--------- I called the Charlottesville City Council's meeting, 09/15/2025 meeting back to order. Brian, can you please read us out of closed session? Yes. I move that this council certified by a recorded vote that to the best of each council member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed session were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session. Second. Second. Are we voting electronically?
Yes. Okay. I know that you can't, Natalie. Yes. Yes, please. Thank you. Okay. So the motion passes five zero. We now have a moment of silence. Thank you all so much. Are there any announcements? Yes. Yes. Mark your calendars and sign up, for the Loop DeVille, which is a hike, bike, or run that circumnavigates Charlottesville on our our trail network. It's a blast. I did it last year and learned a bunch about the city that I have
have grown up in and lived here almost my whole life, about the trail connections and, oh, that came out there. Oh, that's where this is. It's a super fun day. If you, wanna do part of it, but not all of it, that's also fine. There's aid stations with snacks and water along the way. And if you start out thinking you're gonna do the whole thing and tap out, there's a shuttle that'll come pick you up and bring you back to the start. So, that is, Saturday, September 27, and you can find out more and sign up at, loopdeville.org.
It's free. The sign up is just a heads up to the organizers to anticipate how many people are gonna be there. It's not something you have to pay for. And if you miss the sign up, still show up anyway. We'd love to have you. Thank you. I have an announcement that the Charlottesville Office of Economic Development will be having a next gen skill trades day where you can get, information on, trades such as HVAC, welders, carpenter, electrician. It's gonna be October 4, from ten to two at PVCC.
That's a next gen trade day at, it's Saturday, October 4 from ten to two at PVCC. It's a great way to come out and get information on different trades. And these are the type of trades. They can't be, AI'd out, if that's a word. So, so it's really good, and I'm glad that, the Chris in the Office of Economic Development is doing something like this, Sam. And they're gonna have vendors, they're gonna have food, music, and people there from the
schools that will be teaching the courses. So it's a great event. So, other announcements? One announcement, the eighth annual CYM Day observant, CYM being close your mouth and listen. Author award winner trailblazer, mister Alexander, presents the eighth annual CYM Day, first proclaimed by the city of Charlottesville on 09/18/2018. The mission of this day with the CYM character is to stress the importance of closing your mouth and listening, which is the key to learning and living a healthy and productive life. CYM day will be observed on Monday, 09/15/2025 at 09:30AM at the Barrett Learning Center,
410 Ridge Street. At 10AM, all citizens, wherever relax, refresh, and renew themselves. You can contact mister Alexander at alexan@i-cnet, or (434) 202-0773. Okay. Thank you. We have several proclamations that we're going to have read today, and the first one will be mister Payne. Sure. Seaville Subroso Day. Whereas Charlottesville census report of 2020 recognizes that Charlottesville's Hispanic and Latino populations have increased
by more than 40% over the past decade to 3,207 people, which is seven of the city's population, and whereas the city of Charlottesville recognizes that immigrant community members are the bearers of distinct and valuable cultural histories and tradition, and whereas the city recognizes that Charlottesville is increasingly becoming a culturally rich and diverse place and wishes to encourage the local Hispanic community to publicly share with ease the rich cultural heritage of each and every country that it represents, San Barreras brings Charlottesville the thirteenth annual Seville Subroso, a Latin American music and folklore dance festival, and whereas Charlottesville recognizes that we are
a nation of immigrants and that the local Hispanic community contributes to a great a great deal to our city, and whereas the city of Charlottesville supports Sembereres, a local nonprofit linking immigrant peoples in the services and opportunities that are available to them, and whereas we are on this occasion acknowledging our Latino immigrants in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month and extend the spirit of cultural inclusiveness to all our immigrant community members in appreciation of the cultural riches they bring to our community. Now therefore be it proclaimed that we, the members of the Charlottesville City Council, here hereby recognize 09/20/2025 as Seaville Sabrosso Day in the city of Charlottesville, and we encourage
community members to continue to learn from one another and celebrate this occasion. Is there anyone here? Yes. Can y'all can y'all hear me? Yes. Yes. Fantastic. Hi. I'm Andrea Jacobs. I'm the, festival director for Sigos Abroso, for Simbarreras Without Barriers, and we put this together. On behalf of our entire Latino Hispanic community, we extend our heartfelt thanks to the city council for recognizing Civo Sabroso with this meaningful proclamation. Your support affirms values and contributions that Civo Sabrosso represents and we are deeply honored
by this gesture. We are grateful for your partnership and look forward to continuing to do this important work together. With appreciation from Simba Rivera. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great event on Saturday. Thank you. Next is the co responder in crisis responder week. Counselor Snook. Thank you. So, whereas whereas the city of Charlottesville with the Commonwealth of Virginia and The United States have continued to address the issue of mental health concerns and substance abuse disorders.
And whereas mental health concerns, substance abuse challenges, and co occurring conditions often can lead to homelessness, incarceration, and emergency room visits, which are more intrusive and costly for communities than earlier interventions and connections to behavioral health services. And whereas many communities, towns, cities, counties, and states have realized the need for additional resources to address these issues, and specifically when individual persons are experiencing crisis situations, including those in the City of Charlottesville, have identified the promising emerging practice and effective program
called Co Response. And whereas Co Response is defined as pairing a crisis trained mental health professional with a first responder, such as a police officer, a firefighter, or a paramedic, who respond as a team to collaboratively intervene in varying levels of crisis with the goal of diverting anchor team, that stands for Assisting Navigation, ANCHOR team, that stands for Assisting Navigation
Crisis Help and Outreach Services Team, was established in 2024 to partner mental health professionals and peers from our local nonprofit, Partners for Mental Health, with members of the Charlottesville Fire Department and Charlottesville Police Department to respond collaboratively to individuals in crisis. And whereas since its launch in July 2024, the six member anchor team has responded to over 395 calls for help by members of our community who were in crisis due to mental health and substance use concerns that caused them to call our public
safety professionals via 911 for help. Engaged in over 142 call follow-up calls or resource provision services to members of our community who were in crisis or otherwise needed supportive services. Now, therefore, the Charlottesville City Council recognizes September twentieth, twenty twenty five as National Co Responder and Crisis Responder Week in appreciation and gratitude for the anchor team members and the International Co Responder Alliance.
