--------- I'm back. Good evening. The 01/05/2026 city council meeting will come to order. Miss Thomas, will you call the roll? Alright. Councilor Fleischer? Aye. Councilor Asharin? Here. Councilor Payne? Here. Councilor Snook? Here. Councilor Wade? Here. Alright. Very good. Miss Fleischer, welcome to the dais and welcome to your service as a city council member. Is there a motion to approve or amend the agenda? Move for approval. Is there a second? Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. Motion passes. This meeting is divided into several sections, including an organizational meeting where council will select
its mayor and vice mayor, a work session to hear reports that require no vote, a closed meeting, and the regular city council business meeting. As city manager, I will fill the role of presiding officer until council officers are council officers are elected. The next order of business is the election of mayor and vice mayor for two for two year terms ending 12/31/2027. Both positions are elected by majority vote of the city council. The person elected to serve as mayor will preside over city council meetings, may call special meetings, make some appointments to advisory boards and serves as the head of government
for ceremonial purposes and official functions. The vice mayor substitutes whenever the mayor is not available. The members of city council will be given an opportunity to nominate an individual counselor to serve as council's presiding officer and mayor and may make brief remarks in support of the nomination up to two minutes. Following a nomination, I will call for a second. A second. Once the nomination has been seconded, the nominee will be given the opportunity to accept or decline the nomination. I will then call for any additional nominations. If any nomination fails to receive a second, that nomination fails and will not be voted upon. Once all voted upon.
Once all nominations are completed, the clerk of council will conduct a roll call vote and each member will be asked to identify one specific nominee for whom the member is casting his or her vote. If no nominee receives a majority vote, the clerk of counsel will call for a revote on the two nominees with the most votes. We will repeat the process for vice mayor. I now open the floor for nominations for the position of mayor. Self nominations are also acceptable. I would like, I would like to make a motion for, Juan Diego Wade Juan Diego Wade to remain as mayor.
Second. For, having together with Lloyd, having, been here the longest, I suspect the decision's already been made. But for the purposes of, discussion, I would nominate myself. Is there a second? Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, nominations for the position of mayor are now closed. Miss Thomas, will you I guess, will you please call a roll call vote? Councilor Payne? Sure. Yes. Councilor Osherin? Yes. Councilor Wade? Yes.
Councilor Snook? Yes. Councilor Fleisher? Yes. So by a vote of five to zero, council has selected Juan Diego Wade as mayor of the city of Charlottesville for the two year term ending 12/31/2027. Congratulations, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you. I now open the floor for nominations for the position of vice mayor. Self nominations are acceptable. I, nominate, councilor Natalie Ostrid as vice mayor for vice mayor. Is there a second? I'll second that. And do you accept the nomination? I do. Thank you.
Are there any other nominations? Hearing none nominations for the position of vice mayor are now closed. Miss Thomas, will you please call a roll call vote? Councilor Payne? Yes. Councilor Ostrin? Yes. Councilor Wade? Yes. Councilor Snipp? Yes. Councilor Fleischer? Yes. By a vote of five to zero, council has selected Natalie Ostrin as vice mayor for the city of Charlottesville for the two year term ending 12/31/2027. Congratulations. Thank you very much. We will now open, remarks for our twenty twenty six, twenty seven mayor and vice mayor. I just, you know, I appreciate the confidence of my colleagues to continue on the
last two years. I believe with all of us, we have moved the city forward and I look forward to continue serving, the city representing the city, representing council. I've enjoyed it and I have the capacity to do it more now that I've retired. Although sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but, I love the great city of Charlottesville, and I love to serve it. Yeah. Thank you so much. I feel like over the last two years, I've developed a really great partnership with, the folks up here and with several, key leaders in city staff. And I'm looking forward to, not just moving Charlottesville forward, but moving Charlottesville forward in
different ways, and, and hope that we can continue to push a, a robust agenda that, continues to help make Charlottesville a place where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Alright. And with that official action now being Yes.
Okay. Okay. Okay. I have the same situation. Yes. Oh, okay. I don't care. Oh, I'm good. I'm just I'm just wondering. Okay. Oh, you're gonna left. Alright. You should say to them. I think that's I think that's a good idea. I'm gonna call. Sam, I'll take the cable. That's mine. Yeah. Okay. I think we're all set here. So we will, resume our, business, our, our work session with, reports from the, environmental
regulations, policy and review projects. Good evening, counselors. Good evening. My name is Tori Penelopoulos, and I am on the long range planning team with neighborhood development services with the city. And today, we have a work session on the environmental regulations and policy review project. And I am joined today by my colleagues in multiple departments who will be also working on this project, including public works, utilities, the office of sustainability, and other staff in NDS, to help answer questions. The clicker is new for me.
Oops. There you go. There we go. K. So today, we will be starting with the project objectives and project background, talking briefly about city plans and programs that are related, and then walking through the proposed areas of study for each of the project topics. We'll have a few questions to guide the discussion for your feedback on draft project phasing and topics, and I will also cover next steps. So just to summarize what we're asking for at this work session, now that we have completed an internal review of existing conditions and current policies and regulations, we're asking
for your direction on the proposed phasing and grouping of project topics, and there will be future work sessions and opportunities for input that dive into more detail on specific topics and recommendations once those have been developed. So the ensuring alignment between regulations across topics, and using an ensuring alignment between regulations across topics, and using an equitable framework for prioritization and implementation.
Some of the potential project outcomes include city code updates, including the development code, updated policies, including for the comprehensive plan, updates to city programs and policies, and coordination on related project and plans, which I'll talk about in more detail. This balance So some information for the project background, this is really sharing why this project and why now. So it's relevant to both the comprehensive plan and the development code. The relevant comprehensive plan priorities guiding this work include implementing zoning changes to support housing
choice and affordability while also protecting the natural environment, implementing the climate action plan, and preserving and enhancing the natural environment. And along the way with implementation of the development code, there have been some challenges, especially for smaller infill fill sites that have less room for gray and green infrastructure, such as stormwater management facilities and trees. Some other identified challenges and opportunities include mitigating and preparing for the impacts of climate change, planning for relevant infrastructure, replacement upgrades needed, and implementing and coordinating across related plans.
So this slide may look familiar to some of you. It's from the NDS f y '26 work plan, which was presented last summer. And since that presentation, NDS has been coordinating with departments across the organization to document existing conditions, policies, regulations, key takeaways, and areas for collaboration by project topic. We've met with staff from the office of sustainability, public works, utilities, and parks, and there will be additional departments involved at key points along the way.
So these are some of the adopted and ongoing related plans and programs, and the project scoping that we've been doing has included incorporating relevant projects and initiatives, which have resources such as maps and data, community and developer input, and staff technical expertise. So I won't go through these each individually since they were provided in advance, and I will cover them in a little bit more detail when we talk about the project timeline. But I did wanna call out that there are several actions in the climate action plan that call for development code updates and coordination of land use and transportation planning,
and that the flood resilience plan has resulted in funding from the most recent round of the community flood preparedness fund grant. These are some of the concurrent related plans and programs, and there are others that we're tracking including at the regional level, such as the regional water supply plan update and regional solid waste management plan update. And it's only a partial list that we'll keep updated as we move along, including the city recently joining the biophilic cities network and other projects that come up along
the way. So now I'll walk through each of the six project topics in order of their proposed project phasing. The recommended areas of study have been identified based on staff's review of existing conditions and current regulations, comprehensive plan policies and recommendations, state code requirements and constraints, and related plans and programs as we just reviewed. And I also wanna mention that while NDS is leading coordination, the upcoming work that I'll describe is being led and completed by a variety of staff across the city.
So I wanna recognize their work and their collaboration and how this effort really spans a variety of departments. So for stormwater management, we would review and consider updates to the city's stormwater management requirements, focus on feasibility of infill development, and encouraging more on-site water quality treatment. We would also look at evaluating stormwater management infrastructure needs, including those identified in the flood resilience plan. For floodplain management, we would look at the city's floodplain management program through that flood preparedness fund grant to build a more robust floodplain management program, and we would review
and consider updates to the city's floodplain development requirements. So changes would need to be justified on the grounds of protecting life and property from flood risk, and we would look at balancing density with protecting the natural and built environments. Updated regulations and other actions could also provide an opportunity to participate in the community rating system to lower flood insurance premiums. For tree canopy, we would look at updates to the city's requirements for tree canopy, street trees, and tree preservation with development, within the constraints that we have from a
state code standpoint, and we would also look at look at how to better incentivize tree preservation as the current canopy bonus does not seem sufficient for developers to choose preservation over planting new trees. And we would look at data findings and recommendations from the urban forest management plan that's in progress. All of this work would also include continued coordination with the Tree Commission and build on the work being done by community partner organizations, including relief Charlottesville and the Charlottesville area tree stewards. For our stream buffers, we would review and consider updates to the water protection ordinance
requirements for stream buffers. There are currently three waterways in the city that have a designated protected buffer, which are the Ravenna River, Meadow Creek, and Moores Creek. And any additions or changes to designations would need to be data driven and also consider resources for administration. We would also evaluate if additional incentives and voluntary measures are needed to protect stream buffers. Based on previous analysis, about half of all stream buffers in the city are protected in some form either through the designated WPO buffer or through other measures such as being located in a public park, a conservation easement, or critical slopes.
And voluntary measures and incentives could better protect additional streams on private property even if they are not designated with a WPO buffer. For critical slopes, we would look at reviewing and considering updates to the city's critical slopes regulations that would also include the special exception process, since we've heard feedback that the review criteria should be more objective and clear, and then also look at updates to comprehensive plan guidance since there's currently only one comprehensive plan recommendation related to slopes and their value is not clearly defined. For energy efficiency, we would look at updates to standards for public and local tax
credits tax credits and guidance for private development, such as modeling best practices or providing updated incentives. And then also use the forthcoming community EV charging plan to inform potential regulatory or policy changes, including a policy for charging across the public right of way. So these are the potential outcomes that have been identified by each project to date, and final end outcomes will depend on data and findings, best practices, practices, staff technical
expertise, planning commission and city council direction, and community input where needed. All topics should result in improved community resilience and adaptability to the effects of climate change, equitable prioritization and implementation, updates to comprehensive plan policies with the five year review. So I've covered most of these in previous sections, but just to summarize briefly, they're focused mainly on code and policy updates, such as stormwater management requirements, an updated floodplain management program, and tree canopy and preservation requirements.
So this is the proposed grouping and phasing of topics. This is a slide that we updated from the planning commission presentation based on their feedback. The proposed phasing is based on input from staff, alignment with related plans and programs, and impact on comprehensive plan implementation, including the development code. Much of the phasing tracks with parallel initiatives, and many topics overlap and will be addressed at the same time. We can also make revisions based on council's direction. So I'll take a moment to talk a little bit more about the project timeline, which is anticipated to be about two years total, but we would anticipate multiple deliverables
along the way depending on their complexity and their dependence on these parallel projects. We anticipate several of these projects to be completed this calendar year, including Resilient Together, the Urban Forestry Management Plan, and the EV Charging Plan. Other projects would extend into 2027 given their higher complexity and need for consultant expertise, such as the community flood preparedness fund grant and updates to stormwater regulations. And we have allocated funding for this project, and we are currently scoping, which complex projects could best use support from consultants.
And this is a summary of the planning commission's feedback from their October 28 meeting. So since this was provided in attachment three, I'll just cover this as a high level summary. They noted some additional topics to incorporate, including drought mitigation planning, topic topic grouping and phasing, aligning projects with ongoing plans and studies mentioned, considering pairing critical slopes and stream
buffer topics together, and where we can achieve quick wins earlier in the process. So these are the two questions to guide discussion today. If the recommended areas of study in attachment one capture the key areas of needed study for the six topics identified in the project, and if there are additional topics or supporting information that will be included. So just to make sure we have enough time, I'm gonna cover next steps briefly, and then I'll jump back to these questions for discussion. So as mentioned, this is anticipated to be approximately two years as a process, with
deliver continuing to scope more detailed work plans by topic and then establishing staff internal stakeholder groups or technical committees. And this slide is the only one that was changed, from your packet in advance, and that was to add a QR code, and a screenshot from the landing page on the connect Charlottesville site, which I'll talk a little bit more about. So as we develop a public engagement plan, we will determine specific areas for community
input. We recognize that there are many community organizations and committees that we can work with and draw on their expertise and community connections. We also wanna hear and understand lived experiences from community members, and we would want community input on major policy changes and any significant proposed updates. So the engagement will use the newly launched Connect Charlottesville website, which is the city's new engagement platform through Social Pinpoint. And the project landing page is listed on the slide with that QR code to get to the project landing page. So we'll continue adding resources there and information about the project, and we'll add engagement
opportunities as they become available. So with that, I'll try to go back to the questions. So, essentially, we're asking if we are headed in the right direction and if anything's missing and if you need additional information as we move forward to inform feedback and decision points. So I'll stop there and turn it back over to you all, and we're available for questions. So thank you. Lloyd, I'll So with One one question I had is something that we dealt with three or four years ago and, wondered about ever since.
There was a series of proposals that we looked at in 2022 that involved the floodplain down around Franklin Street in in Odwallow. And at that time, we learned that, the, the floodplain lines had been redrawn in in relatively recent fashion, much to the surprise of of some of the folks who were living in the neighborhood. And one of the things that we talked about at that point was, and perhaps
it was was something related to this, was that there was a study coming that would provide more detail on, flood plain issues in Moores Creek in particular. And I remember seeing, as I was reviewing things last night, that there was a reference to some of that. And I'm just wondering, where do we stand with that? I think if I could ask, maybe Jason to come up to talk about the Moores Creek stormwater modeling, That might help answer the question. Good evening, council. I'm Jason Macque.
I'm the deputy director with utilities. I'm I'm not familiar with the study that you're talking about, but we have developed a model with our consultants, for the three watersheds in the city, which is Moores Creek, Meadow Creek, and Rhyvan. We the first one that we we completed was, Moores Creek, which would, include the area that you're talking about. And we can certainly look at at running that model to see how the flood plain has been effect do you have any more details on on what that looked
like at this point? I I I was just trying, as as we were progressing with the meeting to go back and find the page that had the reference that, it talked about at at something in 2023. I remember the discussions in 2022 because there were some, some housing developments that were being proposed for basically what what we had thought was in the flood plain. And then because of some redoing of the flood plain lines, was apparently no longer
in the flood plain. We had experience just in the last year or so, of a project in the county where, the concern was that it was going to end up, it's basically right there on Franklin. It was gonna end up distorting the the floodplain lines in general. And one of the discussions that we had had in 2022 when we were looking at the the floodplain lines that had been modified a year or two earlier, one of those discussions And then, you know, they're just sort of by the way that
things happen on city council. Once that project moved on past our consciousness, we lost sight of it. And I hadn't hadn't had any sight of it until reading this just last night, indicating that there had in fact been something completed. And in particular, because there were concerns at the time in 2022 that the floodplain lines that were now in force, through FEMA did not comport with what popular experience
had been with where there were floods in on Franklin Street. One of my hopes was going to be that as they were supposedly redoing this this look at the at the flood plain, flood management and so on, that that we would have a sense of whether the flood plain lines as they had been redrawn in recent in the time a few years back, were in fact accurate. Understood. We can certainly take that as a priority, when we're we're looking at our modeling
to see if that makes sense, what we're finding. Do you, Brynn, do you recall the I think Dan and O'Connell and NBS, might have an update. Okay. You wanna come up there? Hello, councilors. I'm Daniel O'Connell. I'm ending guest planner, and I'm also the acting city floodplain manager. So I believe what you're referring to, is that FEMA is in the process of redrawing our flood maps. Our current maps are from 2006, I believe, and so we're due for an update. I was not flood plain manager at the time when this process kicked off, so
I believe that when this process started, previous settlement city employees and water resources people did provide feedback as well as members of the public to FEMA. But it is FEMA's responsibility working with private engineers to redraw those maps. I have heard it secondhand from a local engineer, that we may be getting those maps given to us this year, for us to look at and adopt. But Meaning now 2026? Yes. They finally finished them, and we may have given them to review and to adopt
this year. But I can't say anymore on that for now. Okay. Can we choose not to adopt them or to amend them? What is the I don't think at this point there would be an opportunity to amend them, and just not adopting them would probably have very negative consequences Yeah. In terms of our membership in the NFIP. Yeah. But I think as Tory mentioned, the flood maps are not precise. They don't show where it floods everywhere. And so they are just one tool to regulate the NFIB to regulate flood insurance.
It does flood elsewhere in the city that is not covered by those maps, and I think that's part of the project to find those areas and make sure that we're doing what we can to mitigate that. So we would adopt those, but then we could also have our own rules on top. Yes. Absolutely. We can adopt higher standards. We can adopt different standards to to cover those areas too. Just not lower standards. Right. Got it. Thank you. You. A slightly different question, would would deal with the area that that the city bought that we refer to as 0 East High Street, where there had been a proposal,
that would have been involved in extensive building in and building up of the flood plain in a way that I had to think was clearly going to distort the rest of the flood plain simply by putting that much, stuff in into the flood plain. Obviously, the city now owns that land, but what we're going to decide we want to do with it a couple of years down the road, and I know it's not something that's gonna be happening right away, is going to be surely determined in
significant part by whether we think that the flood plain lines there are now accurate. And I would hope that as we look to plan for the development of east or the use anyway of East of 0 East High Street, that we make sure we're really comfortable with where that flood plain line seems to be. So So are you, just making sure we're getting back to the two questions? Are you you feel like on the right track and I hope so. Okay. I mean, I the best best thing I can do at this point is is
to flag areas of concern and interest, and I've now done so. Okay. That's good. Michael? Well, thank you. I think this is obviously very important work given climate change and, and all our emergency planning. Flooding is identified as our biggest risk, and I think the neighborhoods most at risk are working class neighborhoods like our mobile home parks, West Haven, Franklin Street, Is so as part of this process, is our climate team working with you all or what
departments are involved? Yes. The office of sustainability, is very involved in this project as well and is leading a number of the parallel projects, that are kind of informing this project, especially resilient together, our communities, resilience and adaptation plan, which we've had quite a few meetings about. And that will also include stormwater management, flood plain, stream buffers, tree canopy. And so they've been, very involved in this project along with utilities, department of public
works, parks and recreation, other staff in NDS. So that's definitely an important lens for this project. Presumably, as a product of that, I mean, what kind of benchmarks are you looking at? Are you prioritizing flooding risk, impervious surfaces, or what what are you trying to target? So I don't know that we've established official benchmarks yet, but when we were pulling our existing conditions, we did try to look at the data that we already have and what gaps might be missing. For example, the urban forest management plan is looking at updated tree canopy for the
city, which also breaks down by neighborhood. So we can see where there are neighborhoods that have significantly lower tree canopy compared to the city as a whole and compared to other neighborhoods. We have a lot of historic data on, nuisance flooding complaints. We have data on the state of our infrastructure. So all of those will feed into identifying, the highest priority issues to address. And, somewhat related to to Lloyd's questions, in your presentation, you called out, you know, the FEMA maps are outdated.
I mean, the Trump administration is you know, they're gonna reflect active climate denialism, and just not be reflective of the existence of climate change. So if we do adopt stronger standards, what would be how would we develop those? What would we base that on? I think Dan or Crystal, if you wanna comment. Thank you. I think we have a a Crystal Rittervold. I'm the director of the Office of Sustainability. I think we have a pretty unique opportunity to look at all of these environmental regulations with this lens of climate change, of resilience goals, of the development goals, and
as it pertains specifically to what might we consider as different, be it stricter or modified, floodplain related policies, That's really part of the goal of the grant funded project that we're going to embark on this year. So the, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation has a grant program called Community Flood Preparedness Fund. And our application contemplated a review of sort of like a baseline analysis of our program, a gap analysis, some best practices, what are some of the tools and some
of the strategies that are applicable in our area. And then we would come forward with some of the policy recommendations or options. So that's really that's the point of that project that we're, finalizing the scope of work for it now, and hopefully we'll get a consultant on board ASAP. And that'll be, to Tory's point, very inter departmental, which is why our office is leading it because we're gonna be tapping folks from every department that touch that topic to put this together. Yeah. And to answer the two questions you posed, I think, seems to be moving in
the right direction. I think our biggest focus has to be, planning for resiliency and that flooding risk. You know, Albemarle has a you know, know, a couple of people die each year from flooding, and I I do think once we get one tropical storm, with the right path, it it's gonna be pretty severe consequences. So I would say prioritizing within semi city limits, trying to have as little impervious surface as possible, to me, seems like an important goal. And, again, just having that flooding risk and and climate resilience as the front and
center goal. And I would it's lower priority, but I would just offer on the critical sloped waivers, you know, we don't get that many of them. But from my memory of when we have gotten them, a lot of the cases are very, very, very site specific, and I don't know if you could easily develop objective criteria that would perform better than just being able to take in, you know, very specific site conditions. And it's anecdotal, but I've heard from some in the development community that areas that
not special use permits related to density or height, but other things that you used to have an opportunity for discretion decision making that were made purely administrative have actually held them up even longer. I would wonder if there's potentially some risk of that depending on how if if critical slope waivers are made purely administratively just because, again, they're just so site specific. But, thank you. So you're good with you feel like they're on the right track? A long way to go, but it seems to definitely be in the right in the right direction. Miss Fleischer.
Thank you. Yes. To answer the question first, I feel like you're on the right track and with such a robust, deck, thank you so much for putting that together to help us understand that. Just so I'm clear, are you integrating those additional topics to incorporate from the planning commission, or you're asking if we want those incorporated? Thank you. That is a good question. We were planning to incorporate those, but happy to hear if you all have feedback as well on them. I think that keeping those on there as you plan is great, and really looking
forward to the community engagement piece of of determining that community resilience and infrastructure, particularly because we're missing a lot of that data out of our federal data portals now. So getting that on the ground, I think, will really inform, some of that action. And I really appreciate the, celebrating the quick wins on, on route because you're organizing so many departments, whenever we can. I think that's great for the public to stay together with us on that. That's it. Yeah. This is a huge project.
There's a lot of pieces to to this. And and I appreciate that you did cover a lot, and then I I agree that the planning commission additional topics, fit in there nicely as a couple of other things to to add to that task list. The regional coordination noted especially because we are we are not isolated. And anything that affects us is gonna affect the region and vice versa. The the coordination amongst departments is something that I am excited about and also wanna
make sure we don't miss opportunities for things. For example, something that came to mind was, in working with public works and they're repaving, restriping, and working with transit planning, the opportunity to use corners that we're gonna daylight as bioswales. Like, that's something that involves, like, four different departments. And and something like that is gonna be, you know, know, beneficial for the the mitigation part, as well as the transit part and the pedestrian safety and that sort
of thing. So, I'm not saying make bioswales the number one topic to work on, but just as an example of interdepartmental coordination, I'm hoping that that that system works well. There's clear channels of communication, and, also, it doesn't bog down the process too much, because I don't want to to miss to miss those opportunities, but I, you know, wanna get things done so that we can celebrate wins. I do really appreciate the highlighting of both, equitable implementation and engagement because those are
things that, you know, historically have not been done well. I'm not saying Charlottesville specific, but in general, you know, we've all know that lower income neighborhoods have less tree canopy. As Michael mentioned, often are in a flood plain more in danger of flood plains than than higher income neighborhoods. And then engagement is something that we've all been talking about working on improving in the last couple of years. And so the the Charlottesville Connect site is a great addition to that, but just, like, prioritizing that because, that's kind of a a number one piece of feedback we
get is we didn't know about it, or when were you gonna tell us, or how I I missed the survey, you know, that sort of thing. And and, you know, that's partly what we can do, you know, is getting out there and talking to people about it, but having an easy resource for them on a web page of, you know, a link, even adding the QR code to this was was helpful. I do have a specific question before I kinda complete my my comments. In the, stormwater management, recommended areas of study, there was a bullet point about, recommended
areas of study. There was a bullet point about, the code when land disturbance of 6,000 square feet or more. Just for, like, general knowledge, does disturbance mean, like, disturbed during the process? But if it's put back the way it was, does that count as a disturbance, or is it something that is permanently becoming impermeable? I think I'll let, Brennan, our city engineer, explain. I think I'll let, Brennan, our city engineer, explain. I think I'll let, Brennan, our city engineer, explain. Good evening, councilors. Evening. So the the answer is yes.
It it is, if it's disturbed during construction, and that's kind of the statewide definition of land disturbance. Okay. So, yeah, I appreciate that, kind of, that bullet point making the the point that, some smaller lots don't have space for, say, the ADU and, like, a retention pond. But so is there a way that we can be specific about, like, if you repave the driveway in, like, a permeable grid pattern instead of asphalt, does that Yeah. So I mean part of what's being reviewed?
Extremely early discussions of what it would mean, but we're looking at kind of rewriting ours. Because our our water protection ordinance as it relates to the stormwater is way stricter than the the state. So we can kind of modify that in different ways. It could be, you know, lessening that somewhat, but creating something under it. So, you know, things that might be 3,000 square feet now that aren't regulated at all might have to do something, but it's less than, you know, what's required current
or more than what's required currently. But we be capturing more of it. So we're trying to offset maybe some of those things. So that may be a possibility. It could be, you know, rain barrels. It could be permeable pavers. It could be a whole litany of other kind of stormwater management stuff, that we're kind of looking at possibly capturing more of the smaller lots and maybe Like a a menu of mitigation available for people. Yeah. So we we don't know exactly where that's gonna land yet, but that's kind of where we're discussing right now. Okay. Great. Thank you. Mhmm.
