this council certified by a recorded vote that to the best of each council member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed session were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session.
Second. The second. Okay. Can we vote on this? Alright. So we will now have, we're switching over to, like, everything, e voting. So, so we had several votes, and, decisions made on different boards and commission. And so, vice mayor Pinkston will read those all.
So for the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee, CTEC, Yong Yul Ahn, the Community Development Block Grant in Home Task Force, Kayla Theal, the Housing Advisory Committee, Rich Bard, for the John Advisory Board, Christine Appert, Chris Cullinan, and Steven Johnson, for the Jefferson Madison Regional Library Board, Meredith Kohl, which is a reappointment for a term ending 06/30/2029, Local building
code board of appeals, Ted Horn and Zack Snyder. Planning commission, Danny Yoder. Retirement commission, Casey Parker. Sister City's commission, Jason Mason. John. I'm sorry. John Mason, Bonita Patton, Kristin Petros De Gau, SPA say SPCA board of directors, Sina McGill, and we, are rescinding the appointment of Chris Cullum, and and we're appointing Sina McGill. Tree Commission, Worthy Martin and Shea Wales, the youth council, Lila Castleman, a twelfth grade
student, Lyric Cooper, CCS Middle School, and Kimora Williams, Lugo McGinnis Academy student. Second. Second. Okay. Can we vote on this, please? Okay. Okay. So, we will now have a moment of silence. Thank you all very much. We are there any announcements from counselors? Any announcements you need tonight? I have one. Yep. So this is, an announcement related to Albemarle County, but, all roads lead to Charlottesville. So, there is a survey now about the three notched trail shared use path, which
is, a greenway that's hopefully going to connect, Charlottesville through, Ivy Crozet, Greenwood, and Afton, potentially all the way to Waynesboro. So, please feel free to go provide feedback for that. I could read out the the URL, but probably the easiest thing to do is just to Google three notch trail survey, and that'll bring you to it. It's a short questionnaire about, you know, what your priorities are, how often you might use that, and as many, voices adding to that will help, design it, as best
as it can be. So thanks. Great. Other announcements? I know we have one proclamation. We do. For Women's Equality Day twenty twenty five. Whereas on 08/26/1920, tens of millions of women gained voting rights. The greatest history, yet a hundred and five years later, women have still have not achieved full equality and face ongoing and increasing threats of discrimination, violence, loss of bodily autonomy, and restrictions on voting rights. And whereas, although on 01/27/2020 ERA has not been fully recognized and published, allowing gender
based discrimination to continue without recourse under the foundational document undergirding all our laws. And whereas federal laws ensuring the equal rights and safety of women can be and are currently being weakened or removed with the US Supreme Court retreating from its own precedent to take away previous constitutional rights, impeding women's ability to make decisions about their own bodies, families, and futures, and causing irreparable harm and unnecessary deaths. And whereas females make up nearly 53% of Charlottesville population and the city of Charlottesville has an appropriate and legitimate role in securing and defending gender equality in the Commonwealth
of Virginia and The United States. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Charlottesville City Council that 08/26/2025 is Women's Equality Day in the City Of Charlottesville in celebration of all who worked to gain voting rights for women, in recognition of all who have continued the fight for gender equality, and in support of all citizens and lawmakers working today to preserve democracy and guarantee equal rights for all under the law in the Commonwealth Of Virginia and in the Thank you, Mayor Wade and members of the city council. I am Lisa Hillgartner, president of the League of Women Voters of the Charlottesville area.
With me today is Charlotte Gibson, president of the Charlottesville chapter of the National Organization of Women, and we thank you on behalf of organizations for the proclamations. The legal women voters grew out of the National Women's Party after the nineteenth amendment was, ratified and put in the constitution in 1920. Now, on August 1970, the National Organization of Women founded just four years earlier to take action for the rights of women, held a strike for equality.
A 100,000 people nationwide attended reignited the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, nearly fifty years after it was introduced. 1971, representative Bella Abzug introduced a successful bill in congress designating August 26 each year as women's equality days. Efforts like this have revised to push the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which continued through the nineteen seventies. Seventies, but shot stopped short of the ratification, and but gained re gained momentum again
in 02/2017. In 02/2020, Virginia became the thirty eighth state to ratify the con the, twenty eighth amendment, the equal rights amendment into the US constitution. We still advocate for the rights of women, enforcement of quality in hiring, firing, work related benefits and compensation, equity in court, and health care, including the ability for women to control their own bodies, and much more still languishes. Even even voting rights for women are under threat. In closing, we appreciate all the efforts that have been made by the city council
to foster equality for women and your continued support of women and girls. More can be done, but this proclamation keeps Charlottesville on the right track, and we thank you. Our right track, and we thank you. Our organization follows the workings of city council closely and advocates for its citizens. You can learn more about us, the legal women voters by going to lwb-cva.org and Charlottesville now at C Ville Now Dot Org. Thank you. Thank you. Did you want a picture? Oh, sure.
Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you all so much for being here. We're now at the, point at our agenda for community matters. Where 16 slots open up, and seven of those slots have already been, preregistered. So we have nine after the first seven have already spoken. So the first speaker would be, Betsy. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Oops. Okay. I'm, Betsy Reitker. I'm actually on the planning commission. Yes. Thank you. Yep. You service there. Yeah. And I just wanted to speak tonight about something that is going before the board
of architectural review tomorrow night, not for a decision, but for discussion. And I just wanted to kind of raise, people's awareness of that. There's a proposal for an 11 story, UVA student housing apartment building that, would be built directly up the hill from the West Haven community adjacent to the railroad tracks and the standard on the other side. And over years, I've also taught, architecture at, UVA.
Most of the students that study Charlottesville and the urban context in history will identify moments in time where bad decisions were made, and created a more divided neighborhoods. So the most egregious one was probably, during urban renewal when Vinegar Hill was destroyed, then leading the way to, design West Haven as our per first public housing neighborhood.
And West Haven was, uniquely situated very close to, Main Street, but dug way down into the hill, so that it wouldn't be seen by Main Street. So that whole history is wrapped up in this new project coming on top of the hill to further create that barrier between the Tenth And Page and West Haven neighborhoods and Main Street. You you know all this.
I just thought I would mention a couple of ideas, to think about to prevent future, problems like this. I think this is one of those things that was the city's responsibility way back, you know, in the nineteen fifties and sixties. So the city could be more proactive now about preventing some of these barriers, from being, repaired now. One of my thoughts was, there will be an easement. The apartment building has to have an easement to reach the radio tower.
Perhaps that could be run by parks and rec. The city could buy it. I was thinking about how parks and rec does such a good job weaving little pieces of land to connect our parks, and create more better infrastructure for transportation, kind of like the McIntyre Bridge over to the skate park. We a lot of the parks have little mulch paths back in the neighborhoods. One of the, potential problems with the residents being able to get up to Main
Street to get to the bus stops and connect. To So you just wanted to just wrap up your comments. Oh, yeah. Sorry. To Main Street, is the security, and the security would be owned by the student housing. And so I think in some form task force study, I think there's a lot of these little zones that could be studied and put on a list for the city. Thank you. Thank you so much, Betsy. Appreciate you. The next speaker is, is Carla Manno.
Hello. Thank you for your time, Carla Manno. So it's a dangerous business going out your door, said Bilbo to Frodo. And this is how I feel tonight. None of us really wanna come here with a concern as a citizen. It's not easy to do from below to you on high. I serve currently on the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. It's the first time in my thirty five years in Charlottesville aside from in my early twenties, a long time ago when I was the, a representative for the Fifield
Neighborhood Association as the vice president. You might imagine what it was like in the late eighties, early nineties to take that position as a teacher at Beaufort. I care about this city. I care about it passionately. Every few years, I'd say every ten years, I'm aware of something where I'm I'm sorry, I just have to come and speak. So currently, the issue is that we have four members of our board that have also started on the side not reporting it in minutes or at any point since I've been on the board, which is February, who also have a private foundation called
the Seaville Parks Foundation. I'm not necessarily opposed to this concept. Had I started something like that, I think I would have immediately revealed it and rescinded my position on the official board. Being a curious person, I've looked a little further into what's happened. We only found out about it because it was made public on Jeffrey Frasier's, social media site, Happy to announce about a month and a half ago. So a few of us on the board asked for an emergency meeting to discuss this. As I said in that meeting, it's really to help them.
This really immediately looks like a conflict of interest, like at least small c corruption. And the reason I use that word is that apparently, they've been working on an MOU with, the city manager city attorneys look at this and we've never even heard about it. We've been told that it's because, well, we are a public body and they are private. But as I've learned through your own attorneys in sessions, any time three or more
members of our board are together, it needs to be public. They've said, well, we're not really talking about parks. But if you look at their website, they had to be talking about parks to develop this website. So there's a problem. I'm assuming you already know about it because city manager has looked at it. Attorneys have looked at it. We have three open positions on the board right now because of people resigning based on perhaps our questions. Only one from that board. So we still have a problem. We have three official members who are on the foundation board of directors.
Again, I bring it to you. Dangerous to come out and say that I don't often quote Tolkien, but I feel a responsibility to share it with you. I'd like you to address it. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Jacob Woods. Hi. Good evening. My name is Jacob Woods. I own a piece of property, 1458 Avon Street. It will be impacted by the multimodal improvements that is being, I believe voted on tonight. I wanted to speak out about the loss of street parking between Belmont Cottages Lane and Palantyne, which is right at the very bottom of the hill.
My property and others is part of a planned unit development there. There are 15 units and we're looking at losing 15, street parking spots. We're not opposed to the idea of promoting bicycling and pedestrians. The the problem is really the impact of those particular spots. If you look at the street, our section is actually pushed back further than the rest of Avon Street. Even going back, I couldn't find anything in the public record about the dividing line and if it was ever pushed, even from records into, Albemarle County.
The one of the main concerns is that the six units that are on Belmont Cottages Lane were actually Habitat for Humanity homes and this board approved funding for those homes, to help provide, the incentive for those homes to, exist and all six of those homes only have one parking spot each. So, they are heavily dependent on the street parking that is gonna be eliminated. That being said, I really feel like it's gonna be a disproportionate impact to a particularly vulnerable group of folks, and, I'm not very excited about it.
We voiced our concerns to Virginia Department of Transportation with the hopes of perhaps looking at a redesign and perhaps, you know, maintaining some of the parking spots, if there's any possibility to maintain any. We're also concerned about safety. There have been multiple crashes in both directions on that street, one of which took out my, my neighbors, the, head of the HOA, took out his porch because a car came off. And when you widen the street and you put more bike lanes and pedestrian lanes, sometimes, cars feel incentivized to move even faster.
And so it actually proposes poses a risk to bicyclists and pedestrians going down that hill and back up. Really like to see potential to redesign, perhaps keep some of the spots, perhaps, a spot between where the pedestrians and bicyclists would be and the traffic to help, you know, shield pedestrians from potential injury. Just trying to make sure I've covered everything. Yeah, we are 15 units and we're looking at losing at least 15 parking spots. All this pictures that you see and everything are taken during daylight hours, which really
doesn't capture how much those spots are used because everyone is at work. And so, really, at night when when everyone parks, you don't get satellite pictures because there's no point in taking it. It'll all be dark. So, thank you very much for your time. Thank you, mister Woods. The next speaker is Jacqueline Jackie Timken. Yep. That's it right there. Hi. My name is Jackie Timken. Temkin. I'm a business owner in the city. I've spoken to you guys before about inequitable access to play surfaces and partnerships for
girls sports, and other, you know, programs for, different groups. I too am talking about this Parks and Rec Foundation that I also just found out about. I'm primarily upset because and I understand that it is fact that Parks and Rec does not have enough staff members currently to cover the wide range of partnerships that we have, you know, request for, but all of a sudden there are we're just finding out that there's Board members who are on some other foundation. They have inequitable access to the Board and to Parks and Rec because they're on the Board, which is crazy.
The fact that time and money and effort is being spent on spaces, which I am an avid hiker. I love all the spaces, but nothing is being done to fund more programs for kids. It's also concerning that, the there's no I mean, I get the lawyers are looking over the MOU, but currently, the foundation seems to think that they have they're gonna have some ability to talk to Parks and Rec about what they wanna fund. And here, we just went through this massive process for trying to redo the whole
master plan for Parks and Rec. And now we have an independent outside foundation that's gonna dangle, you know, thousands of thousands of dollars over Parks and Rec to get done what they wanna see get done, which is, again, just spaces. You know, who's gonna say that they're gonna put the money in Tonsler Park? Right? There's lots of things that need to be done there and unclear. So it's it's deeply concerning that this is already so far. It wasn't really public knowledge. I mean, if you knew to FOIA it, you probably could, but who would have thought, you you know, there's a secret foundation that's being formed about it?