And we call upon the community to join us in celebrating the addition of Co Response to our community, signed and sealed this September 2025, Juan Diego Wade, Mayor. First off, I wanna thank city council, and I wanna thank the members of the Charlottesville community. We as a team have had a privilege to grow together, as well as aid our citizens here in Charlottesville. We've learned a lot along the way, and we're still learning, and we're still growing.
There's a lot of work to be done, and we're ready to conquer and do it. And thank you for this proclamation, and we look forward to our work here in Charlottesville. All I will add is thank you city council for your continued support, and thank you to the citizens of Charlottesville for, trusting and relying on the anchor team to help you out in crises. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, next one is a proclamation for McGuffey Arts Center celebrating their fifty year, anniversary. I had the privilege of going to their open house a few nights ago and
read this to them there, and I'll read some of it again now. Whereas McGuffey Arts Center was established in October 1975 with the support and encouragement of the Charlottesville City Council, whereas McGuffey Arts Center was tasked by the Charlottesville City Council to participate in the greater community in regional growth through teaching workshops, showcasing works and exhibitions, hosting events, and community outreach. Whereas McGuffey Arts Center is recognized as one of the oldest artist run cooperatives in The United States, providing a supportive and collaborative environment for artists in the communities.
For fifty years, serving as a cornerstone of artistic life in the city of Charlottesville. And whereas located in the center of downtown Charlottesville Charlottesville, McGuffey Arts Center offers free year round access to its public art space, including both exhibition space and artists' workspaces, enriching the cultural landscape of our city. Now therefore be it proclaimed that the Charlottesville City Council recognizes and celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the McGuffey Arts Center, commending its enduring commitment to the arts, its artists, and the Charlottesville community.
We extend our deepest gratitude for five decades of fostering creativity, supporting artists, and enriching the lives of our citizens through the power and inspiration of art. Sign and seal this September, Mayor Juan Diego Wade. And, thank you for the long time support. Yeah. Thank you, Bill. So our last proclamation for for today is for the hundred and twenty five year anniversary of University Baptist Church. Whereas, the history of the University Baptist Church began when a large group of former members of the Charlottesville Baptist Church met at the Levy Opera House on 10/04/1900 for
the purpose of organizing a new Baptist church, to form the High Street Baptist Church. And whereas members of the High Street Baptist Church voted in 1926 to relocate to 1223 West Main Street as a University Baptist to better minister to the students and faculty of the University of Virginia. And whereas the cornerstone of the University of Baptist Church was laid on 09/05/1928 with the building being 08/11/1929, just months be just months before the start market crash that
began the Great Depression. And whereas University Baptist Church building was sold and padlocked padlocked at the foreclosure in December 1937, forcing the congregation to meet elsewhere. Whereas the congregation, repurchased the building following an intensive fundraising campaign led by Cecil Cook, with services resuming April 1939, thus demonstrating that a church is much more than a
building. And whereas University Baptist Church has continuously ministered to the University of Virginia in the Charlottesville community in the years since. And therefore, therefore, be it proclaimed that the city of Charlottesville, council recognizes and celebrates the hundred and twenty five year anniversary of University Baptist Church with in the contribution of its members in the serve, in the service to the Charlottesville University of Virginia. Signed fifteenth, September 2025 by Mayor Juan Diego Wade.
So, ma'am. Thank you so much. We really appreciate this recognition, and we appreciate the opportunity to have had a hundred and twenty five years of sharing good news and, hope with our community, and we look forward to doing so for a hundred and twenty five more. Thank you. Thank you. We now at the first opportunity for community matters, And so we have eight slots, people that have preregistered. And after those, we'll have opportunity for eight more, and then there'll be another opportunity at the end. The first person assigned to speak is Kate Lambert.
Good evening. Thank you so much. My name is Kate Lambert. I live at 1227 River Vista Avenue, and I serve as the CEO of Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia. I'm here tonight to thank mayor Wade and council, for your very, very generous support and for restoring our f y twenty six funding to our previous, levels Members participated Members participated in programs that promote academic success, health and well-being, character and leadership, and
life and workforce readiness. Our members participated in STEM Olympics. They participated in, challenges in another Olympics event in Orange, where our Cherry Avenue members took home two gold medals, one silver medal, and a bronze medal. A 188 members participated in triple play, which is a program that addresses the whole child from the perspectives of healthy habits, including physical activity, good nutrition, and social and emotional wellness. All of our members at Cherry Avenue participated in the twenty twenty twenty program, twenty
minutes of reading, twenty minutes of writing, and twenty minutes of STEM daily. Our Cherry Avenue third and fourth graders benefited from a literary specialist who helped them combat summer learning loss. Over the course of two project based learning units, 85% of our members maintained or improved their reading skills. They participated in field trips to the Science Museum of Virginia. We had teen takeover events at Urban Air and Topgolf, and our teens participated in career chats with UVA facilities.
They learned masonry, circuitry, and landscaping and co and toured the college campus. They also, heard from Sentara Healthcare Professionals, Metabolic Gym and UVA Athletics, social media promoters, cosmetology professionals, and they learned about entrepreneurship from the leaders at Rhoback Apparel. Since the school year started, we've had over 200 members participate in cooking, chess, which is very popular with our teens, STEM, art, power hour where they receive tutoring in,
reading and math. We've served over 1,700 snacks since the school's year started. And this past weekend, our Cherry Avenue teens participated in a youth of the year leadership kickoff where they per participated in activities around the themes of lead, succeed, and inspire. That that was followed by a fun tailgate celebration. It was especially wonderful to see our teens talking to each other without cell phones. Thanks to you all, we've been able to maintain affordable membership fees to families of
only $35 per year. Thank you so much for helping us provide these opportunities for children and teens in the Charlottesville community and for helping us Good evening.
My name is Joy Johnson, and I am the chair of far. And I'm here to speak about the building that is gonna be going up behind West Haven. But I would like to read a statement that someone asked me to read today. Says the American skin scene has been continues to have negative impact upon the poor, especially black, that are unproductive for all. Here we go again. Charlottesville City Council with the support of private section greed, including the national government, destroyed
a valuable black community, enforce rigid racial segregation in housing, public housing in private, and deny opportunity and potential to to set determination to black neighborhoods and citizens. Now the city continue in this vein of destruction where the poor must suffer vital population and social stigma to racist spot zoning by by denying neglect and private sector greed to legally pollute the the visual and social environment of poor in West Haven.