To the back to the questions. Right direction. Incorporating the the planning commission notes, into that. And then, I mean, it's such a broad base of things that are already being covered. And, again, when we add the the planning commission feedback, that I'm not gonna add anything else to that plate right now. Thanks. I just, I thank you on target for questions one and two. I just had a couple of kind of comments and it it may be something
new. You had mentioned, the of a flood grant, at the beginning. Is that, can just can you tell me a little bit about that grant? Is it, is it So the Community Flood Preparedness Grant is a funding opportunity the states make of it state makes available to local governments. The stormwater model that Jason referenced was funded by that same funding source. The flood resilience plan that we had adopted in 2023 is funded by that same
source. And, that made us eligible to pursue additional funding. And so, that's $360,000 that you all appropriated a couple of months back. We have very small local match, and so it'll be a substantial project to try and sort of bring our floodplain management program, in line with and consistent with the various other challenges that we're trying balance. So, yeah, that that's good that it was a state grant kind of going it is good. Yeah. I mean, because I know that, as Michael mentioned, some of the federal funding may
be going away. So And and as an aside, the funding actually comes from, the state's participation in the regional greenhouse gas initiative. So it's the revenue from that participation that is actually the source of funding because there's a recognition that climate change is driving increased flooding risks. And so looking at taking proactive approaches to flood plain management is connecting some dots. Thank you. So my last kind of comment is that something, at least when I first got
on council's, project, the, kin, Kindlewood, when they were starting that project, they had cut down all the the the the trees or a lot of the trees. And that was something that was a gap in our regulations, I think. I just wanna make sure that things like that are that we are not, like, overlooking some obvious things, you know, things like that. So I just wanna make sure that as part of our review policy and things
like that, that we are doing what we can to kinda keep those more mature trees instead of trying to, you know it might be easier to to cut them down and then, you know, plant some more, but, so I just wanted can someone comment on that? So Sure. I'll ask a Steve Gaines, our urban forester, to to come comment. I I did a tour with Steve on the downtown well, he knows every tree by name, I think. So it's amazing. Good evening, councilors. Thank you.
Steve Gaines, Herb Forester. So right now, there is it's it's difficult to get the tree preservation written into specific site plans. There is a process. Generally speaking, unless a tree is already specifically called out for preservation in the planning process, it's generally not considered for preservation unless it's specifically designated. And to go along with that, generally there is a preservation plan associated with that. There is not much incentive, from the city side other than, you know, Tory had
mentioned the canopy credits. That's really about it. So we are, I'm working with the tree commission and we're also working with folks in MBS to actually have more of a front center pamphlet for site, you know, for the site preservation and excuse me, the development planning process. So when, developers have their initial meeting to discuss planning, they will have this preservation plan packet, and they'll be able to plan accordingly for how they're gonna designate and
save these trees. We find that it's definitely easier to preserve the trees if it's identified very early in the process. When you get towards the end of the development process, it's very hard to say, oh, gotta go back and save these trees. So it's a planning process. I think there are other cities that have a pretty good model to go by, and we're very much looking into that. Can I be part of this whole process that we're going through now? Sure. Yeah. That's well, that's something I wanna edit then. Absolutely. Thank you. I've got a quick question about about trees now that you're off your wrist of
gaze. Hello. Which is something that I know was a a point of consideration when the zoning was being discussed a couple years ago was, setbacks to allow space for trees on private property, which are, you know, it's it's it's making a zero sum game out of space for greenery and space for people to live. And something that I was hoping to push more for, and it's noted on here, but I just wanna call out this bullet point and kind of make that a
point of emphasis was additional street trees, which can be put on public property, which there's probably rules that Brandon knows about, like, you know, where they can be used with regards to cars, but that's a lot of public space that we have available. And I do support a a strong urban street tree program, since that is, you know, where we can make it not a zero sum game with livability. Sure. And one of the focuses of the, urban forest management plan is we actually inventory
or, I guess, we did a sample inventory of all of our street trees. And, essentially, what we have found is that, we need to have more of a robust program for maintenance for one thing. But what we are really finding is that we have room to plant smaller trees like dogwoods and redwoods. We are running very low on room to Big trees. Large diameter trees. The trees are gonna grow to be very large. Yeah. That's why we really want to focus more on preserving the large diameter trees that we have. So a lot of the tree preservation discussion that we're having broadly, it is I
think it's very timely, and I'm glad it's being addressed. So I'm certainly glad to have mayor Wade on board. So Yes. Thanks. Other comments? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Doing you're on the right track. So thank you. Next we will have, Bill Moyer, with the Ravana, Authority Executive Director to give an update. Thank you, mister mayor, members of council, mister Sanders. I do appreciate, having a few minutes to tell you about the programs that the Ravenna authorities manage for the community in the city and, some of the exciting projects
we have going on. So I can operate this guy. So we're governed by, Board of Directors. And, Mr. Sanders is a member of our Water and Sewer Board of Directors, along with Laura Hildebrand, the Director of utilities, along with members of the, county administration and the Albemarle County Service Authority administration. You see, we have a blank there, so we look forward to the next appointment from your group to our water and sewer board. And, we serve as a wholesaler for drinking water.
So we sell to your department of public utilities as well to the county through its Albemarle County Service Authority. We manage five water supply reservoirs and, the three at the top, South Urbana, Sugar Hollow, and Ragged Mountain are the property outside the water area are all city properties. So, those are city properties. We manage all five. The two Beaver Creek and Todia Creek in Scottsville are county owned properties outside the reservoir area.
So this is where we get all of our drinking water. We have six water treatment plants. The Observatory plant is on leased property from the University of Virginia on, Observatory Mountain, the South Urbana on 29 North, North Urbana also out on 29 North. Those three serve the city and the urban areas of the county. We have three what we call county plants at Scottsville, Red Hill, and Crozet. Those water treatment plants serve those communities and we operate them all. We have four wastewater treatment plants.
Our largest plant is at Moores Creek on the left. And, all of the wastewater from the city and most of the way and all the wastewater from the urban areas of the county, including Crozet, come to the Moore's Creek plant. We treat about 10,000,000 gallons. Per day there. We produce about 10,000,000 gallons of drinking water every day. So it's almost equal in and out. We also manage three additional wastewater treatment plants at Scottsville, at Stone Robinson Elementary School,
and also in the Glenmore Subdivision, for the county service authority. We have our own drinking water, laboratory. So we do our own drinking water analysis Virginia Department of Health. We do that in house. Our the pride of our, drinking water treatment program are our granular activated carbon filters. So the big white tanks you see in the picture, activated carbon filters. So the big white tanks you see in the picture are filled with a dark
carbon material. All the raw water, untreated water goes through those carbon filters and takes out many, contaminants to help us remove them from our drinking water. So, PFAS, per and polyfluorinated alkaline substances. This is one of the leading technologies to remove that emerging contaminant. So we're we're thrilled, that we have these filters. They were expensive to install and build, and they're expensive to maintain, but they do help us provide a high quality drinking water for our community.
We our wastewater treatment is a biological process where the microbes, reduce the the the nutrients in the wastewater. And this is an aeration basin over at Moores Creek. And the the bugs, as we call them, they're devour the nutrients that come in through wastewater. The end product of that process or what we call biosolids after the wastewater sludge is, pumped into a dryer. We dry it out. We spin it and it creates the product that goes onto a a trailer and
we haul it to Waverly, Virginia, and it's put into a composting facility where they make compost. So we produce about 15,000 tons of biosolids in 2024. So biosolids either have to be land applied, land filled, or for our case, we'd send it to a compost facility and they reuse it with other products. It's a really interesting plant they have in Waverly. They have food, compost that goes into the mix.
We saw we visit it and we saw, money from the Federal Reserve that they dumped into the mix and they dried it up. And they make compost at the McGill environmental facility. So that's how we get rid of, our biosolids from our community. And then ultimately on the left is, ultraviolet light, disinfection program and all the wastewater is is been treated. It goes through the UV lights, It's disinfected and then we put it back through the outfall there into Moores Creek.
So again, we produce about 10,000,000 gallons a day of drinking water and we treat about 10,000,000 gallons per day of waste water. Some of our major projects that, 2025 was a terrific year for us. We were able to get construction started on a number of these major projects that will increase our community's water supply. And this goes back to 2002 when the community had a significant drought of record. And in 2012, this council and the Albemarle supervisors crafted a plan to increase the crafted a plan to increase the drinking water for our community.
It, included building a larger dam at Ragin Mountain that was completed at the Ragin Mountain Reservoir. And then because Ragin Mountain does not have a sufficient water supply to fill it, we have to pipe water. Right now, it comes from Sugar Hollow Reservoir. But this plan is on the purple line to, build a pipeline from the South River Reservoir all the way to Ragged Mountain, and that's how we will keep Ragged Mountain full. And so the pipe this pipeline, the purple project is now, awarded and construction will
start soon. This red section is adjacent to the Birdwood Golf Course. And, we tried to think proactively. And when that golf course was renovated in 2018 by the foundation, we put in a mile of this piping then. Mister Snook was on our board at that time, I believe, to help us make that decision. And, and so we've already built that pipe. The, the what the brown line here is under construction. You may know we are clearing trees around Ragged Mountain Reservoir so that we can add 12 feet of water, and we're gonna increase the capacity by 700,000,000 gallons.
Ragged Mountain Reservoir will hold 2,100,000,000 gallons when we're finished with removing the trees, and we start putting more water into Ragged. The dam was already built in 2014 to the ultimate height, so we're not increasing the dam height. And if you go there, you'll see the stone riprap on the water side. So that was built to add 12 feet of additional water in Ragged Mountains. So we're poised to do that as soon as we can get the trees cleared this year. And then we'll transfer water from Sugar Hollow as long as there's over 30,000,000 gallons
a day overflowing Sugar Hollow. And, ultimately, though, with the purple line, this pipe, that I pointed to six and a half miles of piping here. That will fill Ragged Mountain Reservoir. We're building a new pump station here on Reservoir Road. And then this pipe, to get water from Ragged Mountain Reservoir to the Observatory Treatment Plant is under construction now. And, also, then from the treatment plant, we're building a new pipe that's gonna weave through the city, and we've called it the central water line that's under construction.
And that will distribute treated water to, the residents of the city as well to the county. It's a major interstate type pipe, large pipe, 30 inch pipe that will help us move major amounts of water throughout our, water distribution system. So several $100,000,000 in projects that we have underway. And this is the central waterline project I mentioned right now. We're working over at Stadium Road and Lewis Road, north of the railroad track and
getting the work done on UVA property here during winter break. Probably next month, we'll we'll we'll bore under the railroad track, and then we will, go on a a private property for a short distance up to JPA and start installing the pipe down Jefferson Park Avenue. We turn the corner onto Cleveland, and then we go to the, east north on Cherry Avenue all the way to ultimately, to we get to, East I Street at Longstreet Bridge.
The the peak line is under construction. The blue line, we're still doing some design work. It's what we call phase two. And, that we anticipate asking this council for an easement on the, project that you mentioned, mister Snook, down by the Ravenna River. So in a few months, we may be asking for an easement to install that pipe along the western boundary of that property owned by the city. So that project's under construction. And in about four years, it will be finished. We also operate the Ravenna Solid Waste Authority, which, this, council and the Albemarle board
created in 1990. And that's mission is to manage the refuse and recycling programs for the community. We transfer we transfer all of the refuse that we receive out of the county. Right now, it goes to Henrico County via a private hauler to a private landfill. But we try to recycle as many items as we can. We have 28 employees in this authority, a $10,000,000 budget, which is half of that's funded by, disposal fees, and the other half is funded from the county and the
city from your tax revenues. And that's primarily to for the city to support recycling programs. Sorry. So So, Bill, just before you move on. Okay. Oh, Oh, there's questions. You had mentioned the recycling. I and this may be old, but I thought it went to Zion Crossroads, but that that's previous, you know Long long time. Long time. Okay. We have we we bid it out to the market to take the refuse from Ivy where we all the all the trash that we take goes to the Ivy
solid waste and recycling center. Mhmm. And, so that's there on the this top left. That's the that's the Ivy, transfer station. So all the refuse comes in this driveway here and it dumps its load on the floor. And then we push it and there's a big hole at the back of the facility and there's a truck underneath. And that that's how we fill the truck. And then that goes to Enrico essentially almost every day. And, so we do not landfill any refuse at Ivy anymore.
That hasn't happened since about '20 the year 2000, twenty five years. Wow. And so that's where we we manage, post closure of the landfill and making sure that, there's no erosion and other and with gas management program. We have a vegetative waste disposal there and clean field disposal at Ivy. We manage the McIntyre recycling center, which the county and city participates significantly in that. We also have the Southern Albemarle Convenience Center as a recycling station. And then at Ivy, we have recycling facilities.
And this this council is supporting a new bailing facility that we're building at the Ivy Solid Waste Center. And there, we will we take all the paper and cardboard and plastic products, and we bail those, products into cubes. And then they put on tractor trailers and convey to where they where the market wants to pay the most at the time. So to to the transfer, we bid that out and we let the market tell us where to take it and at what cost. And so that's how the current vendor decided to use a private landfill in Henrico.
It was going to Amelia, to a private landfill in Amelia County. But, that was a different vendor. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I think I skipped one of the slides that, about water and sewer. I'm sure you're really interested. That, I did skip this then. That that water and sewer authority was created in 1972. We We were reauthorized by this council and the county board in 2022, the Virginia
Water and Wastewater Authorities Act that the state enacted says every fifty years, an authority has to be reauthorized. Remember to do that. And that and our charge is, to, again, to provide the drinking water and wastewater for for the city and the county. We have a 106 employees. We have a $64,000,000 annual budget, but noteworthy, over half of our budget is to pay debt service on the revenue bonds that we have. That's how we borrow money to pay for $560,000,000 in capital improvements.
So we carry all the major infrastructure for drinking water and waste water. We carry that debt, and we provide those programs for the city and the county. And those funds, do not include any tax dollars. They are all, water and sewer, revenue from ratepayers. The only exception to that is we do get some grants. We've gotten about $10,000,000 in grants from the federal government through the Emerging Contaminants Program and, I suppose they would be tax dollars.
So but that's the only exception to that. Okay. Thank you. Miss Fleischer, you have any questions? No questions. Thank you. Okay. Just to clarify, I didn't come on the board till 2020. So if that thing happened in 2018, that was before my I was trying to give you credit. I'm trying to make me old. No. No. I I I was on the board for two years, and then when Brian Pinkston joined council, his natural expertise was such that we were delighted to loan him to you Uh-huh. For four years. So, anyway Yes. Familiar with the with the way you all work.
And I've, in a number of instances, tried to encourage, the various city departments to follow some of the reporting techniques that you have used that were always very helpful, to to me when I was on board. I have no questions at at this point. Oh, I do have one question. Is there any move to, add any other kinds of things that can get recycled? You know, there are I'm constantly getting emails saying, why can't we recycle this? And, of course, my answer is, well, that's, RSWA's issue and if they see a
market, maybe. Yes, sir. Well, we are initiating a program that our board approved to start recycling lithium batteries, because they have been a big problem. They started a fire in our transfer station. They've started fires in several of the trailers that haul the refuge to Henrico. And so we are working on a lithium battery program. We've gotta buy a special facility to keep them in that's fireproof. Mhmm. And, so we're working on that. But we get we, what's the, paddle ball game?
Pickleball. Pickleball. You know, we we got a pickleball container. We get lots of special requests too. And we're glad to provide those programs, but ultimately, there there's a cost. And where do we take the products? That's the big challenge of recycling, is having the demand for the products. And where how far do you have to ship them? And and is it worth the cost? And, of course, these costs come back to council and the and the county. And so we work, closely with, mister Hicks from the county, from the city on
your budget. So that's always, I, think we talk with them about. So is there going to be some lithium battery recycling or is that just something that it's thinking about or No. We're we've approved it. We're trying to we're bidding out a facility and then purchased this the facility and it'll be at Ivy, located locations for a similar facility. But, no, that is gonna happen. Our board's approved and and we're we're gonna get that going as soon as we can get the the, container purchased.
Good. Thank you. Miss Ashwin? Hey. Thanks. Thank you for your presentation. My first question is for the granular activated carbon filters. You call them the pride and joy. And, they mentioned they were expensive to install and build and maintain. How long do they last? Well, the the carbon in there is depending on how much water you run through, but let's say they last the product lasts about a year and then we have to replace it. And it's several million dollars that we have, across all of our treatment plants to replace the carbon annually. Gotcha. Okay. Thanks.
And then, let me scroll down. For the, the last slide with all the different services, and this kind of ties into what Lloyd was just talking about, other things, has there been a bigger discussion at any point recently about a city or maybe not countywide, but citywide compost program for household compost, not, you know, the large scale vegetative, debris that was mentioned here, but anything like that?
Well, we we did a study a number of years ago, and and it was a significant investment to have a compost compost facility constructed. And, you know, Ravana used to have a compost program out at Ivy, the long white bags. And we put the compost in it and and it was turned. I don't think that worked. That was before my time. That didn't work out very well. So there have been some studies through the decades of composting. This is a fairly significant investment to do that. But we'll be glad to take a look at it again if you'd like.
Okay. Yeah. I I, was recently visiting visiting family in Seattle where they do it citywide. Uh-huh. And in fact, inspect trash cans to see if you haven't composted. I see. Yeah. So, And, you know, in your city, you pick up, the refuse through your vendor. Yes. And what Robanna doesn't pick up, we don't have any collection facilities. We just receive. Mhmm. And we have a container at Ivy and, for compost if people bring it there. So we do compost food waste, but we don't have a major program yet.
Okay. Thanks. And then, I know recently, there was the rain event and one of the I'm getting the details wrong and it's fuzzy. One of the things somewhere failed. Yes. Thank you. January 2024. Yes. Time flies. Yes, ma'am. That's been fully restored. And, and we, we we had to rebuild it and because it was flooded from the inside, not necessarily from the outside. And, and we had some challenges, and we we hopefully, we corrected those, and we
it has been rebuilt and it's back in operation. That's great to hear. But the the kind of question, especially in the context of the presentation we just received about, flood mitigation and wildfires and, you know, potential natural disasters that are coming our way. What kind of climate disaster resilience program do we have? Do we need to improve it? We received a grant from the federal government for about $200,000 to do a flood resilience study, and we're we've got that ongoing for our facilities because wastewater facilities are,
by their nature, usually close to streams Mhmm. Pump stations because, we want gravity flow in in the, sewer system. And so you're typically following the topography and that puts you in your streams. So we have a study ongoing and, we're we're trying to implement in our CIP a project to enhance the resilience of our facilities in case the floods get worse because that's what climate change has has said to us, that droughts are gonna be
longer and more intense, and you need more storage in your reservoirs to survive it. So that's part of our initiative to expand our water supply. And but when it rains, it's gonna bore cats and dogs in an intense storm, and that's when the flooding of your facilities is gonna be an issue. So we we are working on a study for that very issue. When did when's the study what's the length of the study? This calendar year, and within the next six months, we'll have information about that.
And it'll probably tell us about a number of projects that we could or should build to protect our facilities. At Moores Creek is right next to Moores Creek. And we have two major pump stations, the one you mentioned. We have a second pump station there that are on the banks of the creek, so to speak. And, so they're prime candidates for some kind of protection, but it's a significant expense to do that. Mhmm. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Michael? Yeah. Speaking of flooding, as was mentioned, that was decade old, a couple inches of rain
led to a catastrophic failure. I know you've identified what went wrong. Have you, is there, like, a finalized cost the repair is gonna Yes, sir. And how much was covered by insurance? It cost about $14,000,000 to restore the plant. Our insurance covered 10,000,000, and we covered 4,000,000. Because we did make some improvements that, you know, almost like your automobile insurance. They wanna replace in like kind. If you want an improvement, you have to pay for it. So we did make some improvements in the in the facility that we paid for,
and that was our 4,000,000 contribution. So the total cost was about $14,000,000. On the central water line, you referenced the coming months there's gonna be a decision on the exact location of, that piece of it that overlaps with, Riverview Park area. What will be the process for deciding the location? Because that will obviously have a significant impact on both the amount of tree canopy cut down in Riverview Park as well as easements for, what can or cannot, you
know, be built in areas. Yes, sir. We're working with your neighborhood development department, on the site plan to set forth exactly where the pipe will be and what trees. We've been done a tree survey of what trees would be impacted and what trees we could replant, to replace any of the impacted trees. So that process is ongoing. We hope in the next month or so, we'll we'll have a a plan to NDS and, and receive their comment. And just quick clarification. It's is it going through Riverview Park or 0 East High?
Excuse me. What was that? 0 East High. 0 East High. So not of the waterline. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Right. Is it it's Yeah. What you call it? 0? 0. It is it is a park with a river view, but Uh-huh. There is also Riverview Park. Yeah. We we I think where our plane is on the what I call the westernmost property line of that. So the so the river would be on the the east or the south, and we're trying to hug the Western property line to to not, impact your property more than necessary. Yeah.
But certainly, the community in terms of using it, you know, it's de facto extension of Riverview Park in terms of how it's experienced from people going there. And depending on the decision we make, what's the amount of feet on either side you have to clear and have permanently cleared? We usually have a 40 foot easement for most of our our pipes. So, I mean, you're you're potentially talking about, you know, a pretty significant impact. Forty forty feet. Yes, sir. And we allow some vegetation to be planted back, sort of like your Forrester was saying, small trees, small bushes, but we don't really encourage the oaks and the major
trees to go back there. And what will be the process for determining exactly where you put it? Is it gonna be a decision made by the RWA board that then comes to city council? Or well, we will rely on our consultant to recommend the best location, and it's submitted to your utilities and our NDS department. And we'll receive their comments and whether final question, you know, I know this is
outside of our city council purview, but Albemarle County has been discussing recently, the possibility of allowing data centers by right, depending on the scale, if they make any change. You know, Louisa County, I think their estimate is in the summer, it'll use up 60%, over 60% of reservoir capacity. Is that something that already have to say as an agency is thinking about, you know, just the possibility, that all these redundancies and, system capacity improvements created as a result of a drought, depending on what decisions are made, the benefit of that will
just flow to Google, Meta, Facebook, or what that is, Facebook. Well, we are working with the county on all of their development projects, the AstraZeneca project on 29 North, the, the project on Afton Scientific on Avon Street as an example, and, obviously, UVA Foundation on 29 North. So most of the major development that we hear about is on 29 North, and we are, preparing, some preliminary projects to address that in order to get because that
is at the extreme north end of our system. We need better piping and maybe a tank, water storage tank at Airport Road. All of those projects though, most all of them, we have what's called the Northern Area Water Agreement, between the city and the service authority and Robanna. And everything North of the South Robanna River is fully funded by the Albemarle County Service Authority. So if that's part of your question, but we are, considering the demands of these facilities relative to the storage and capacity that we will have.
Not only in in storage, we have to have three things to get drinking water to your faucet. We have to have storage in reservoirs. We have to have treatment in our plants, adequate capacity. And then we have to have the piping in place to get it to you. So it doesn't solve the problem just to build a bigger reservoir. We've gotta be able to get that water to a treatment plant, to treat it, and then to distribute it to your faucets. So we we look at all three of those as we do our, water supply and demand, studies.
Every ten years, we do a study. We measure our reservoirs, with, with, with, plane airplane surveying, effort, bathymetric survey, it's called. We measure how much water is in our reservoirs. We meet with your planning departments and county planning departments in UVA and project growth out for the next ten years. And when then we try to equate those two things. We have supply, we have demand. Do we have adequate supply to to meet to meet the demand?
And that's what then feeds into our capital improvement program of the $560,000,000 that you saw of, well, we need to build a larger plant. We need to build a larger pipe. We need more storage. And, we integrate all that together. Mhmm. Well, I definitely think it should be on our radar with the Rivanna Futures projects, National Ground Intelligence Center combined with UVA Data Science Center. I think our area is certainly gonna be targeted for that industry. And we'll just end, just acknowledgment that over the past couple years, I think the increase has been a couple $100 for, individuals.
Not saying these projects aren't good or necessary, but, obviously, a real, it's become a pretty significant cost to consumers. And I'm sure given the scale of the capital projects, there's gonna be future increases as well. But Yes, sir. Again, we're just not to say these things aren't necessary. But Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have any questions. Questions or comments? I I actually did have one kind of is there anything that is there anything keep you up at night, Bill, that we are not doing?