It's not necessarily going to programs that are gonna help the city. It's not gonna help, you know, low income, programs for girls. It's not gonna help, you know, all sorts of stuff. So, I urge you to look into it. Thank you so much for your comments. Alicia? Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan. I live in the county. During thoughtful conversations with members of the council explaining why you don't support the resolution condemning federal immigration enforcement tactics and affirming community safety principles, you said that you don't want to draw attention to the city and our immigrant neighbors.
Members of the immigrant community with whom I have contact have not raised those safety concerns nor have the thousand people who've signed the supporting petition. I will rely on pastor Brenda Brown Grooms to make the case for action. This is taken from the prayer she offered for the Moral Monday gathering in Lynchburg earlier today. In this month, when we remember the anniversary of August 2017, we brace for the assault on democracy. We believe we can overcome this horror, but will we? Will we lay aside fear, privilege, class, economic, and social status, tribal allegiances, and plain
old human greed to allow the safe birth of the next phase of this republic? The civil war is still being adjudicated here. We know this is so because all roads from that time to Charlottesville's summer of hate, the January sixth insurrection, to Trump's current occupation of Washington, DC are living proof that America's original sin still and always muddies the waters of our collective life. Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan could not have existed in a country whose
people really believed that all people are created equal. Help us recognize the hypocrisy of white nationalism posing as Christianity when it is really apostasy and a democracy of the people, for the people, and by the people. The time is fast approaching when we will not be able to stop the death of democracy. All that is necessary to kill America, this dream, is for good people to continue to do nothing. Remind us that sin isn't isn't just what we do, it's what we allow. Let us not allow the cruelty coming from the White House or the halls of
Congress or the bench of the Supreme Court or the actions of our fellow Americans to make us afraid or keep us from working for the day when all people are treated as equals. Let us not be afraid. To that, I will add end your silence. Work with us to make the resolution stronger. Work with us to prepare a community response to the backlash that will come sooner or later. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is James Hensley. Good evening. Jim Hensley. I'm a Albemarle County resident living in the Bullen Mills neighborhood.
I work in Downtown Charlottesville at 350 Park Street. I have the pleasure of advising the council and through the meeting that we're having here of an important local event that's coming up on September 5. That's a Friday, September 5. It is the seventy fifth anniversary, commemoration of the Gregory Swanson case decision. You probably are familiar with this because Ashley Marshall, of the city staff has worked
on, planning this program and the city of Charlottesville is a partner, in this program. This program will be in the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, downtown Charlottesville. Starts at 02:00 again on Friday, September 5 and, it is free and open to the public. The location of the program in the library is in the Swanson Case Court Room.
That was the location where this decision was actually made by the federal district court. Now what was this decision? We just had a speaker referred to, Jim Crow. This was a decision in 1950, in which Gregory Swanson, an African American, had applied to be a student at the University of Virginia Law School. The law school faculty unanimously supported his application for admission. However, the board of visitors turned him down because of the laws, the Jim Crow
laws that were in effect at that time stating that an African American could not go to the University of Virginia. Gregory Swanson filed suit against the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia and on September 5, the federal court rendered its decision ordering the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia to admit Gregory Swanson who then became the first African American admitted to a segregated college, not just in Virginia, but in the Old South.
This was a landmark civil rights, case and is, very important that, everyone in this community be aware of this program and those that can, please attend it. Speakers include the Dean of the Law School, Leslie Kendrick, US District Court Court Judge here in Charlottesville, Jasmine Yoon, and Jennifer McClellan, United States representative, in congress who is was a, University of Virginia Law School graduate and has a lot to say about
the impact of this decision on her and other African Americans, who were interested in pursuing, higher education in previously segregated institutions. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next, speaker is Lily Lily West. Hi, all. Thank you for having me. Again, my name is Lily West. I'm the president and CEO of the UVA Alumni Association, and I just wanna start by expressing my gratitude for this opportunity to share more about our building project, which I know you're gonna address later in the agenda.
I view this project as transformational for our organization, but my hope, of course, is that it has a hugely positive impact on the university and Charlotte Charlottesville communities too. So there are three things I wanna convey to you all tonight. The first, which is important to underscore, is that the alumni association is a separate and independent five zero one c three, and we've always been independent from the university, actually. It means that we're alumni led. I report to a governing body of alumni and also that this project is entirely
funded by us. So we aren't receiving any funds from the university to build this building. And it's part of why we're seeking financing to begin construction. The second thing I want to convey to second thing I want to convey to you all is just what our work is about. At the end of the day, we are community builders. We are long term relationship builders. Our mission is to build bonds between alumni, but also between alumni and the university. And so what that means in practice, between alumni and the university. And so what that means in practice is we are bringing thousands of alumni back to Charlottesville every year for events like reunions, tailgates, young alumni reunions, which will happen
at the pavilion in just a few weeks, career events, speaker series, and a whole host of other events and festivities throughout the year. And what that also leads to is something that is baked into who we are, which is the fact that we view ourselves as a community asset. You know, for all of these externally facing events that we host, we prioritize working with local and alumni owned businesses, to drive millions of dollars back to Charlottesville and ultimately provide an broader community.
While in the immediate term, it does address a very real need, which is that our current facility, which, while beautiful, is failing, the longer term goal is that we finally have a facility that will enable more events, Lewis Mountain Neighborhood Association also feels good about this project. And given the way that it's gonna be constructed, the flexibility, the footprint, the hope
is, of course, that we can continue to drive community building and engagement for Charlottesville and beyond for decades to come. So thank you for this opportunity. I am proud of this project, and I hope as you learn more about it, you can be too. Thanks again. Thank you very much. So that was the last pre registered speaker with opportunity for nine more speakers. Who else would like to speak, at this time? Kevin? Mister Cots? Hello. Hello. My name is Kevin Cox. You know me. And so you'll understand what I mean when I say I'd like to proffer an
olive branch and mend some fences. Okay? Mister Sanders inherited a terrible legacy of neglect of ADA compliance, sidewalks, curb ramps, and many other essential infrastructure issues. But now, he's taken charge. He's working with the bicycle pedestrian advisory committee and they're moving forward with many different projects. Those projects are being done because they are needed and they are based on the facts. Okay? Now, Second And Elliot. One fact about Second And Elliot is the sight distance. I've driven through that intersection.
I've walked through it. I've driven through it with my dash cam. Sight distance is not a problem. Here's the issue with sight sight distance though, the road undulates and as you come down the hill from Sixth Street the undulations slightly block the view of the paint of the crosswalk and about that much space above it. And that's just for a few seconds. It does not block the view of the pedestrian. It would not block the view of one of those rectangular signs that says drivers must stop.
The intersection has the crossing has many good reasons to put it in. Some of them are in strollers. Some of them are in wheelchairs. And many of them have two feet and walk across it like you and me. So I hope you will look at the facts and reassess the decision to reject the request to put in a marked crosswalk. I have a statement from one of your members. Strictly on the facts, the city was just wrong about the Elliot Second Intersection. It clearly meets VDOT minimum standards and clearly falls within VDOT's framework as being an
intersection where a marked crosswalk should be installed. So please take a second look at the facts and protect people with that marked crosswalk. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Hello. My name is Wendy, and I'm a community organizer at the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents. I'm here today to comment on the proposed 11 story luxury student apartment building located at 835843, and 847 West Main Street. Residents of West Haven and the Tenth And Page neighborhood are concerned about the height
of the building and how it would loom over West Haven and together with the standard, make the residents feel more crowded and entrapped. Currently, there is no accessible walking path from West Haven to West Main Street. West Haven residents have to walk all the way around from Page Street up Tenth Street or Eighth Street to get to West Main Street. It has long been a priority for West Haven residents to have an accessible walking path from West Haven to West Main Street once West Haven redevelopment is complete. This building would sit right on top of the West Haven residents proposed walkway and
obstruct their accessibility and visibility. But this building is more than these concerns, which I want to be clear, are still meaningful and material when they stand alone as independent reasons for opposition. This building is the standard, is the lark, is the flats, is the dairy market, is the dairy market expansion, is the mark. The Tenth And Page neighborhood, one of Charlottesville's historic black neighborhoods that includes West Haven, has repeatedly, time after time, been encroached upon, taken from, ransacked, and ignored for the
benefit of ginormous profit generating developments to support a population that is largely non black, often transient, and people who are not among the long term residents of Charlottesville. The walkway to West Main Street that is a priority for residents is not just a sidewalk. It's more than a sidewalk because West Haven was purposefully dug 16 feet below the ground and isolated from West Main Street when the city of Charlottesville constructed West Haven in 1964 after demolishing the vibrant, independent black community of Vinegar Hill, all because Charlottesville
didn't want people to see poor black people from one of Charlottesville's busiest roads. When West Haven residents talk about not wanting to be overshadowed by a looming, towering building, they're talking about this building at 08:35, 08:43, and 847 West Main Street, but they are also talking about the looming, imminent, ever present afterlife of enslavement, Jim Crow, over policing, mass incarceration, and continual ongoing gentrification. Not all increases in housing supply are good increases in housing supply, and not all
density is good density because this city has to grapple with the weight of its history. As such, I call for city council to urgently prioritize more affordable housing and more community centered planning. Thank you very much. Hello. My name is Nettie Caldwell, and I also live at the, Avon Street, Belmont College Lane residence as a homeowner. And, also, I'm here to also concern, to talk about my concerns about the parking there as well. Just like, the HOA president, he had also mentioned that we only have one parking
spot. And if you're a family of more than one person with one parking spot, like, I have a husband, two children who have one of them has a well, all three of us have cars. And, you know, and assume my my oldest child might have a car soon. So we don't have any parking. So where will we park at? And not only that, sometimes I deal with arthritis and I have, you know, have bad days and have good days. So when I get out of work, I shouldn't have to worry about where I'm gonna park at. And so if you do look around that area, it's all neighborhood. There's, like, no other parking spots.
And if you do park, it might be all the way up there at Belmont Park. And who wants to not be around their car with vandalism and everything going on? Also, if we decide to wanna sell our house, nobody would like to buy a house because if it's more than one person in a household with more than one car, if there's no parking, then they're gonna be like, this is not, you know, a place for me to stay. So that's my only concern is if y'all do take the parking away, where are we going to park at? You know? Because there's no if you're parking anywhere, you're in front of other people's houses, that's
gonna be a issue. And just like he said, my husband's car got totaled being on that street. So like you said there and said about pedestrians, can my you know, you know, it'll cause them probably to be in accidents and stuff because this car got pulled because somebody was speeding down the street. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, ma'am, in the red shirt. Hi. My name is Sofia Marrero, and I am a community organizer at the Public Housing Association of Residents. I'm excuse me. I'm here to speak in opposition to LV Collective's proposed 11 story building proposal on
West Main Street. This building would will overshadow West Haven community and residents. Affordable housing is a human right, and we should all be able to live in our homes peacefully with no obstructions and no limitations. This building on West Main Street will limit the ability of West Haven residents to fully enjoy their neighborhood and their homes and to have a decent livelihood. This is just another way to silence and overshadow black low income residents as we have seen in the past. We all know about the horrible history of Vinegar Hill. We need to be talking about our history and addressing it, not committing the same mistakes. But the rise of homelessness, affordable housing continues to be a pressing issue that must
be addressed. The solution is not to overshadow current public housing communities, but instead work together to ensure that everyone has access to affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you very much. Get this quote over here. Hi, counsel. Long time resident, first time speaker. My name is Mark Denison. I have, been living in the city basically my whole life. I am a member of the Parks and Rec advisory board, and I just wanted to add my voice, of concern to the voices you've already heard tonight.
I'm not gonna go into that all all that much, but I am looking forward to working, partnering with you all, partnering with the city manager's office, city attorney's office to resolve this and come to some agreement. The other thing I wanted to say was mostly to people listening in the room and out there. We do have a meeting on Thursday at 05:30 at Carver Rec Center, I believe. And I really encourage people to come out and speak their mind. We are there to listen as long as we are an advisory board, with power
granted by the city manager's office. I'll be there, and my partners will be there. Thanks. Thank you, sir. So the young lady in the room. Hi. My name is Hannah. New resident to Charlottesville about a year. Moved from Chicago. Streetscape project. I will say that, it's it's a bit frustrating because even in Chicago, I had more parking available to me downtown than I do in Charlottesville, especially with, the proposals
for this project. So, just a moment of introspection. Would you have purchased your house if you did not have parking? Would you have purchased your house if it had two spots and then it removed it to one? It may change your decision. Like what it was said previously, the closest parking, I think, is about half a mile away. I am currently seven and a half months pregnant walking up Avon Street Hill. I encourage you all to do it. Doing it seven and a half months pregnant gets my heart rate higher than the OBGYN what recommends me, actually. So the idea of doing this with groceries and with a stroller, because my parking
spot is over half a mile away, is not something I wanna do. I'll just say that. Safety was already talked about, the speeding cars. There are no lights on the street as well. So the fact that we're encouraging even more, pedestrians and bikes to be going to this area, I don't think it's recommended. The last thing I'll say is I believe at, one of the previous meetings we heard that when we tried to convert the houses on this area from, single family homes to duplexes, the city said no because there was enough parking. So the fact now that we are taking away a lot of our parking spots
con contradicts previous decisions that were made by this council. The other thing I will say is it's 1.83 cars per household. So by removing this parking, you are are limiting, limiting our parking and or sorry, limiting the number of spaces that we have available to us. And it's not just our side of the street. That's the other thing I don't think that has been mentioned. The other side of Avon as well where the parking is not available, all of those residents also park on our side because they do not have parking available to them.