Local make decision maker hold office at the request vote of citizens, which damned all who permit such irresponsible, mean spirited, and calculated wrong to continue, all are responsible and and all are responsible. Here's some points that I made before, and I'm making them again, that will right the wrongs, the poor, and embrace fairness in the our city. Move the move with dispatch to execute the following.
One, counsel take the legal it's it's legal responsibility to reserve reverse errors in the correcting inclusive zoning. Enforce include including use legislation to deny vital population, I e building height. Give priority of land use management to those most negatively impact. Listen, not just simply heard the voice and cry, careful recommendation of black and forth.
Reaffirm a commitment to real inclusive zone zoning that goes beyond the parts of development. I also wanna give you an update, about our, petition. We have over 700 people who have signed a petition, and we would give you an update. We do not want that big building behind West Haven. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Wendy Gail. Wendy Gail. My name is Wendy Gao, and I'm a community organizer at the Public Housing Association
of Residents. There's a prevailing narrative about housing in Charlottesville that needs to be debunked and changed. It is a myth that new housing makes it cheaper for everyone. We need to seriously interrogate this econ one zero one logic and break it down. If we only build market rate luxury apartments, econ one zero one tells us that the supply curve will increase and prices will go down. This is econ one zero one thinking precisely because it doesn't actually explain how the world actually works. Since 2015, Charlottesville has seen the construction of 10 luxury apartment complexes and rent prices have only surged. Trickle down housing doesn't work.
The only thing this logic does is attract residents who can afford these egregious rent prices. The prices in those housing communities then skyrocket and displace residents, mostly black and brown people who were previously able to afford living there, but cannot anymore because of these new luxury apartments. We need to call this what it is. It is gentrification, and it is happening to the already diminished historically black neighborhoods left in Charlottesville because of this Reaganomics thinking promoted by several city councilors. We also need to interrogate how we talk about this housing emergency. There is one, but it is not the one in which we need to build
as much housing, any housing as possible. The crisis is in deeply affordable housing, meaning affordable by extremely low income families below 30% area median income. We need to be clear about exactly what the housing emergency is so this city can stop feeding black low income neighborhoods to bloodthirsty multibillion dollar developers in the name of addressing the housing crisis and adding to the housing stock by any means necessary. I get that affordable housing units need to be funded and that, yes, that might mean building some market rate housing, but any concessions to get the deeply affordable housing
built needs to be done in conversation with the most impacted communities. They need to be in the room making those decisions. City council cannot just decide what needs to be sacrificed for the end goal of affordable housing. Black and brown people are the people who need deeply affordable housing the most, who are the most rent burden, who are most at risk of losing their housing and of being unhoused. So any steps to address the housing emergency must center, protect, and put these populations at the forefront at all costs. Anything less is dishonest and co opted, which means we cannot build any luxury student
housing above West Haven, Tenth And Page, or five bill in the name of affordable housing or addressing the housing crisis. A city councilor at the last meeting said we want to preserve a parking lot. This isn't about a parking lot and to say so is insulting to the West Haven residents who have been redesigning their community below that parking lot for the past three years. This is about protecting and preserving the black people and neighborhoods that have been displaced, dispossessed, extracted from, encroached upon, and enslaved for centuries in this country and especially in this city where Thomas Jefferson built his bloody university on violently stolen land.
That is why we need to amend the zoning and oppose these luxury student housing developments on West Main Street. Thank you. Frank Frank Belcher. Frank. Council members, mayors, city manager, thank you for this opportunity. My name is Frank Bector. I'm a resident of Fifehill, talking just in that capacity. I live at 3046 And A Half Street Southwest. Council, the city of Charlottesville has a mandate since 2017 at least. And this council, I think, adopted that mandate in 2017 or 02/2018. I don't know if it would be official, but I think it's very clear.
And that mandate is affordable housing. Affordable housing translation could be anyone who works in Charlottesville ought to be able to live in Charlottesville or anywhere else there's gonna be affordable housing. That's a very noble and good and challenging task. How to do it? An ideal place for affordable housing is in Fifeville, where I live. Specifically at a place that is currently not very developed, it has a a few houses there, historical and so in in two cases.
It's on Seventh Avenue between the railroad tracks and Delavan. That's the area that has just been spoken of, one of the areas that a proposed absolutely humongous student housing, luxury student housing project has has been proposed and I guess has been looked on with some favor. So I'm here to speak very much against that. I said FIFO. FIFO, beyond the the council's mandate as I say, it has a sort of a related concern.