Well, we had a water break on Christmas Eve that kept me up a little bit. So, trying to get water restored and get the boil water notice for everyone north of, Edward Road out to North River was in a bowl of water. You know, we look we don't have to look far to see what happened in the city of Richmond, last winter when they were on a bowl of water and no water for a a week. And so, what keeps us up is aging infrastructure that we know we need to replace. But yet when we we struggle within our budgets because we're competing with two things,
you know, affordability. But, yeah, we wanna have dependability. And sometimes it's hard to align those, and we try to do our best with that. So we we don't go play. We don't go for the max, but we're but we push hard to get what we need as far as infrastructure for capacity and growth, but infrastructure replacement for the, thousands of devices and pumps and transformers that we already have. That keeps us up. The other thing is regulations. I know I've talked about our granular activated carbon is to helps to remove PFAS,
PFAS. The next concern that we we have from the regulators is they're gonna ask us to remove it from wastewater. And that is gonna be a significant capital cost if that should occur. Because why? Well, because the wastewater has PFOS. It goes back into the river. Now it's back in the river. So that's that's a lot of discussion around the country about, don't land apply biosolids because they have PFOS in them. And don't put any PFOS back in any of our streams.
Well, that sounds nice, but it's gonna be a major, filtering process to have to not only treat 10 filter 10,000,000 gallons of drinking water, but to filter 10,000,000 gallons of wastewater every day doubles our challenge. So we'll see where that goes. Good question. Is there anything the average consumer could do differently to make it easier on treatment and well, you know, we have pretty active in the city and the county and service study have active conservation programs, encouraging conservation.
And that's always an important, thing that they can do. Be aware of how much water you use and how you use it. We tend to say water is one of the least expensive utilities that any consumer has when they look at their electric bill, their cell phone bill, their gas bill. Water is fairly inexpensive, and so the challenges with that, and people may or may not wanna conserve as much as maybe they could. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Any other action or comments, Sam or anything?
That's it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Alright. Alright. We're gonna be read into closed session. Pursuant to section 2.2 dash three seven one two of the Virginia code, I move that the city council closes open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as follows. Pursuant to Virginia code 2.2 sec section sorry. Virginia code section 2.2 dash three seven one one a seven for consultation or briefing with legal counsel pertaining to actual or probable litigation where such consultation or briefing and open meeting would adversely
affect the negotiating or negotiating or litigating posture of the public body. The subject matter to be discussed is a case filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and, number two, pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2 dash three seven one one a one for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates to be appointed to the following boards and or committees, the Board of Architectural Review. Can I get a second? Second. Okay. Any other discussion? All in favor, please say yes. Yes. All opposed, please say no. Okay.
Thank you. We'll be back at 06:30. Part: 2
I call the Charlottesville City Council, business meeting to order. Will you read us, out of closed session, please? Certainly. I move that this council certify 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. Did you want us to vote electronically? Okay. Is everyone set up to vote electronically? Yes. Everyone's logged in. Okay. Initiate it.
Okay. Motion passes five to zero. We're gonna have a moment of silence, please. Thank you. Do we have any announcements? Yes. Do we need to announce the BAR meetings? Is that later? Yeah. That's a little further down on the agenda. Okay. Then, yes, I do have an announcement, from our local trailblazer, mister Alexan, would like the community to know that on Monday, January 19, from one to 3PM at Carver Rec, there will be an event, in honor of Martin Luther King Junior called continuing
his dream and works. There will be, speakers, dancers, musicians, and, the entire community is welcome and is in support of, or there is participation from the city as well as local sponsors. Again, that is from January 19 from one to three at Carver Rec. And I also wanted to announce announce that Abundant Life Ministries will also be having a program on January 19 at 06:00 at it's a program and dinner at, Mount,
Mount Zion African church over in Langford. And, so, I'm I'm gonna be the speaker for that, so I need to finish that that speech. But, it's always a great event. They're really involved with the community, of Mind and Life Ministry, so it'd be a great program. Do we have other announcements? Actually, I was wrong. We don't have another spot to do the Okay. The BAR. The BAR. Yeah. Okay. We have an announcement. We made a selection for the BAR. We actually have to vote on it Yeah.
In this meeting. Yeah. We are considering, Cheryl Lewis, Catherine Snyder Tabony, and David Timmerman for reappointment to the BAR. There's still a landscape architecture spot open. Can I get a second, for those Motion to reappoint motion to reappoint? Yes. I will second that. Okay. Further discussion or addition, all in favor, I mean, we'll we'll vote on that. Okay. Motion passes five to to zero.
And sorry. I did have, one announcement, which is just that, Charlottesville boards and commissions are now accepting application through February 1. There's a number with openings, including Tree Commission, Youth Council, Affordable housing fund committee. So if you're interested in getting involved in local government, definitely consider applying. If you go to boards.charlottesville.gov, there'll be more information as well as a list of all the ones accepting applications. And, again, deadline is February 1. Thank you. We're now for, the time on the program for proclamation.
And when we had the moment of silence, I used that opportunity to think about the the life of Eddie, Harris, someone we're gonna be acknowledging today. Another giant in our communities has had an incredible impact on our community. He's one of those individuals that did so much kinda behind the scenes. A lot he did in front, people knew about it was so much that he did behind. And soon after his his passing, I got a call from, Ladera, and she's like, you know, we need to do something. And she immediately got me in connection and pulling this proclamation together.
So I'm gonna read this proclamation. I'm gonna have the family to to to come up if anyone would like to to say something. Honoring the life of Edward Eddie Harris, Eddie Douglas Harris, whereas to see, Charlottesville pauses to honor the extraordinary life and enduring legacy of Edward Eddie Douglas Harris, 07/31/1956 through 12/28/2025. A visionary leader, storyteller, son of the tenth, son of the tenth and page community,
and whereas fondly referred to some as Eddie and others as Ducey. I didn't I didn't know that, but he was a product of Charlottesville Public School System, where he drew strength from mentorship of, educators, like, with the likes of, missus Josephine Wissett and Teresa Walker Price. And whereas Eddie demonstrated profound resilience, overcoming personal and systematic challenges to transform his life into one of service, providing that, to a person's, past does not define their capacity
to build a monumental future. And whereas Eddie's commitment to his community was felt by many and evidenced by his, dedicated work, with the Real Dad programs with Ready Kids and where he supported young men on their journey to the to better to bet to be better fathers. He was most remembered as a kind, caring, and always willing to help kind of person. And whereas in 2011, Eddie founded Vinegar Hill magazine, started a grass root news started
as a grass root newspaper, to provide, necessary counter narrative to local, to local media media, ensuring that the warmth, intelligence, and entrepreneur spirit of the black community was documented with dignity and truth. And whereas through his leadership, Vinegar Hill magazine has grown into a vital cultural institution reaching thousands of readers and fostering a new generation of of writers, artists, activists dedicated to preserving the black, community and promoting social equity.
And whereas Eddie Harris lived by the mantra, the sky is the limit, successively building legacy intended to out last his own earthly time. A thread that continues to reunite and strengthen the local black community, being honored with the 2020 Alicia b, Lugo Award for Community Service. Now, therefore, the city of Charlottesville City Council hereby proclaim, deepest gratitude for the, for
the life of Eddie, Howard, of of Eddie Harris and urge the community members to recognize his contribution to the community, mentorship, city. To come. Signed and dated to, the December 2025 by Juan Diego Wade mayor. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. I just wanna say thank you for the support.
My family truly appreciates it. Thank you to the city council for this great honor. That's really all I got to say. I just appreciate everybody. Thank y'all. Thank you. So this is a time for, public comment. We have eight, preregistered speakers. The first we have, someone from the presidential precinct, miss, miss o Gunsey. Are you yes, please. Yes. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here tonight to the city council and mayor Wade and everyone in this meeting tonight. My name is Toyosi. I tell people, if you can remember Toyota, the car brand, you can remember Toyosi.
And when people call me and they say, am I speaking with Toyota? I'm like, yeah. Customer care speaking. That one. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. The presidential precinct has been in Charlottesville for the past twelve years. We're We're a non profit organization comprising University of Virginia, William and Mary, Montpelier, Monticello, and Ireland. For the past twelve years, what we've done is basically global exchange programs. We look for leaders all over the world who are serving their communities and seeking to address some of the most pressing challenges in the world and we bring them
together. Every year we bring in an average of 200 international leaders here into Charlottesville across different programs from democracy to rule of law, to governance, to business. And for the past twelve years, over 2,000 international leaders have visited Charlottesville over a period of sometimes two weeks, seven weeks, one week depending on the program. And a few weeks ago, I was talking to Mayor Wade just before Christmas and I said to him, I want the people of Charlottesville to know the amount of diversity, expertise, and brilliance we bring into this community. There's 200 international leaders who visit this community every year, invest very heavily in our
local communities. We pay huge, huge sums to the hotels here to house them over the period of their fellowships. They also invest here by shopping. Many of them eventually come back to University of Virginia. They bring their kids also to come leave you over a period of time. The most exciting thing about what we do is contributing to our community. And how do we do that? We match them when they come here, depending on whoever program they are, with the best experts in The United States, in Virginia, and in Charlottesville. I'll give you an example. In October, we finished our biggest judicial program, which is called the judicial fellowship program,
which brings together 25 international supreme court judges. It is the only exchange program for supreme court judges in the world. In that program, we have supreme court judges from Ukraine, from Bolivia, from Afghanistan, from Iran, from Africa, from all over the world. Just Convergent, Charlottesville talking about the rule of law. And when they come here, they get to meet you with judges. In Charlottesville, they get to meet the Supreme Court judges in Virginia, and they're thinking about what can we learn about the purpose of democracy and how can we improve the rule of law in our countries based on how far America and Charlottesville has
been able to develop over the years. A big question people ask me all the time is, how do you bring leaders here at a time like this when The United States is also having its own issues? And I say to them that what my organization does is not to teach people what to do. The simple question we ask them is what works for you in your countries? What can we learn from you? And how can we put you in touch with our people here to strengthen your leadership skills when you go back to your countries? I could go on forever about the presidential prince, but I'm really conscious I have just about thirty seconds left just to say that I'd like to engage more.
And when we bring these leaders in in 2026, this year, we're estimating we're gonna have 300 international leaders across sectors coming here over a period of time. And through the city council, we're gonna be sharing some of our work and letting you know when these leaders come to town so that you can get to meet them and get to know about more what we do. And if there's anything we can do for you and if there are ideas you have on how we could deepen our relationship here in Charlottesville with the local community, I'm here till the end of today, and I'll be happy to hear from you. Thank you. Thank you. It's a wonderful resource to have in the community.
The next speaker is Richard Allen. Richard Allen. Bye. Yes, Billy. I did register, but my my colleague, sir Bob, yes, is a non sun seating. My time did have the phone. I will get this Okay. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. My name is Colonel Robert Guest the third. I have been with Court Square Memorial Advocacy Group for over five years. That's a little bit less than the thirty years I spent in the air force. As you counselors know, 20% or more of Charlottesville population are people of color.
Many have families that have been here since the enslavement era. Since Vinegar Hill was demolished, many feel oppressed by the powers of leadership, and I am here to speak for us. Last November, we asked deputy city manager Friess to reinstall the traditional site of enslavement auction block sign. He directed us to consult with descendants of enslaved ancestors.
We did so. We also got NAACP backing. I will give you the list of black residents who stated strongly that they do want the auction block restored immediately with a but with appropriate and proper wording that is humanized. Should we go public with the media or have a rally at Jefferson School asking white residents and citizens of color in Charlottesville to send you letters?
Please do not delay another year or two. We feel strongly that to replace the marker is to return a historically significant and important part of the city's moral fiber. As we said when we met with mister Fries, we believe that city council is ignoring the part that enslaved people played in this area, and we consider this to be erasures of history or better known as historical erasure.
The selling of human beings on a stump was noteworthy enough to be approved by HRC descendants consultants. The same is true for traditional knowledge of our sign, and nothing about that has changed. Please do not delay another year or two. We feel strongly that to replace the markers to return a historically significant and important part of the city's moral fiber. As we said when we met with mister Freeze, we believe the city council is
ignoring the part that enslaved people played in this area, and this definitely is historical of the ratio. The selling of human beings on a stump was noteworthy enough to be approved by consultants in the past. The same is true Thank you. For traditional knowledge of our sign. Thank you, sir. Nothing about that has changed. Thank you, sir. And thank you for your service to the country. Thank you. The next speaker is Paul Mack. Good evening. Thank you very much. My name is, doctor Paul Mack.
I am, speaking today on behalf of the Court Square And Sleeman Memorial. I'm a member of the justice and advocacy committee of the United Church of Christ Sojourner's United Church of Christ. For for for over five years, I've supported local efforts to place a reworded slate marker where it originally stood. The marker reads traditional site of reportedly in use even before the number nothing building
was constructed next to it. The building was the operation of the operation center for colonel John r Roeth, Jones, a dealer in enslaved human beings who could buy or sell them as agent for our towns and country's wealthy planters, such as Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, prominent among them. The most vigorous enslavement commerce was on monthly court days. There were 780 such buying days recorded between August 1800 and 1865. So called Negro traders regularly stayed at the Swan and Eagle taverns.
Andrew Grim and five other traders employed by Franklin and Armfield of Richmond greatly valued basement pens where they could hold enslaved persons prior to them being removed from town. Such underground holding facilities exist to this day between beneath Samuel Leich's eighteen thirties mercantile business, which was which today is the Redland Club on the former site of the Swan, exterior stairs for a similar similar basement under number nothing, and our photoshopped from a nineteen twenties photograph. I have copies for the for the board.
Until the nineteen twenties, there were wooden rooms adjacent to those stairs that could have served for dressing and a kitchen for feeding underground candidates meant for sale on the block. The book, the ledger, my assistance. The ledger and the chain describes in detail such operations in Virginia. I'm leaving copies of this handout with a 1940 photograph showing the number nothing building and two book references. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next speaker is, Joy Johnson. I don't see Joy.
You're not doing that. Okay. The next speaker is Tess. Going the wrong way. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Good evening, honorable mayor, members of city council, and to the Harris family. My name is Martez Tolbert, better known as Tez in this community, and I serve as a national director of the Fountain Fund. I stand before you today to formalize what we in this community have known for decades, that Eddie Harris was a giant amongst men. Eddie didn't just live in the West Side neighborhood. He poured his soul into the pavement of every block in the city.
He was an activist who spoke truth to power, a leader who led by by serving. And to me, he was a North Star that guided me back to my purpose. He didn't just talk about change. He lived it out loud in the streets where it mattered the most. I wanna be very clear with everybody in this room today. I would not be standing in this position of leadership if it wasn't for Eddie Deuce Harris. There was a time when the path forward seemed impossible for me, blocked by barriers that felt too high to climb. It was Eddie who looked at me and gave me the direction I desperately needed.
He was the one who told me, Tiz, stop messing around. Take your healthy risks and go see them people over there at the fountain. He understood that restoration is practical. He knew that getting my license back was about more than just a piece of plastic. It was about the dignity of being able to show up for my family. Because he pointed that way, I was able to begin the hard work of rebuilding my life from the ground up. But any impact went deeper than that. I remember clearly when when he used to come into the local ACRJ jail just to get guys out of the local block and start this program called Real Dads.
Eddie knew that the strongest thing a man could do is be present for his children. If it wasn't for Eddie bringing that program to me, I would never had the tools I needed to mend the relationships that matter the most. Because of what he taught me at RealDance, I was able to rebuild the bridge back to my children and their mother. He didn't just help me become a better citizen. He helped me become a better father, a better man, and a better mentor just like him. To Eddie's son, Rico, As you receive this plaque today, known as your father, legacy
is living, breathing force. It is alive in every family he helped put back together and in the leadership that I exercised today. Today is the day of homage. Today is the day of remembrance. Today is the day of honoring my mentor and friend, Eddie Harris. We thank you for the tools you gave us. We will keep walking the path you paved. And for me, today, it's not just January 5. It would always go down and be remembered in my heart as Ducey Day. Thank you. Well said. Well said. Well said, Tess. Thank you. Wendy?
Hi. My name is Wendy Gao. I'm an organizer for the Public Housing Association of Residents. Today is the last chance for the community to make public comment before council's special work session on by right zoning and student housing on January 20. I'm here to make sure that council knows what the community expects you to do during that work session. We want you to urgently change the zoning code as it relates to by right zoning around core black neighborhoods, specifically in the transition areas between core neighborhoods and commercial mixed use districts. The zoning ordinance as it is written currently incentivizes developers to build gigantic luxury student
apartments in and around low income black communities, accelerating gentrification and displacement. We need to decrease the density in allowable heights near core neighborhoods, strengthen community benefits requirements, and implement stricter inclusionary zoning requirements on student housing, which remains the most profitable type of housing development and therefore should offer on-site affordable U units, pay higher in lieu fees into the affordable housing fund, and be concentrated away from the core neighborhoods of 10th And Page, 5 Phil, Rose Hill, Star Hill, Venable, etcetera.
Last month, the Board of Architectural Review denied Landmark Development Group's application for their seven story luxury student apartment building over Fifeville, thanks to resounding community and neighborhood organizing from Fifeville and the brighter broader community. The BAR's decision should show council that there is significant community support for a zoning change, as well as support from within the BAR, a body appointed by city council itself. Over the last five months, you all have heard unceasingly from residents of West Haven, 10th And Page, Fifeville, FAR, the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition, members of the UVA
United Campus Workers Union, Friends of First Students, and wider Charlottesville community members and their support for protecting black and brown, low income, working class neighborhoods. On January 20, please do not kick the can further down the road and delay the conversation more. We need an immediate zoning change. We will be here. We will be listening and we will be watching. I also just wanted to ask everyone in the room who supports the residents of West Haven, 10th And page by Phil, to please stand to show your support. Thank you. Thank you. Alicia? Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan.
I'm a resident in the county. You have copies of the resolution condemning nontransparent federal immigration tactics and affirming community safety principles. It was originally presented in July 2025. It has been read into the record at previous meetings and is supported by the community. The resolution doesn't include anything radical or unreasonable. It does draw a bright line between local law enforcement and ICE, a force intended to become a national paramilitary organization answerable only to the president. Although the council has refused to debate and pass a resolution, you have touted the
decision not to enter into two eighty seven g agreements and the decisions not to use Peregrine or FLOC cameras. These are incremental steps at best. Our concerns about surveillance and data collection have been reignited by the city's decision to install Metropolis Technologies in the parking garages. The data collected includes name, email address, phone number, vehicle license plate number, and type and account credentials, videos and pictures of the vehicle and its license plate, as well as the date, time, and location of the capture collected by ALPR systems.
Depending on the interaction with your services, Metropolis may collect biometric data via facial recognition technology, browsing or search history, interaction with emails and communications, and other data collected automatically through tracking technologies like cookies and IP addresses, and precise geolocation, pinpointing the location of the device used to access services when location sharing is enabled through device settings. Like Peregrine and Flock, the company makes assurances that data won't be shared.
Assisting law enforcement is an exception. Metropolis faces scrutiny and lawsuits for allegedly misusing vehicle owner data from motor records for citations, raising questions about data access legality. Although Metropolis Technologies isn't directly named, its partner, NVIDIA, does support DHS ICE, whose data sharing with other agencies is a major privacy concern, raising alarms about surveillance, data breaches, and eroding trust. Of particular concern is is DHS access to biometric and location data.
You are naive to accept security assurances from yet another tech company. Your silence and inaction relative to the resolution normalizes the actions of this administration. Every American who does something in defense of the constitution makes a difference. In Chicago, one person wearing a whistle. Then he and his volunteers distributed them to thousands of people who then had one small tool that collectively disrupted ICE actions throughout Chicagoland. You are about to have support from the governor's office and the general assembly.
It's not too late to stand out, not too late to stand up and to lead courageously even if it feels uncomfortable. Set an example. Others will follow. Thank you. Adrienne Dent. I know we got a email, but I'm not sure if she's here. Miss Dent? Angelie? Hello, everybody. My name is Angelie Shaw. I'm the CEO and Editor in Chief of Charlottesville Tomorrow. Congratulation, Mayor Wade, on your Thank you. Reelection and your retirement. It's a nice thing to go together. Yes. I want to thank the council for honoring Eddie Harris, not because I knew him deeply or for very long compared to many people in this room, but because of
the legacy that he is leaving. Mister Harris accomplished many things as a community leader that I know. The one that I keep thinking about is the legacy he's leaving local media. Mister Harris was extremely courageous in many things that he did, not least standing up and saying that we all deserve a right to tell our own stories. We all deserve to be represented fairly and have agency in media. Vinegar Hill Magazine is a treasure for our community. Eddie Harris not only built up this organization but instilled his steadfast courage in its contributors in in Sarad Davenport who continues this important work.
He had the generosity to extend that strong sense of community empowerment and bold action to the partners of Charlottesville Inclusive Media, Vinegar Hill Magazine, the In My Humble Opinion Radio Show and Charlottesville Tomorrow. I hope that he knew how broad his impact is. I learned from his legacy as well and his vision has helped shape how I think about local news and who gets to be a part of creating it. Thanks to the team at Vinegar Hill Magazine, his story is being told and his vision is impacting people around the country who care about how local media is being
reimagined to be for and by more people. The black press is a crucial part of a strong local news ecosystem and because of Eddie, we have a strong black press here. It takes tremendous courage to stand up and say, I deserve to be counted. I deserve to be heard and to publish day in and day out. Whatever the challenge we face trying to build up representation and equity in local media today, mister Harris faced tenfold. And he endured and he succeeded. So I want to thank city council and the family and friends of Eddie Harris
for sharing these immense gifts with the rest of us. I will do my best to honor this legacy in my work. Thank you. So that was the last about, preregistered speakers. We have opportunity for 10 more. But before I, select Nine. Nine. I'm sorry. Nine. Before I, begin, I forgot to acknowledge, a new counselor, Jen Flasher. Welcome aboard. Thank you. She's already kind of part of the family. I just you you you feel normal now.
So it's, that so welcome. Mayor, I'm sorry. We actually do have room for ten. The first guest was an invited speaker. Oh, no. So I didn't count in the 10. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, who would like to speak? Miss Hudson. Thank you very much. Happy New Year to you guys. It's been a while since I've seen a lot of you. Happy New Year. I wanna start off just by saying, first and foremost, while I wanna keep this on a positive side because it's about Eddie, but I think, like, in the long term, this is about anyone from Charlottesville.
Please stop waiting for people to pass away to honor them. People deserve their flowers while they are living. And it's long overdue for a lot of people. And I just think far too often, we wait for people to just pass away, and then we wanna try to honor them. Because, I mean, your your family wouldn't like if if you were honored if, you know, once you, you know, ready to go to the upper room. So, you know, I just I I think that egos need need to be placed to the side. I see far too often y'all get proclamations to people who are not from Charlottesville. And let's be real and let's be, like like, I I wanna be stern when
I say this. Eddie was a product of Charlottesville. Born and raised, not somebody that moved here, not somebody that went to UVA and just got a job here. He was a product of Charlottesville. He saw it turn tenfold 50,000,000 times. He saw the good. He saw the bad. He saw more bad than he saw good in Charlottesville. And he took it upon himself to give his all to make it better for people that look like us. So I I I just think far too often, like, you guys just completely overlook.
And I I think it's just pride and ego. Because sometimes it's about who you like and who you don't like and, you know, when you wanna get these awards. Stop being like that and give people the awards for the work that they put in. You may not like their approach because I know I'm one. Y'all don't like me, and it's fine. You don't like the approach, but the work gets done. The work gets done when it needs to get done. The results are showing when they need to show. And so, I I I just wanted to speak on that because it really bothers me that this this is years old for Eddie.
Like, we this this you can't you you can't keep doing this. You know what I mean? And I think, you know, I know that that DI has been removed and and and misplaced or dismantled or whatever y'all wanna consider the verbiage of it at this prosperity. Is that the new word being used in the city? But you don't have to wait for things to be implemented to do the right thing. And far too often, black people are overlooked. Not only are we overlooked, we're we're completely being, you know, pushed out and dismantled from this city in more ways than one.
I mean, every year, we could just look at the makeup of council, and we see the results. So, with black history being next month, I think it's every day. But for you guys, it's next month. Let's try to do a little bit better with these proclamations and maybe honor someone once a month, once a once every council meeting or something. Like, it's so well deserved for so many people in this city. That's all I got. Thank you. Someone over here would like to speak. Anyone over here? I'm good. Okay. Mister, you you you, had your opportunity, sir.
My name is Richard Adams. Richard, yes. Yes. You ceded your your time. I did cede my time with someone else. Ma'am? Yes. You. Good evening, and happy New Year. My name is Sofia Marrero, and I'm a community organizer at the Public Housing Association of Residence. I'm here to speak on LV LV's collective LV Collective's desire to build a ginormous student luxury apartment building that will overshadow West Haven residence as well as speak on the zoning code. As you have heard tonight and for months, residents have organized to speak to council to say one thing. They don't want it.
I want to use this time to uplift the other voices that have already spoken and once again ask for a change in the zoning code. You have the chance to right so many wrongs that have been done against the black community in Charlottesville. As elected officials, it is your duty to listen to constituents. So I ask for one thing. Listen. Don't allow this building to be built. Neither students nor residents want it. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone over here like to speak? Anyone over here like to speak in this area here? Sarad. Good evening, counsel. Brad Davencourt. Don't wanna take too long. I just wanna say a few words to commemorate, honor the life and legacy of
Eddie Ducey Harris. He, meant a lot to a lot of us. And one of the things that I think Eddie had that was unique was he was able to communicate across the generations. And so he was able to talk to the to the young, and he was able to talk to those of us kind of in our middle age, and he was able to be the bridge and the connection to, the elder generation. And I think that, we need more people like that. We need more people to, be more, other centered, right, instead of kinda self centered.