So, it is impacting more than just the 15 homes. It is also impacting all of the homes across the street as well. Thank you. Thank you very much, Don, and then I'll get you, Joe. Good evening. Good evening. Don Gathers, city resident. Just a few things. Mister Sanders, we have a huge, I don't know, sidewalk sewer line replacement project going on, 10 And A Half Street, Eleventh Street, maybe Tenth Street, Grady, Gordon, West Street. Yeah. And I'll send you pictures with in an email, but the, crews that have come
through have ripped an entire hole in my hedges there, under the auspices of repairing the sidewalk, replacing the sidewalk, replacing the sewer line. Never bothered to notify me. I came out, a day or two later and saw the shambles that they had left it in along with a huge mound of dirt there in the driveway. So like I said, I'll get you that information, very, very soon. And with no disrespect to the young lady from the alumni association, I would hope
that before any consideration is given for assistance and funding, that we secure some sort of promise from them for tax incentive or tax repayment. Because seemingly all things UVA, if there are any taxes paid, go towards Albemarle County. So before anything is, is pushed their way, I hope that there will be some negotiations to try to secure some sort of tax repayment, both now and in the future. And finally, the, the PCOB. As everyone has seen and knows, it is in a complete shambles right now.
The original civilian police civilian review board that was put together drafted what we consider to be very work specific ordinances and directives and bylaws that, that would be beneficial and and and could actually work for the city. The citizens of of Charlottesville said that this was what they wanted, and what they have now does not resemble at all the work that we initially put in. It has been completely gutted. Lord, I'm sorry, but much of that seems to fall right at your feet.
Not just this particular council, but previous councils, have just completely destroyed the work that was put in to create this this particular entity. It's it's it's not a it's not a good look. It's not functional. Folks are jumping as though the the COB is now the Titanic, and everybody's trying to run away from it. It's not what was, was, what was called for by the citizenry of of of Charlottesville. And I'm hoping that that you all will or are already looking into this to
do something to repair the, the train wreck that it has become. If you need any of the original members to to come back and to offer assistance, I'm sure that I myself, and I'm sure others will be more than willing to do so. But it's needs it needs to be it needs to be directed and spoken to. Alright. Thank you. Thank you. No. Stacy, you'll be our last speaker in for Good evening. Good evening. My name is Jo, and I'm a long time Charlottesville resident and recent graduate of UVA School of Architecture. I've also worked at far for several years, and I've been learning from resident leaders
and planners who fight for Charlottesville that everyone, especially black and brown families, can afford. Growing up here, I was well aware of UVA's troubled history with local communities, so when I entered the architecture school, I was very skeptical. To my surprise, during orientation, we were assigned to watch the Raised Race documentary on Vinegar Hill in West Haven and as Betsy mentioned earlier, in planning and architecture classes, there was critical discussion of the standard, and the general consensus was that it was both an architectural and social failure, that had deepened the mistrust between UVA and historically
black neighborhoods. It actually seemed for a moment like the university was honestly reckoning with its problematic history and role in the housing crisis, so I was hopeful that this hindsight meant UVA was serious about being a good neighbor. But today, those commitments begin to ring hollow as UVA backs a project that repeats those same mistakes Without meaningfully engaging the communities most impacted or seeking the expertise of
West Haven's resident planners, LB Collective is poised to finish what the standard started, excluding long standing neighborhoods from one of Charlottesville's most central corridors. That exclusion will be material by accelerating property values and displacement in neighborhoods that are already rapidly gen- gentrifying, but it will also be symbolic by reinforcing the idea that West Main Street belongs only to certain people. Who truly has a right to be visible along the central axis of the city? Not through a side alley at the edge of an 11 story tower like the developers are proposing, but fully present in the life of the street.
This project advances two harms at once, the physical erasure of black and brown neighborhoods, erasure of black and brown neighborhoods, as well as the erasure of the expertise of residents who have been tirelessly planning and designing a neighborhood by and for low low income folks. This project would cement a precedent of luxury developments overshadowing low income communities, projects UVA once criticized but is now enabling. UVA can no longer plead ignorance. Ten years from now, we'll hear leaders and academics say again, if we only knew then what we know now. So we ask not just for density, but for good density, development that doesn't wall
off historic neighborhoods. And not just affordability, but deep affordability with developers In units people can actually afford instead of paying nominal in lieu fees. And we ask not just for dialogue, but for real engagement with the very communities most impacted. Thank you. Thank you. Stacy? Hello. Hello. My name is Stacy Rush, and I am a community coordinator for FAR. Entrapment. Entrapment is the act and feeling of being caught inside. This is how the residents of the West Haven community already filled with the standard billing along with its wall closing their community away from the rest of the city.
This is a call to action. Has anyone ever thought about how the new luxury building will impact the safety in West Haven? Allow me to enlighten you. Closing off this community will make rescue response times worse. Having rescue vehicles maneuver around these structures is a direct impact on the residents' safety, health, and their lives. What about the home homeless? It's a slap in their face to see luxury housing being built instead of affordable housing that they can manage.
This building is a disservice to the residents who are already waking up to a concrete wall of the standard blocking their sunlight. The impact this has on mental health is real. Imagine waking up to a wall as a child and being expected to be happy and even further learn. There are so many more issues that this development will cause. Let's do the right thing by the West Haven community and listen to the residents'
concerns and make changes that bring about a stronger policy, not luxury. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much. That was the last slide for, public comment at this time. There'll be another one at the end of the, agenda, and we're now we'll go into the the senate. Just would like to clarify one matter. I just wanna express there must be some confusion as to regarding this Parks Foundation. The city manager has not negotiated with anybody. Upon hearing that, there was some concern.
What I did was direct staff to ensure that the special meeting would happen so that the details of what the expressed concerns were could be gathered and provided back to me. So that information is what I am now actually going through upon also taking a look through the city attorney's office of whether or not a conflict of interest exists, and to what degree it can be mitigated, if at all. But I just wanted to clarify. I have not been participating in any conversation about the establishment of a foundation. I have not done that. Just so everyone knows that. Thank you.
And, mayor, if I could just briefly, because I think it's just important for people to understand and for those who spoke about the, LV Collective project over West Haven, the most important thing is the zoning on that site is c x eight, which means 11 stories is allowed by Wright with unlimited density. I think part of what we heard here tonight is the legacy of urban renewal is something that's always going to be around for the city. And it was planners who at the time thought they were following the best practices at the time, and they imposed something on a community, and they were wrong.
Today, are we incapable of making that same mistake? Or this time, do we always know best? In the past, that site used to have a special use permit required to build at this height and density, and that was the mechanism if anyone wanted a community benefits agreement or to actually have their voice matter in in this process, that's now gone. It's 11 stories unlimited density by right. The only discretionary decision point is the Board of Architectural Review. So if you believe, and I think it is correct, that because of the history of urban renewal, these are neighborhoods that deserve to have a seat at the table,
to have their voice heard, to actually be not just listened to, but incorporated into decisions because of the history of the city, the zoning has to get changed. And that's the most important thing. Because if the zoning is what it is, the only voice you have that can matter is a board of architectural review. I think that's just important to understand. Thank you. We will now go to the consent agenda, agenda. Madam clerk. Consent agenda number four, resolution appropriating $60,000 for Virginia Department of Education Special Nutrition Program, Summer Food Service Program, second reading.
Five, resolution to transfer additional funds for electric school buses in the amount of $10,032 one of two readings. Six, resolution appropriating Opioid Abatement Authority Cooperative Partnership Grant for fiscal year 2026 to OAR, Offender Aid and Restoration for expanded specialty docket services, dollars 13,504.43, one of two readings seven, resolution appropriating Virginia Department of Social Services' temporary aid to
needy families grant, dollars $69,312.67 one of two readings Eight, resolution to appropriate funds from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, Virginia Homeless Solutions Program in the amount of $440,885 one of two readings. Nine, a resolution, approval of a resolution authorizing the refund of business license tax and business tangible personal property tax.
K. Is there a motion to approve that? So moved. Is there a second? I'll second it. Second. Okay. Can we vote? I will let you know when I initiate it. Okay. I've initiated the book. Okay. Okay. Thank you all very much. The next item on agenda is, the city manager's report. And, city manager Sanders will discuss the city manager's work plan. Yeah. Before I do that, I would like to ask Heather Hilliard to come up. Heather is the new, director of the Emergency Communications Center.
She is now relocated to our fair city and just wanted to give you a moment. One, hello. Nice to meet you and give you a chance to, speak to council. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. I moved up from New Orleans. I cannot say go tigers. I have to say roll green wave. So sorry. But I'm very excited to be here. I come with numerous years of experience. I have moved into the city proper. I'm enjoying my experience. I moved two days before I started the job. So it's been great. I've enjoyed the neighborhoods, the camaraderie, meeting my neighbors, and the staff here that we
have supporting you for your emergency needs has been fantastic. So I wanted to say thank you for the opportunity if you had questions. I was very purposeful in my color selection this evening, because of our former co, listings of our our two cities. So, recognize that, but I'm very glad to be here. I will learn the proper spelling of Wahoo and, doing those sorts of things, with, you know, our UVA brothers and sisters. So thank you so much. Thank you.
Welcome. Just a quick question. So, is what we have here kind of the agreement with University of Virginia, Albemarle County, and the city of Charlottesville kind of one center? Is that similar what they have in New Orleans or where you came from? So in, Louisiana, they have, consolidated districts. So New Orleans is actually a a unique situation because it is created, and we were a state political subdivision created solely to serve the city of New Orleans for various reasons, that are usually newsworthy.
So we, serve just the city of New Orleans. When I was in Jefferson Parish, however, I had something very similar to this. So it was the parish. We had five municipalities within it. I had 18 fire departments, and multiple things. So it is a very similar nature, having a consolidated district and having lots of, political influences, financial influences. The Commonwealth is different than our FCC funding. VDEM takes 40% and the state of Louisiana gives a 100% to the consolidated district. So I am learning, the fiscal differences here.
But it is very similar in having a board that works together for the common good of the community, is not unfamiliar to me. So it's a pleasure to to see that consistency between the two states. Great. Welcome aboard. Thank you, miss Mary. Thank you. It was a very diplomatic answer. Yeah. Yeah. So when did you start? My first day was the seventh, and I moved into my house on the fifth. Yeah. I sort of moved into my house. Thank you. It was better than what I had hoped for, because usually, we're used to no power, no air conditioning when you move things like that. So I had all of that. But, yes. So I've been here now. This is my seventh week. Great.
Yeah. Thank you. Great. Should I pay you as well? March of July 7. Alright. So you see on the screen, it's work plan time. I'll just start with good evening to council and members of the public. This is my annual opportunity to present what am I working on, and what I am working on is what everyone is working on. So I always frame it that way. Tonight, I'm gonna just go over the f y '26, plan, which started for us last month, July July 1. This work plan tool has been a consistent and reliable resource for planning and tracking my efforts every year, and we are now broadly using work plans across the organization.
So we've introduced this and we've gotten more and more people into the idea of before we get into the start of a fiscal year, we start planning ahead, then we capture it, then we start working the plan that we put together. So my first plan that I put together for you about thirty, came about thirty days after I started the job in August of of twenty twenty three. And each year, the process begins reflecting on the prior year before looking ahead and making sure that I try to reasonably predetermine what else and must what else can get done and what else must get done.
This time, I found myself looking back to that period of time and then coming forward. So what I showed you in that first plan was the theme of the work for the first fiscal year for me was about stabilizing and strengthening city government, and we did a lot of good things in that plan. We prioritized performance evaluations, launched employee engagement. We focused on some better business, some better budgeting practices, and it was really more of just asking more questions, prioritize transparency and public engagement and just really, really committed to the idea of delivering consistently.
And then last year, the theme that came out of the work plan was compensation, collective bargaining, communication, and coordination. I didn't plan four c's, but I like the fact that there were four c's there. And that was a heavy lift. We got through adding collective bargaining to this organization, which was very much a big lift, with the first three, contracts, now four contracts live. We also significantly reset class and compensation, making sure that we were trying our best to demonstrate to our entire workforce that we see you, we need you, and we, really respect you and trying to make sure that our compensation was better and will
continue to do so. We focused on communicating better with the public. We brought back the public access show inside Charlottesville. The city manager's report now comes at every single meeting and is multiple pages of just information for anyone who is curious about what we're up to. And then CityScope being the city newsletter that we also put out that anyone can go online and sign up for, and we'll feed you more information about things that are happening. And then collaborating regionally, I've prioritized that as an important aspect of my job to engage with the county, UVA, and regional localities and we've been doing that.