It's really very earnestly and admirable. I really appreciate it. Embraced FIFO. FIFO since, I think, maybe 2017 has had a city council liaison or a city liaison there. The city manager, the mayor, the council members, you've you've been there many times and spoken there for with in long, very involved, energetic, vital meetings. So we very much appreciate that. I certainly do. And I find that very valuable. So my impression is that council cares about Fifeville, cares about affordable housing, cares about
not displacing the residents of Fifeville. Now if you I don't have a graphic, but if you looked at this proposed housing, as I'm sure you have just for Fifeville, the other one is even bigger. It's humongous. It completely dwarfs anything else in the vicinity. Even as a reference point, the the church there on Main Street is a very large impressive church. It looks like a little hut in comparison to the proposed structure. The council's relationship with with FIFO has involved caring about parking there, caring about traffic,
caring about homelessness. As council discussed recently in one of the recent meetings, one of the leading causes of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. We need it there, but we don't need this project there. Thank you very much. I'm gonna submit a neighbor of mine's, draft of an emergency measure that he would like you to adopt. It hasn't been vetted or anything, but I have read it, and I do think it contains valuable ideas. Oh, so I can get it. The next, speaker is Sarah Malpass. Sarah? Oh, I'm sorry. Good evening, counselors. My name is Sarah Malpass and I live at 626 Bailey Road in the Fifield
neighborhood. I'm also the vice president of the Fifield Neighborhood Association. As a beginner remarks I I do want to take the moment to thank each of you for the love and the care that you've shown to the five fold community over the years. We're very grateful for your service and your partnership with the five fold Neighborhood Association and serving our residents. Today I'm here to speak in support of the Tenth And Page, West Haven and Fifeld neighborhoods and against luxury student housing developments in our community. We just had our Fifeld Neighborhood Association meeting, this past Thursday, and this was on
the agenda. Firstly, the f and a stands in solidarity with FAR and the tenth and page neighborhood association in opposition to the planned eight to 11 story building on Main Street. We underscore their concerns destruction of black communities in our core neighborhoods. In Fifeville, we're now facing a similar development on Seventh Street that Frank just spoke
about. The development will be before the BAR again on October 21 I believe and our residents are also concerned about the impact that this development will have on Fifeville and we are in conversation with the developers about the future of the site. On its face while by right development within the zoning code the current proposal in Fifeville does not fit the vision of the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan because it is intended for luxury student housing and would not be financially accessible or culturally related to our community. In addition, we are concerned about the impacts on the surrounding historic district and neighboring
homes, and I can discuss those particular concerns in front of the BAR. The points I wanted to make tonight are threefold. First, the FNA was involved heavily, as you know, with civil plans together, and we did not understand that our new zoning allowed for this kind of luxury, student housing. Our conversations with the city really focused on the future of Cherry Avenue and I'm really sorry that this was not something that we were able to discuss extensively with our residents and give more substantive feedback on. At any rate, the, by right zoning on this property or these properties, is not
aligned with the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan. Secondly, I would ask that we work together to amend the code to require early and frequent consultation on developments of a certain scale, especially in our core neighborhoods. I would ask that city council core neighbors to develop an amendment to the zoning code that requires consultation with impacted neighbors whenever developments of a certain scale are proposed and we know that this works. In the 501 Cherry Avenue process, that proactive engagement and trust building is a 1 Cherry Avenue process, that proactive engagement and trust building between developers and neighborhoods can result
in win win proposals for communities. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you so much. Angela Carr. Angela Carr. Hello. Hello. My bad. So this is, like, my first time speaking at one of these. I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm okay because I'm outspoken. Hey, miss Wade. How are you doing? Good to see you. My name is Angela Carr. I am a citizen of this neighborhood. I was born and raised there my whole life. I'm in my thirties. So I'm gonna start off with saying, can you really, like, for real? See a a seriously tall building hovering over luxury at that, but hovering over a
neighborhood that doesn't see or have that luxury or that hasn't seen or had that luxury since that place has been built? Like, let's be honest. Like, we have this man coming, and I'm not, like like, I'm not against somebody, you know, giving more to the community or trying to give back to the community, but you gotta think about the community while you're doing it. Like, you're talking about building a huge building. So you'll bring rich people, you know, into this building, and then those people will walk past windows and look down on people that are living poor.
That just makes no sense. Like it makes no sense. So I mean, I understand you have by right, like, laws, and you you can legally, like, build stuff. But if you have the community come and say, hey. Like, we have a problem with this. You have the community saying, hey. We have a problem with this. And I think, like, beyond and beyond anything, the communities how we feel about it, how we see it, how we are going to live it, how we are gonna be in it, how we have to drive in it, how we have to wake up in it. This is our community. We are in it every day. So I feel like, ultimately, the word has to be what the community says.
And I understand, you know, like, this person may feel like this building needs to be built or but that's not gonna help the community. Like, if you if you donate a 100 if you donate that $120,000,000 that West Haven needs to to redevelop and get everything that they've been needing for What the oldest member, I think, is about 70 or 80 years old on the far I'm sorry. I'm also a farm board member. Sorry. I didn't say that. But the oldest member on the far board member is about 70. Right? Am I wrong? So 70, she still hasn't seen any redevelopment. You know what I mean? So just turn around and you got a big old wall and people walking out,
getting in, you know, Tesla cars and Tesla trucks right around the corner from people who are still walking and catching the bus. And thank God it's free because if they if it wasn't, they'd be walking. You get what I'm saying? So it really is wrong. Like, you have to know that it's wrong to allow someone to come in and build this huge building and hover over top of everyone that don't really have or never seen head. You know what I mean? Imagine someone taking you out of your comfort zone and putting you somewhere where you're totally uncomfortable. Like, I I I used to live in Saint Louis, long story short, for about
nine years. And living in Saint Louis and coming from Charlottesville, you see all the trees, you see all the beauty, you see all the nature. But then you go to Saint Louis, you see builders that are broken down, build you know what I mean? And they're closer to the black suburban areas where it's really it's messed up. And it it shouldn't be like that here at home where you are at home. It should not be like that, especially for the black melanated children that are growing up. Oh, and on top of that, we need the sun to thrive. If you bake that building, how they gonna grow correctly? You know what I mean? Mhmm. So yeah. Thank you. That's how I feel.
Welcome back. Miss Parker. Miss Parker? Good evening. My name is Rosia Parker. I am a West Haven resident. Main Street, Wharton, luxury living. UVA is an institution who seems to not care for other common people in Charlottesville, especially people of color, shoving modern day slavery over our heads, treating us as less than because of the plans were already made before coming into our community. Based on our race, they seem to think that we had to be much appreciative. So they act like, we are misguided, miseducated, but we are just misunderstood fighting for
daily life of happiness, wholeness, and all we want is equity and fairness. That the core of our that's the core of our issue because there is no trust. There needs to be a common ground that we will all work together as well as benefit our community. I'm sorry. I got different pieces. With my disruptive voice fighting for change no. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I was rushing to get a hat. I had another meeting. Oh, I'm sorry. Counselors, do not look down on nobody unless you are helping them up. Leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to absorb
the pain, and be resilient enough to bounce back. Keep moving. So with my disruptive voice fighting for change from this chaos, I will never back down or give up the fight nor will I surrender nor will I I will forever stand strong for our rights as human people and people of color. When everyone is included, all wins. So we are residents of West Haven, Tenth And Page, and, we will continue to fight by any means necessary. And if they don't get it, we will shut it down.