And he was the person that was very much so other centered, and I learned a lot from him, not always by what he said, but what he did and how he was with people and his, the posture of listening. I really like listening to people, and not always thinking you're going to make deposits, but understanding that in order to help people the most, you have to be patient and listen. And I thank his family, you know, Rico and others for for sharing him with
us as a community and for allowing us to learn from him, and to become more, than we thought we could be. And I think that is there's a lesson for all of us, that we can learn from people in their passing. And, and we can learn that, how you make people feel, it matters. You know, they they might not remember what you say, but how you make them feel in their presence, it matters. And Eddie made all of us feel like we were whole people and that our
humanity was respected and it made us wanna get up and go out and do better and treat people better and to be conscious of the entire community. So just wanted to say that and to, say those words. I didn't wanna, like, let this time go by where I didn't honor and commemorate, you know, what Eddie meant for me personally and I think for us collectively as a community. So sit down. Thank you, sir. John. John McNeil. I'm John Hall from Fry Spring. This is the month we honor reverend doctor Martin Luther King and, some of his
people that, helped forward black progress in America. I brought a poster that I wanted to show the council and maybe the audience also. It's, the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. And, there is somebody that retired in our community. His name is Raya j Fields. He's a personal friend of mine, and, he organized he was a secretary of the, Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. And I was hoping that maybe we could open the discussion to somehow honor him.
I wanted to read this, sort of put it into context. Rosa Parks refused on the afternoon of December 1955 to give up her bus seat so that a white man could sit. Four days later, African Americans launched the Montgomery bus boycott that would continue for three hundred eighty two days until buses in Montgomery were desegregated. Of course, now, Uriah j Fields was the person that had to organize all that,
and he took pleasure in doing that. But he had to pay the price just like a lot of these people in the inner circle of Martin Luther King. They were pastors of churches, and his church was bombed. Just sort of the price you pay, for trying to get something really important done in society. You know? Here's a picture of the bombed out church. Photo of the here so the audience can kinda see. Photo of the, bombed Bell Street Baptist Church, 01/10/1957.
So that was at the end. Once they were successful, there was these racist bigots that, took their vengeance out on them in this way. And, it's really a shame that that's the kind of thing that happened in Jim Crow South. And, it really hadn't changed a whole lot as we we know, even today. But, meaningful progress was made. And, I just wanted to maybe, hope, fully, we can open the discussion to somehow
honor Uriah Jay Fields because he is a resident of Greater Charlottesville even to this day for over twenty years. And, he's nearing a 100 years old. And, I just I had hoped it would be fitting to maybe somehow maybe have a portrait and hang it up somewhere. Maybe even in the hallway outside. Thank you. Thank you, John. Sir, you bring it to Did you Fellow citizens and, city council, good evening.
My name is Mike Henrietta. I live on Paoli Street. That's 10th And Page neighborhood. Wanting to correct historic erasure on behalf of my 10th And Page neighbors. I've been a a member of the C S E M, the Court Square Enslavement Memorial Group for five years. Our group believes it is important to be honest about local enslavement history. This is especially true in the few 100 square feet containing active locations of auction commerce. The HRC identifies these as Swan Tavern, Eagle Tavern, Number Nothing, The Courthouse Steps, also
by tradition on a tree stump in front of the courthouse, across six hundred court days and many other days as well. Tens of thousands of enslaved people from Charlottesville and surrounding counties were sold here on the enslavement auction block. During the selling South era, 1815 to 1865, outdoor auction sites were the primary spot used by Negro traders to buy coffees of human beings. Fully 10 different towns surrounding Charlottesville each had an auction block. One of the towns was pre war Wheeling, West Virginia.
That town held a politically a political assembly called the Wheeling Convention in 1861, attended by a number of unionist Virginia's Virginia counties. Here, they formed the restored government of Virginia. They repealed Virginia's ordinance of secession. By 1863, West Virginia became recognized as congress as a separate state. This is how greatly fractured our home state became. The 10 towns I just mentioned are Fredericksburg, Alexandria, Warrenton, Hagerstown, Maryland, Luray, Wheeling, Virginia,
Lynchburg, Petersburg, Norfolk, and Richmond. And today, all of them have established markers of public acknowledgment of that long ago fractured history. CSM the the EMS you counselors to vote for Charlottesville to correct any ratio of history and join these towns. We also request that you flip one parking space to across the street, then shift one city hall floor opener to occupy the empty space in front of the, the coming traditional site of Enslavement Auction Block State Block.
This will transform a soul killing space of community grief into a space that is life memorializing and honoring for our town's earliest builders. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone over here like to speak? I believe you noticed. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Good evening. My name is Rachel. I've been a resident of Charlottesville for over twenty years now. I wanted to speak with you all about a problem The United States has, which is gun violence.
US is the highest firearm ownership, and it has the highest firearm death of any of the high income countries in the world. The firearm homicide rate in US is nearly 25 times higher than any other high income country, and firearm suicide is nearly 10 times that of other high income countries. Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens. Ages one to 19. That's in The United States. It's nowhere else. Just here. It's a uniquely American problem. On average, black people are over 11 times more likely to be the victims of
firearm homicide than their non Hispanic white peers. Among young black people, disparities are even higher. Black children age zero to 17 are more than 13 times as likely to die by firearm homicide than their non Hispanic white peers. As you all probably know, since before the pandemic, gun violence has been increasing in small towns, including our town. I'm here tonight to, voice my support of the Central Virginia Violence Interrupters, also known as the Buck Squad. I'd like to ask to support and fully fund their organization and the work that
they're doing. Read the mission of the buck squad, the Central Virginia violence interrupters. Their mission is to reduce the cycle of gun related crime and homicides through education and economic empowerment by restoring a sense of commitment, community, and personal development. We use mediation, mobilization, and motivation. Some of these guys and gals are sitting in the audience right now, and I can tell you I know them well. I know their, sense of loyalty and community. They are community builders. They're doing important work, work that no other organization is doing in our town and
work that's desperately needed. It's evidence based. It's a public health approach to a public health problem. They attempt to detect and interrupt conflict before they escalate. They identify and treat high risk individuals and build community, and they're really making a difference. They have a hotline that you can call anytime there's a threat or escalated violence or risk of violence, and they come and they respond, and they're on the ground twenty four seven. These guys don't sleep a lot. They're building community, they're protecting community, and they deserve the support of this community.
Their violence interruption model is one that's been used across the state and across the country. And for that reason, I'm asking for the full support and funding to allow them to continue to do this important work. Our country has a violence problem, a gun violence problem, excuse me. And Bucksquad is just one small example of a solution to this large and complex and deadly problem. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Deanna McDonald, and I am the owner of RN Heartwork Health Education
Coaching and Consulting. I stand before you today to say thank you to the city manager for, letting the community know about the progress and that has been going on as it relates to bringing a grocery store to Cherry Avenue. I also stand before you to urge city council to keep this conversation going to help us to ensure that a grocery store comes to fruition. There is a gap. As the city manager man mentioned.
There was a proper made to the community in order to get the rezoning by the developer. That proper was a grocery store. Store. Proffers are for land, money, construction, a community benefit that is served because this community, which sits in the Fifield neighborhood, is going to be impacted by more people with the affordable housing that is set to come. We also need that very much in Charlottesville.
I urge you to also, as we work together, myself as a community partner, I work with the 10th And Page neighborhood. I work with Ridge Street. I work with Fifeville neighborhood. I work with several residents that are not here, sometimes not present because they can't be. The low wealth community is not here because they don't want to be a lot of times. They are taking the time to work to care for their families, and they just don't don't have the extra time. I stand in the gap for people like that.
That's what I do as a community health advocate. So I urge you to help us hold the developer commitment to actually building a grocery store, not just the idea that a grocery store would come, help us close this gap, and get the grocery store actually built. I am also a steering committee member for Charlottesville food coop, which is made up of community members that volunteer to ensure that
a grocery store comes to this neighborhood that has been considered a food desert for over twenty years. The grocery store was the pillar of that community. Low food access contributes to health disparities, contributes to mental health, contributes to things that also affect violence in our areas. So please, I urge you. I stand here on behalf. I am also a proxy for my family members who live in Fifeville that cannot be here to urge you to help us close the gap to help us ensure
that the developer delivers on that proper and that we get the proper and that we get the actual building because the community is gonna come in and do the work of working the grocery store. Thank you. Thank you. We have a opportunity for two more speakers. Two, three, three more speakers. Anyone else like? The gentleman in the back. Oh, no. Richard, you you ceded your your, your your opportunity, sir. I'm glad to take all these options, sir, please. Thank you. My name is Frank Bector. I'm a resident of Fifeville.
I live at 3046 And A Half Street Southwest. Council, you recently received, I believe, a letter of appeal for the decision that was brought by the Board of Architectural Review, which was referred to earlier. There were many people at that meeting in December, and there were many people at the meeting in October as well. I'm I'm here simply to emphasize to you, if you haven't read that letter yet, if you read it, I want to make sure you know that it is extremely disingenuous, and its argument is extremely weak.
The Board of Architectural Review took its guidelines very seriously, guidelines that are that are made by city council. And the problem that the developer encountered was that it did not take your guidelines seriously. Those guidelines say, is the height compatible with those individually protected properties there? That's the reason that was at the board of architectural review. Is the height of this seven story enormous structure compatible with that? Is the scale of it? Is the mass of it compatible?
If not, it can that certificate of appropriateness can be denied. Is it, incompatible with the historic, cultural, or architectural character of those two individually protected properties? It is very clear that it is not and that is what the developer did not consider. It didn't think anyone would consider the actual guidelines that state that. It wants to say and does say in this letter to you all that, there
was there were I will say there was lots of conversation at that meeting. Tons of people were there. Not a single voice was in favor of that proposal except from, you know, architects. And there was a lot of conversation from community members. People were objecting on various ground. It was certainly mentioned that we don't like the zoning. We think the zoning should change. Various people said that. Is that a real issue? Yes. It is. But that is not what the board acted upon. But in this letter, it says outright, that is exactly what the board did.
It acted upon zoning. It didn't like the zoning, so it didn't approve. But it actually acted on those things that I just said. And it says that it requires their their wording of this rejection is so vague that it requires speculation and conjecture. We just don't even know why. If you go back to that architectural review meeting in October, you will see four out of five of the board members present. There were only four of there were five present saying, unless you reduce the height and scale significantly, not just reduce, but reduce significantly, we will vote no.
There's no conjecture on why they voted no. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Richard, did you have anything additional you wanted to say? Thank you. Thank you, Bradley. I'm Richard Allen. I live in Riverside Village, and I would like to speak with, all of you tonight respectfully about two words, tradition and agency. A long standing tradition says an auction block was here just up the street. And this word, tradition, means handed down orally from generation to generation. Thus, a large portion of citizens know the block was located next to Number Nothing
on the East Jefferson Street curb. They've heard about it. Traditionally, Our Court Square Enslavement Memorial group goes by CSEM, and the deputy city manager directed us to come before you and ask you to vote in favor of that tradition. Mister Snook, miss Asharin, mayor Wade, mister Payne, and miss Fleischer, you possess something else. You possess something called agency. That means you have the administrative governing role of exerting power.
Just as a surgeon has the agency to operate and remove a melanoma, you hold similar healing power to operate and stop erasing the history of the enslaved laborers who built the center of our town. In its beginnings, back in the 1720s, privileged white men had agency over laborers they brought and set up in enslavement labor camps, basically. And so our population remained majority black for seven generations.
And using the euphemism laboring stock, they named these builders slaves. In the words of enslaved Fountain Hughes, we were auctioned off like hogs, cattle, and horses. Slaves were powerless and diminishes. Diminish? They had zero agency. CSM thanks HRC Black consultants who demand that we eliminate this powerless word slavery from our vocabulary citizens, use your agency.
Email and write to these five fine leaders starting today, just as UBA has done, demand that they respect as human beings those tens of thousands enslaved by white agents who built the place we live. Last Friday, we asked you, city manager Sanders, to schedule city council's public vote soon. Please authorize a sign reading traditional site of enslavement auction block, And let us memorialize the updated humanity of our town.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. What opportunity for one more speaker during this time? Thank you all. We have another opportunity at the end. We'll go to the consent agenda. And Oh, did you wanna say something? Yeah. Just as a response, a lot of things in public comment, but, obviously, we continue to get, comments about, resolution, which we've never provided any answer for. I think we should provide an answer, one way or the other, and would just say, I think, I think we do need to reach a determination of what we
have the legal authority to do or not. But anything we do have the legal authority to do, I think we do need to pass, a resolution around ICE activity in our community because I think there are thousands and thousands of community members who expect us to directly confront what's happening at a national level. And I just don't think we can ignore it. But, regardless of what decision we would come to, I mean, it's been months and thousands of community members with no response from us. So but thank you. We'll now go to the consent agenda. Consent agenda. Number four, minutes from December 9 joint CIP public hearing with the planning commission, December
15 regular meeting, December 18 joint meeting with the school board. Number five, a resolution to grant $50,000 to the residential energy retrofit mini grant program, second reading. Six, resolution to appropriate 303,000 $303,660 from the building resilient infrastructure and communities grant program for the City Of Charlottesville Rock Creek Watershed Management Plan. Second reading. Seven, resolution to appropriate stormwater local assistance grant fund for the Ravenna Restoration at Riverview
Park in the amount of $607,610, one of two readings. Is there a second to approve the consent agenda? Or a motion to to approve? I move approval of the consent agenda. I will second pending. I sent Kina just now, I recognize some of the public comment names were, spelled differently. So I just said that over in case that needs to be correct for the record, but substantively, all good. Okay. It's been moved properly to second. We'll vote electronically. It was just so for the community just as a positive thing.
The Riverview Park project got a lot of attention, and funding for that is included with completion for the erosion restoration by spring. So positive thing. The motion passes five zero. Thank you. The next item on agenda is city manager's report. Good evening, council and members of the public. I have a few different things that I would like to do this evening. First, I would have asked, Chris Engel, director of economic development, to come and share with you just a review of where we are with the parking management system in
the garages. Remi, that's a later report. You can take that down for now. And because there have been a lot of different comments about that particular item, I wanted to have him, speak to some of the questions that have come in and more or less look to see are there any other additional questions as we look at this as an a management, upgrade, an operational upgrade for the parking garages, recognizing also that individuals do take issue with the the use of license plate readers, but this is common practice in this industry. So I think that's part of what our suggestion back to you as a staff.
Good evening, everybody. Chris Engel, director of economic development. As the city manager mentioned, he asked me to come and give an overview of the recent changes in the two garages, and answer some of your questions, which you've raised, in the last week or two. And at the end, if I haven't captured any of those, please, we can handle additional questions. I'd like to start just with a little context on how we've operated parking in Charlottesville. It doesn't get a lot of kind of conversation most most days or most times. But in the last couple of weeks, there's been a fair amount of, conversation about
it. But in any case, the city has had, public parking since 1975. The street parking garage was built in conjunction with the approval of the bricking of the mall, and the garage was actually built before the mall was finished as I understand it. And, at that time, we employed our first parking operator. It was a company called Charlesville Parking Center, local company that was actually started by local businesses, several local business owners that wanted to to support downtown and create a
create a parking, company to to manage a surface lot and then ultimately, first garage, the Market Street parking garage. So in 1975, that that began. Charlottesville Parking Center was the operator for many years, probably till about 2015, 2016 time frame. And then there was a change in ownership at CPC, and there was a change in, outlook, on that relationship internally. And so we did an RFP at that time for another operator. We picked one called Lanier Parking Systems, LPS for short.
They then turned into REEF. The parking industry is rapidly consolidating and and whatnot. So REEF was the new name of Lanier Parking, and that was in 2023. Actually, that was in 2038. Sorry. They had a contract for about five years. We did another procurement process, in 2023 that resulted in a selection of a company called SP Plus. You might have heard of a company called Standard Parking. They're one of the oldest parking companies on the East Coast. Standard Parking became SP Plus. Once again, quite a bit of movement in this industry.
So we started a contract with them, after an RFP process, where we had a number of submittals, and that began in 2024, 04/01/2024. It's a five year contract with one year extension opportunities at the end of the first five years. Then in 2024, '24, early twenty five, Metropolis, which is a West Coast parking company, that is tech focused, purchased SP Plus. So they are kind of consolidating their operations and becoming one entity.
And the name that you've heard mentioned and that you see is Metropolis, they're rebranding, but our contract is actually with SP Plus and the staff and some of the emails, all of that is kind of in the process of changing as this company becomes one entity as opposed to to two. So in any case, they're they're working through that. So in all these scenarios that I described, which cover a little over fifty years, we've always had the same type of contract system. The city owns the garage, the operator operates the daily operations.
They pick up the trash, they clean, they restock the tickets, they provide, attendant services, janitorial services. When something goes wrong that it's not their responsibility, they they let the proper person know and, just basically oversee the garage, which is now a twenty four seven operation. So it's a pretty significant, role. But they don't set the rates, they don't set the policies, they simply collect the fees and, remit them to the city on a monthly basis.
Their expenses are reimbursed as is traditional in a contract like that, and then they make a management fee. That's the scenario that all of these companies have operated under, and that's the the scenario that the current, SP Plus slash Metropolis is operating under. So I just wanted to kind of share that to kind of set the set the stage for how and why we got to where we are. Operators, current and past, don't have the ability to issue citations, tow cars, put boots on cars, or issue fines.
That's just not within the purview. There's some state law tweaks or changes that would be needed to allow some of that to happen in Virginia, as I understand it, but it's certainly not something that they're contracted in our contract to do. So I want to say that as well. Some cities do it differently, and there are kind of more common trends now where cities are engaging, in what's called a concession agreement with a larger company that they bring in to build, finance, operate, manage, a new facility so that the city doesn't
have to undertake the cost of building said facility. That's happening in Annapolis. There's a good example of that there. Chicago is another example, not with a facility, but where they essentially, leased for ninety nine years the parking meters that, the city of Chicago has to a to a firm. They got an upfront cash payment, and then the firm gets the rest of the day. It was a bad deal. It was a from Oh, good. There's lots of commentary about that, slightly described as a bad deal in almost all of them. But in any case, those are two examples of situations, that are unlike ours completely,
but that cities are pursuing, for various reasons, but we are not doing that here. Our agreement with SP Plus Metropolis, we may maintain full control, they just they manage daily operations. The primary change, as the City Manager just alluded to, and this began on the December 16 was day one, was that the equipment used to facilitate the parking session is new and different. And the system involves a camera, optical character recognition and or license plate recognition, involves a camera, optical character recognition and or license plate recognition, to start and end the
parking session. The previous system, you had to stop, put down your window, grab a ticket, and the ticket started your session, and then you had to put that ticket back in the system on the way out along with your money, to fulfill that session. So you no longer have to stop, you no longer have to grab the tickets. The tickets are problematic on a number of fronts, and we don't need to go into detail on that. But in any case, most of the companies and systems are moving towards more software, less hardware, more technology, less moving parts, thing things of that nature.
So efficiency obviously, the in and out. We're already noticing changes with, respect to to vehicles coming in and out. There are it's obviously quicker, because there's no there's no interaction with a a a machine to grab a grab a ticket. So, that's a little bit about that. So the, for transient users. So transient users are folks that come one time a month, one time a year, they're just there for one time, they're not regular, monthly users or enterprise users.
Enterprise users are, you know, folks that are have their parking paid for by the company and then they get the company gets the company gets the bill. Monthly parkers are folks that sign up for their own monthly parking because they work downtown and they they wanna do that. But a transit user is just a a very occasional user. So that payment is now facilitated through a web based system. Some people call it an app, it's really not an app, it's a web app, so you don't have to actually download an app onto onto a phone. It does require the ability to receive a text message, to to interact with that
with that system. So that that is new, and people are asked to click a QR code to activate that system, they're asked to put in a payment method, which is not unlike what they had to do previously, They do not have to put a name in they can simply put a phone number and a payment method, in conjunction with their license plate, and that that is sufficient for the system. So that's in basic terms how the new system works for folks coming in and out of the garage.
For a little additional context, the type of information that they're gathering is not dissimilar from, the city scooter provider, which is currently VO. And when you when you go to instigate a session with one of those, you do have to have the app and you have to click it and have your information either already in it or loaded at that time to start a session that you can then use and then return it, and then you have to check out of that session. So the the type of information is is very similar, with the exception of this system, does not require a name.
So you can simply put in a credit card info, a phone number, and your license plate and have it have it function. So just wanted to mention that. I know some people have suggested that you have to connect a name to it. You do not have to. You can. You do not have to, though. How do you do a credit card without a name? They just need the digits, and they can run it, as I understand it. Right. So folks have asked why we're doing this. It's essentially a modernization effort to to remedy the the equipment that we had, which
is in nearing its end of its useful life, and was not terribly efficient in a number of scenarios, particularly when you have large crowds exiting all at one time. You all may recall, exiting all at one time. You all may recall, last spring, there were a number of two or three instances, early in the event season, April and May, in which there were some equipment failures that caused the that it takes so long to get people in and out with
regard to the just the basic design in the process of the technology. So it was also nearing the end of its useful life. It's been in place since late twenty eighteen, 2019, And, these are thermal imaging printers that have a five to seven year useful life, as we understand it to begin with. So, the company that provided them also is not great on the service front and has few contracts in this area. So getting them getting their attention on things has always been a challenge.
So they got a lot of use. Service was lousy, and, end of useful life was was very nearby, if not imminent. We had one cash machine at the Market Street garage, at the elevator area that had been out for about six months, prior to our transition, last last week. And that was because of an equipment piece that couldn't be couldn't be replicated. They're not making the part for it anymore. So they basically kind of have to harvest parts from other older machines and try
and make them work, and they were just unable to do it. So we're kind of left in a position where we can't offer the service that is suggested, for a long period of time because of basically equipment failure. As was mentioned, that most major parking companies are moving towards more software heavy approaches as opposed to hardware, fewer moving parts, things like that. In addition, the upfront cost is a lot lower. On the last time we did, a full equipment upgrade, which was 2018, the cost
was about 350,000 for the whole system. The cost for this system, it's called Computer Vision, run by Metropolis, was about 85,000. So as you can tell, there's a vast difference in terms of the upfront cost that has to be born, to create a put a system in place, like this. In in addition, we anticipate operational savings over the course of a year. We don't know exactly what they'll be, but five to 7% is is not unlikely, in terms of reduced operating costs.
We no longer have to maintain a warranty on multiple pieces of equipment, and, have a service contract for that equipment. So that that's those are some of the reduced the areas where you see reduction in cost. Now with regard to the launch and the rollout of the system, certainly, recognize it wasn't smooth for everybody, including a number of our businesses, that were caught unaware. I'd like to apologize for that. We missed a few steps in that regard. The company that implemented this, did the usual routine where they contacted everybody that already
had a relationship with the garage, monthly parkers, individual parkers, validation accounts, etcetera, and interacted really well with them. But folks that were not connected to that system did not get a personal touch. So that was a misstep that we definitely had. We did not engage our our, business partner, friends of Downtown Charlottesville, as well as we should have, until it was basically launch time, and and it was a little late. Now we did make a concerted effort to the very next day to hand deliver,
information to all the mall area businesses on Wednesday of the week of the launch. So we did catch up with them, and we did answer questions, and we did send folks around, to help with that. But we definitely missed a step with the the traditional launch. Process was followed, but we definitely missed a step with additional public outreach that could have happened in advance. Having said that, this is the type of thing that typically people don't really engage with until it actually happens, but, nonetheless, we we should have done better, with regard
to to to getting information out in advance. If you were not coming to the garage, you didn't see the signage. If you were not already a validating account, you wouldn't have you wouldn't have necessarily known, particularly if you missed the press release and and things of that nature. So, a few key points just about the system of some things that haven't changed. So we have a very generous grace period, which is the first hour free. That continues. That hasn't changed. In fact, it's actually easier now with the new system. You don't have to register to be part of the first hour freight. You just drive in and you drive out.
You don't have to have an account, do the QR code, any of that, if you're just coming for an hour. A lot of our visits are, in that one hour or less, quick visits, city hall, post office, restaurants, etcetera. So that's a that's a change, a change in the in the ease of the one hour. Previously, you had to stop and grab the ticket, and then you had to put the ticket back in on the way out, and hope that it was calculated properly under the hour. Now you don't have to do that. So just wanted to point that out.