So when I looked at this fiscal this fiscal year's theme, it is really about implementing our plans. So much of what I'm gonna show you in showing you the actual document is really focusing on the act of implementing the plans that we have because we've done a lot of planning. And I know that that frustrates a lot of people because plans are just things you say you're gonna do, and everyone is now ready to see us do them. We've been doing a lot. I'll I'll give you that. We've been doing a lot, but we are actually gonna focus heavily on implementing our plans. So this is the document again, just reintroducing it for those who have not seen
it. It's five pages long. It's full of stuff, and there are a lot of things there. But ideally, it's meant to focus on action items, target measures, when are we gonna get it done, and what's the status of it. Wanna identify who's working on it and any notes that may come. At your retreat on Friday and Saturday, we talked a little bit about recasting your commitment because today, we have, folks in DC who wanna antagonize us with the use of certain words, And we have had a commitment to JEDI, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, and I've positioned that we should consider changing that to a commitment to community
prosperity. It all says the same thing, and, honestly, it's not the words that matter. It's the work that we're doing. So I hope that that becomes something that we can latch onto and frame that in your next iteration of the strategic plan just to show that we're whole community focused and we're gonna commit our work to doing those things. What I've also chosen to do here is highlight for you, the things that are highlighted here, the things I'm gonna go over. You can always take your time with the document and ask me many questions later. But I just wanna just highlight some of the things that really matter in the work that we're doing, especially focusing on the idea of implementing plans.
We have latched on to the idea of an ADA culture of compliance. That means we have to stay committed to it. We are working hard at that. There are a number of target measures there that indicate that we're prioritizing improvements that take away barriers. Our goal is just to make sure that people can move around this city, and they can do it with ease wherever possible. We have allowed our infrastructure to get behind. We are years and years behind, and I've owned that. I've acknowledged that the city has to own that. There's no reason to try to defend the fact that we have, telephone posts sitting in the middle of sidewalks.
We have other barriers that are blocking in people's inability to travel on sidewalks. We don't have sidewalks in places. Those are all things that we as a government body have to acknowledge that we're working to fix. And it's been my priority to make sure that team members are really, really ingesting that set of responsibilities and then putting that into actions. And therefore, that's what the plans are all about. And our ADA transition transition plan is getting kick started this fiscal year, and that is the goal, to spend $2,000,000 a year over the next five years demonstrating that we can do better.
And I recognize that $2,000,000 a year is a drop in the bucket for the type of problem, the scope of problem that we've allowed to build up. So we'll continue to work on that. I wanna deepen the integration of social determinants of health and the local government operations. You heard a presentation from miss Marshall earlier this afternoon where she was able to frame that. You heard her reference it as well during the retreat. I think we're gonna hold on to that idea because that is community wellness. That's the entire community, the focus of of that particular set of framework. And I think it's important for us to always look at ways that we can,
try to reach into the households of the people who call Charlottesville home and figure out ways that we, as a government, may be able to do something that could change the trajectory, help really, really influence the outcomes, and do our best to ensure that those folks recognize that we do care for them, we care about them, and we're not gonna lose sight of what we need to do. The The next box that's highlighted is exploring community initiatives to redress systemic and historic pain and injury. We've heard a little bit of that tonight. I think there's probably some real work that we need to do in that space. I would like to explore that, probably pull out some of the old stuff that
we've done, talk about some new stuff going forward, but ideally to get really into the meat of figuring out what are some things that we can do to help heal this community. And then the last thing that you see on this screen is really what, miss Marsh was talked about earlier today, leveraging the financial outcomes of low wealth low wealth residents to create economic mobility and opportunity. We're gonna be using that language more and more because that's really about moving a household. It's making sure that individuals that are there are not stuck, they don't stay stuck. And if we can provide an opportunity that they are interested in, they can grab
that opportunity and move themselves forward, and we'll be getting, an additional staff person to help us do that. Paid mostly by ICMA. Next page, I highlighted education. We spent a great deal of time Thursday I mean, Friday and Saturday talking about education, and I only put one action item under education for this year, and it is to figure it all out. That's what all those words actually say. Figure it out. We have to operationalize what our relationship is with the school system as it relates to the financial operations, the development and construction, interior maintenance, our enrichment programming, and just
capture that in an agreement or two or possibly three. However, we do it. Ideally, what I'm suggesting is that we need to prioritize the types of conversations that lead to the clarity that then we can predict what it is what the relationship is supposed to look like going forward, and then we execute. So that's why there's only one item there. And under housing, naturally, affordable housing is something we need to spend a lot of time talking about, but that first box is about homelessness. It is the issue that I will not lose sight of, and I'll talk a little bit more about that shortly. This is organizational excellence, a full page of organizational excellence.
What is that all about? Us doing our job to the best of our ability, making sure that we can deliver on the things that matter to this community, make sure that those who come to visit, they see a well kept kept community and they feel like they wanna come back and leave their tax dollars with me. So what you see here is, the things that I highlighted was improving our capital improvement planning process and procedures. That is how we get more sidewalks done. That's how we get the roads done. That's how we get the various innovation done in the spaces of how a local government takes care of its expenses. We have work to do.
Deputy Frizz is he knows that's my biggest issue of what we need to do in capital improvement planning. So we're gonna continue to focus a lot of time and attention on that. And then to maintain a focus on development and sustainment of a high functioning city manager's office and my reflective state and and the mode that I've been in, I'm reimagining the workflow. And the plan is to roll out changes that will start at the top, and then we'll find our way going through other parts of this organization making it stronger. Partnerships, the first only item there is to establish a a collaborative liaison relationship with
city boards and commissions. This is something we just haven't been able to get to. You appointed a bunch of people to represent, the city's interest this evening. What we recognize is that we've been doing that for years and we haven't necessarily checked on their connection with city issues, their connection with city council. And I think there is some real work that we can do in that space. So I've identified that as a priority that we hope to make some serious progress on this coming year. And under public safety, because every community has to always focus on public safety, we need to strengthen our emergency management framework.
We'll have our new emergency management coordinator starts on September 2. John O'Brandy, who used to work with the city before, is leaving the county and coming back to the city. So I stole something from Albemarle County for a change. And John will come and help us move our emergency management framework forward and pull our various, aspects of that together. We wanna support and facilitate critical infrastructure improvements. So that street acceptance agreements are impact projects like the Central Waterline and Shanks branch branch projects, which require a lot of public engagement.
We wanna highlight and focus on making sure that we get the word out so the larger community understands what's happening. But we're also adding open gov asset management because that is something that we needed a long time ago, and this gives us the ability to understand what we have, what we need, where we are in its replacement, and it just makes it easier for the process to work when we have a good sense of that. And then also under public safety, maintain prioritization of mental health and substance abuse interventions. Our anchor team has been doing amazing work. They are well beyond their skis at times and doing things that we did not
initially plan for them to do, which speaks to the need. We've got to figure out additional ways to enhance their work because the community obviously needs it. Our opioid abatement funds are being deployed. We wanna make sure that those are hitting targets that make a difference. We wanna really focus on what are some additional public health strategies that aim to help solve some of the problems that have been long standing. I think really it's about moving things forward, doing. That's what we're really focusing on. And then the last page is there, prioritizing downtown mall investments. Downtown mall turns 50 years old next summer.
The goal is for us to celebrate during the fourth of July weekend with a lot of attention and, actually, hopefully, people will come and say, oh, how great it looks. That's that's the plan. We're working on pulling that list together. Counselor Snook, you don't have to ask. It's coming soon. We'll have that list of what all the projects are that will get done before June the June next year, and we're gonna make sure that we just really take care of this living room community, that living room amenity that we have for the larger community. I wanna demonstrate commitment to the implementation of our parks and rec master plan.
We spent money to get that document done. Now it's time to focus on implementation. There's been money set aside to begin work on the barrier removal, that we, funded for this year, but we need really need to come up with what are the additional funds that are gonna be needed and probably not just the next five years, but maybe ten to fifteen years, I would say, and and then get another plan done. And then lastly, under transportation, we could have a whole page full of a lot of things under transportation under transportation, but I've heard loud and clear from all of you. I think the team would acknowledge that they have heard it.
We heard it Friday and Saturday. The transportation is the top priority, so we wanna maintain that commitment and demonstrate that in the next budget and also make sure that our team members are working to resolve issues that get in the way of moving that particular initiative forward. And the last thing that you see at the bottom of this slide is I highlighted tier one, which is taking your nine priorities and putting them in tiers of priority. Tier one being housing, education, and transportation. That's what you have demonstrated to us as your top priority because it's what you priority because it's what you talk about the most. It's what we spend the most money on.
It is what we're talking about spending more money on. And for that, we wanna make sure that we don't lose sight of checking with you and confirming with you that that is what you intend for us to prioritize. And while the other two tiers don't mean anything other than they don't necessarily get the amount of money, there's still work getting done on all of those because you gave us a list that long. So, again, looking at implementing our plans. We have parks master plan, ADA transition plan. Our portfolio with vDOT has been reset. We have downtown mall enhancements. We have NDS work plan, whole lot of things that need to be done.
We have an opioid abatement plan that helps us with mental health and and substance use and abuse, transportation plans, which there are four sub plans there, and an affordable housing plan. So am I tired? Yeah. I am. There's a lot of stuff on that list. But can we get this stuff done? Absolutely. And we're gonna continue to work on those things. And I'll just point out that and we're not done planning because there's still more work. You don't stop planning. You wanna make sure that you're always thinking what's next, what's to come. Some of the things you've heard about already in the presentation that Ashley made earlier today, and I've touched on a few of those things.
But your next strategic plan is coming up, and ideally, I think what we would like to do is just simply grab that plan that we have completed up to this point and just stretch it out over another five years and add specific strategies that get us through. I don't know that there's a need for us to go into a deep dive into strategic planning again because, now that the list that we have is pretty good, pretty deep. But while I have you, and because this community has had a struggle with homelessness and has not necessarily been able to figure out how to deal with it, I'm just wanting to reiterate to the larger public what the city's homeless intervention plan is.
It is all these bullets here and things that I didn't put on the list because we're still looking at other things, but I just would like to run through all of those for you. Strengthening the capacity of BRAC, that's the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the homeless. We've been trying to make sure that they get stronger as as the central centerpiece to the homeless, providers in our community, looking into possibly having multiple, and we have literally been looking at more than one location of tiny villages to give an opportunity for individuals who are currently unhoused to have a shelter, a place to go. I have proposed a low barrier shelter.
It is where it is in the process. I met with the new major at the Salvation Army this morning. We have some further conversation to have. He has expressed interest in trying to continue to move this issue forward. But I also the next bullet tells you that I've been looking at options for alternative placement because I know it's difficult for the community that we proposed to do this for to be there. And I have not had any neighborhood reach out and tell me, please bring it to us. So for that reason, I'm looking for alternatives. We're considering multiple shelter types for the deployment across the city. That's something that came up in our conversation, Friday and Saturday.
It is something we have thought about. It does make it a little more challenging when you separate because then you've gotta get services to different places, but we're looking into that. We're looking at adding homeless outreach workers, individuals dedicated to being out on the street with the people who are outside, helping to inform us by having direct contact with individuals who are going through the things that they are going through and better inform the work that we're doing. Investing in public supportive housing and other, lower AMI related units so that we can build as many units as we possibly can.
But I will say confidently and sadly that we cannot build our way out of this. It's gonna take too long for us to say that we can solve this problem that we see today by simply saying we will build units because we would have to build units forever. Evaluating how to better direct funds to key gaps that exist in the network of services, that is what place that I've spent a great deal of time. Considering housing support for unhoused projects, I'm looking at other ways that we might be able to specialize in funding just the project that is tied to helping pull people
out of a state of homelessness. Providing bags to unhoused individuals for keeping their things orderly because that is one of the big complaints about what the symptoms are of having people congregate in the same area. We're continuing long term storage for unhoused individuals as well so that they don't have to keep up with all the things. We can try to help take away some of their concerns and help manage the problem as I've described it a little bit more recently. Advocating for regional on house supports. I've talked to my peers. They have actually not barked at the idea that maybe some of them will step up and contribute to a regional, set of priorities related to the unhoused, cleaning up
problematic areas. This has become a real challenge in that there are folks in the community who would rather we leave them alone, and there are other people in the community who would say, please move them. Then have to make a decision. So I've done that, and we've tried to make sure that we do whatever we have to do in managing encampments with care and compassion. And we are seeking genuine partnerships to work on the issue in meaningful ways that really, really demonstrate that the only way to make serious inroads with homelessness is to come at it from multiple angles. There is no silver bullet. There is no one magical answer.