Thank you. Alicia? Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan. I'm a a county resident. On the morning of Sunday, 09/15/1963, a bomb ripped through the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was youth day, just five days before black children had entered formerly all white schools after a court order required that they be desegregated. The bombing occurred four months after the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized a young people's march in Birmingham. When the children agreed to participate, the SCLC held workshops on the techniques of nonviolence
and warned them of the danger they would be facing. On 05/02/1963, they gathered at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. As students moved in waves the short distance towards City Hall singing we shall overcome, police officers arrested more than 600 of them and blocked the streets with fire trucks. Ultimately, they used fire hoses and dogs. Oh, the things we ask of our children. You may not know that today, children as young as two are required to represent themselves in immigration court.
You do know that young people in our community today are living without parents who have been disappeared. Older siblings are gathering resources so they can care for younger brothers and sisters. Oh, the things we ask of our children. Report after report of violence swallowed up the news cycle last week, so you may have missed the Supreme Court decision handed down on September 8 that allows racial profiling so the administration can carry out its mass immigration strategy. The wreckage caused by this ruling will injure individuals, families, and, yes, children for as
long as it's allowed to stand. Although it it effectively singles out the Latinx community, you know it will erode constitutional safeguards for all of us. Racial profiling denies humanity and violates the dignity it confers. It is not only unjust, it is inhumane. Every neighbor, regardless of economic status, race or ethnicity, and immigration status, deserves safety, dignity, and equal protection under the law. Racial profiling, a legacy of white supremacy, is rooted in the sin of racism.
You were represented with an anti ICE resolution in July that you have largely ignored. All we are asking is that you say no. You cannot come to Charlottesville in unmarked cars, out of uniform with no badge visible or warrants presented, and assault our residents, batter our residents, kidnap and traffic them. It is against the law. Thank you. So so we have the opportunity for eight other speakers. Who would like to speak first? Just, you know yes. Hi. My name is Sofia Marrero, and I'm a community organizer at the Public Housing Association
of Residents. I'm here to speak against LV Collective's huge, building that they're trying to build on West Main Street. I echo what everyone has everyone else has said and just wanna add and reiterate that trickle trickle down housing is a myth. What we need is deeply affordable housing, which means affordable by families at or below 30% area medium income. The construction of the standard, the flats, and the lark did not alleviate the burden of Charlottesville's housing stock or decreased prices. Rents in Charlottesville have actually surged since 2021.
And in 2025, rent in Charlottesville outpaces both state and national averages. Trickle down housing logic causes more gentrification and displacement. Building more market rate, luxury apartments attracts and lures wealthy, often white residents into historically black previously affordable neighborhoods. Many, many, black and brown residents have had to move out of the city because they cannot afford to live here anymore. More luxury student housing along West Main doesn't necessarily get students out of other residentially historical black areas. Building an excess of luxury student housing makes this issue worse because it actually makes
it more competitive to find cheaper affordable housing so students continue to compete with long term residents. And city council should not be prioritizing students over long term residents of Charlottesville. UVA does not pay property taxes and also has a $14,000,000,000 endowment. Make UVA take care and house its students. Given the institution's violent history of indigenous genocide, enslavement, and ongoing gentrification of black communities, Charlottesville City does not owe UVA anything. The priority ought to be to the literal descendants of the enslaved laborers who build UVA, many of whom were residents of Vinegar Hill now living in public housing or
who do not live in Charlottesville City proper because they have been pushed out by sky high prices and gentrifiers. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone in the middle section? Hi. My name is Laura I live in Belmont. I'm here also to speak against LV Collectives development along West Maine. I recently finished a six year term as a commissioner with the redevelopment and housing authority and so I know what it's like to give up your weekends and your evenings to serve your community. Thank you for being here. As a commissioner I also got to know some of the resident planners on our sites including those at West Haven. These are also hardworking people who gave up their evenings and weekends precious time with
their families to make their communities better. Now the LVS proposed luxury housing for brunt of mistaken housing policy, bad decisions, classism, and racism for decades. They are mostly black and brown residents who have been dispossessed of the land and the property that has been mostly black and brown residents who have been dispossessed of the land and the property they have worked so hard for simply to enrich others. I'm here to support West Haven residents and the Fifeville Neighborhood Association in opposing luxury student housing on West Main and in our vulnerable net in opposing luxury student housing
on West Main and in our vulnerable neighborhoods moving forward. I've had many conversations with nearly all of you about affordable housing and I share your share your admirable commitment to the new zoning code but we have identified a mistake in this code and we need to fix it. I know from these prior conversations that some in this city think that any development will help low income residents but this is not true. We know this for we know this for two reasons. First trickle down housing policy has been our policy in this city for decades and
that policy has handed us our current housing crisis. We also know that because like all market goods, housing is comparative. Its value fluctuates fluctuates along with the market. When the city conducts a tax assessment for a dwelling or other structure, they determine that value in part by comparing it to the comparable housing nearby. That means that as luxury developments go up in a neighborhood, neighboring properties increase in value. Along with that Landlords pass those higher taxes onto their renters.
They don't eat them. This means that luxury housing can quickly make a neighborhood less affordable rather than more. I'm asking you now to prioritize people over property, to follow through on what you started with the zoning code, correct the X corridor development error, and prioritize affordable housing for low, very low and extremely low income families with their consultation. Those who need it the most. Now more than ever, we must learn to find a way to help and protect one another. Correcting the code is a first step in making that support a habit. Thank you.
Thank you, Laura. Thank you for your service on the board, Laura. So I'm gonna go here. I'm gonna try to get you anyone over here like to speak? Just wanna okay. I'll come back over here. Yes. You I'll get you, miss Carr. Hello. My name is doctor Emily Yen. I'm a resident of Charlottesville. I live at 318 Fourth Street Southeast Apartment 31. I'm here today to, request additional funding for the CAT bus system. This is an essential service for, residents of Charlottesville, especially for, elderly and disabled residents.