But the first hour is still free, and that hasn't changed. The rates haven't changed. The rates are the are the same. We use a fixed rate structure. It's a dollar per half hour and $2 for an hour. There's no demand or fluctuating pricing. There's, some companies, including some in Charlottesville, use demand based pricing, which can be confusing, to folks. We have never done that, and we're not doing that now. The validation, as I mentioned, process is still available for businesses that wish to validate
their customer parking. Not all do it. Some do it, some don't, some start, some stop. There's currently probably 80 or 90, businesses that organizations that do that, non profit businesses, etcetera. So that is still available if they want to do it. There's two ways to to do it, and each of those, businesses that had accounts were reached out to and were set up in advance and are actually now using it. As of this weekend, 56 of the 80 or 90, enterprises had already done validations,
and some had done quite quite a few. 8,000 folks have signed up, which is a pretty high number, given small small size, and we had fifteen days of service so far. So sign ups, that's that's people that have engaged with the QR code, set up an account to to come and use, the facility. One other thing that I probably didn't mention yet is that you only have to do the sign up once. So once you put in your credit card and your license plate and your phone number, you don't have to do that every time you come.
A lot of systems, do require engagement with a app or a system every time you come. And some of them require a sign in in and a sign out, including one locally, which has caused a great deal of confusion, because if people forget to sign out, they get a giant bill, when they're expecting a much smaller bill. So in any case, this system is unique in its aspect where you just have to sign up once, and when you come back in the next time, it'll start you another session.
And on the way out, it'll it'll give you a receipt. So it's just a one time, sign up is required. So 8,000 members have signed up. There's about 900, monthly accounts and, enterprise accounts. And like I said, 56 enterprises have already used their, QR code validations, at their various locations. Seems to be working once they get the hang of it. There's typically an adjustment period, with all of this that they suggest last thirty to forty five days. And at this point, we're, you know, fifteen, sixteen days into it.
So concerns, some of which were mentioned previously, even tonight, is the lack of ability to pay without a phone, or with cash. And currently, the office and or the attendants, when available, are taking can take a cash payment or swipe a credit card. There's, an attendant out there tonight that can do that for anybody that, that needs help with that. Staffing is a challenge with that, so it's not like a guarantee that they're going to be there 20 fourseven, but in the meantime, as we get acclimated with the
new system, that is an option for people who wanted to do that. There are also some workarounds that the staff, can help folks with, if they have challenges with computers, phones, etcetera. In any case, what we're going to do is add to the system, two separate cash credit card kiosks that will be where the previous kiosks were that you interacted with it. One at Water, one at Market Street, essentially in the elevator lobby, at Market Street and at the corner, second, and water at Water Street, where folks who don't want
to or don't have the ability to interact with a phone can do a traditional credit card swipe or cash payment. Those are not in place today. Four to six weeks is what I'm told. They were ordered prior to Christmas. So we're looking at early February likely. But we believe that those will help, folks who have that particular concern, give them another option. They'll still the pay by phone option will be there for those who like that, and then the kiosk option, credit card or cash payment, will be there for the
others, who wish to pay that way. You still have to enter your license plate, but you don't have to register with the system, so to speak, and and do it on a on a QR code. So we think that'll give a diff a different option and alleviate at least some of the concern that we've heard. The an additional concern is is data privacy, which was also mentioned. It's obviously a very personal subject. Everyone has their own level of comfort with what they like to share, wanna share, will share, and and that's their own business, and I understand that.
A couple of things just to kind of share about the system as we understand it and as we know it. The data that they're capturing is only used to facilitate the parking process. There's no biometric information captured. There's no facial recognition captured. It's literally only, like, six inches around the rear license plate. It's not even the front. There's no side views. There's there's nothing, like that. Some companies are doing biometrics, but we are not.
Metropolis is probably experimenting with it, but it's not part of their contract here, and it's not it's not in place here. So just wanted to be very clear about that. They do have to follow all the federal laws, the FCC, the FTC, state laws, the SCC, any local laws. That's all written into the contract, and they have to follow those, as a matter of course. Payment is called PCI DSS, which is payment card industry, security standard is is, in place as well. All our previous operators had that as well.
That basically says when you engage with a credit card, you have to keep that information safe. And so that's really no different whether you're using a license plate reader or a traditional system you have to keep that data safe. And that is still the case that hasn't changed. In addition, SP Plus Metropolis has a number of other certifications, you know, speaking to data control and how they organize themselves and behave. So there's lists of them if you want to see them. In any case, every anybody can opt out, you can have your data removed at
any time, and you can opt out of them sharing any type of data. I've asked multiple times, do they sell and share data? They don't sell data. Their policy probably suggests that they may, which is a little confusing. They've told me that they don't do it, and he and there's an opt out process for anybody who wants to to just be clear that it wouldn't happen, and we we have, access to that too. I can direct folks to where that is if they need it. Once again, data can be deleted at any time, and that's a standard part of
their contract, and it's included in ours as well. A few others I've mentioned, potential lawsuits, and we we've looked into that, we've asked about that, and, we're aware of at least two potential class action lawsuits. Both of them, as I mentioned before, our contract does not have the vendor able to do enforcement activities, citations, booting, towing, fines. At least one of the cases was revolving around that.
They're not able to do that here, and so they're not that's not part of their duties here. So we kinda see that as unrelated in in some respects, to to the activities that we've engaged them to do. And that's the same with the other, the the other, case. There's one in Tennessee and one in Texas, and, they're both similar in that violation fines and things like that. They're simply only allowed to charge the rate that, that we have set, for the
garages here. So they're not allowed to charge an additional fine or anything like that. Different states have different laws on this, I'm certainly not an expert in it, Texas has its own set of laws, and that's where one of the cases is. Virginia's laws are little different and evolving, and like I said, as we understand Virginia law, citations for parking cannot be automated or mailed via an automated system at this point, So even if we wanted them to do it, they couldn't do it in
Virginia at this time, with respect to the law. Not defending the cases. They may be legit. I don't know. But they are, very early in litigation, and there's been no resolution to any of them. Nonetheless, we certainly would take any any violations seriously and, take action as needed if something were to to to arise that caused us concern as a result of any of of those cases. I would also say that to date, our experience with the local staff and with the Virginia SP Plus Metropolis staff, has been positive.
They've been, quick to rectify any issues. There were a couple on day one where the wrong rate was charged, full refund was given, within the day, and, that that has happened and they have been responsive. So I just wanted to say that as well. There were a few other questions that popped up that are sort of kinda related, to all of this. One involves the general district court agreement that we have with the county, which includes providing parking. It it basically says we have to provide them 90 spaces during business hours, Monday
through Friday. 63 of those spaces are in a lot called the 7th And Market Street Market Street lot, which is, just adjacent to to City Hall here. And they have control of that since about 2023. So those spaces are are being used by the courts currently for visitors and for court staff, and county staff. And to date, with, they've not had need for the additional 27 spaces. The agreement that we have with them suggested that the additional 27 spaces would be provided at Market Street, and and that can happen.
It could happen with the old system. It can happen with the new system. To date, they have not needed that. When we implemented this, we did reach out to them, and we do have a meeting set up later this month to talk through what their options are and the best the best option for them, based upon their needs, which is a mix of visitation and and staff needs. So I did wanna mention that. One of you shared that as a question. It was a question about the parking advisory panel, which used to be in existence. It was created in 2016 when we did a parking meter on street meter pilot,
and that the the goal was to kind of provide advice to staff and and others, as that was being implemented. That pilot ended, in 2018. The, the parking advisory panel, which was a group of six, folks appointed by council at that time, continue to meet, and we continue to engage them in things, although they started to feel less useful. And then in 2020, council reworked all of its boards and commissions and, essentially moved
that one to a staff advisory level, and as opposed to a council advisory level, I suppose. And then no further appointments were being made to the group. So the group kind of, unanimously agreed amongst themselves that they didn't feel as useful as they once were. And, it was late twenty twenty three when they decided to sunset the panel. There was a letter that was written and communicated to the city manager at that time that's that stated such and, you know, something of that nature could be revived
at any time if if it was the desire of council. But that's, in a nutshell what happened with the parking advisory panel, which did exist for some time, but has not met and has had no new appointments since probably 2020. They did continue to meet until late twenty three, but but there's been no appointment since that reorganization period occurred. I think those are the basic questions. So, yeah, there are other options as as we've tried to share with folks. There are 30 parking spaces right outside this building that are free two hour spaces.
The 63 spaces that I mentioned across the street are free and available to the public after six six every day and all day on weekends. The West 2nd parking lot, which is a surface lot that's owned by the city, off of Water Street has a 105 spaces. Nothing has changed with how it operates. It has two payment kiosks at either corner, and, that is still available, put a credit card in, put your information in, and that's that hasn't changed. There are also, within the downtown area, about a thousand parking couple block radius of
the downtown wall, that are, as we all know, free two hour limited, spaces. So there are other options for folks, if they wish other options besides the garages. So I think those were the highlights of the questions that we had captured. I'm sure you have others, so I'll pause and That was that was very comprehensive. Did I hear you to say that there was actually a committee that was sunsetted? I never heard that before. It's like, they went out. That's good. That's good news. Yes. Michael, do you have any questions?
Or Yeah. I'll try not to to to be too long, and I'll just be in if if nothing else, I think this is one of the few times Albemarle supervisors, activists, downtown businesses, and Charlottesville residents have all been in agreement. So, if not if nothing else, that's happened. But I will I will just say, you know, I think it's a bad system. I think after the community had such concerns about automatic license plate readers, flock, Peregrine, to implement this is just on the part of city government or, you know, hypocrisy
and I think hard to defend. And I think it's a system that just makes people's lives marginally worse, sacrifices their data, and doesn't provide them a benefit. It just advanced private equity profit. And the business model is very new and explicit of establishing a nationwide monopoly in parking management using AI to to mass surveil customers and then monetizing it. A few questions. So this is from Metropolis directly. Data collected includes vehicle type, time location of entry, what kind of device is used to scan QR codes, biometric information of passengers, bank information, credit card debit card information,
and other categories. Metropolis will not delete the data. Quote, we may keep personal information for as long as necessary to achieve the purpose for which it was collected, our business needs, and any other purpose permitted under law. Is that kind of privacy, concern something that factors into how the city makes decisions around which technologies to implement? I would think so. That was a lot there. Their policy is hard to decipher, and it kind of flips over on itself a few times. So I think there's language in there as you found like that.
There's also a section where you can opt out and have your data deleted. I haven't been through the whole thing word for word, but I've asked the specific questions that we've heard, of which you're reflecting in your concern. And they've shared they shared the link again where you go to to, to opt out. So that's I can't speak for their whole policy. I didn't I I don't Yeah. Well, and and, obviously, you know, they're very explicit. The business model, which they call the recognition economy is, you know, monetizing surveillance data.
The other question, you mentioned that, they're also in several class action lawsuits, including several led by attorney generals around improperly act accessing personal DMV information and improperly charging people, either charging the wrong vehicle because the AI system misidentified it, or someone parked for two hours, it charges them for ten hours. Is that kind of concern about consumer rights factored into how the city makes decisions around technology we implement? Yeah. And as I said, I think, our experience with the local operators has been they've
been quick to rectify any any known issues, and they're then willing and ready to do that as needed. It's not a perfect system. It will probably in fact, within the first several days, there was a joint, license plate from another state that was the same digits if you can believe it. But, so they're quick to rectify those situations when they come up. So to to some extent, you know, those can be remedied pretty quickly. And final two questions. First, in 2018, we spent $350,000 on a new, technology system in the parking garage
at the time moving away from parking attendants. The argument was this would modernize the system, save money. Within five years, it started to break, and you said it reached the end of its life. How does a $350,000 system reach the end of its life in five years for ticketing? Well, it it's not really a tech solution or a technology solution, it's more of a hardware, and the hardware is what I understand, the thermal imaging printers that spit out the tickets, you know, got a lot of use. These two garages get a lot of use, and the company was not great with
maintenance. And, that we realized that pretty early on in the in the situation and couldn't do anything about it for some time. But, as soon as we were able and this technology is moving quickly, able to identify something that's a little more cost effective and hopefully longer lasting, Thought it only made sense to begin to modernize that the whole system at that point. But the older system and even the system before that was very hardware intensive, large
refrigerator sized, units, and the two facilities between them have 14 gates. So each gate had to have one of those units. So if each unit costs a certain amount, you can start to see the cost, how they add up pretty quickly. So, this is a just it's a different model. And, certainly, as Metropolis establishes a national monopoly, they'll have a lot of leverage to do similar things of delaying maintenance, put putting costs onto localities. Final question, how much do we pay Metropolis annually for this service?
Yeah. So they, they have a management fee that is, $40,000 a year, for the management fee. Their costs are reimbursed, so their staffing costs and, you know, equipment costs and things of that nature, which as I mentioned previously is the typical arrangement in one of these type of operations. But they get a management fee, and that that management fee is is $40,000 currently. And it escalates a little bit every year per the per the contract. Okay. Thank you. Natalie. Thanks. So, delving first into the the parking history, you mentioned the parking advisory panel was
created in 2016 for the pilot program, which ended in 2018. When did the pilot program start? 2017. How long how many months was it in effect for? It was about ninety days. It was supposed to be a six month pilot, but it it did end, quickly in conjunction with other events happening that that time frame. Mhmm. Yes. Okay. Thanks. If someone has the app but drives different cars, are they able to register multiple license plates? Yes. Yes. They are. Okay. It's very easy to do. You can do rental cars as well.
And you might have said this, but I I missed it. The data that they collect, they say it's only for the parking process. How how long do they store that data on their end? I think there's language that says says as long as they need to. I've I've also asked that question, and I've heard ninety days. So like I said, I can't specifically say, but Mhmm. Every time I ask the question, it's for the parking session. I don't know how valuable it is much longer after that. There's a period of time that they have to keep it, such as if there's
a refund or some dispute. But that's why I think the language is as long as they need it for the for the purpose, which is to facilitate the parking session. Mhmm. Another thing is that they noted. And, again, you gave a pretty thorough and detailed history of how we got to the system. Forgive me if I missed this as well. But did they have to go they they bought SP Plus. Yes. Plus, which we were already using. Yes. So they didn't go through, like, a standard procurement process and RF SP Plus did.
SP Plus had different, but Metropolis didn't. Acquired SP Plus. So was there an opportunity for us to pick a different system at any point? Well, we're in the contract with SP Plus currently. So when that runs out, there will be There will be. Okay. For sure. Because one of my questions was how come knowing that we maybe wanted to go into a different system, why didn't we pick one that was already in place in Charlottesville, like ParkMobile, which people already have on their phones? And Yes. What would that look like? That's a good good question. ParkMobile is a system that is around Charlottesville in a couple of spots, and it's
prevalent on the East Coast. It's not really suited for a, municipal system like we have that has validation accounts, monthly parkers, transient parkers, enterprise parkers. There's a whole back end to billing and receiving and all of that, that happens with those type of users that ParkMobile is not really in that space. They're in they're in the space of one street it works well, and in certain, like, surface lot situations or or smaller garages that are all transient, but not kind
of the combination that we have. Mhmm. So I don't know they certainly didn't respond to our RFP, which is one signal, but So we did issue an RFP. The original one with SP processing. Yes. We've issued multiple. Each of these transitions had an RFP process with them. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that each time. But, they did not respond. I don't think they've ever responded to one of ours. And I they probably would answer that question in a similar way where they don't see themselves as a true parking garage operator.
They have a technology that they use for on street and, some surface lot situations that people like and can use. It's a similar kind of a theory to Metropolis, whereby if you're registered with ParkMobile, you can use it in Charlesville, you can use it in Richmond, you can use it in decent you can use it wherever it's used. That's a common kind of theme there, but I I don't think they see themselves as a true operator. Okay. And then when is the SV Plus contract over? It started in '24, it's five years, so '29, 2029.
And that's when we'd be able to kind of reevaluate? Yes. And it would actually start prior to that. The process typically takes about six months to do issue and receive review and award, an RFP contract. Okay. Thank you very much. Nolan? So, I'm trying to figure out what the the cost structure of this contract is. So we're paying them $40,000 a year plus something additional towards their costs. Their costs are reimbursed.
Yeah. Yeah. And we are receiving the the fees that they bill Correct. And collect. We we receive all the the parking fees. So every time yeah. If somebody do we have any sense of how that's gonna balance out? Are we gonna be making a profit or paying money? The garages themselves are are profitable. The enterprise fund, which is where everything goes along with some other funds, is basically breakeven, and it was The parking enterprise fund. The parking enterprise fund. Correct. It was profitable pre COVID and pre Water Street parking garage rent reset, which some
of you will recall, which raised our rent cost considerably. Right. So the parking enterprise fund is break even to maybe losing just a little bit, but trying to get back to to losing just a little bit, but trying to get back to to at least breakeven. But the the two garages in and of themselves take away the the the rent piece for Water Street, which is a unique piece of it, are profitable. Yes. I mean, I'm I'm frankly not not concerned How do you know whether or not it's a profit center? I just don't want it to be a loss center. We're trying very hard to prevent it from being a loss center.
There is a small balance in the parking enterprise fund, small, $2.02 and a half million, something like that. It was building up prior to COVID pretty nicely. COVID obviously put a significant damper on it and then the additional burden of the increased rent that we have at Water Street. Yeah. So, just sort of by way of history, my recollection is that we had installed the new parking meters either, like, a few days before August 11 or a few
days after August 11. And the downtown merchants were so upset about all of the events of August 11, and they were saying, nobody's gonna wanna come down to Charlottesville and deal with these deal with all of that baggage and deal with the new parking meter system. And within a a month or so, we had removed those those meters again. Do I understand that we still have them in storage? No. We do not. Okay. Fortunately. We had them for a couple of years, didn't we? No. Fortunately, we leased those, at that time, and they went straight back to the company
once they were taken out. But you're correct in your memory. They started, 09/01/2017, And by Thanksgiving, they were turned off and taken out shortly thereafter. It was supposed to be a six month pilot. We didn't get our full six month of trial. And I believe they decided to vote again after a year, but then that vote never came back on the agenda to reinstate. There was talk about doing that. It never did come come back. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. So they I am not I'm not super paranoid about the notion of a license
plate reader, but I am paranoid about where the data is stored and who has access to the data as it's stored. Do you know is there a central set of servers that they maintain nationally? Or or There are. As best I understand it, it's it's probably, Amazon Web Services. They some of their security documents reference that. They've let me look at those. So I'm I imagine they have a rather large contract with them. Do you know if and, obviously, I've I've got a, you know, metropolis for Market
Street knows me because I've parked there because of my business. If I go and park in a different metropolis parking garage, for example, park on Water Street, does it recognize me and bill me separately? Am I am I good for whatever, either of the two parking garages? Or you're only good for Market Street with your monthly payment. If you go to Water Street, it'll ask you to sign up like a transient
user. You'll put in a separate card or you'll put in a card, and it'll bill you the $2 on the way out. So Metropolis is all over the country, you know, at least in half of the states probably at least. Just picking a hypothetical, I don't know whether Metropolis is in Minneapolis. Let's assume for the purposes of this question that they are. If I go into a parking garage, a Metropolis parking garage in Minneapolis, is it
going to recognize me as being somebody that Metropolis has a relationship with some place? Yes. But you'd have to register If you're registered rental car, you would have to register that rental car to your account. But if I'm if I've driven there, they they see my same license plate number. Oh, they'll know your phone and credit card, and they'll have a individual profile of the car. Regardless. Like if you used Veo in another city. Yes. It's it's the same concept. It's like logging in to order something from Amazon from a different computer. Yeah. You know, they're So this gets to the question of who's got access to the
data. And if if we assume that the only purpose for which data will ever be used is, to try to figure out, how to charge somebody for parking, Number one, I think that's hopelessly naive, and number two, I don't think it likely I mean, certainly in the in the the current political realities, I would have no confidence what so ever that that would in fact happen. So I'm concerned about the data security, the data privacy, the big brother aspect of
it all that, and I don't know if there is a way to modify a contract with somebody like Metropolis, so as to even if they were willing to do it, so as to be able to minimize some of those some of those downside risks. I don't know either. All I can say is they have shared with us all their security measures. They're all the federal, state, and local laws apply. In some ways, it's not that different, minus the license plate, than any other electronic
transaction that we have fairly regularly in terms of where the data goes and lives and and all of that. So there's some for for some people, that is helpful to to think of it from that perspective. For others, not so much. I understand. I guess I mean, I've been thinking about whether this really represents a significant step forward or backwards, a significant step either way, in terms of privacy and being able to track me. I guess, if they can track, where I know I know that I know that
the credit card companies can because I frequently get calls saying, hey, you you just charged something in California and here you are in Virginia. What gives? Where what's where's the fraud? I I guess I'm trying to decide in my own mind whether I think that that degree of of of integration of data and sort of feedback loops within that data is significantly different from what we see what we've already come to live with with credit cards. Yeah. I'm not I'm not sure.
Okay. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. I had very similar questions to Michael and Natalie and concerns about where that data is living. And, did we have any opportunity to end the contract with this buyout? Did they say we're moving to Metropolis and you have thirty days to change your mind, or do we hang out? No. They just moved to kind of merge the processes and technology of the company. I will tell you that SP Plus had a very similar technology to Metropolis, using
camera, it's called Sphere, and that was implemented in a number of places, and they're sunsetting that. They're no longer putting that out there or building on it, and their metropolis technology is the chosen one in terms of it is deemed to be more proficient and better at doing that job. So, a lot of times these tech companies compete until they don't, because they realize one has a better, companies compete until they don't because they realize one has a better version than the other, and they either merge or one acquires the other. I think that's probably what happened in this case.
And, are they compensating us for having to put in a cash and card? Is that their software they're that is No. We're we're paying for that. That's an addition. That's a convenience. The the the system works as I described. Obviously, there are concerns, which are legitimate. This is a supplemental system that they'll actually have a little bit more work to do on their end to rectify the two systems, to to make them work, simultaneously. But we are pay we will pay for the two additional kiosks to be placed.
And if, between now and the end of the contract, some egregious something happens where we are absolutely must get rid of Metropolis. It's all their equipment, and it's not changeover to anything else. Right? Correct. The the equipment, it's kinda hard to say that word. It's it's literally 12 cameras, and a couple of LTE boxes that connect the things. Excuse me. So it's not the traditional equipment as I described earlier.
But, yes, they they own that. And if we go with somebody else, if it has any value, they would take it. If it didn't, they would probably wanna leave it. But it might not be useful without the software, which is kind of their secret sauce, so to speak, on some level. Okay. And my last question is if someone's disputing a charge, which seems to be a problem with Metropolis, what how can we verify that? The easiest thing to do is is to contact the local office, which is located
in Market Street Garage. There's phone number, email, all of this is on our website, charlottesville forward slash parking, and, just contact anybody there. The operations manager is the best person. But like I said, I've watched them issue refunds, in real time, when they realize there's a problem. So if people are having that, and like I said, it did happen on the first day. One of the rates was in wrong at Water Street, and they they proactively rectified the ones they saw, and then, they went back to the other two that they
didn't capture and and did refunds on the spot. So they will do that. And if folks are having that challenge, they they should contact them. But we don't have any way to audit how that happens. Many refunds. Yeah. How We haven't gotten that far, but I'm sure there's a trail of refunds that can be reviewed. I can ask. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have any everything has been covered. All my my questions have been covered. Okay. I have met the I think, the operation manager of the young man that's in the, so he's very available and, you know, helpful.
So is someone local that they can they can talk with. So Yes. They're there every day. Sam? Alright. Thank you, Chris. I have additional items. So this is the longest city manager support of my tenure. Yeah. Not this room. You're still ahead. That's for later. Thank you, Chris. I also just wanna speak to the issue of this parking management system. This is challenging in in addressing a need. There have been many complaints about, interfacing with the park challenge of technology is is
is a bit problematic, and we've been in that conversation. I think it is regrettable, and Chris and I both acknowledge that. We both regrettable and Chris and I both acknowledge that. We both probably should have thought about this a little bit more and made sure that we thought about when to roll it out as well as how to roll it out. My my leadership team knows that public engagement has been a bigger conversation, a bigger priority for me, as we're working to, even revamp our communications and public engagement team so that we ensure we don't miss steps. I don't know that having gone through the perfect rollout would have changed where we
are today. So again, just acknowledging that for where it is because I don't tend to shy away from if it's uncomfortable, it's just a part of the process for me, and this has been uncomfortable. But I I'll acknowledge that we are continuing to look at ways to make this easier, identify options so that no one is forced to do anything that they don't wanna do. And that is the main reason for adding the feature of being able to get the kiosk in place so that people can use that version, which they're more accustomed to using and not have to deal with the other.
And we will continue to monitor the situation because I think I'm obligated to do that and that's what we're a responsible, leadership team would do. Beyond that, I do have individuals who new faces in the room that I wanted to introduce. Evan Pilachowski is in the the gallery here. He started today as our new assistant city manager. Evan's report. I'm sorry. What did you say? Oh, and he said welcome. Welcome. Okay. So Evan has moved here from Manatee, Florida. He takes on the responsibility of oversight of IT, parks and rec, public works, and utilities departments, and he's had a long day, a long first day.