It means we have to work at it. And ideally, I think what I'm reminding you all that when I came before you in October, I labeled that presentation, setting a new standard and managing expectations. Still hold to that. I know it's challenging to be able to see why do we do this when we don't have a place for everyone, but we have issues and we need to be able to address those issues and we have to do it for everyone who exists in this community, whether they're coming to stay, coming to visit, or they just happen to be here at this time.
It is what a healthy community looks like. So as we will continue to do all these various things on this list, we will hopefully reduce the numbers of individuals who find themselves outside. So I'll get off my soapbox. All of that to say, I'm here to really, really make sure that this team remains focused on implementing your vision to be a place where everyone thrives. So questions? I'll start with you, Michael. Just comments, questions. I guess comments. I mean, obviously, there's a lot that could be said, so I'll try to limit them significantly.
We got time. But I would say one, under climate action, the focus is really just on emissions reductions. And, obviously, that's extremely important, but I really, really think there has to be a core focus on climate resilience that is embedded throughout everything we do. In our hazard mitigation plan, the biggest risk for Charlottesville is extreme rain events. What we used to be one in 1,000 or 10,000 rain events are going to become routine here now. What happened in Asheville, it's a matter of when, not if it will happen here.
We know our biggest risk is a tropical storm or hurricane taking a route through Central Virginia. And what happened in Camille will happen again, and it's more likely it'll happen again. So I just say all that, like, we've gotta prepare and have that ground how we think and plan. And the other thing I'd say that we talked a little bit about the retreat is a ton's happening. Obviously, as you mentioned, we have a long, long way to go before we've done everything we wanna do. And, obviously, we'll probably never be done with everything we want and need to do. But I impression talking with people in the community, a lot of the work we've
done and are doing is not breaking through. And how do we get better at telling our story to the community, but also having the community feel more able to join us? Because we have a lot of knowledge and expertise and people who want to help the city. And if we can do things with the community and they don't feel like they're doing it we're doing it to them, I think a lot of disagreements will actually kind of be able to be overcome. And so I don't know what it looks like. I know before the pandemic, the city used to do a lot more press conferences, different, going with, town halls in each different neighborhood.
I hate social media, but TikTok and Instagram are really important for breaking through now. That's what I hear. It's not my thing either, but Afton loves all that stuff. So yeah. Just and, you know, city council is the most public facing part of city government, so we have a big role to play too. But our story is not breaking through, I think, the way it it can. I would agree with you on that. And and we there's under organizational excellence, you'll see public engagement work is there. Thank you for this comprehensive list. It is nice to see a lot of our our values reflected, but we did talk a lot about, things on, at the retreat that might include, based on federal
funding, based on that sort of thing, how some of the priorities we decided in the last couple of years may Right. May shift. So we'll have to keep an an open mind there, to see how we can, you know, weather this federal storm. I agree that, for for so to to just bounce off of what, Michael was saying, the climate action plan does have to do with reducing emissions, but a lot of it has to do with, the emissions that the city produces. And as we've gotten a presentation from our sustainability team before the city produces a
like, the city municipal government part of it produces about 5% of local emissions, and then there's 95% that come from that general community. And so there's things that are not listed here that are in other sections that do affect that, but kind of emphasizing this is where storytelling comes into play, outreach in the community to help them understand their role in that and shift and understanding that we are at a cultural shift moment. Sure. And not we are at a cultural shift moment. Sure. And not everybody's gonna read the books or do the research or understand they're gonna
show up to a meeting, have a thing to say. And then what I love about, public comment folks who stay and watch the rest of the meeting is often that's a first time that that's happened. So thank you for sticking around, because you get to see the other stuff that we do. And so, yeah, communication outreach and storytelling to understand, like, the decisions we're making, the research that's gone into them, and how our focus is going to be on Better
by Pet infrastructure because that not only helps with road safety and land use policy, but it also helps with climate goals. And so all of that ties back in together, towards that. So making sure that people understand the overall narrative of because a cultural shift is gonna be thorny. Mhmm. But we've already Throwing it. Yeah. Decided that that's what our goals are. So the the if you build it, they will come for for better infrastructure. And so it's I'm happy to see that that's on here.
But we'll talk more about I can appreciate that. When we get to the Yeah. That. And remember, this isn't meant to be comprehensive. So a lot of the details are still in the climate work plan itself. This gives me the ability to, every quarter, give you an update on these kinds of things as we're going through the year, and, might even bring staff members to help in in some of those cases. I do wanna add one thing about you've quickly said that we can't build our way out of it because we'd be building forever. And that is As it relates to homelessness. Yeah. But I think that's a good phrase to consider because, we haven't built enough housing
in about seventy years to meet the need. Right. So so this is not addressing any specific projects that were brought up today. But in general, we are that far behind the eight ball. So, it's going to feel like we're building forever, but that's because we we will not to make up That's really what it's in connection. Yeah. Yeah. So just across the board there. Thank you. Brian? Just an excellent list, and appreciate the update. And I appreciate, you know, you bringing back the the fiscal years prior to and
just showing how things are progressing. And, you know, don't quit. I'm not going anywhere. Alright. Louie? I I don't have anything. We, you know, we talked about a lot of these things over the weekend, and I don't need to be taking up more time right now. K. So I I do kind of have a a question, you know. So you've been here, like, you know, three years now? This is the third you started the third year, I guess. So you kind of know who we are as a community. It's a really tough community to to govern and to to to be a leader
in, because they're very engaged and and I think that's People care. Yes. It's a good thing. So now that you kinda know where everything is and what what have you found to be, you know, a challenge for you that you maybe you didn't expect? This feels like an amazing interview question. Thought I had the job. Right? I'll just say that it is it is hard to manage in a situation where you usually hear both sides. I think that speaks to our level of engagement that you hear from both sides
on the same issue at the same time, and your job is to make a a decision. So in that, you you really have to know yourself, and you really have to stay focused on the intent behind why you make decisions the way that you do, which is what I pride myself on. And I think what I have appreciated about my time here is this is me. This has been me for quite some time, and I give you me. I don't sugarcoat as you all know. My goal is to give you the honest statement that I can as often as
I possibly can, and I try to be the same way with residents and property owners and business owners so that at least they don't have to go and try to figure out what did he just say? What was he meaning by that? I try to make sure that when you finish with me, you know where I stand and you know what I meant. I think that is the healthiest place for me to stay when it's this hard with all the different things. And I've shared with you I mean, I said to you all that your list of nine strategic outcome areas and a commitment is a lot, and I would hope that we could cut that down. And you don't want to.
Okay. I get it. So if you don't want to, that means we have to figure out how we can get those things done. And ideally, that means we gotta go deep. We gotta go deep into our processes and our procedures and figure out, is everything working the way that it's supposed to? Do we have the right people in place? Are we missing people? Like, that's really the work. But I like that kind of stuff. Like, I like to go under the hood and figure things out. So good question. But I'm good. I mean, I think it's it's really figuring it out to the best of my ability to, again, just preserve me in all of it.
And I feel like I've been able to do that. Good. The picture from, the retreat this week weekend, I don't know if y'all remember, it's deep and and wide. Deep and wide. That's right. Deep and wide. We do that here all the time. Thank you. Thank you all so thank you so much. The next item on the agenda is, some action item. It's a public hearing on the consolidated annual performance and evaluation report for the year, 2425, in community development block grant, and home investment partnership Program.
This is the first of two reading. Anthony. Good evening, Mayor Wade, members of council, and miss Thomas, members of the public. It's a pleasure to come before you again. I try to keep the titles as short as I can, but my intent is blinded. So I apologize for that. I also apologize that there was a missing hyphen in the link that was shared with you earlier. That has been corrected now. I will say that the public notices that went out in the daily progress city website and and the news alert all had the, seemingly very important hyphen involved. So the public, got that information.
We're here again to talk about the, twenty twenty four, twenty five program year, review for the, city's CBBG and home programs. And, I will try to keep it short. We have two goals tonight. One is to serve as a public forum for a public comment on the activities that we've undertaken as part of these two programs, the community development block grant and the home investment partnerships programs that are offered to the city through the US Department of, Housing and Urban Development.
And then the second part is to initiate a discussion regarding council's goals and objectives for the 2026, twenty seven year, because it's never too early to start thinking about what do we really wanna try to focus on with the limited money that we have available. We've learned a lot about how that money can be, directed to, leverage, good outcomes. So, I just wanna leave that out there. We don't have to make a decision now. Just trying to throw that out there. How how does council wanna set priorities for the program? For the members of the public, the city participates through the CDBG and home programs.
For the home CDBG program, we are the sole entitlement community. We direct all of the activities to benefit residents of the city of Charlottesville. For the home program, we participate in a consortium with five, of our neighboring counties, and, work with our partners at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to, support, housing, initiatives, affordable housing initiatives in those areas. Albemarle, Green, Flovanna, Louisa, and Nelson Counties are our partners in that. Nelson Counties are our partners in that. I will point out that the the link is here.
We'll try to share that. A little bit about what the the caper is. It's a HUD requirement in order to continue our eligibility to receive funding. It is a, backwards reflective look at the prior year. So as to help us inform our steps to reach the broad five year goals that we've set for ourselves around the community planning development, activities and affordable housing issues. The draft CAPER report is a very long document. It is available on the TJPDC website, for review. It's open for public comment period through, September 1.
Any members of the public who want to provide comment can do so at any of the three, scheduled public hearings either tonight or in hopefully two weeks. And then, before Thomas Jefferson, planning district commissioners, by my colleague, Lori Jean Tulum. Or they can send them in writing to our email addresses here, or they can deliver them in in writing to city hall, however they want to. These programs thrive and and and and grow based on community input. So, all public comment is welcome.
I will say that, for these two programs, we've made admirable progress. We are very pleased with the direction that we're, moving in given that nationally, it's trying times a little bit right now. Trying times a little bit right now. Some of the highlights of what we were able to do in the last year on the, community development block grant side, we were able to support the installation of three new roofs through CRHA, on some of their Dogwood properties, benefiting 11 households. We were able to provide, adult literacy and workforce employment services to over 20 city
residents, helping them, maintain or improve employment opportunities. 13 households received housing stability supports to prevent, eviction, diversion. We know that, the cost burden of housing is incredibly large. That program also involves individualized counseling to help, stabilize families and provide a a stable environment. Five local entrepreneurs received subsidized tuition for entrepreneurship trainings, and five received startup grants, for
their, small business, startups. 10 residents of public supported housing, and 17 recently relocated new arrivals, received financial counseling services. It enabled them to, among other things, establish their first bank accounts in The United States Of America to increase their credit ratings, thereby, hopefully, lowering costs of borrowing for major purchases like cars and for, housing. We also we're able to use, resources from prior years to support a couple off cycle programs.
One helped, Parks and Rec install new trails in and around Jordan Park, very accessible. They, for the first time, connect all of the amenities easily manageable, navigable pathway. We, helped support and maintain urgent youth counseling services for children, families, in the area who desperately need it and to begin work with, our partners at Ready Kids to convert, a relatively unused space into a, habitable and safe and welcoming, play space and
place for families to, wait while their children are, receiving services. The benefit of that for people who are medically fragile and, find it difficult to wait inside. They've had a lot of families who are waiting in cars while their children are inside getting services. This will provide them a welcoming environment. That is ongoing. We are gonna engage in a one year extension agreement with them, because the there's also corridor development going on, and just getting it going when it's not their core mission is is a little challenging.
Takeaways, are that a 100% of the direct benefit beneficiaries of our c d c CDBG funded activities meet the low and moderate income LMI requirement established by HUD. And, with a more majority of these falling below the 50%, income level, which was a key goal for ourself, a couple years ago. And we are very proud to have done that. I will say that if you actually go in and read the draft caper, and I apologize that this is hard to see in this version.
We have adopted new data reporting tool that makes it very easy, for our, sub recipients to report data and meaning that we get, sometimes more data. So we're still kind of teasing through, what what what are the reported data is directly attributable to the CDBG program. So for example, one of our subrecipients reported a 172 people served. In the last couple weeks, I've been going back to them and asking, are all of those, directly related to the CDBG?
And then we've had to break that down because, the total project costs. And so it was more like 57, direct beneficiaries of that program. But we are well on our way to meeting the established goals that were established in our consolidated plan. And, our housing, activities under the home program are also developing a pace and they touch on a lot of the activities that are issues that were brought up here earlier today. And with that, I will make myself available for any questions.
Thank you. Any questions before we open up the public hearing down here? Okay. So, now officially open up the public hearing for this project. Anyone would like to speak on it? I will now close the public hearing. And this is the, first of, of two hearings. And so we'll we'll come back to, what what did we decide on something like this? A consent agenda or just to we can put this on a consent. We can put this on a consent agenda. Thank you, Anthony.