Right now, there is insufficient funding to have fifteen minute services on all routes, and I would encourage you to increase the funding, in order to support support that level of service. I would also request that to improve infrastructure, at bus stops, especially to make it ADA compliant. And then I also request, for the micro CAT micro transit, service to be, brought in house. This is a service that can and should be done by current, CAT employees, and
I would encourage you to, just bring it all in house so everyone who's working for CAT, can make a living wage. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. You the black? The black? Yes. And then I'll get you after I get miss Carr. Okay? Alright. Good evening, everyone. Unmute. Is it evening? Yeah. It's evening. Sorry. We are, as you can see, a bunch of students in the back. We are part of Friends of Far, which is a newly formed organization. Under the guidance of Far, we are here to help and assist the community in
any way possible. And as UVA students, we do not approve of this new luxury student housing. We are entirely against it, and it is nonsensical to be students of the university without recognizing and interrogating the historic violence of UVA in Charlottesville from the needed Monica from the unseated Monica man it was violently built on with enslaved communities with black laborers to the current present day and displacement of black communities. We refuse as students to take part in these ongoing processes of violence, displacement, and
dispossession. It is the burden of both UVA to contend and redress with these histories by housing its students outside residents. We are here in support of these residents. We do not approve of these new student luxury housing buildings, and we will continue to support and fight for these residents however long that may take. Thank you. Thank you. Can you have your name? Excuse me. Thank you, lady. And we didn't get your name.
Oh, Ava Kodyaga. Kodyaga. And then everyone here is the fastest one. Okay. I'm gonna get miss Carr and then you. Okay? Miss miss Carr? Hello, everyone. Hello. My name is Salidia Carr. I am the CEO of Not Me, I believe. Formal, organizer with FAR, a a court facilitative for Central Virginia Community Justice. I am a long time resident. This is my community. I love my community, and I will always stand for those that cannot stand for themselves.
I will always be there because I believe in just I believe in justice and not just us. Because this building that they're wanting to build luxury, we never had that luxury in West Haven. We never had that. So when you're talking about you wanna put luxury over top of somewhere that's been here for a long time before I was even born, when are we gonna have that opportunity that it happened for us?
Us that's been here, that is still here. We are still making things move the way they should. And somebody coming over and hovering over us, we already that's done in Main Street. They lied when they put that over there by where? For great Stacks. The dairy. The dairy market? It was a lie, and it's continuous and continuous and people are coming just to put us down in the slums. That's where we are. I can't stand for that. Looking over me, looking over us, it is unfair.
It is not right. When are people going to look at us to come up? Because we're still down and we're continue to be kicked down, pushed down, pushed out. It is unfair. I've been to city council plea at times talking about the same exact thing, and then it's happening over and over and over again. Y'all are the fathers and mothers of the city. We're looking for you guys to see, hey. Hey. Wait a minute. These are our children and we are.
I've been here for a long time. Angela happens to be one of my nieces and for her to stand up and she's younger. She's she's a next generation coming here speaking. We need to be more about us. When are we gonna get this break? Because it seems like we're never getting that and everybody else coming in, and we're being pushed out. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Susan McCully. I'm a resident of the county and the owner of two properties in the city. I'm picking up where Alicia Lenahan left off.
On July 7, the council received a resolution that will provide some level of protection for our immigrant and refugee neighbors and indeed for the entire community by requiring that ICE agents be unmasked, display badges, present authorizing documents, and use marked vehicles. When asked why the council wouldn't even bring it up for discussion, two excuses were offered. First, you don't want to draw attention to Charlottesville and our our vulnerable neighbors thereby
putting them at risk. However, when we asked members of the Latinx community for input this was one response. The resolution is very well written and intentional. Thank you for moving this forward. What would be the next steps for this process? It's also worth noting that on September 20 we will all be welcomed at the Sabrosso Festival to enjoy music, food and a celebration of Latinx culture. Clearly our neighbors aren't lacking courage. There was no response from the council to this information. Second, you said the resolution will run afoul of Dylan's rule which limits local control.
Again, the council did not respond when we pointed out that Virginia code 18.2 dash four twenty two prohibits the wearing of masks in certain areas. It is a class six felony. Dylan's rule does not prevent the police department from enforcing the law. Over 1,500 people have signed the petition in support of the resolution, a number that continues to grow. Last Thursday, nearly a hundred and seventy seventy people attended a training that taught them how to safely and effectively observe and record ice abductions.
Many of us will be at the Subrosso on Saturday, enjoying the event observing and if necessary buffering unwanted intrusion. We aren't asking you to put your body intrusion. We aren't asking you to put your bodies in the struggle. We are asking you to use your power and authority to support your constituents. Please stand up. Doctor King said that no one can ride your back unless it is bent. We are not the first ones who've had to fight against overwhelming odds. Remember the American creed. It's in the first three words of the constitution. We, the people.
We must believe that ultimately, it's not about the people in power. It's about the power that's in the people. Speak. We got two more shots. Two more. Yeah. Two more. Yeah. Two more. Slots. Two more. Well, we need this before we, double up. We have two more slots. Thanks, Isis. Isis. I actually don't feel super comfortable speaking, but I just wanted to add my voice to the support of West Haven and Tenth Place residence. Thank you. Who else would like to speak? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Sorry. You gotta you gotta raise that high. I'm sorry. Hi. My name is Anna Nkanduwe. I am an urban planning student at UVA, and I'm also here on behalf of
Friends of Far and Far. I don't have much to say other than I believe in the commitment to our community and the commitment to the city. I think that president Ryan, former president Ryan of UVA had a commitment to being great and good. And I think in line of that, despite our changing political climate, despite the changing political climate here in Virginia, I think that we as a community need to know
what we stand for and what if we stand for us all rather than just a few particular people. I believe in the rights of our black residents. I believe in the rights of all of our residents including our Afghani refugees, other migrant workers who are here in this city. I believe the problems of citizenship, of borders, of security, and of low income housing all relate to each other. And And if we are to have a community of care, if we are to
commit to the plans that this city has established, then we need to care for everyone and that requires us to all be taking a stand. I lay that responsibility on the council, but also as us as residents, who us as residents. Who are we when nobody is looking? Who are we when we don't feel that we have legal or obligated responsibility? Who are we, I guess, when nobody's watching? So, yeah, that is all I have to say. Thank you. So that was the last speaker for this opportune for this time. There'll be another time at the end of the meeting. Yes. And and just briefly, you know, I wonder if it may be worth at some
point getting, an analysis from the city attorney whether we have the legal authority to, dictate how federal law enforcement operates within our locality. Whatever approach we take, I feel like it would be important to just fully establish. Is that something we have the legal authority to do? Is it a statement exact legal authority? And the second, just briefly, is, you know, this is not the first time we've heard from Tenth And Page West Haven, Fifeville residents concerned about this. I've said it before, but I'll repeat it. I think this speaks to the fact that in the new zoning, the conversation at
that time was overwhelmingly focused on the residential districts, r a, r b, r c. Many people in the community did not pay attention to the x districts, in particularly that by Wright and Tenth And Page, Fifeville, Rose Hill, 11 stories is allowed by Wright in many areas. The only thing that's gonna get built there is student housing. I'm not making that up. That's from the city's own planning documents, our very own economic analysis. It's the only type of housing that has enough rents per square foot to pencil out above seven stories.