How does parks and rec get thrown in with those? Those are operations. Makes sense. Mhmm. There's a there's a natural overlap IT. Yes. Utilities and parks and rec. And public works. Follow-up. Yep. There there's a natural overlap in project management across those, so that speaks to it as well. And Evan has been a department manager himself, and that's exactly what I was looking for in that experience. So you'll see Strict me as an unusual combination. The next one will be just as unusual to you, so that's fine. Do we get him a Charlottesville beanie to keep him warm coming up from Florida
in the middle of the day? About that today. He wanted to ask me when do you adjust to the weather change, and I told him you don't. But he likes it more than I'd like it. So I'll probably adjust before I wait. Also, I wanna introduce, Abigail Matthew Wade. I left out the Matthew part before. So, we've had to distinguish the fact that there's no relation between yourself and the mayor. But Abigail joins us, today as well. She will serve as the economic mobility officer. It's a new role for the city. This role was primarily funded by ICMA, the International City County Management Association.
Charlottesville was selected based on our clearly identified equity priorities as a local government. And Abigail will represent us in a cohort with peers from other cities doing this same work. And, we'll continue to speak to that while I have made changes to the approach that we take in doing the equity work, regardless of the titles that I use, the work is the work, and that's what matters. It's really about what efforts are we really engaged in. And Abigail's efforts will continue to explore opportunity and access work to build wealth in low income households. So she will hit the ground running as soon as we get her comfortable with
what that means. She's gonna be out and about in the community helping us to build out what is a solid framework for how we build wealth in our communities that remain challenged in our community as a whole. So welcome, Abigail, to the team. Also a couple of reminders to the public that city council will have a retreat this Friday, January 9. It'll be at the Hillsdale Conference Center from nine to four. I know. It will be broadcast live for those of you that wanna watch, and we will post it, afterwards as well. And next week, with all great enjoyment for those who like to come and talk
about money like I do, my series of community budget sessions, will be held Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday next week. That's new. We're doing it from six to 8PM on each of those nights. City space on the thirteenth, the Walker cafeteria on the fourteenth, and the CMS cafeteria on the fifteenth. This is an opportunity for anyone interested in being able to engage with the city's process for developing its fiscal year budget. We're engaging through the use of monopoly money, give you a chance to spend money so that you can get to feel what it's like.
And I will show you very quickly, it is no fun. Because you have hard decisions, you have choices, you have options, you have tensions, you have trade offs, and you never have enough money to do everything that you wanna do. So we were inviting the community to join us in engaging in that, very important process of looking at council strategic priorities, what we value, and what we appreciate as needs that relate to our own personal choices and desires, and the limited resources that we have available for how we go about using what we have to make the
biggest impact that we possibly can. And we come back next year and try to do it all over again. So we're gonna do that three nights next week, and I hope folks will come and enjoy the fun of playing with monopoly money and not playing me in a game of monopoly. I'll end that as my report. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We're now going to act to the action items. So we, the a resolution to establish the days and times of our, regular meetings, for the twenty sixth calendar year. So, we had talked from time to time about maybe, not meeting the first Wednesday,
the first Monday fiscal year or next meeting, you know, so No. There's there's no specific, matter that is associated with the end of the fiscal year and opening of the fiscal year. So we don't foresee that as, something that will prevent you from choosing to not have a first meeting in July.
What we have done differently in in the more recent years is we've been able to manage the agenda in a way that we have tended to be able to bring you a set of of action items that we think you can conduct your business in a reasonable period of time, knowing that the public is watching and they need to remain engaged in the process for those that want to. And my goal has been to not require you to be here until 10:00 because I know that that becomes a challenge for the public to participate. We can make adjustments. We've, shifted how we allow staff to add items to the agenda for consideration.
They're having to do it further in advance, which is not always a popular thing, but it is a good process thing for us. And for that, I think we could always manage the idea that there is no July 1 meeting or whatever the first Okay. Date is. I think that's pretty fine for us to do. So did we wanna have, we have, the list of the kind of the first and the third Mondays, of the year, of this year. And with some dates change like, you know, holidays. Are there any changes to this, to take out to July 6 or any other
changes? Entertain a motion or discussion. I'd like to make a motion to remove the July 6, meeting. Okay. I would support that just as well. Yeah. It's kinda I'm fine with that? Yeah. Yeah. I'd I'd I'd Okay. I don't feel super strongly. I don't Okay. Yeah. I can see the need on both sides to give staff a break, but also Yeah. Get stuff done. And, you know, if we can manage the schedule outside of that, fine. If there's a last minute need for it, I'll show up.
Yeah. So we move adoption of the calendar with, with that amendment July, first July meeting removed. Which is July 6. Yeah. Is there a second? I'll second it as amended. Okay. Any further discussion? Nope. If not, we can take a vote or do it electronically. Should've just alright. Thank you. I didn't know how it worked. Oh, good. I love it.
It it took me a couple of months. I know. Although this has been the most successful electronic voting meeting we've had. I think in a while. Yeah. The motion passes five to zero. The next item is a resolution approving, authorizing the acceptance and installation of a city sponsored commemorative display recognizing the one hundred one hundredth anniversary of Jefferson High School. Stephen King will present. Yeah. His first time in front of you. Yes. Yes. Mayor Wade, members of council, it is a pleasure to come before you here on
my ninetieth day on the job as assistant to the city manager. Also very happy to come to you on, behalf of the resolution, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Jefferson School. Next slide. Again, for you all, many of you are, lifelong residents or long term residents, so you may already be familiar. But I would be remissed if I did not acknowledge the historical significance of the Jefferson School. As you you can see, as it's displayed, the school was originally founded in 1926. Although it was founded in 1926, its origins trace all the way back to the
Freedmen Bureau, in in '19 or in 1865, where it then eventually became the Jefferson colored gray grad graded school, in 1894. Again, many of the students, played a critical role in the desegregation of of schools here in the the state of Virginia, as well as the this school was one of 10 schools in the state. That was a high school where black students could be educated. Many of the students went on to play prominent roles, in education, and, the school
is now the site of the Jefferson School African American History Heritage Center. While I cannot do do the the, the school's history and and and significance justice, if you do have additional questions, I do have doctor Douglas here as well, should you have additional questions. Next slide. As for what the resolution, that is being presented to council is, is it would be, a city sponsored commemorative display, that would be on designated poles, along Main Street.
This would be a year long commemoration, that would run the entirety of the year of 2026 through, 2027. As for what will be displayed, the intent is to feature students of the school, as well as potential community member or, sponsors as well. And again, the city would have the ability to be, to ensure that the content, placement and maintenance, is adequate to council's needs. With that being said, I will, turn it all over to you all for any
questions you might have. Yeah. I love that that picture. It's great. Miss Fletcher, do you have any questions or comments? Yeah. I think this is a great way to celebrate. The school and it's and it's history. And I think it'll look great going down, the street as well. Is the, the what's the process of determining the look and feel of these and, you know, the sponsors, etcetera? So some of that I'll I may defer to doctor Douglas, but, we've been working with doctor Douglas since October on this, potential project.
Again, she's presented some mock ups of the images that would be presented, and she's actively been working with community sponsors that could help cover the cost. I will say that, it has been a process. The original intent was to display these from light poles. We ultimately determined that the light poles could not adequately carry the, the weight of the banners, especially for the duration of the of the the commemoration. So we've been working with her and her team, on those implications to try to
still find something that honors the the vision, of that. But, I'm happy, again, if you have anything else you wanted to maybe add. Yeah. Let me give you a little check. Come check. So February 20 is not really a well known date for the opening of the Jefferson School. In fact, the way we arrived at this date was as a consequence of an article that was published in the daily progress that came out in in March. Most people have assumed that, you know, the school opened in September because that's when
schools open, but that's not in fact the case. One month after the opening of the Jeffersons, High School, the Public Assemblage Act comes in to, and and it becomes Virginia law. And Public Assemblage Act in 2026 1926 is the law that, codifies the ways in which blacks and whites can occupy public space. So we're not only just commemorating the idea that this is the African American high
school, but we're also talking about the ways in which this high school then becomes essential to the community itself because it becomes the community gathering space. And so where these banners are located on West Main is essentially what has also been described as a historic corridor. So it's between, 8th Street, so encompassing First Baptist as one parenthesis and going down to 4th Street as the other parenthetical. So if you think about Charlottesville and what we're doing for Virginia 250 for, what
is happening for the downtown mall, you already got your banners up for that. This allows us to really extend for the city and its visitors a really, broader notion of the history of place, and moves it not just as a conversation on the mall, but also a conversation that links and creates the kind of corridors that you're always interested in doing anyway. The kind of the images are coming directly from the Jefferson School yearbooks.
Right? So we have yearbooks from 1940 through 1950. So most of those images will be of students, and it will be taken directly out of the yearbooks. So it's a nice little vignette of of history. And then in terms of the material, we've been looking at material. You know, I've gotta be honest. I wish they were on the light poles. I'm not gonna I've I've come to terms. Since they're pictured on the light poles in this in this Well, that was a mock up that we have just to give you a sense of how they would exist in space. That's our picture.
Is that you? No. No. I mean, I mean That's from the Paul Singer collection. Yeah. So Of of a woman. What do we have to work with? What do we have to work with? Honestly. I mean, I So, working with our public works team, what we've, determined is a 12 foot pole that will be, added to the, sidewalk, that will then have the appropriate, banning banner equipment or, hanging equipment for them to still be displayed at 12
feet. And so they'll be still close in proximity to the light bulb, but just not hanging directly. And not in in the fringe on No. ADA accessibility on the side of the racks. That's for the height. That's why the 12 feet matters. That that that as well as the the space that these poles occupy are pretty small. They just do, the installation is quite simple. It's how it's been explained. Okay. Pretty minimal in terms of what it will do to the landscape. Okay. Great. And the other part that's important about it is the fabric that we're gonna use. Mhmm.
If you've been to the ex it's park and you've seen the way those banners Banners, animals that they have. Animals. It's the same thing. So we're working with, sir Speedy. And they have said to us that they that material is porous. And so the the notion that they will hang for a year, is that's the consideration of the kind of material that we're using, giving it because I think the issue really is wind as well Yeah. In that corridor. They want to fray.
Yeah. So this will allow for the wind to come through and therefore less burdensome on the actual overall structure. What you're also looking at is so we are hoping that those banners go up on the twentieth. We've been told that that's possible. It's Black History Month, so that's one good thing. But it's also, allowing us to have the celebration on the twentieth. And so it's sort of, you know, so my point is that the logo that
you're looking at is from the Doyle. Each one of these banners, as it was mentioned, we're using them as fundraiser because this the event on the twentieth, we'd like to have it free and open to the entire community. We're also giving a reflector award on that day, and we're giving it to someone who is, relevant to the anniversary. Don't wanna say who it is yet. So but it's yeah. Mhmm. So it's it's a it's a really big, opportunity for all of us to to,
create something that shows the importance of that school in a place where, you know, the Jefferson School is one block over. And so this gives us recognition on a main court. So thank you. Yeah. So the installation sounds pretty, easy to do, and we we got about six weeks. So yeah. We were told that they could be made in a week and put up in a week. Oh. So And how many of them will it be? 20. 20.
Okay. Yeah. And I would just add, I think, obviously, this is a positive thing. I hope with the hundredth anniversary, the city also maybe returns to some discussions around, you know, Vinegar Hill Monument. I don't know if that ship has sailed, but but that opportunity, as well as clarity and decision on how we'll approach the swords into Plowshares project, as well as just public art in the future of Lee Park, Market Street Park, Court Square Park,
I think those are just some other unresolved big questions around, you know, memorialization and public history. And I just want to clarify that you're gonna primarily get the pictures from the the yearbooks or some maybe some collections that you have at Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's mostly because it's the high school, we'll be using images for the yearbooks. Mhmm. High school is in that building only until 1951. Yeah. I've got Okay. Quick question. Just to clarify. So there are sponsorship levels. One of those noted in our packet, but then it's a city sponsored installation.
So that means the city's paying for the installation and then the sponsorships are going to the job School. Yes. Correct. But to to to pay for the celebration. Mhmm. So it's not really a fundraiser necessarily for the Jeff School. Yes. To make sure that we have as much members of the community for free at the celebration. Yeah. Great. Good. The Jefferson, I guess, Foundation had a announcement today of their new leadership change and things there. So it's a lot of good good information coming from Jefferson School and Heritage Center.
So thank you. Thank you. So do we we have to take action on this. Right? Yes. Mister mayor, I move the resolution. K. Second? Okay. We will vote electronically if there's no further discussion. K. Motion passes five zero. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. You were here for the 04:00, sir. You you put in your eyes. I tried to help her out. Take over time out of petty cash. Yeah. The next item we have to do is, as we have part of our reorganization meetings, we have a lot of committees and things that we sit on, in addition
to meeting twice a month. So we have a a long list and that we some of them we're on, others we maybe do. So we'll just kind of go down the list and, and those who are interested, if you can just chime in. The first one is is that is that do you think that's the best way to do it? Sure. Yeah. Or we could read the assignments from the columns. Yeah. You wanna do that? No. I'm happy to do that. Yeah. Okay. For the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board, councilor Payne, the, historic resources committee, councilor
Snook, the housing advisory committee, councilor Payne, legislative committee, Snook and Ostrin. And then not showing a lot of commitment. Thank you. Sorry. Well, I realized I hadn't put my x in there. It's in there now. Okay. Minority business commission, mayor Wade, retirement commission, mayor Wade, school capitals project school capital projects, councilor Snook and me, social services advisory board, councilor Fleischer, Albemarle County Regional Jail Authority
Board, councilor Snook, Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, mayor Wade, Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, counselor Fleischer and me, Charlottesville Community Scholarship Program, me, and then Darden Town Memorial Park Committee, counselors, Fleischer and Snook, Jefferson Area Board for Aging, Board of Directors, Mayor Wade, Jefferson Area Community Criminal Justice Board, councilor Fleischer, Local Energy Alliance Program Governance Board,
councilor Payne, Metropolitan Planning Organization, councilor Fleischer and me, Piedmont Housing Alliance, is on hold until there's an invitation, Regional Housing Partnership, councilor Payne, Rivanna River Basin Commission, councilors Fleischer and Snook, Ravana Solid Waste Authority, councilor Snook, Ravana Water and Sewer Authority, councilor Snook, Thomas Jefferson District Planning Commission. Or did you wanna check this box too? Okay.
Councilors Snook and Fleisher? Wait. Wait. Well, Jen had it marked on there, but did you I know. Maybe. I think we said two can two conservative. Yeah. Yeah. Two conservative. Yeah. Okay. Virginia Career Works, Piedmont Region, mayor Wade, Virginia First Cities, mayor Wade with councilor Snook as an alternate. I think that sounds good to me. I note that we had see, on Regional Housing Partnership, councilor Payne would be the
the member as as he is now. I've been an alternate. Is there a need to have an alternate to that, do you think? I think if anyone's interested in being on it, then sure. I don't think no one's interested. I don't know. It has an asterisk noting, alternate appointee is required. So would you like to be that alternate? I'm I'm willing to be. If somebody else wants to, really get a lot of education about regional housing, that would be a a great opportunity. But, you know, I'm willing to do it if nobody else is.
And Sounds like nobody else is. I'll be well, I was just checking the calendar. I I will be able to do that. You wanna do that? Yeah. Okay. And the only the only one on one I will certainly survive if you want to stay on it. I would be interested in staying on the Rivanna River Basin Commission, but I don't know how much, Lloyd you would like to stay on it. Well, that's a two member. Correct. Yeah. Oh, I see. You and if you'd like to be on it, that's fine. You sure? Yep. Then that's the that's the only one. That has been updated on the chart.
Okay. So would someone like to make a notion with it, all of the I move that city council members be appointed to boards and commissions as outlined in the previous previous discussion and noted on our chart. Yeah. So, can I get a second? Second. Before we vote, we can send it to you, Max and Keena, but did you did you have any questions or anything? Okay. Thank you. I think the one TJPDC, there had previously been maybe a planning commissioner that was on there? Is this this has taken the place of that?
Yeah. I think that they have, the city or other localities have I mean, other localities have two elected officials. Is that what I understand? Almost all of them. We've been for for period, we were usually the only locality where it wasn't two electives. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So we'll be owing to two electives, and that would be councilor Fleischer and me. Is that or, I I was interested in staying on it. I'll prefer. Yep. So Payne and Fletcher. For the TJPDC? For TJPDC. Yeah. Cool. Alright.
Okay. So, would that change or or would that so I think we're prepared to vote. Yep. Counselors. No. Hey. Hey. As the parliamentarian, since you've just now amended the previous, motion, you need to have a new new second new motion and second. I move that city council members be appointed to boards and commissions as will be as we outlined in the previous discussion. Second. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So the motion so we'll begin our duties, probably, tomorrow.
Already tomorrow. Yes. Already. Thank you all so much. It's so much more than the, time we come to this meeting. I think most of us put in at least twenty hours a week and, maybe some of us more, but that's what we signed up for. Mhmm. The next item, so we are now at the item for the second community matters. Nope. Nope. No. General business report, to discuss the investment of the housing development project, of our cycle
funding request. You wanna go home, I understand. No. So, this evening, what I am doing for you is providing a report, which is a report a two part report, f y twenty seven request for information, part of our notice of funding availability round, that is, the city's competitive grant making as well as second quarter off cycle requests, because that has become a part of our process for the notion that individual organizations may have a need to submit something for consideration
outside of our deadlines and to not then allow or force counsel to be unable to respond. We decided that every quarter, I will bring to you any of those requests for your consideration. It is important at this time that in framing this, I'm bringing these items to you knowing that I am deep in the process of working with our team to put together our f y twenty seven budget. And I assure you, it is painful, to do that at this present moment of how hard it is to make the numbers work while I'm also talking to you
about maybe you wanna spend money on this or that. And I can see her eyes in the back of my head right now. Miss Hamill is wondering what are you all what are you all about to do to that process? So first, we'll just take the f y twenty seven request for information. This is just a a snapshot of what our notice of funding availability looks like. These are all the different funding programs that the city offers today available for response, based on a deadline and application period, where funding is available usually July 1 of
the next fiscal year. So we're, anticipating what these expenditures are gonna be, and these are part of the next year's budget. These items are all a part of our normal vernacular of what, our nonprofit organizations and other parties who are a partner with the organization with the city organization are understanding the process to be. That last section, the the request for information, is something that we added a few years back. It was an opportunity for us to formalize the moment where if a if a local developer was going to be doing a housing development, especially with affordable housing integrated
into that. We wanted to be able to hear that as the city organization because it is such a high priority. It does not have funding identified. As you see, TBD is there, so they are submitting this information without any expectation of funding. They are invited to identify a request for funding so that we have some sense of what it is that they're looking for us to do, and then we give them an opportunity to do that within an application period. And it goes under review, and then that review is why it then comes forward to you. And this is an annual process, an annual step in our process for bringing the
results of this particular activity to your attention. This year's RFI submissions produced three applications. I shared these with you last month in the affordable housing budget brief just to give you a preview of the idea that what was coming to you was an ask, and that is the ask submitted by these three developer parties who are identifying for you affordable housing units that they are planning to produce at different AMI levels. And then the staff has taken a look at their packages, the performance that they put together.
That link was provided by me to each of you to give you a chance to go on the city's website where you could then go and take a look at those packages and understand them to whatever degree you were interested in. But we wanted to also identify for you that staff took a look at all of of these, and we formed one single recommendation of if you're going to consider a place to go, the community housing community services housing application of $900,000 is one that we would say that we are supportive of because the AMI levels are 60% and below.
And as you recognize from some of the work that we've done to evaluate what our impact has been on the work that we're trying to achieve in the providing, of more affordable housing units. That's the area where we struggle. 30% even is an area where we struggle, but the 60% and below is where we need more units. We absolutely need more units in our community, and this particular application, connects there. The middle one, while it is an interesting opportunity to produce a 192 units and the request is $1,750,000, it does not sufficiently capture the AMI targets because a 108
of those units are at 80% AMI and nineteen and forty six being a 120% and above. That is not to take a a knock at 80% AMI in this community that is expensive. 80 percent is still a struggle for some. And the point that we make in pointing this out to you is that because these are higher number of units in those higher areas is why we look at this as a trade off in confirming what it is that you might be able to handle, and or afford in the making of your budget.
Because anything that you add at this time is just gonna add a little more work for us because it does come at additional cost beyond where we are today and trying to close the gap in the budget. And then the last option is the preservation of affordable housing project, we refer to as POA. That is the use of, UVA, donated land, for this opportunity to produce a 170 units at 60% AMI, which is attractive for hitting that AMI area. But the reason why the staff recommendation does not exist is because we still are
looking for you all to provide direction on whether or not you are willing for the city organization to support directly UVA project, and that has not been concluded up to this point. So we are not, at this time, making a recommendation on this matter. What I'm looking for you to do for us this evening is to identify for us if you are aligned with the staff recommendation and want us to bring forward an action item to make that so. If you have further questions that you would like to have answered in the form of an action item that we will bring back to you in the next meeting,
we can do that as well. But we're definitely interested in understanding from you at this moment. Is there anything on this slide that speaks to you as a place of interest that you would like further deliberation? Because that will be our next action. And this is just one step of multiple things that I'm gonna share with you. So I'll start with you, Lloyd, this time. Any questions? My my first thought as I'm as I look at these is I'm trying to
figure out what I want a rule of decision to be. Do I want it to be we're willing to subsidize a certain level of affordability at a certain amount of money per unit? If so, it does is that amount different if we're looking at a 60% unit or a 50% unit or a 40% unit? I think we if we buy into the idea that we should be, subsidizing these
kinds of of endeavors, we ought to I I I think it would make sense to be able to say, if if you are gonna produce 40% AMI units, we are more willing to encourage that with more money of ours than if you're looking at an 80% AMI unit, or a 60 or whatever. I don't know what the right numbers are, but it would seem to me that one ought to be able to construct a ladder of, okay.
For this, we'll give you this. For that, we'll give you that. And that help would help to, make sure that we're comparing apples to apples as much as we can. Again, I don't know what the right answer is, but, I'd I'm concerned that looking at, for example, the the Brick Lane Better Communities project where they're asking for $1,750,000 and only 19 of those units are gonna be at 60% AMI.
Again, I'm not quite sure what the right numbers are, but that feels like that's the wrong number. The the latter the last It's 10%. What? It's 10. Well, and they're required no matter what to include those because that's the inclusionary zoning requirement. Yeah. And, you know, one of the reasons that we were sold, at least one of the the reasons that we're being argued in favor of of the including the 10 was supposed to be that if you're only including 10%, the other 90% market rates
ought to be able to subsidize that 10%. And yet what we've come down to, the way the projects keep coming to us, is they say, well, fine. We'll build our 90%, but you all have to subsidize the 10%. We're not looking for the other 90% to subsidize the 10%. Well, this one, instead of doing that, has below market rate units. So it's not the other 90% are not market rate than below market rate. So it's providing lower AMI that's not completely offset by their market rate units.
Yeah. And, again, I'm I'm not sure what the right combination of numbers is, but I don't know that it for whatever reason, maybe I need to think more about it, and maybe I need to think more about this concept of of some sort of a laddering. But I'd I'm not impressed at the moment with either the the second or the third options. Whereas the first one, with fairly decent, you know, AMI numbers, 22,500 per affordable unit,
it kind of feels like that's more or less in line with where we've been on a lot of other projects. I I don't know. I'm just sort of thinking out loud here. But Yeah. As far as the University of Virginia's component goes, yeah, I one of the issues, I suppose, that we always run into in looking at at the at these kinds of projects is, is there some other fund of money that would be, able to perform the subsidy that, that they're asking us to to to give them?
It certainly seems like there's more likely to be such a sum of money coming from UVA, but I wouldn't reject it out of hand. I'd I I I I guess I sort of feel like my my my reservation about almost all of these projects is I don't know who is driving the hard bargain to get down to the lowest number possible or whether I mean, as far as I can tell, is that somebody came up with notions the city should come
up with $3,000,000, and they came up with that a couple of years ago. And here we are now being asked for $3,000,000 without really very much understanding of of why they need our $3,000,000? Well, I wouldn't say that. I think they produced the pro form a. They identified what the total development costs are. It's part of their package. What they identified and having been in this world myself, you ultimately just simply break down what your gap is and where your potential sources are and who's most likely
to give you what you're looking for. So I'll speak to it from that perspective, not because I have not had a conversation with them directly. I stay out of these types of conversations. But I would say that they identify what their need was, and they need to go after low income housing tax credit. So they need a local contribution of some so it's probably reasonable to say that they chose $3,000,000 because they're satisfied with that checking the box for the points that they're seeking. And I would imagine that that would also apply to Brick Lane if they were going after, LITEC as well. But does it matter I know it matters to their their bottom line whether they
have to put another million dollars of their own money in, but does it affect as it adversely affect their low income housing tax credit application if they get a $2,000,000 contribution instead of a $3,000,000? Yeah. It depends on what the scoring is. I mean, and whether or not they could find, local funds in a different manner. I would imagine, but I I have no way of knowing that for sure. But that is the process. That's what it takes. Janet, you still pondering you? What's happening? I don't know. Yeah. Are you pondering still? Oh, no. I'm No? Okay.