Oh, thank you. Oh, well, you had mentioned, wanting some direction about, you know, discussing priorities for for next year. What kind of direction would be helpful? Like That is an excellent question. So basically, every year, part of the CAPER process has has involved us putting forward kind of what is called the council priorities and objectives. And but it occurred to me this year that, a, we don't have to do that while we're passing the CAPER, and b, it should reflect a bigger dialogue conversation
going on. I could share with you the, council priorities and objectives that we have for the current program here that's launching. They are relatively unchanged from, I think, the past five or six years. Our understanding of what our community needs has grown. So the Within the within the scope of the HUD activities that we're allowed to do, where we'd like to prioritize. So, Mike, you just want to know the best way for us to get input to him? What what are you looking for? Yeah. I mean, if council feels they're not in a place to discuss tonight, that's fine.
But, you know, it sounds like there could be some value of and I I would just say briefly, I very broad, and I think it's priority in part reflected. But just what investments given the limited money will maximize impact, particularly investments that could result in permanently affordable housing, I think there's maybe, high impact opportunities with, like, the community land trust model to prioritize as part of it. But that that's it. Okay. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is a resolution to identify a final preferred design
alternative for the Avon Street, Avon Street streetscape project. Ben? Yeah. Good evening. Ben Chambers, state transportation planning manager. This evening, I'm here to speak with you about the Avon Street multimodal improvements and ask for you to weigh in on a resolution to provide direction to BDOT who is administering the project. First, I'm gonna go through a little bit of the project background, speak to you about some of the public engagement that BDOT has done, and then provide you with vDOT's recommendations and the resolution that we'll be looking to pass this evening.
So this project is on a phone street. It is between Druid Avenue in the city and a v on court in the county, which is also the location of our park and ride and our school bus, yard. So if you're looking at our map, that's what it shows is the big yellow school buses. This project's about point four miles, just under half a mile long. It was submitted back in 2022. It says 2023. We were awarded funding through SmartScale in 2023, for this MPO application. We were awarded $15,800,000 thereabouts for this project.
It originally was something that came out of our bike and pedestrian planning back in 2015, showing that we needed to have better connections going into the county, going south. We're ultimately aiming to improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists across the city with these sorts of projects. And, you know, making connections to our trail system, which Ravana Trail also runs through this area. Another concern that we wanted to address with this project was, some of the high travel speeds of traffic coming into our city. The traffic along Avon Street in the county is about 45 miles per hour speed
limit. As you come into the city today, is marches 35 miles per hour. And in the past year, we have said we're looking to reduce speed limits to 25 miles per hour. So the initial design looked at having a sidewalk on both sides of the Avon Street- between Druid and Morris Creek- and would have unprotected bike lanes. This design also included a retaining wall on the west side of Avon Street, and a lot of right of way purchases. One of the the things that happened as soon as BDOT started looking at administering
this project was they looked at how much it would cost. And very quickly, they realized that $15,800,000 with the retaining walls and the right of way and the pedestrian bridge at the bottom based on VDOT standards, they weren't going to be able to do it for that price tag. So they started looking at how they could value engineer that, down closer to that $15,800,000, amount that we have. And the first thing they looked at was the pedestrian bridge. And they said if it we build it by VDOT standards, we basically have to build a bridge that you can drive a car over.
We don't necessarily need to drive a car over a bike and pedestrian bridge. So VDOT has asked that we take on ownership of the bridge so that we can use city standards, and we can build that bridge more akin to what you see in one of our parks instead of something that a car or an ambulance could drive over. So that was the first big cost savings that they were looking at, but still looking at reducing some of the the widths that they were looking at originally, trying to figure out how to squeeze everything in. They were only able to bring the pipe price tag for alternative a, which is what they began calling this, down to $16,000,000.
So there's still a difference that we would have to make up as a city if we wanted to go with alternative a. As a result of that price tag, this was during 2023, 2024 when we were looking at some other projects that VDOT was administering, including the Fontaine Avenue streetscape, where we ran into a very similar issue with retaining walls right of way, issues with unprotected bike lanes. And we would ask V dot to look at another alternative, which would remove the unprotected bike lanes, remove the additional new sidewalk, and compress everything into a shared use
path on one side of the road. We asked V dot to look at a similar thing for this, and that's what became alternative b. So alternative b, instead of having a sidewalk between Druid and, Morse Creek, would have the shared use path on the east side of the road. This is a little bit cheaper. It is within our price tag range. It's $13,000,000 or thereabouts. Gives us a little bit of buffer in case we see further cost escalations as, we go towards design and construction. So there are some similarities between the impacts of both projects and some differences.
Both of them are looking at improvements to bike and pedestrian connections. That's ultimately the goal here. Both of them also have the impact to on street parking that's the same. This is 33 on street spots. Most of them are between, Belmont Cottages and Druid at the top of the hill. Both of these projects also have the new pedestrian bridge over Morse Creek, so we both have that that cost savings by doing it- with city standards instead of be dot standards. And we'll be looking at a similar construction timeline- I had the construction would start
September 2028 but you probably see a little bit of movement before then with- right of way purchases and utility easements and some of that, pre utility work before we get into construction. Project would be finished 2029. The one item that is not listed here that, we're currently working on is figuring out how to add bus stops in this corridor. We're looking at realigning the Route 2 for Cat. So it would start going southbound on Avon Street, and we'd be looking at a bus stop at Druid and another one, down towards the bottom of the hill.
Near Belmont Cottages. That would provide residents in that area a ride to the Fifth Street Station's shopping center much more directly than what they currently have on the Rapid 2. So we're providing not just improvements for bike ped in this corridor, but also for the transit mode. The differences are one, cost. Alternative b is just within our means, and we can do that by not having all of these additional right of way purchases and retaining walls. Alternative b also helps us slow down the speed. When we are having v dot look at this alternative, they said, okay. We're gonna assume that we would use the same 35 mile per hour standard that's
there today, and we directed them to to know use the 25 per mile per hour standard for this one. The lanes are much tighter. We're hoping that that is going to slow down traffic as they're coming into town and also coming down the hill. This a little bit of a sidebar. It's not that important for this specific question, but we would legally be able to set the speed at 25 miles an hour there right now. Right? Yes. Legally, we would be able to, but there are some design things that we would wanna put in place to make sure that traffic actually complies with that. Sure. But we this following the 85% rule is not a legal requirement.
No. No. We can use other context to inform our decisions around that. Right. So some of the public engagement that was happening around this, there has been public engagement leading up to this project, leading up to it being a smart scale application. But since it was selected, VDOT being the administrator of it held a citizen information meeting to look at these designs. That was held in May at Monticello High School. 27 community members attended and unsurprisingly, the the biggest concern we heard was lot lack, loss of parking. There were also concerns with speeding, which we hope is addressed by this alternative b.
Intersection safety and sight lines, which v dot did go back and look at sight lines and make sure that, you know, people turning off of Palatine or Druid will be able to see the traffic that is coming up the hill with proper sight line distances, and also concerns with some of the pedestrian crossings, which, will have a crossing up at Druid as well as a crossing down at the bottom of the hill, so that the Ravana Trail can cross Avon down there. Out of these options, the public, response from these community members, preferred alternative B over
alternative A or the no build alternative. So based on that design analysis that v dot has done, mostly looking at at the cost impacts, as well as the public feedback, v dot is recommending to the city that we pass a solution, resolution of support selecting alternative b as our preferred design option. Resolution of support selecting alternative b as our preferred design option. They would also like us to to acknowledge that we understand that we are losing on street parking as part of that resolution. And as part of that resolution, we're looking to accept ownership over that bridge. Over that bridge. V dot and our public works folks are already in discussions about what that might
mean for maintenance and operations going forward, and there don't seem to be any issues there. With that, happy to take any to go first. Okay. So I was at the the meeting at Monte Carlo High School and got to hear some of the discussion then, so that was good to to talk to people who, who are able to come to that. And then I know we've gotten support for this project, from the larger community, who
are excited about having a safer way to cross that bridge and access the trail, but also get up to the Fifth Street Station area. I have biked this area myself as it currently stands, And then we've started to hear from, folks who live there about parking constraints, and how that will shift their accessibility. So just to clarify, because of the Smart Scale application that happened in 2022, the approval from the that the MPO approved the application, which includes council representation, and then
the award, this project is happening. Tonight, we're just deciding which one we prefer. Yes. Yeah. And the the project can move forward, but they are looking for you to select an option to for them to move forward with. They're not going to the county. They don't have similar concerns on the county side of the project, with the designs there. Really change on that side? Yeah. There there's really no cost savings to have with the parts that are on the county side. It's really within the city. Okay. Great. And I know I I generally just have some principled concerns of sometimes with partnering
with VDOT because their historical nature has been cars, cars, cars, how do we increase car throughput and making cars go faster and get to where they need to go? And so this kind of, like, PED shift is new for for, at least my working relationship with them. So I'm excited to see that. Are there any concerns about their recommendations so far from the city's bike ped team? I have not heard any concerns with the recommendation. I I will also say working with vDOT in the past year or two has
been very refreshing for the the reasons you just stated. They are doing a lot more bike ped work here for us. Yeah. And and, you know, some of us were were at the, walk audit workshop, last year, and had a table there too. So that was great to see. Mhmm. So some things that we talked about over at the retreat over the weekend is, human centered design, telling the story, and our direction moving forward. So with that, often, we are when we talk about transportation essential nature of getting
people around, especially in a city which is land constrained, cars are not the best solution, and they're simply not scalable. If everybody had four cars in every household, we'd have more car storage and not housing, not people storage, not parks. So cars are inherently not scalable. So building for better land use in the future includes bike ped projects like this. I wish it was happening sooner, but I understand that there's a required timeline. Also the fact that Vidot is giving us money for this. We've mismanaged Vidot projects in the past.
We don't wanna give that money back. And then there already are bikes and pedestrians on this area, so this path is gonna make it safer. And by making it safer for bike peds, it makes it safer for people who do have to remain in their cars. And so telling the story is that narrative, is we have to go through that cultural shift of not being as car dependent because we can't. We can't fit that lifestyle. And there's going to be a sticky transition period where not enough people are riding bikes, taking transit, or walking as their primary source while we make it safer and
more convenient to do that, and there's still going to be car culture that we have to shift out of these things don't happen overnight. So I'm fully supportive of this project. Plan b sounds like a good idea. And anyone who is concerned, I encourage you to sign up for the ebike voucher that the city offers quarterly. There's $251,000 dollar options that can help you replace those those cars. So, again, this will be a sticky cultural shift that won't happen overnight, but this is the way forward. Lloyd? Well, first thing I wanted just to play lawyer a second.
The last sentence in the resolution needs to be amended to add the word pedestrian. It says, now be it finally resolved. City council acknowledges that the city takes full ownership of of the proposed bridge over Moores Creek. We're not taking the proposed bridge of on Avon Street. We're only taking Not the existing bridge, but the proposed bridge. So yeah. That It might be If you wanted to add the pedestrian language that would make sense. But, you know, the the the issue overall and then this is obviously, sort of
the the first time since we passed the zoning ordinance where we have reason to take a vote that specifically adopts Natalie's view of cars. And you heard tonight a number of people in the neighborhood who feel that they will be distinctly prejudiced on their present property interests, their present values, the the home that they presently own, based on that different value.
And, you know, it's it's something that, I suppose, you know, one might say, well, somebody has to be first. Sorry, folks. But that's a tough thing to say to to people who, are are likely to have very significant and be taken regardless of which of the design alternatives we used.
So the only real choice is a no build option, unless there was some way that, that there might have been an intermediate position to say, well, okay. Let's not take 15. Let's take eight. Or and and then then we have a different policy decision to make. But under this particular policy decision, where we're only where the the only effectively, the only choice we're given is, do we do the version that we can't afford or do we do the version that we can afford?
I don't I mean, I think that the only thing we can do is to take the version that we can afford, hope that somehow or another, we will, through other means, figure out ways to mitigate the problems that the residents at the bottom of the hill there are gonna have. And other than that, just say, sorry, folks. Yeah. So I think it it's only fair to say that this will impact people, even
if it is a cultural shifting and so forth. It it is painful for the people that are involved, and I think there's nothing wrong with admitting that. This project was conceived and baked and put in the oven years ago, and so it seems to take a long time. And so now it's finally coming, coming forward. I'm going to vote for this because for no other reason because of the procedure
or the policy or the fact that, you know, this was kicked off. I'm not gonna at at this late point, diverge this project. It was clearly agreed from a policy perspective that this was something that we wanted to do in the community. It was recognized that there would be impacts to parking. At that point earlier on, if there had been some major issue, with the parking, the fact that that was gonna be, negatively impacting people, it could have stopped then, but it didn't. And so I'm I'm not gonna stop it now.