And I believe it was a mistake to do as extensively as that. We need that type of housing in JPA. We need it along Ivy Road. But the impact of that in Tenth And Page and Fifeville is very different than in JPA or Ivy. And the final point I would make, something I think people should also pay attention to, is in the new zoning code, there's all these formulas for inclusionary zoning. One of them is that student housing pays a lower affordable housing fee if it's within point five miles of the University of Virginia.
The zoning administrator determines where that point five boundary is set at. Currently, the boundary chosen was UVA hospital system buildings, not the rotunda, not main campus. That project on West Main, as well as the Fifeville project, are farther than point five miles from the rotunda. If our metric now is point five miles from the university as any hospital system building, that means most of Fifeville, the university is any hospital system building, that means most of Fifeville in Tenth And Page up past Page Street is all targeted for
student what is appropriate for student housing under the new zoning code. These are all things that are just very important for the community to understand because unless the zoning is changed to not allow it by right, there is no mechanism to have a community benefits agreement or have your voice in this matter at all. So I'll just offer that. Thank you, Michael. We're narrative, consent agenda. Madam Clerk? Consent agenda number five, a resolution to appropriate grant funds from the Anne and Jean Worrall Foundation for KIIP for the KIIP Community Attention Youth Internship Program in the amount
of $42,480 second reading. Six, resolution to appropriate Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act grant, $452,704 second reading. Seven, resolution to appropriate Virginia State Police f y 26 heat equipment reimbursement funding, $10,000, second reading. Eight, resolution to appropriate $25,680 from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services 2026 JAG
Law Enforcement Equipment Grant, second reading. Nine, resolution appropriating Charlottesville Albemarle Adult Recovery Court Grant Award in the amount of $240,000 one of two readings. 10, resolution to appropriate victim witness grant, dollars 299,672, dollars one of two readings. 11, resolution to appropriate funding from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS HIV, or HOPWA.
Grant, 25 HOPWA three zero three. I'm not sure what that is. In the amount of of $392,582, one of two readings. Thank you. Can I get a motion to approve, please? I move for adoption of the consent agenda. Second. Okay. I can vote. Okay. We're now at the city manager's report. Mister Sanders. Yeah. It's a two parter this evening. First, we're gonna hear from the Foothills Child Advocacy Center, as a part of the continued effort to bring to you your fundamental and intergovernmental partners, for presentations just for
updates as we head into the next budget cycle. Good evening. I'm Sherry McKinney, and I have the privilege of being the CEO at Foothills Children's Advocacy Center. And I just wanna start by saying thank you so much for your time and for your support over the years. We're very grateful to be in partnership with you. It's over here. Do I oh, mic or wrong glass? You can control. You can agree to either one. Yeah. Sorry. Alright. Okay. Great. So I wanted to include this slide because this is my team, and I have a team of rock stars, and I wanted you to see who they are. I have been referring to Foothills as Foothills two point o, meaning this is not
a new chapter in our book. This is really a whole new volume. I've been at Foothills about eighteen months and during that time we've had the opportunity to do some really incredible things. We have a new name. We are not not Foothills Child Advocacy Center anymore. We are children's advocacy center because we wanna be more inclusive of who we serve. We have a new logo, which I hope you got to see it. I'm kind of obsessed with it. I think it's beautiful. And our new tagline, which is healing starts here. Very, very excited to announce that we moved. We were at on High Street for years.
The mayor was there recently. Well, you have to come. We're on Pan Tops now in a beautiful new space. We're co located with Sarah, which we are so excited about the opportunity to not only save funds, but to work more closely and collaboratively with them. We have a new website that's gonna be launching by the end of next week and our board will be finishing a strategic plan on Monday. If you don't know who we are or what we do, Foothills is one of your fundamental services and we're really grateful to be considered in that category.
We provide, services. We work hand in hand with your law enforcement. Detective Smarr and I were talking earlier. We partner with your law enforcement and your children's services in particular. And when they get a case and there is a concern that a child has been sexually abused, severely physically abused, a human trafficking victim, or, they have witness violence, they bring those kids to foothills and we provide these four core services. We provide these forensic interviews. What is a forensic interview? It is a legally sound non leading interview, in a place place, that is very
comfortable to the child with the goal of giving them the opportunity, after establishing report to share disclose abuse if that has occurred. There are 19 CACs in the Commonwealth. Five of them provide on-site medical. Two of them have a board certified pediatrician and we're one of them. Child abuse pediatrician. Very, very important. They're kinda like unicorns and we have one. So we provide on-site medical exams to the kids that we serve and that's important because when a child has experienced trauma like that, the best place for them is
not in an emergency department. Right? Where they tell their story over and over and, can experience more trauma. We also have family advocacy services and that is really important because the majority of kids kids that we serve, they know their perpetrator. This is not a stranger danger. That's uncommon. And so not only do the kids that we serve know the perpetrator, but so does their caregiver oftentimes. And so all the feels that the kids are feeling, the parents are feeling the same thing. They're sad, they're mad, they're angry, they're scared. Mom is thinking, oh my god, how do I pay the rent?
This is my partner. We have a baby. What do I do? So we have a family advocate who meets that person where they are. I just got goosebumps. Who walks beside them, connects them with services because what we know, research shows what determines a kid's resilience. The number one thing is that they have a supportive adult in their life, and we want to empower that caregiver to fill that role. The last four the last core service we provide is our multidisciplinary team case review,
and I know that's really a mouthful. And what that means, in very basic terms is that we serve nine localities, Charlottesville, Albemarle, and kinda like the seven surrounding counties. So we have nine teams, over 200 people involved. And your law enforcement, your children's services, your commonwealth attorney, and then our partners, UVA Medical, Ready Kids, Casa, etcetera. We meet monthly, and we staff every case that comes through because we don't want these kids falling in the cracks. Right? We wanna make sure they get their needs met, and we want justice for them.