Okay. Okay. I thought you're getting back. I thought I was done. And I'm getting back. Just some meditation. Yeah. That's a small moment. I was like, shit. Fuck. Thank you. For the community services housing, that seems like a no brainer. I it's my understanding that that was presented in November in fall twenty twenty two, and then it did not get funded. Yes. Do you what do you know why that was? Don't exactly remember. I wanna say that our process was not the way that it was supposed to be where those items came to council, and it may have been made at the
staff level to not bring it forward. If I'm remembering correctly, I vaguely remember that being part of the scenario, which is why I changed the process to this to where we would bring all requests to council and allow you to make that determination of where what happens with it. Great. Okay. So nothing glaringly No. There wasn't there was no don't merit as reason as to why they shouldn't have been considered. Fantastic. And then, are you ultimately asking us to pick one of these or that No. I'm I'm asking what's your pleasure? Okay. You'll get used to that.
That's my favorite type thing to say to you when I'm looking for you to make a decision. I'm looking for you to help me in helping the team pull together. What more do you need to consider an action? Also, because it just popped into my head, I will share with you that none of these projects are what you need to consider in order to meet your $10,000,000 a year ten year goal, in the way of investment. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying that none of this puts you over that. You're already over that.
I think what I'm more or less pointing out to you at this time is we received three three applications or three letters of interest with packets. We reviewed them. They all check the box for what is required for review. And out of that, the staff formed what we believe is a solid opinion on each of those, and one gets a recommendation and the other two do not. Not. But we don't make the decision, of course. We bring that to you because if there were something that you wanted to push back on or for us to take back to these parties, we would do that
as well. Okay. So then I'll jump to three because that would be one that I would wanna kind of open the door to conversations on, not push back. But I think that location of that, building is ideal for, close you don't need a car to live there. It's a fantastic downtown location. And I'm I've I've seen UVA raise 1,000,000 over than they need in capital projects
before, so I have faith that they can maybe do that here if maybe we contributed. I'd love to know what they are if there is some flexibility in that request, I e, could there be a $1,500,000 investment and an abatement, or are there algorithms that would, that they could help us reconcile what's needed without us giving the whole 3,000,000? Could we get more lower AMIs?
We can ask that question. Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah. We could ask that. And so I would love to see that project go forward because it is I think it's so ideal, and it does meet our rubric of success. But, I would love to see us shake up that number a little bit. And then with Brick Lane, you make a good point. 80% AMI AMI appeals to a lot of people who cannot afford market rate and still gets us some housing, though not at the, at the target that we're seeking
the most. That being said, the ask isn't as as big as the 3,000,000. It seems like those units are quite small. Maybe will attract, you know, folks we need to get into housing. And, I'm not opposed to us moving forward on the middle one, even though it's not ideal. It's it is hitting some points that we do need to cover. So thank you.
Mhmm. Michael? Yeah. I would say, the one that's of most interest to me is community services housing of these three requests. On the conversation of AMI, I know in our adopted affordable housing plan, we have goals for the amount of money we'll spend on each AMI level with majority going zero to 30% AMI, then another amount for 30 to 60%, and then the smallest amount for, 80% AMI. And I hope we're using that to prioritize what investment decisions we make.
I do think with the Brick Lane project, I think I think the project itself is exciting in terms of converting it from hotel use into apartments. I believe and I believe in the information we got. They indicated that even without subsidy, they may pursue the project. It could be higher AMI levels, but the project itself of converting it will will happen no matter what. And again, I think the project itself is exciting, but I wouldn't I don't I don't think it would be a good investment for the city at those AMI levels.
The 60% would be required no matter what. And because AMI is based on consumer price index, the pandemic that high period of inflation really screwed up AMI AMI calculations across the country, combined with so many people already pushed out of Charlottesville. So 80% AMI is a income of a $100,000 in Charlottesville, and the rent they would charge is $2,400 a month. I don't know if where at this point, but there are many localities who invested
in 80% and a 120% AMI. And because the pandemic exploded AMI so much, the rents in those units are actually higher than market rate rents. I I don't know if we're at that point, but I would definitely prioritize 50% AMI below. And 50% AMI may the number seems low, but I mean, that's still $60,000 $70,000 a year. I mean, those are people who are working for the city. Those are people who are working in public works, parks and rec, teachers, firefighters.
In the median black household in Charlottesville is at 50% AMI. White households, that number is over 100% AMI. So again, I just think the lower AMI is where I would target money. I think the preservation of affordable housing project is the, it's low AMIs or lower AMIs, and I think there's a lot of good things about the project. Obviously, the challenge is, you know, this is a project UVA pledged to build for affordable housing, and all the cost is going to Charlottesville to pay.
And I believe, at least, the last UVA administration explicitly said they would not commit any money to it. And that was their final decision. So I don't know what to make of that. In I'll say beyond these three projects, one thing I'm really thinking about is the fact that Hearthwood's affordability period is gonna be ending. That's 200 units, I think, over 300 people who live there who are gonna be at immediate risk of displacement. And so I think trying to prioritize setting ourselves up to be able to respond
to that situation, would help us a lot because I think I think it would be more cost effective for deeper AMIs to purchase existing naturally occurring affordable housing versus just new construction. But, you know, that's kind of a crisis that we know is coming pretty soon. And I was just we remain positioned to be able to address that at the present time using, former surplus funds that is now within the CIP contingency, and I continue to manage the use of those funds with the possibility that something like that
could happen. That has been the approach that we have used so far been able to successfully navigate this year, but, of course, that isn't guaranteed and because anything could happen. Natalie. Hey. Thanks. I if we didn't grant the 1.75 and the 3,000,000, what would happen to these projects? I don't know that we know the answer specifically. I would imagine that, I think the reference to what Brick Lane said is they
probably would make the adjustments. I believe that was in the packet. So that's already kind of been indicated, which is usually what anybody would do when they're putting in a request. They wait for an answer, and then they come up with their plan, c, d, e, f, g. For POA specifically, deputy Friess, spent time with them talking about this particular project. I think there is, concern that the university has stated clearly where they are on investing directly in the project, but now we've had another administrative change.
So we don't know if that changes anything or not. We also don't know if And he's a very good fundraiser. Yeah. We don't know if the seats getting filled on the board will then have a different, set of interests in something like this once they get an understanding, but I think those are time required, moments to overcome. And I don't know that that works to this particular schedule because they have a lot light tech ground that's coming up that they would love to probably go after. I don't know that we have that answer. I don't know that we will get that answer because no one's gonna wanna say
that if you don't give us this money, their project isn't gonna happen, because they probably put this out to other people as well. Yeah. I, I yeah. I think we're all kind of agreed that the first project is is worthwhile, especially since it's something that they've been coming to us for for a couple of years now, now that we have the process. Okay. That's not to say that the other two are not worthwhile either. What's appealing about the second one is it's a lot of units. We need those units.
It's all types of housing for all types of people kind of situation. I mean, not in a deeply affordable way that I know is one of our primary goals, but it's also pure numbers is one of the ways that we can help get there. The third project has a lot going for it in terms of utility. It's a great location. It's a lot of units. It is low income lower income housing in a neighborhood that's specifically asking for that. I don't like being held hostage is what it feels like by UVA who dangle
a carrot, give us half of it, and then say, oh, that's not what we meant. And I don't want to UVA doesn't get punished if we don't support this project. The people who would be able to live there get punished if we don't support this project. However, as, council member Fleisher suggested, if there's time, I mean, it's worth negotiating, I think, to see what not necessarily if it's gonna be straight cash, but, like, what other alternate options do they have to make this project better and have it not
Okay. Feel so upsetting to Sure. Give the money to when it's, you know yes. They're contributing the land, but they could contribute so much more quite easily. Okay. Was that helpful? Mhmm. And I I don't know if anything, has changed, but several months ago, I think POA, their perspective if the funding request wasn't met is that they'd still pursue LIHTC, but they would have higher AMIs and include a, start including market rate units.
So it may still occur just higher AMIs, more market rate units. Mhmm. And And possibly, you know, there's also that balance where the more market rates you include, the lower some AMIs can get. So The changes are scoring dynamic and live tech though. So that's that's the concern because it is a highly competitive program. Yeah. And, I mean, they they they they indicated with the market rate they wouldn't be. Yeah. It wouldn't be lower AMIs than 60 or more of them. It's just covering the gap.
Yeah. Yeah. And so, again, it feels like the people that don't benefit are the people who we most need to benefit. But I don't like the the way it was presented was, not that this much contribution would be requested of us. Yeah. So I just like to quickly chime in. I support the first one. And I'm on board with with Jen. With the third one is that, I like to see it work out, you know, see if we can work with them on that $3,000,000.
I think it's a lot of possibilities there. It's the first time the UVA's proposed something like this. They certainly have the resources, I believe, to do this without anything, but, I think that they're in a a better position to make this happen. But, I would like to just the third one, if we can work with that $3,000,000 sum. But definitely the first one. Sure. And I'll remind you, you're not making a decision right now. You're giving an indication of interest.
Yeah. Right. This is not an action item. So, I will bring more information back, but I'm looking for direction, and I feel like I've gotten that. Sam, one other thought that I had somebody else had mentioned along the way. This the the POA property is owned at this point by the University of Virginia Foundation. It's taxed. I think it's I think it's split, so it's both. I mean, I was looking at the city website. It just says University of Virginia Foundation. So, if it's to be owned by the University of Virginia Foundation, and let's say
it gets built out a 170 units, I have no idea what what the value of that would end up being, probably 60 or $70,000,000, taxes on which would be 6 or $700,000 a year. If there were some kind of an abatement, that might be a way to get them some Sure. Some assistance, that might help them. Mhmm. I think that's what I'm thinking that we would look to explore. Yep. And I just wanted to to clarify that I a 192 units at various levels
of AMI that aren't all market rate is a great injection of units into an area that desperately needs them. If there's a way we can maybe there's a couple more market rates that get added and then those 19 can get down to 50% AMI, that 19 can get down to 50% AMI, that perhaps could be a worthwhile trade off. Alright. I think we will explore. I I with the second project, I I'd be curious as well. I do think we should try to follow the affordable housing plan in in terms of the amount of money going to different AMI brackets.
20% of annual commitment going to 80 to a 120% AMI, is a concern to me. But I do I do a 100% agree it's a need in the market. I mean, you need We need all the the ladder of all AMIs. And, ideally, if you had a functioning economy, people at 30% AMI could eventually move up into fifty, sixty, 80 plus. But, I would be curious with the second project to figure out what what what are they charging for market rate and how does that compare to a 120 AMI
and 80% AMI? In other words, do we subsidize, a rent level that they would charge anyway? Just making sure we don't do that. K. Alright. We'll dig in. There's a little more work that I think we have to do than I was hoping for, but we'll be fine. We'll work through that. Alright. And I'm and I'll just say this isn't meant to feel like a bait switch, but this is going step by step because there are different things. The first slide was about things that we are proposing to have you consider adding to your CIP. That's what that is framed as.
Now we're shifting to you already have items in your funded CIP, but there are now additional requests associated with them based on the ability to deliver what has been identified and funded. Candlewood Phase four is currently in your CIP with 4 and a half million dollars currently committed to the project. Overall, the agreement calls for 425 to 475 units. Available funding today will allow for 85 to 95 units. And if that happens, that means the delivery of units total 380 to 390 falling
short of the original agreement. There are two options that are available to address this. If the city were interested in providing an additional $3,000,000 to ensure that those 130 units were provided, then you would actually be able to hit your goal of 425 units in the original agreement. And if not, you could also modify the kindlewood agreement to reduce the minimum required units to 380 to 390 units. So that's what's being offered as a request for consideration. There were additional options that were identified that were provided to city staff to look
at, but those options did not really deliver, anything that would be any better than what this option provides, for consideration. And I'm gonna ask James if he has anything else to add in the way of detail in regards to this item, but this is a big ask. It's a that's $3,000,000 additional that is being requested. It is not needed at one time. This would be a future phase that we'd be working towards. I'm not exactly sure we know yet when the money would need to be available.
And if a split is possible, we might not have to do it in one year if that were the choice. But this is really an attempt to take a look at your original agreement to request 425 units appear on the former Garrett Square site. And today, that is in jeopardy. And the question is what role do you wanna play in making that happen? I'm sorry, sir. To to keep it at three eighty or three ninety, it it would won't take it. It would be the the 4.5 we've already committed, not at any of this.
I'm sorry. The 3,000,000 is in addition to the $4.24 I'm sorry. The $4.05. Right. But for the last bullet, the modified to to Oh, the modified means you keep the it's it's just using the money that's already Right. In the CIP. Yes. So that would be $3,000,000 for basically 45 more units. And do we know what $70,000 unit. Do we know what AMI levels they'd be? I don't remember. They're they're lower AM they're the lower AMIs. I just I don't have that off the top my head. We could get that for you, though.
So, Sam, we had talked about that we've had some some concerns about the, late payment. That's coming. That's separate. That's coming. Yes, sir. That's another ask. Well, I mean, before, you know, before before we I I think that that needs to be part of it because if we keep pouring into it and whatever we're doing isn't not enough because they're late. And I hear different reasons for that, but I would honestly, I would say to
you, matter of factly, that it that's in addition to. Whatever decision you make here in regards to this, that item is still a valid open item because it not only affects the, units that have already been produced and the threat of the additional units producing the similar situation, but the legacy units that have not been converted yet to new units were experienced in the same situation. Right. So there's a problem there that we need to investigate and intervene on, which is
why it's a separate action item. So the $70,000 that Deloitte had mentioned for 40 to 50 additional units. Is that that's way more than we typically I'm not sure how that stacks up. We would have to look at a comparison of other projects, but multifamily tends to go high. Right. And, I mean, so what's primary not to I don't know all the details, but what primarily appears to be driving that higher cost per unit is the fact when
you get to that density on on that remaining portion of the of the overall kindlewood site, you have to incorporate structured parking, and that is very expensive. Wait. Can you say that again, please? The the the that cost per unit goes goes up higher and a and a component of that is that to get to the level of density, that, get basically that a 130 units onto that portion of the light of the of the remaining property, you pretty much have to go into structured parking. But we got rid of parking mounds? Yes. But there's still including parking within the within the design of the project.
Which would have been a part of the request for the residents when they designed this site. Mhmm. So this is this is complicated. It is it's meant to be a heavy one for you because this is revisiting your original agreement for the Kendall Ward project. That 425 was a minimum number, and we're not even coming close to the maximum number that we might have hoped for at that particular time. And we're, at this moment, admitting that there's a struggle being advised of us to get to 400 units. And the question is, can you live with the reduced number of units for what
you've chosen to invest to date? Or are you willing to pay more to get what you originally requested so that you're not losing anything in the way of units, but it is costing you something in order to get those units. And would there be I mean, we we just paid a lot of money for an extended parking lot contract. Would those would those parking spaces be available to use for Kindlewood folks so we don't have to build structured parking?
It's a block away. I don't think it could work like that because someone has to pay for those spaces. So there's a need for compensation for that. Mhmm. From I mean, it's, you know, 35 to $50,000. Sorry. It's 50 to $75,000 to construct a structured parking spot. So how many years of monthly parking could we pay for instead of building a structured parking lot on Kindle Wood? Could take a look at that and figure that out because I don't think anyone's
thought about it that way. That's different. And the the timeline for the Kindlewood Friendship Court redevelopment plan back in 2018, a letter from the resident advisory committee said that they want a mixed income community and not be exclusively a low income development. So where is factoring how much market rate housing would we need to pay for
the low income units that we're requesting here? We'd have to give that back to them to figure that out. I don't know. I know that they're I'll I can speak to my own knowledge about this project for the fact that I haven't been here since it started, but I've heard a great deal about it with my time here. There was always a concern that phase four was going to be a heavily market rate proposed project, which was identified as not being in alignment with the original plan. I asked questions about that myself on multiple occasions.
Each time I was told that we haven't figured out phase four, we haven't figured out phase four, and I believe that. I know that when you're doing a sizable project that's phased like this, things change over time. The market is changing with it. And for that reason, by the time you get to that final phase, even if you had to find it, it's not gonna be the same thing. So that's kinda really where we are is that it was 2018 when we started the process, and here we are this many years later and it's different. So where I am on this is that I would support the minimum or not
any additional funds. And I could see those funds being used, you know, for, like, some of the things like this the previous slide that you showed us. And others that are still coming because I'm not sure. Yeah. I just I just, you know, I remember talking to, to Sunshine. I think he, you know, about this. And I I think the the $3.80 of to $3.09 is just a lot more achievable than the $4.25,
$4.50, or whatever. But that that's where I am. I I I'm not in the camp of the additional funds for that. I rather put it towards another affordable housing project. Can I raise one other affordability question? I asked this question two or three years ago. My concern has been when construction costs are over $300 a square foot, and we build a unit that is a 100 square feet larger than perhaps necessary.
We've now added $3,000 to the unit. I I suggested during a meeting some time ago that when I was, shortly after after college, I had no problem living in an 800 square foot or two bedroom apartment. And people thought that I was advocating them living in a prison cell. And the discussion was about 1,200 square feet and more for three bedrooms and and so on. And I wonder whether it is ever going to be appropriate for somebody to look at this whole thing and say, maybe we don't need 1,300 square feet apartments.
Maybe we can save the the difference of what they are asking us for an infusion of $70,000 per unit by making a smaller unit. I think kind of what a different way to phrase that is I think we need more information about what phase four would look like. We can share that. I know there's the catch 22 of what we need to know what the budget is before we have plans to show. Well, we have we have options that were identified to help us achieve this ability
to say this to you as clearly as I've tried to say it to you. There are options. They're less attractive. Yeah. And I think what also this goes to show is that we have a lot of good valuable projects in the city that need a little little extra fold in money They're coming. Yeah. Which means we need to remember that these things cost money, and we can raise money by allowing other things to be built without our intervention. And that's how we, for example, the the property that you're talking about with the
hotel, now suddenly the tax you know, after the abatement's finished, the tax revenue we get back is can go towards these projects. Well, one of the things that pains me about this 3,000,000 is a lot of it is gonna go towards, parking. And, Well, I think we should, you know, certainly have more conversation and, get specific information about, things like the amount of structured parking, how much of that is driven
by decisions, of residents versus decisions of PHA itself versus funders. I think there's a lot of conversations to to be had. I think as well, obviously, a huge part of the Kindlewood project is, the approach of residents being directly involved in decisions and, that flowing from, you know, one of the lessons of Vinegar Hill of involving, you know, community members directly rather than making
decisions for them and the either conscious or subconscious. You know? I think if information is given to residents, they're smart enough to understand the trade offs. And I think, I think a lot more conversations warranted, but I hope we get more information. We could have PHA come to council meeting to discuss further and engage the residents themselves in in dialogue as well. I will say it's obviously a huge project that's very complex that has taken years. These agreements were done, I think, before the pandemic.
A lot has changed since the pandemic. So for me, flexibility seems totally reasonable because the world has changed since this began, and it's a very complex project. The more units we could get, you know, at lower AMI levels, obviously, the better. But, you know, if the world has changed and that's not feasible at a realistic cost, I'm open to being, flexible. I would be very curious what the AMI levels for the additional units would be. If we're talking about zero to 30% AMI, maybe that's a cost that's worth it.
I mean, because just to take one unit from 60% to 30% is is a $120,000 a unit just to cover debt costs, because they're losing money each month. So if again, if it's zero to 30, that cost may be worth it. But if you're talking about, you know, higher AMIs, maybe it's not worth it. I but I feel like I don't know enough information right now to really know. But I would agree with what others have said. I think any, continued conversation, you know, is warranted on multiple elements of the plan.
Okay. So, Jen, you didn't you haven't Yeah. I just I I was thinking that maybe it was because I was the new kid and I just didn't know what was going on, but it sounds like none of you really know what the plan is. And so I would like to know what the plan is because I'm trying to process it myself. Yes. So Ultimately I mean, I hear you. I don't know that time is on our side for being able to go into a deeper process because I know there are light tech implications, as this is a rolling project. It's it hasn't stopped.
I think for me, the priority was to ask you first. So I'll try to reset this in a different way. Are you open to spending 3 additional million dollars for Kindlewood? So you just wanna go down and get a yes or no? If I could get some clarity on are you willing to consider it, it at least frames whether or not we have a question. I'll I would say if the AMIs are low enough, yes. At least consider it. With a lot of TBDs as to what we're gonna get out of it, again, I don't wanna set it on the parking.
For it. Help me see that. You want lower AMIs for it? I, lower AMIs, but I'm also open to market rate. I want quantity. I want quantity of house helpful. Quantity of housing Sure. And deprioritizing the the needs of cars. Louis? It looks like, as I'm looking at the numbers, so we're putting in 4 and a half million to get about 90 units. That's gonna be $75,000 a unit.
And then another $3,000,000 and another $75,000 a unit to get another 40. I don't my guess is that that's more than we've, ended up for other similar projects. Let's just say I'm not enthusiastic about it. Not a definite no. How acceptable do we find fewer than 425 units? Because that's the other question. I I don't think it's ideal, but I can live with it accepting that, you
know, these were developed before the pandemic, and that changed fundamental things about construction costs. K. This is why it's kind of a, like, it'd be nice to see some more plans because one of the other things that could be interesting is the three ninety that we're able to build now, build them in a way that saves space for a future building that could add more. So, Sam, before you go into the next question, I want to get That's the only one. Jen Jen and I hadn't responded to the $3,000,000 question.
So Yep. Thank you. I but my response is similar. I I would if if the 3,000,000 had a lot had as many units that we could sustainably get in there closer to $4.25 at a low AMI, and maybe there was opportunity for commercial or future self to be to recoup that 3,000,000 in some way, that's why I'm saying some commercial, that
would be very appealing and I would it would be easy for me to easier for me to say that. There is commercial already in this phase. Mhmm. So that's within this 4 and a half million dollars already. Okay. So there wouldn't be more. It's all about the units at this time. Okay. The the size of the commercial changes. But it's But not the size of the units? No. I don't believe it's it's about the number of units, not the size of the units. But the commercial space would change in options, the size of that space. Yeah. Yeah. I I I just I'm not in the camp of I just think we can
get more bang for our buck with the $3,000,000 on other projects. K. So That's for you all. Just kinda taking you back to your retreat in August since we're about to do this on January. That was an exercise intention and trade off just so you know. It was supposed to feel that way, and it has been hard. I understand that. And we're not done with asking you for more money. So that's part of why I have to do this the way that I'm doing it. I'm trying to judge whether or not you're willing to go as far as it's going to take us to figure out how to do these things.
Five zero one Cherry also is a CIP funded project. It today is short of its ability to move, which is why no construction has occurred on-site. There has been a request to increase the $3,150,000 cash investment and the $1,000,000 performance agreement, which is the tax abatement over a thirty year period, to now increase that by 700,000 in cash and an additional $1,000,000 performance agreement for tax abatement over thirty years, and that in itself would allow the project to move forward.
The caveat is that that is gap funding that supports the goal of building a grocery store, but it does not commit a grocery store on that site. As you heard earlier this evening, there is still concern about the notion that the grocery store will not be delivered as a space ready to open. Simply stock the shelves and open. It will be in this iteration a shell. It will still need additional investment. That additional investment will have to come from somewhere. The food coop has made a request. They reached out to me specifically, asked for a meeting.
They're looking for further commitment from the city. There has not been an ability to bring forward a request from the food coop because there is still organizing work to be done on establishing the coop as an entity that is deemed viable for any consideration of investment by this body. They need eighteen to twenty four months to do the additional work. Everyone has been very excited about what this group has been able to pull off up to this point and being able to, connect themselves to national outfits that have
made it possible for them to continue to move the concept. It does appear to be moving in the right direction. I've been pleased. I'll share that as well for what I've heard. They're looking for more of a city endorsement, conditioning of this investment ensuring that a grocery store will result. I am not bringing that to you as a part of the request only because I don't know that you can make that kind of condition and something happens down the road and how do you undo that.
I'm sure we can always make a decision, but then there's a lot of legal stuff that the attorneys would have a field day trying to figure out how to make it work. But where we are today is the entity that you were being requested, to consider something with is PHA. So, again, it's a $700,000 cash investment and a million dollar additional performance agreement over thirty years. And it would ensure that the project, as we all know it and have seen it to be, will commence, with the closing in April, I believe, and they would start construction this year.
So today, miss McDonald mentioned, the grocery store that the proper requires a building? I I wasn't clear on that. So we, I requested the actual proffers myself, the proffer myself, so that me and James can spend time reading because I enjoy reading that with him so he can tell me what this says. But we are going to take a look at that specifically. The question is, does the proffer indicate a full absolute commitment of a grocery store,
or does it ensure that space is available for a grocery store should one be deemed viable? It's the language that's going to matter. Again, we will have to probably engage the attorney for an interpretation as to what the proffer actually commits, but that has been what has been offered as there is contention in this conversation between PHA, water properties, and the food coop on whether or not the grocery store is going to happen and is everything being done to ensure
that it can should they be able to do everything else that is required? That's how I appreciate it. And, again, I've followed this conversation. I've tried to stay up on the process. I've met with the group myself and others have met with them on other occasions on my behalf. That's why I'm able to say that this is still ensuring that a space is available for a grocery store by allowing construction to commence because as it stands today, there's nothing happening and there won't be anything happening unless this gap is closed. And we still need eighteen to twenty four months or so to be able to
allow the food co op to do all the other things that are still gonna be necessary to ensure that a grocery store can operate in this space or any space. So how do you feel about $700,000 cash and a million dollar performance agreement being added to 501 Cherry is the question. So where where would the $700,000 go? It would go for helping with the construction gap. So it's just a part of the money that's necessary for them to be able to build. Thus, cost escalation, I would imagine, what most of that is covering.