I think that option b makes more sense for the reasons that have been, laid out. I don't know if there are ways that we could figure out how to ameliorate the the very real loss of parking, for the residents there. I'm not sure what that would look like. So I'd be interested in staff. If y'all could if you had some suggestions, you could come back. It sounds like each house does have at least one on-site parking? Yeah. We're each house has on average one off street parking space. Okay. Off street. That's what I meant to say.
And it is true that on street parking is not something that's a guaranteed right. It's just not. So I'm gonna vote for it. Real quick. One of the things that we talked about in two two ones, which were a little funky last week because of the, the retreat was there's potentially a way to add some pedestrian access points points so that for, this is all potential, and it would be something the city would have to do because it's not part of the scope as is. But to add some pedestrian paths through the houses that connect to streets so that
if a car is parked somewhere that currently is out of the way, it'll be easier to access. So that was one of the things that, we chatted about that we can look into. Right. I hope we'll do things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Michael? And I appreciate you saying that parking is not a street parking is not a guarantee. It's public city space that doesn't belong to even if it's convenient to park in front of a house where you live, it's not it's not something that the city guarantees you. But it is an expectation that people rely on when they buy their houses.
Let's not lose sight of the fact that they have property rights that are going to be adversely affected by the consequences of this. So I'm gonna quote a very popular Spanish mayor who's been elected several times. It is not my duty as mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. He said at a 2020 conference. For me, it's the same as if you bought a cow or refrigerator and they asked me where you're going to put them. It's public space, and people can traditionally store their private goods on that space, but that is part of the cultural shift is understanding broadly that that space does not
belong to the homeowner. Just recognize there's a cause. Yeah. And they will suffer it, and we will not. Well, I think once you get to a I mean, you look at some of the highest value cities in America and neighborhoods in America, places like in DC where there's row homes and there's not parking for everybody. It's fine. It's just it does hurt. It right. And I'm right. Just didn't No. And I'm I'm aware of that, but those home values do not suffer for lack of parking. But I bet the fur but So I I wanna give Michael a homeowner.
I wanna give Michael a They can continue. I'm okay. I mean, this sounds like Wait. Wait. And as I admit it, there's potentially a sticky moment, but then we get through that. And I think that's a little Yeah. Hard for a person who's going through the sticky moment with a child. And I I I can appreciate that, but, we we don't get there if we don't go through that. Yeah. Which is why I'm voting for it. Yeah. And I appreciate that. And thank you for bringing that about jump in. Please. Come on.
Play some wisdom. What is a road? A few just to to clarify, you know, we there was the original project, then we switched to alternatives a and b. Mhmm. Even in the original project, the loss of parking spaces was the same. Correct? I I think there were some mitigation for some of the parking spaces, but not all of them. Okay. Do you remember, like, ballpark? Like I I'd have to take another look at it, but it was closer towards the end of the bottom of the hill is where some of those spaces were. But it was not very many. It was not the majority of the spaces that were being taken away.
But largely, it was it was pretty at least 90% similar maybe Yeah. In terms of the loss of spaces. So I totally understand the context of cost overruns. We have a history of not completing v. Projects that has rightly made v. Angry with the city that we're fixing. You know, I think in the alternative be focusing the improvements where they are, it does make sense. I always think it would be even better in the original in terms of you never know how development is going to unfold over, you know, twenty years and having pedestrian infrastructure on more sides is better.
Infrastructure on more sides is better. And this is not the only project this has happened on. We have other projects where we've made a decision to pursue alternatives where we reduce the amount of bike ped infrastructure that exists. How are we evaluating when it's time to make that cost benefit analysis of maybe it's $1,000,000 more and we would need 1,000,000 in the CIP, but because that's technically over budget, we're gonna pursue alternatives. Like, is there at any point where the value of something, even if it requires, like, a 1,000,000 CIP commitment, it would be worth sticking with? And I don't know if that would be Yeah.
I mean, there is a point in the conversation when we're talking about designs with v dot where we do talk about what are the the general values that each design brings. With alternative a, the sidewalk on the west side of the road, we're talking about building a retaining wall that would build into people's backyards. Those backyards all are for homes that all face on the Sixth Street. And so we were talking about providing a pedestrian connection along a block that would not be facing the fronts of any homes. We also were looking at, you know, the shared use path coming in from the
county was already gonna be on the right side. There didn't seem to be much of a need for the sidewalk or the unprotected bike lanes on the other side of the road necessarily. So that was a bit of a value decision that we made alongside, v dot. And the other point I'll just make is this is not a city administered project, so they're not really worried about cost overruns that we've experienced necessarily. It's more cost overruns that they've been experiencing across the state with v dot projects. And a lot of this came in in the wake of some of the COVID, escalations and construction costs.
So, that's more what they have their eye on than our previous performance. Right. No. And I I I totally get it. It's just, obviously, that's conditions right now. What the conditions look like twenty years from now. Right. And I don't think this is I think some of our Emmett Preston projects had the biggest negative impact and reduction. It may have been necessary anyway. But, Well, we may be able to rely on development to provide some of those bike and pedestrian facilities for us based on zoning code. So Sure. And, you know, I this is a, I guess, more philosophical conversation people have been
having. Even if a culture shift should happen or is going to happen, you know, going back to that framework of doing things with the community rather than to builds a lot more buy in and trust. And I think think a lot of conflicts can be resolved if that's the approach. As others have mentioned, look, the reality I mean, there's a Habitat project here. There are people who drive for the foreseeable future, and certainly the next few years. They're probably going to continue to drive. People with kids, you know, may make that choice. People who are older with disabilities or health issues may make that choice.
And there are some people who may feel the infrastructure right now isn't good enough for me to choose driving not driving, you know, the majority of the time or all the time. And that infrastructure, you know, hopefully, will be improved, but it could take a decade plus to get where we wanna be. That said, as others have said, you know, we have to begin to make a shift. But I think it is fair to acknowledge there's an impact on people and figure out how do we work with people, not at or to people to resolve conflicts. And people may not get whatever, you know, their ideal outcome at the end of the day.
But all of that to say, it would not resolve, I think, all the concerns by any means. But as we go forward, I think one of the most important things for the city to figure out is how do we figure out a situation of permanent parking and work with neighborhoods at a very local level to figure out what will work for them. And it won't resolve everyone's concern, but I think it could play a big part in removing as as we lose off street parking. So what is, if any, situation of permit parking, and what would be the process to get to permit parking so there's a better guarantee that the residents who live
there are using remaining off street parking, not commuters coming in or, you know, people visiting a park? Right. So Per you said permit parking? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. We do currently have a permit parking system. Public Works manages that for us, and they it is a relationship with the residents of we're not trying to do this to you, but with you and and make sure that we're making informed decisions. This area of Belmont does not currently have permit parking. It would be something that we would have to look at and pilot to see if that was, necessary. We probably wanna do some sort of parking studies before we start moving that direction.
The other thing I will mention is, Mr Sanders mentioned earlier that we're looking at building out a comprehensive transportation plan. Part of that plan would have to address what are we doing with parking, since that's one element that constantly comes up as part of these transportation discussions. Right. And and I certainly don't, you know, know all the data to be say where, if if any place permit parking would help or make sense in this area. But I do strongly believe more areas are going to need to have permit parking.
And it's will play an important role. And I think reaching a balance of addressing genuine concerns people have, while also moving forward with losing more off street parking to build bike ped infrastructure. So I would just, offer that. And I don't think it will resolve everyone's concerns, but I think it could really help. Because I think if you can guarantee that commuters and people connected may may not be as relevant here, but people connected to UVA or people coming to visit an amenity are not taking up neighborhood spaces. I think a lot of people's concerns would actually be addressed in practice.
That's all I would say. I mean, I do support the project. I think it's relevant that not just alternative A or B, but the original, very similar amounts of off street parking are lost. And I also say, I'm glad to see the speed limit will be changed to 25 miles an hour. I do think we need to stop being devoted to this eighty fifth percentile rule, or that the speed must match the design build of the road. It's not legally required. In many cases, it's hurting pedestrian safety, even without additional enhancements.
Some cases that it'll be road specific. But I hope we are able to not be resistant to moving beyond the eighty fifth percentile standard. I wanna just respond to something that Michael said about permit parking. Currently, it costs less than 7¢ a day to have a permit parking spot in the city of Charlottesville, which significantly undervalues that square of land. You can't rent anything else for 7¢ a day in this city. So as we think about permit parking moving forward, we also wanna think about the value of that space and the charges that we, we require for those spots.
I also realized I didn't give credit for my quote. That was mayor Miguel Fernandez Flores of, Ponte Vedra. Thanks. So, I just had a couple of comments. One, been for, 20, I was in your position as the county transportation planner, and actually live by the 85% ruling in the county. We we used it. I used it a lot. And these are just some difficult, decisions. I know that when we met individually about this, we talked about the loss of spaces and, you know, potentially providing some access to it.
I'm gonna support this project. It's my hope that in the future, that we will have the, you know, that robust transit system that we talked about during the retreat, that, having a car where where, you know, I met with, ironically, with one of my mentees who's a thirtieth student at the at the University of Chicago and and he said, you know, for him it's a deficit to have a car there, but you know, I know it's a big city, but I thought it was ironic that we had the lady from
Chicago who who mentioned that, but, no, it's a big city. But he he he definitely is not gonna take his back. So, do we have a motion to, So I would move that we adopt the attached resolution identifying alternative b as city council's preferred alternative to the Avon Street streetscape project, approve the loss of the on street parking spaces in the project area, and accept the ownership of the proposed pedestrian bridge. Second. I need to okay.
Can we vote? I guess everyone has one has something to me. Alright? I'm sure we have pedestrian bridge. Did you change that the the do we have to change that language to pedestrian? No. No. He he mentioned it. He did. He was just saying. Oh. For him to make sure he put it in pedestrian. Okay. It's alright. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. So the thank you, sir. Mister Woods. Yes. Thank you for coming, sir. The next item on the agenda is a resolution authorizing revenue sharing bond, financing on
behalf of the, Alumni Association of the University of Virginia. Chris. Good evening, counsel. Chris Singel, director of economic development. Here tonight wearing, my hat as the secretary of the economic development authority from which this item emanates, and I'm pleased to not be talking to you about parking. So it's not something else done at the moment. In any case, the, Economic Development Authority received an application from the Alumni Association of the University of Virginia, which owns a facility on Emmett Street to, have, industrial revenue
bond or tax exempt financing, facilitated through the authority. Economic development authorities, like housing authorities, are, enabled through the state code to basically confer tax exempt, financing on entities that, qualify for tax exempt status through the federal, tax code and, the alumni association in its current, status does qualify. In any case, they, made an application for the EDA to consider, submitted all the
proper paperwork. The E. D. A. Is required to hold a public hearing on behalf of the community. That was properly noticed and held last week. There were no, no comments, by the public during the public hearing. The Economic Development Authority voted to recommend approval. These type of, issuances require that city council also agree because it's happening within the jurisdiction of the city, so although the EDA held the public hearing and the EDA is technically the issuer of the bonds, the council also needs to consent to this,
issuance. Now, speaking of the issuance, there was reference made earlier about funds, there are no city funds involved in this, there are no EDA funds involved in this, there's no liability for the city nor liability for the economic development authority. The authority is essentially acting as a conduit to confer tax exempt status, It enables projects, that qualify, to receive their financing through a different mechanism, and it's typically at
a better rate than they can get on the current, the current market. There are representatives here tonight that can speak to the specifics of their organization, and or the project. It is a demolition and rebuild of the current Alumni hall, on Emmett Street. Mister Engel, is this essentially the same thing the same, type of arrangement that we was worked out with staff not long ago? Yes. It is. So the EDA over the years has done probably 30 to 40 of these.
Saint Anne's Bellfield did have an issuance, actually, a reissuance, maybe two years ago, if you're So it's no different in kind from what we approved then? Correct. It's the same exact concept. Yes. Okay. So I'm happy to answer any additional questions you have. Representatives of the applicant and their council are here. Happy to to proceed however you would like. Okay. So, Brian, did you have any more questions? Michael, I'll I'll start with you. So what is the how does this come about? What's the what's the process by which this is, ends up as a a decision
from the Economic Development Authority? I say that because in the in the past, the city, both through this mechanism and other EDA mechanisms, was more proactive in terms of facilitating things like the live arts building, things with a broader community benefit, whereas the past decade, it's primarily been, like, stab, UVA connected things. Is there a reason what's the process of how this ends up? And is there a reason the city's become less proactive on using this kind of mechanism outside of people, I'm guessing, kind of come to the EDA?