So what what sorts of rights do we have if it becomes apparent after five years that there's no way to make this food coop profitable? Yeah. I don't know that there's a way for us to engage in that. I think what I put there as the last bulleted item that an agreement between PHA and the food coop is still needed. I think we can state that clearly that that is the preference. I don't know that we can make that a condition, but I think that is
to be worked out between those two parties. If it's not viable, that is a question that is not quite it's not really easy to discern what happens because what usually happens in a grocery store set up like this is when it can't be deemed affordable, it just raises its prices. So therefore, it doesn't serve the market that it was intended to be. It becomes more of a boutique operation and they it probably could thrive. It's just not for the people that it was meant for. That's always been my concern with the notion of doing it, and without any consideration
down the road that council might be interested in supporting its operation so that it can stay that way, which could be an ask. There's no way to guarantee that. I mean, one of my concerns about this, of course, the reason why we don't have a grocery store there is because it hasn't been profitable to run a grocery store there. And so the question is, what are we, are we simply going to be asked to pay rent for?
Or are we going to be asked because, oh, by the way, we need another $200,000 a year? Well, they will be paying rent. I do recognize that as a part of the pro form a that was submitted and approved. It is it is, below market. So it is being subsidized in the agreement, for being able to occupy the space. I think that's part of why the difference of agreement is is in existence today is that there was an expectation based on the proper that the space would be ready to occupy the space. Left unaddressed, unresolved, then that means the food coop would be expected to fund those
funds in addition to what they've already agreed to have to go and find. That's the concern. Which is how companies operate. Sure. Right. What I'm saying is I think it's reasonable to ask for the funding gap to be filled to get the building built. I think that's a reasonable ask. We are here to do what we can do as a collective group for the benefit of the the city. Having a building there with 65 to 73 units or whatever we've settled on now is a benefit to the community and to the city and to the people who
need to live there. Operating a grocery store is not the auspices of city government. Subsidizing a grocery store is not under the auspices of city government. If it becomes a coop and successfully manages to serve the needs of the community or to be a grocery store that people outside of the community also go to, that is the responsibility of the coop. That is not the responsibility of the city. I hope it is successful. I think having more people in that neighborhood, including the ones living above, are gonna help make it successful. If I were a grocery store operator at 501 Cherry, I would want a seven
story building two blocks away full of people who could be consumers at my grocery store. I think those are some of the tensions and trade offs that the operators of the grocery store are gonna have to contend with, but is not council responsibility to subsidize a food coop. We can, however, be responsible for helping the building get built. I think that is that is something that does fall within our wheelhouse. Mike, a question about the $1,000,000 performance agreement tax we went over thirty years that's listed as a prior city investment, and then another one request for additional investment.
How does that layer? Because the gap is 1,700,000.0. So that's the basis of how this request was made was if they could get the performance agreement increased and the cash increased, this in itself closes the the gap. So it would be a $2,000,000 performance agreement over thirty years. Right. And 3.85 in cash. Okay. Thanks. Okay. So, Michael, what are your thoughts on a 700 cash and a $1,000,000 performance grant.
I have less concerns about the tax abatement. I would say, you know, one of the things, you know, I'm thinking about is, you know, if there are things we want that capitalism is not producing, it's gonna cost money and it's gonna be difficult. Because if it was easy, we wouldn't have food deserts. There's a reason for food deserts. To address that, if there's some level of public subsidy, I think that's probably inevitable. I mean, there's some cities like Kansas City that have had, grocery stores with public
funding for a long time. Obviously, New York City, it's a big conversation topic recently. The due mayor there, I'm open to a a role for it, because I think, you know, the issue of food deserts is real and difficult, but there is you know, the amount of money to do that is not unlimited. So that for the $700,000, especially, I would want, in writing, a clear understanding of if we provide that subsidy and the coop can't even get off the ground, what
happens? And then two, you know, one of the other things that I think is a concern is, let's say the coop does get off the ground, but you have a situation where, you you know, working class people are just totally displaced from the neighborhood and the prices are high. A coop's gonna be there, but that was not really the intent of what the community was looking for. They They weren't looking for a boutique food coop. How, if at all, can we guarantee that doesn't happen? And the yeah.
I don't know. But those those are my two biggest concerns. In I guess the question that I have for you because, again, I don't know how we condition that. Are you saying that you cannot see making the additional investment if the coop is not better provided for? I don't I mean, I don't know the solution either, but I'm yeah. I'm just saying I don't think it will benefit anyone or meet anyone's expectations if we spend this money and nothing comes together, or we spend this money and nothing comes together or we spend this money and it's just high priced. And but that's but I I don't know the solution, but those are my concerns.
From what I remember, the is that the idea would be seriously explored, but it wasn't like it must happen. But I I certainly think the community's expectation is that it absolutely will happen. That's what the community expects. Okay. So, Jen, what are your thoughts on that 700 cash and 1,000,000 performance? Yeah. I'm for getting this going and taking the risk. It's Yeah. It's beneficial to the health of that neighborhood. Yeah. And I'll chime into this. My understanding that this this is needed for this project to move forward, to keep
going. And, supportive of the 700 cash and the one point I mean, the $1,000,000 performance to help me get off the ground. I'm I'm not supportive of kind of, you know, subsidizing the the grocery store on an annual basis. But I think it's Which will be a separate matter. I'm just wanting to be clear on that. Right. Any support directly to the grocery store would be later. Yeah. That is not what is a part of our consideration here. I'm supportive of this. So, Lloyd, I just wanna make this clear where if you can succinctly say if
you're for it or, you know, if you can't. If if there are sufficient, if there's sufficient clarity about what happens if things don't work, Yes. Okay. So Sam When you say what doesn't happen in this space It seems to me that if if we are being asked to basically subsidize the creation of a a space for a food coop or for a grocery store, and the food coop of
the grocery store doesn't meet whatever expectations we have, and let's say it either goes belly up and question is at what point is the city going to be willing to say, no. Sorry. That's not what we paid for, and we're not going to keep throwing, however many hundreds of thousand dollars a year into an operating budget for us, a place that's
losing money. And I don't know what the I don't know how I would write that contractual provision right now. But I wanna have a clear understanding with everybody that we are not by doing this. I mean, I I always feel like every time we make one set of commitments and then we get another request for more money on top of that, how many more requests are we gonna make? How are we signing up for for how many more infusions because things didn't work out right? Sure. And once we get into actual performance of a store, of a store that we
know historically has not fared well there, I'm just real concerned that people are gonna say, say, well, the city's got to keep rolling 100,000 or however much money a year in operating expenses. So with sufficient protections, yes. And I don't know how we make those protections. Sam, do you have what you need for this? I think so. Okay. Guess it's late. Alright. This item, is a request. This is a new request. So a request for intervention in counseling and rental assistance. It is focused on the Kendall Kendallwood site because it has come to our attention,
through a variety of means of various conversations with Sunshine and his team. I'll also acknowledge that, Nakai Walker brought this to my attention. She shared this, as an issue with others as well. And the discovery of this has now turned into a material opportunity for us to do something clearly. It is real. It is a problem. There have been rising rental payment delinquencies, across the Kendallwood site. The Legacy property, which is the property that has not yet been touched, has significant
delinquencies in rental payments, as well as individuals who have moved into the new units, have also reached some degree of delinquency in more than a few of the units. And we know that some of that is attributed to the notion that when those individuals were Offered the opportunity to pick an apartment. The apartment is at an AMI level that is above their means. They're paying more, and therefore, it's probably contributing to an inability to pay because the rent is higher than where it should have been. But it's only the option that they have because a unit at the AMI that
they are is not available. Is it not available yet or is not going to be available? At this moment, not available yet. So then that in itself creates delinquency for a period. Part of the intervention here is the thought is that we would add a counseling component so that we can really get to the bottom of what is the cause of the the delinquency. There is an understanding that the individuals are in these units in many of the units that are not, the newer units. Their income suggests that they should be able to pay the rent, but they haven't
been paying the rent. And there's a need for verification as to what's going on inside that household. So the request is to create a pilot program. It's targeted at 305,000 as a pilot, $85,000 for PHA to add financial coaches within its financial opportunity center who will be focused on this is their job to work with the individuals that are in the Kendallwood property with delinquencies that have accumulated. And then the idea is also to make available a fund of $220,000 to allow
for some matching payments towards the removal of the arrears through the act of counseling them through whatever delinquency issues, whatever things they need to be, worked out. And for that, then rent payments could match some of their ability to tar to start repaying if it is identified that they can. That's a question. But I also have a bullet there that there is a broader application in this because I've spoken to John Sales about a similar situation in CRHA properties, and we believe that it probably is something that is occurring in other low income sites in
the city as well. And, again, wanting to not assume that people are just simply not paying the rent, the thought is to create this opportunity to do financial coaching and figure out what really is happening and help individuals resume an ability to pay. So this is a request for new money, for you all to make available. This $305,000 as a pilot is not, something that we have earmarked. So the suggestion that I would make to you here is that I would bring this to you as an item for your CIP contingency for former surplus funds as
a one time or over two year period allocation. I guess we have to determine that with how the program would operate, but the thought is that would be your source. So Jen, I'll start off with you. What are your thoughts on? Do we have, a sense of the efficacy of financial coaches and how many it takes to tackle the proportion of folks that Having been one in my past, absolutely. Excellent. Thank you. And if someone wanted to donate 305,000 to see if this pilot works, is that
an option or it has to come out of pocket? We can take anyone's money. Okay. Right. I think we can figure that out. Yeah. And we'll welcome anyone giving more than this 305 if that's the case because I think we have a problem that we found, a real problem. Yes. That that it crosses it is not isolated to PHA residents. And this is not resolving it at the Kendallwood site, and it's exclusively. This is just an ability for us to prove concept that there might be something else going on. Okay. Also known as my prosperity work. I it doesn't seem like they're unless we're gonna start paying people properly all over
the place all all over the place all the time and take up that, which we cannot, I don't know that we actually have any other option. If this is if if financial coaching and paying towards arrears, it it would just be great if we had some way to Offset the pilot if and a plan for if it's successful how and I think that's really the point of offering it up as a pilot. We had real conversation about, we don't know how far this is gonna go.
We don't know how deep it's gonna go. We don't know how wide it's gonna go. The assumption is that because the arrears have reached the level that they have and we've now seen the list of the dollar amounts by household, it's a household, it's a bit jarring, and it really makes you wonder what is actually happening. How can I ask one, two more questions? How, I didn't wait for the answer on that. Sorry. How do we know who's holding this pilot accountable? We would. This would be this would be a city grant application, basically a grant award, and
it would have, performance metrics, and it would be a part of our budget and grants office. Fantastic. Then that was my only question then. Thank you. Michael. Yeah. I think, certainly, the financial coaches I'm open to. You know, the the pilot program I'm, you know, potentially open to, I would caution, you know, CRIRAGE's offer, CRHA had a very has a very similar issue. They did actually get a donation through community area, CACF, to cover arrears a few
years ago in the same problem a year later at the same exact scale was back. Nothing was actually solved. And I think that AMI issue is a big part of it. Inflation during the pandemic for light tech units that don't have a voucher or public housing, What you pay is not attached to your income. It's attached to the AMI. When inflation explodes without wage increases, people have to pay a lot more suddenly and can't. That's part of it.
The other is CRHA did have to confront when, if ever, do you combine sticks along with the carrots and no affordable housing agency wants to be involved in people, you know, losing housing, but when, if ever, is eviction appropriate. And I they also found the biggest problem was addiction, severe mental health issues, and elder abuse for those who were just not paying rent after getting contacted multiple times, certified male. And they found really really, they just needed, like, really intensive social services work.
So I I would just offer that, and I think CRHA has, certainly a lot of lessons Mhmm. But still has not solved the issue. Yeah. Natalie? How long does this pilot program last? Do you recall? Did we say I don't know that we settled on that. Two years pops into my head, but I don't I I I tend to go with two year pilots because it takes a minute to get it all started, and then you need, like, a year's activity to really assess. Mhmm. I was thinking two years as well. I believe that's what we talked about, but there's still a lot more to be
done in this space. This is just the number that we came up with. And so Being able to grab a swath of people to be able to focus on. And so that $85,000 spread over two years Yeah. Pays for hourly support, consultant support. Who's the coach? Be I would imagine that they're gonna hire staff as coaches. So that 85 isn't gonna It would cover two people probably for two years. With other subsidies from other places? I imagine so. Okay. Yeah. Has this has that number been negotiated with?
No. I mean, this is the number that we put on the table. It may be adjusted by the time I bring you the action item because we would be at a point of them saying, okay. We think we can really do something. I would suggest that if there was a need to pay differently, then we would take it out of the arrears portion Mhmm. And let that be something to come back and ask after proof of concept. Okay. And but the coaching standing alone for what it needs to be, we will never figure it out if someone does not sit down with them with the skill to really figure out what's going on. Let's see how they're cooking.
Okay. Thanks. Lloyd. Will you give it a try? Same here. I think, it's Okay. Not done yet. So your second quarter off cycle request. I did it on one slide though. The YMCA has a $145,000 cost upgrade to meet state egress standards in relation to the operation of the day care facility at the Jefferson School. They were approved by the Jefferson School to make the adjustments to the space. They have done their own additional fundraising to secure funding, and the remaining balance of
what is needed appears to be $45,000. If you are inclined to use your council strategic initiatives fund, that's the source I have identified for you. A $150,000 request from PACHA is identified as an operating shortage for the current year. If they are unable to raise these funds, they could find themselves needing to close early, which they are currently scheduled to close in April, and they may have to cut it short because they would run out of funds. They have asked for additional funding from other local funders, and I'm aware that others are considering making a contribution, which is why the city asked that I push to
get, clearly identified as now $65,000. I would say to you that we, the city, have those funds available today because in our f y twenty six operating budget, we have half $1,000,000 that was identified for shelter operating support that is not being used and will not be used because we do not have a shelter that operates. That's what the holiday drive project will eventually become. So the suggestion that I make to you here is that we could have you reallocate $65,000 of those funds for this ask, but I'm not done spending that money.
I'm gonna drop down to the Salvation Army. They've asked for $340,000. This is to operate a new family shelter for 24 occupants. It's five two bedroom apartments and one one bedroom apartment at the current Ridge Street site. This is not currently available and open. They had actually abandoned the idea because they were gonna eventually do the full renovation, but they were able to secure funds from the county and from a philanthropic source to make, think a $100,000 of improvements to make this space available because there is
a critical need for family shelter. It is the only group in our population that there is no site available for them. So this is a response to a direct need that has, appeared, I guess, more regularly. So the Salvation Army decided to step forward and get approval to operate this space. It will have a shared kitchen, laundry, storage, and common space exclusive to the family shelter entity. So it would not be, mixing kids with adults and all the various things that come with being having having to be a little bit more careful.
They've asked the city for $340,000, which is the operating cost for this, facility. So that too, I would suggest to you, is a consideration of some portion, if not all of it, out of your existing $500,000 that is in our budget today and will be unspent. And then the last item, which is the box to the lower left, I received notice from, BRAC, our continuum of care, that permanent supportive permanent supportive housing funds are in jeopardy of being dramatically decreased based on federal action.
HUD has has basically submitted a change to how the program operates, and we would see a 6 figure decline in the funding support that would come to this area. It currently serves 32 individuals. Those individuals do for a significant number of them, originate from Charlottesville and currently reside in this area in the city of Charlottesville as well, which is why the ask is coming to us. There's probably an ability for other funds to come from other sources because not all of them are from the city of Charlottesville.
The thought there would be naturally is if you are inclined to intervene in the loss of these funds, it too could come out of the shelter operating funds first because that's $500,000 that we have. Anything addition to what we might consider would have to be a surplus allocation. And I remind you that last year you did this, there was $250,000 that they did not receive, that was brought forward to you all as emergency intervention because there was a grant deadline missed, and we were unable to get funding.
They were able to raise some charitable funds from some other places, and then the city gave them $250,000 in the increased council strategic initiatives fund that I set up for you and surplus BCF and other places for that thing that I did last year that I'm not gonna do to you this year. Is that grant opportunity still available this year? They are still looking. I know that they're gonna pursue other sources. Right now, the reason why it says 250,000 to 500,000 is because the 500,000 was the higher number of what they have gotten in the prior years prior to not
getting their grant in last year. So it could be anywhere from a $250,000 to a full $500,000 loss. And that would again put 32 individuals in jeopardy of being on the street. And this is, crossings? No. They're these are this is not crossings. Well, you know what? I shouldn't say that. These are individuals that are receiving subsidy. They could be anywhere. Mhmm. They could be anywhere. So it could very easily be in that location or single family housing or anywhere else where you're receiving supports. Yes. Yeah. So this is the ask.
And the question is, what do you think? So what I would suggest is that we, you know, we'll go down. And if you could, just as single as you can, we could identify the four I mean, which of the four you support or not. So, Michael, I'll start with you. Well, I think the the highest priority would be permanent supportive housing funds. Below that, the Salvation Army's request and then Pachem's request.
You know, if we're able to get a family shelter even when holiday drive is completed, that's gonna be a missing part of our overall need. So I think that that's just meeting a really critical need, even if that ends up not being enough. But those would be my three biggest priorities, and I don't know if this is the last slide, but for all these slides It's the last slide. I hope we think about that relatively soon. You know, over $10,000,000 of inclusionary zoning payments from the Verve and two one one
seven Ivy will be coming to the city. And there'll still be many, many trade offs, but if we treat that money as an addition to our $10,000,000 a year commitment, it makes things like this more feasible. Quick question. For the Salvation Army box, those are operating funds. Are those funds that we're gonna be asked for every year? Yes. I would imagine so. Because it is clearly identified as operating support, so it would be an ask that would be a continuous one going forward. Okay. So at some point, it would not be an off cycle request Right.
Perhaps. Right. Okay. It's just ready now, and so they wanna Yeah. Especially just in the notion of what what councilor Payne just said. This is the big this is the establishment of a family shelter. One thing that they did share with me is when the Ridge Street property begins to go through its transformation, when the offices are relocated, they will relocate these families with them. So they would go to temporary space within the Cherry Avenue location, and they would not be lost as a result of that. And then when it's done, they go back. So this is the establishment of what could grow beyond this.
So it is checking a box, that is unmet today. Okay. Thanks. I mean, it looks like you've found the money for all of these. I wish I could have found it on the other slides, but, you know. I mean, the it seems like the most urgent too are Brock and Pacham since Pacham is actively operational right now. If Pacham is able to stretch their current money, do will they do they repay that or just just here 65 stretch as long as you can? Well, my assumption is that because I have not gotten an update that, hey.
We don't need as much. My assumption is they haven't been able to find it. So they're they're really waiting to see. Yeah. And, they do know that we're having this conversation. They just didn't know what to do. Cold now. Yep. And then I mean, a family shelter would be great. If we have all the money, great. Let's you know, these are all useful things. You seem to have found the funds. And the city, ASKCON, BRAC is undetermined, and it's because it's a moving target. So that's I assume we'd come back and talk about that later. Yeah. Yep. Lloyd? I am concerned that we're being asked to by the Salvation Army to contribute basically
about $60,000 per apartment, for operating expenses. And we were just talking earlier about being reluctant to spend $60,000 to build an apartment. And I and to see that as as something that there's going to be an expectation that we continue to to to do year over year over year, just just concerns me that I don't think that that's a sustainable model for us.
On the YMCA, when I I got a call from Kurt Krueger on their board when they had the problem first came up and so, Kurt was asking me for assistance in two respects. One, was easy to do. I think it had already probably been granted before I even made the call, but was to get an extension of time for for doing the, for for for trying
to meet the code and and that was fine. The second was he wanted a $145,000. I gather from this that they've raised a $100,000 from other sources. I guess, I would say, if you if you've been able to raise two thirds of it, I you know, maybe we go ahead and we give you the last third. You've you've made certainly a good faith effort at that point. Pacham, with they're they're currently functioning and they're doing things and keeping people warm in
real time right now. And I certainly don't think we ought to do anything to to make that more difficult to pull or cause them to pull the plug. The permanent supportive housing money, you know, when it says city asked undetermined, that always makes me nervous. But if we figure for our if we figure we've got the money allocated anyway and it's just a question of of figuring out a different avenue for spending it,
it's still out of the same bucket, the same bucket of bucket of of shelter operation funds. And I guess I'm okay with that one too. So the Salvation Army one is the one proposal that I'm really not comfortable with. And, actually, I I appreciate you calling that out because I didn't do the math, but I earlier, but I just did the math. And for six units, it's a $4,700 a month cost, which seems higher than market rate. So what is what is all that money going towards? Well, it is operating a facility in that staff.
You got services available to these folks. They're not just given a place to stay. This is a program. Okay. So so, I'll get to you in a minute, Jen. As we're talking about that, I mean, aren't they eventually going to redo the entire Yep. Retreats of this. I know it's not gonna be for many years down the road. Couple years, hopefully. Well, not a bit. So I'm just saying we're doing, you know, probably fixing up the space that they have upstairs now, which is not you.
Because I go over there all the time to, you know, my church. We make dinners there, and I know they're not using that space. So they fixed that up. I assume that's what they are planning to do. Well, the fix up space the fixing up of the space is already covered. They have the money for that. This ask is about the operations. So this will also include when those folks move, they will continue to receive the same supports in the temporary space to then coming back to that permanent space. How it gets factored in once it's all said and done is to be determined.
But, ideally, this is because this is establishing a new service, and that's the ask. Got it. So, Jen, Lloyd, were you finished? I'm done. Okay. Yeah. I am I'm okay. You again, yes. You've seem to assign this already. It seems to be there. It's filling a big gap and we may get lucky with Brock and have some state support that's coming. There's been some chatter about that. So And there's a court matter.
That's the reason why it's still undetermined. Yeah. So if you if you there's some good luck on this screen, then it looks like we can cover these. I am a little concerned about the Salvation Army. Just it seems like a don't it's daunting, but it's when you think about it year over years, but we're in desperate need of a family shelter and it does take a lot of wraparound support. So, I'm okay with this.
Yeah. I'm I'm fine with it. You know, with the Salvation Army. I mean, I mean, not the the YMCA, you know, I think that that will put many families right now that use it. They won't be able to operate it anymore. So, if we can find the money, I'm supportive of it of them, all four. Alright. Chrissy's still sitting upright, so I think I did okay. Okay. Alright. So is that, is that your report? Yes. So, Jen, are you amazes are usually not this long. It's good.
And I said this to the people who assisted city manager as well. But I told him it was gonna be a long time ago. Yes. Yes. So, we're now, at the opportunity for second community matters. Would anyone like to speak on this? Yes. Mayor Wade, council, and mister Sanders. For I didn't come for this, but I can't resist congratulating the Jefferson School and thanking you for supporting them. And as I hear you talk about housing, it made me reflect on how good
things take a long time. I spent nineteen years from the first meeting I went to when Jefferson School was considered surplus city property to the day, we as Jefferson partners have been named by the council to rehabilitate and lease, the building, the day we handed it over to the foundation. So good things take a long time. And I'd also just like to remind you that probably the Jefferson's goal was the first substantial equity project of a previous council.
It was a bold move to take that valuable downtown thank goodness that they thank goodness that they did that and that we did this because what would we have done if we hadn't had it as a safety valve in addition to all the other good things that it's done? But the reason I really came here tonight, because I thought I would be remiss if I didn't speak to you in both my personal capacity and as as the
president of Preservation Piedmont to to lend this voice to those who are expressing concerns about the West Main and West Main adjacent and other developments that are encroaching on cultural, historic, and environmental resources. Preservation Piedmont, as those of you who are around or following the comp plan of the development code, were with it at every every step of the way. And we had some misgivings, but we made a decision that we would not oppose
the plan, that we were for more equitable change about so much density and so much height adjacent to our most sensitive areas, sensitive in terms of culture, in terms of history, in terms of previous designations, both local and national, and those that for
various reasons, some of them the patriarchy of Charlottesville, had not been recognized. And so, we're lending our voice to those who say, Really give this a hard look. And as you're going through a review of the comp plan, I know some people are saying you can't do something because of spot zoning and I'm sure Mr. Friese and others have some thoughts on that. They're probably more informed than mine. This map needs some work because it really was never ground proofed to meet the real conditions in Charlottesville. It worked for the consultant's algorithm and what we're doing nationally, and I'm not opposed
to that in concept. And it's not really working here. My colleagues in Richmond who have the same consultant are calling me and saying, how's this working out in Charlottesville? And I'm really not a 100% sure what I'm gonna say to them, but I ask you take a look at it. You're a new group of people and there really are some important issues to consider here. And thank you for what you're doing. It's been a fascinating meeting and good luck to, a new counselor and, to continuing as mayor. You're doing a great job. And so are you, mister Sanders. Thank you all. Thank you.
If there's no further discussion, can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. All opposed, please say no. Thank you.