Yeah. Generally, we get an outreach from either the applicant and or their, counsel that they're working with or their financing entity. They make the decision internally that it it, if they qualify that it makes the most sense, based upon conversations that they have. We don't get involved with the specifics of the rates or the deals or any of the of the financing. Then they reach out and ask, you know, if, we can send the application, any materials, what are the meeting dates, etcetera, and then it generally evolves from there with,
you know, both sides reviewing documents and, looking for schedules that tend tend to work. So, there's no advertising that we do in any significant way. Every locality throughout Virginia either has an EDA or an IDA or could has the opportunity to have one. And so, generally, the jurisdiction that the project is in is where, that that interest is directed. It doesn't have to go to the EDA or IDA within that boundary. It can go others to to others, but it would have to come back to
this body for approval if it did go to to another EDA. So, generally, they start in the jurisdiction that that they live in. Yeah. Well, it's a larger point, but, you know, I think, Cardinal News had an interesting story just recently about Danville who's used their EDA to revitalize Danville's downtown by creating a river district where they've used this mechanism, but also additional ones for creating public spaces, also mixed use private development. It's just interesting operating that kind of proactive way that the city is directing versus
this as, you know, the primary kind of instance we get. Second question, obviously, for city council, you know, our prerogative is deciding how to, decide what's in the interest of the Charlottesville community, not UVA, but Charlottesville community. Does this property pay taxes? No. They're tax exempt, as I understand in our GIS system. The the assessor has them as a tax exempt organization. And I would I would also say that to the earlier question about others, they are not a 100% always tax exempt, but they often are by virtue of their,
federally federal tax tax status. Yeah. And I I know in GIS, the property is is listed as tax exempt Right. As well. So what is it what I mean, what's the argument of how this would trickle down to benefit the Charlottesville community? I'd be happy to have them speak to it. I can, summarize. They have employees, about 16 employees. They have a $6,000,000 payroll. Obviously, some of that, benefits, either directly residents of the city and or, the surrounding area. They host events, that are open to the public as I understand it.
One of my children went to prom there a few years ago, so I can I can attest to at least that one in particular? I've been to events there that, were unrelated to, the university and or, being an alumni. So they do host things. It is an event space. Our community is somewhat, connected to tourism and hospitality. You heard earlier tonight from our visitors bureau. So it's a place that kind of furthers that, piece of piece of the economy, if you will. You know, it just This is gonna be a $1,660,000,000 dollar renovation that happens on
that site with all the construction? Yeah. Of course, you have the construction activity during during that period. No one else is planning to buy it and spend $60,000,000 that I'm aware of. So that would be a quick snapshot. The applicants may have more color to add to that if you'd like. Did you want more information on public use? I mean, I I I can speak to nonprofits having fundraisers there, just countless for me over the last thirty years, but, you know, but no problems. Sorry. I don't know. I don't have further questions.
Yeah. K. Natalie? Hello. Yeah. I have couple questions. These might be more for the group, but we'll see. Does the alumni hall charge a facility fee? For rentals for that rent. If you could speak the mic for the people at home. Thank you. Yes. We do have event rental fees depending on the size of the event, the square footage that's being used, the type of group that's renting the space. What's the range? Garrett? I might ask my CFO. I can't remember off the top. Yeah. Depending on the square foot, it could be anywhere from $400 upwards of 3,200.
Okay. Thank you. And you mentioned in your public comment earlier that UVA is not contributing anything to the project. Why not? Well, we're our own, again, separate 501 C 3, and, it's the land we own, and this is our project. And it's not to say they aren't supportive in spirit, but this isn't their construction project. And so, you know, we are embarking on it. We view it as mission critical. I mentioned that the current building we're in, which I am delighted to hear many people have been to events at, is failing. I mean, it's it's housed the Alumni Association since 1936 and if you look closely
enough, it's really starting to fall apart. So it's not meeting our needs, it's not meeting the needs of those who use the space. And so, we view it as mission critical. The university has many priorities as you can imagine and many capital understand that, you know, they wanna put their funds elsewhere, but of course, you know, have supported us and are willing to promote it. But ultimately, we are the ones responsible for paying for it. What kind of request process do they have if you go through? Request process do they have if you go through? You mean in terms of asking for funding? Mhmm. We we didn't ask for funding. We wanted to build this and, you know, we've asked for them to be supportive
in terms of advertising it. But we had originally early days thought about ways in which the university could rent space from us if they needed it, because as you can imagine, we are so close to grounds. We're in a prime location, but that didn't materialize. So we've never formally requested, financial help. We just have wanted to honestly have their partnership in terms of promoting it and using it for their activities and renting it ultimately for activities too. Okay. So they've not offered to university to be supportive.
There is a body within the university. It's run also by alumni that gave us a matching fund. But again, that's its own entity. So, you know, we we never formally submitted to, like, the COO or anything for financial help. Okay. And then, so this is through the EDA, but then we still have to approve it. Just for procedural clarity, what would happen if we did say no? Couldn't happen. I think that's accurate. Mhmm. The project would stop. There's no alternate. Well, the bond financing wouldn't happen.
The project likely project would then be right. So that's what would happen. What would your your next planning process look like? Yeah. So we would probably go to the Virginia Small Business Financing Authority to try to get tax exempt financing through them, which then would be approved by the governor's office. If that did not materialize, then we would go back to our truest partners, and we would have to pay a higher cost to capital, or either take funds directly from what we have in reserves. Yeah. And I would just add that financing is a critical piece of this project in enabling it, so it would have significant implications for us.
And, again, we hope this is a really net positive, not just for us, but for the community and for all of those who are impacted by the work we do. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Lloyd, do you have any comments? Comments. The the first comment is if we look at the enabling legislation in the city ordinance, the criteria to be considered in deter this is section two dash three ninety one priority of facilities to be financed. In determining whether a particular facility or project should be financed by the authority, both
the authority and the City Council shall shall give priority to those facilities which, one, are proposed to be located within an area designated as an urban renewal project by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority. That doesn't apply. Right. Two, are in harmony with and further the fulfillment of the dually adopted comprehensive plan of the city or the Central Business District Master Development Plan such as such plans may from time to time be amended by city council. Here, this is an already existing use, which we've adapted around it.
So I think we would have to say that that to continue in the use would comply with with the comprehensive plan. But more to the point, and I'll move on and I'll come back to that one. Three, are likely to produce the greatest increases in revenue from property sales, license, and other taxes to the city. Four, are most likely to produce expanded employment opportunities for the citizens of the city and surrounding jurisdictions, and which five will be least likely to produce pollution or adverse
environmental consequences. I don't see that as being an issue. And our least six are least likely to necessitate the expenditures of additional public funds for the provision of essential or customary public services. And I don't see that that's really an issue one way or the other. The overall point that I guess I would make is that for better or for worse, the University of Virginia is where it is, and the Alumni Association Building is where it is. And when literally thousands of people come back to Charlottesville for alumni reunions, it has
a very large financial impact on the city of Charlottesville. It produces a lot of tax revenue, some meals tax revenue, people go up, to the to the corner in hotels or whatever around here. The reunions, that that they used to I remember twenty, thirty years ago, reunions were almost accidents. And somewhere along the way, the university and the alumni association both realized if they
really sold the heck out of this thing, it could be something for every class, it could be something big. And when it's something big for them, it's something big for the city. And so and I I go to I go to church right across from the rotunda, and we see that reunion traffic. And on the one hand and I don't mean just the car traffic, I mean the foot traffic and the people coming back. And on the one hand, we can say, well, gee, you know, that that's really not our our problem.
But on the other hand it's a great benefit to us for that degree of economic activity. It is at least as much economic activity as we get from, things like film festival and the the festival of the book. So in terms of the comprehensive plan of the city, one of the bits of that comprehensive plan is a recognition that the area around the university is going to interface with interact with the the people who who come back to the university.
And that because we have located these other other services, particularly the the commercial services on the corner and Barretts Road Shopping Center and so on. And we get a lot of a lot of revenue from all of that. So it is very definitely in the city's best interest to have the Alumni Association doing a bang up job. And I just think that this is, this is something that is I mean, it's not gonna cost the city a penny. We will be contributing financially every bit as much as the University of Virginia will
be contributing financially. I mean, let's not fuss at the university for for not making a financial contribution. They're contributing as much as we would be. We would all be benefiting by the economic number of, of meetings have been held in at Alumni hall and and neighborhood association meetings and things like that that are, to a certain extent, a public service. If one assumes that the alternative, is that maybe this this this building falls apart
and nobody can do anything. I just I think that's an alternative I know you all would not tolerate. But if we're thinking about, is this a facility that we want to encourage the renovation of? The answer to me seems absolutely clear. Yes. We do. Okay. Any other discussion? If not, can I get a motion, please? I would move approval. You could you could second, and then I'll just make a comment. Okay. Second? Second. And then further discussion? Yeah. I would just I hear everyone's arguments. You know, what I'm gonna say is something I've said before.
But, obviously, you know, UVA, the broader UVA community, at this point avoid paying over $20,000,000 annually in in taxes, despite having an endowment of, around $10,000,000,000 in annual operating budget of over $2,000,000,000 with the acquisition of the, Federal Executive Institute, they imposed a cost of tens of millions of dollars on the city in order to accomplish, full school modernization and also took the that property off the tax rolls, even if the
city hadn't have gotten it. UVA continues to buy property, in the Fifeville neighborhood. We have no answers in terms of how UVA, reached a decision of forcing Jim Ryan to resign, and what their relationship with the current federal administration is. UVA has an immense negative impact on the Charlottesville community in some areas. It prevents us, from being able to afford our school needs, transportation needs, affordable housing needs. It plays a huge role in accelerating housing prices, especially when they continue to expand
things like Biomedical Institute, bush lava gentrification pressure. And when UVA comes to us, the expectation is when it's a transportation project they care about or a project the UVA community cares about, we'll work with them. But when we need something from the university, it's nothing. And I think it's clear we have decades of experience showing that if the city's strategy is to be friendly and try to get along, we're not getting anything from it. I think we need to be shown respect in order to give respect to the
UVA and, their needs as well. So I would just offer that. Thank you. Any other discussion? If not, madam clerk, can you, initiate the vote? Let's see. The results let's see. The results are, four to one. The motion passes. Thank you very much, miss West and miss Dingles. Thank you so much. The we're now, at the port of the, agenda for the second public comment. What Oh, sorry, Mary.
I'm just sorry. The written report from the land use and environmental planning committee, we're just coming on that. I think it's, timely that this follows that action item. This is the only body for planning between UVA and Charlottesville, and this, body is not open to the public. It is not open to the media. And in the report, there are no meeting minutes. Information about what was discussed or decided. And all that is linked are to presentations, most of which were presentations already given at other meetings. So essentially, thank you for allowing me to speak.
I, respect your decision on the Avon Street improvements. Natalie, I believe that the term you're looking for is that, cars are an economic inelastic good. The more streets you you build, the more car the more parking spaces you build, the more cars there will be. That's just standard economic facts. Mhmm. So I understand that. Also, you were mentioning a sticky moment and and how people are gonna be disadvantaged or hurt from this. I think it's it's important to remember that a lot of times when it comes
to climate issues, it's it's the least well off that are gonna be, impacted the most. And that's why I was trying to look out for my neighbors that, you know, only have one spot in this. That being said, I I think we are gonna, as a HOA community, gonna perhaps come back maybe to you or to the planning commission. We have a small amount of green space. We're looking to get additional parking units off street, for that. If we have to, we're we're a little concerned about, water runoff and issues like that. So we'll be looking at, you know, if we could do impervious, parking spaces for
that. There are some potential parking alternatives across the street. There's a section of land where a bus stop could be. There also could be a couple of, parking spots. I believe right now it's owned by the, trailer park that's behind, but it's funky that they've, they've they've cordoned that off. So they have a fence, and they've left a section of it on Avon Street. I don't know if you've, seen that or been aware. With this project, I'm curious if there's any plans to bury the utility lines that go along Avon Street, specifically because if you look at the v dot plans, there
is a small amount of green space between the road and the pedestrian path. I'd love to see some trees there, if nothing else. With overhead lines, it's hard tough to put trees in. So curious about that, and I don't know if there'd be someone, maybe Ben or someone else to coordinate with. Lastly, going down to 25 miles an hour, I think, would be great, But, I think that it would be really beneficial to have some coordination with Albemarle County, because if you drop from 45 miles an hour to 25 miles an hour, just like that, it's it's an immediate speed trap.
Actually, Scottsville has one where you go you're coming from the South into Scottsville, you go over the river, and it jumps from 45 down to 25, and I've actually gotten a ticket there. So I'd love to see some coordination, or if I could work with someone to, maybe talk with Albemarle Morrow County, maybe up by the light where you turn into Wegmans to drop to 35 so that there it drops from 45 to 35 to 25 rather than a a large drop. So look forward to working with you and and hopefully, improving this corridor even more.
So I really appreciate it. Thank you, mister Wood. Sam, can you have been to follow-up with him about the James' guy. James, you know, about the I was just taking the note. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Would any would would anyone else like to speak from the public on on this or or anything, actually? If if not, can can I get a motion to adjourn, please? So moved. Second. All in favor, please, say, vote. We we're voting. So thank you all very much.
Have a nice evening. Okay.