And justice is different for different kids. Right? But we we follow them through the entire investigative process. It costs us last year, last fiscal year, a little over $3,100 to serve one child. Some successes I wanna share with you last fiscal year, we really focused on streamlining our operations, and we were really successful at fundraising. The most we had ever raised was a 125,000 and last year we raised $4.13 and this year we're gonna raise $4.18 or more. We also That's amazing, by the way. Just Thank you, mayor.
Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Super super excited. We also added a director of MDT services, which is also another unicorn. There's only a handful in the Commonwealth. And really, we take those teams of of your professionals that we work with so seriously that it's always been kinda like that other thing we do and that's not sufficient. Our kids deserve more than that. So we hired a person who's a rock star. Her name is Amber Blair and she is our new director of MBT services. Last year we we served three zero three Children, 55 of them were your residents.
Our challenges. We do not have on-site mental health services. Our kids deserve, they need and they deserve mental health services. I don't have to tell you there's a crisis in our country. Right? Well, there's a lot of crisis is in our country. One of them is mental health services. Our kids have really specific needs and they need mental health care. So number one goal, add mental health services. And then, our I would love for every kid who comes to Foothills to be able to get a medical on-site and that's not possible. Right now, our contract with UVA is for twenty six hours.
So they see about thirty percent of our kids and I would love to have on-site medical there full time. So no kid has to go unless unless it is a young child that has a skeletal that needs an x-ray. You know, that I don't want an x-ray machine at Foothills. Okay. But other than that, I want every kid to be able to come to a really safe, warm, comfortable place and not the e d. As far as our concerns, federally, we are part of the National Children's Alliance, body. There are over 900 children's advocacy centers in the country.
We are one of them. And we follow best practices. There used to be 10 of them. Forensic interviewing, family advocacy, MDT, medical, diversity, equity, and access, and now that is gone. That has been eliminated, so there are no longer 10 best practice standards for accreditation. Our last accreditation was in 2022. Now there's nine. And all the resources that and tools that went along with that have been eliminated. There is a very, very vital resource to us called the zero abuse project where
there were were decades of research and tools, and we use them frequently. Again, those resources have been removed. We also, for many years, before I got to Foothills, got VOCA funding, victim of crime act funding. Those are federal dollars for for white collar crimes. That funding has vanished. It has disappeared. We're very thankful that the state has filled that gap so far. We're hopeful that will continue, but you know how that works. Right? And thankfully, NCA is working on a new federal funding stream that they also help
also hope can fill that VOCA gap. Okay. Well, that's the super, super fast Foothills version, and and update. And, again, I'm happy to take any questions that you have and really just wanna thank you so much for your really vital support. So are there questions or comments? Natalie, do you have might have to come Nope. Come back to me. Go ahead, Michael. Lloyd, do you have any questions?
Fine. While you're looking outside, so I I vividly recall the tour and I was just amazed at the work that you all do there. So I was, just, I think I asked you this when we're doing the tour because you and your workers, you only, you know, like everyday, you see families and children probably in a worse one of the worst situations in their life. What do you what are y'all doing for your mental health, for your self care?
Thank you for asking. This last fiscal year, we partnered with a local mental health provider. Some of you may know Shannon Noe. She years ago was on one of our MDTs, so she knows our work very, very intimately. And we made her services available. I don't even know who accessed them. I just got a bill every month. It just said one person, six peep whatever. Mhmm. And we made that that service available, mayor, not just to our staff, but to all of our MDTs as well. So that's one thing, I think I shared, in my PowerPoint that we're really we
really worked on shoring things up internally, and that's making sure that staff have enough time and that they take time. And we've done a lot of training, as far as, like, trauma and responses, and we check-in with each other and really try to take good care of each other. I really appreciate that question. I was telling detective Smart that, you know, our program director has done 3,700 forensic interviews. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking. One last question. In your old building, you had, like, you know, a medical room Yes.
In there. So, did was it space and then new built into half? You have to come. Okay. I'll you did the You have to come. Well, we're gonna have an open house. I'll be sure to tell all of you when. But, yes, we have a medical office. The main reason we moved mayor is because, I don't know if this was the case when you were there, but literally, I had staff in a hallway. We had no literally no space. Set to end at a hallway. Yeah. So we have three empty offices now because we're gonna add mental health service. So the $4.18 I told you I'm gonna raise doesn't count the $1.30
I'm gonna raise for a mental health person, because we're gonna have mental health on-site. So we have plenty of room to grow. Good. Thank you. Did you And new recording equipment. Brand new state of the art recording equipment. Thanks to CACF and the Worrell Foundation. Oh, great. Great. Funding is actually a good side going into what my question was. You said that, you you provided service to 303 children and their families. 55 of them were from Charlottesville. Mhmm. Charlottesville has you all designated as a fundamental organization, so we guarantee funding every year. Do I'm assuming that the other, children are from the surrounding counties.
Correct. Are you a fundamental organization in their eyes, or how is their funding assured, to to reach you all? Mhmm. It's, competitive in the other localities that we serve. Albemarle, last fiscal fiscal year twenty five, gave us approximately $50,000. And y'all were I asked you for a $104.09 $9.09, and that's what you gave me. So that's what I asked Albemarle for, and they gave us, like, 98. So not quite quite what you gave us, but soup I mean, it was a 50% or a 100 per whatever.
It was a bit doubled. It was big. It was a big increase. And then the rest of the localities, really, it's like 17,000 from Fluvanna, 9,000 from Buckingham. So it kind of trickles in. We serve less children from those localities, but they also have a lot you know, the resources are more limited. So which is why we rely a lot on foundations and individual fundraising. Oh, I just Does that answer your question? Yeah. And are Charlottesville and Albemarle your biggest contributors? Absolutely. Okay. Absolute. Charlottesville and then Albemarle. And I'm not familiar with any of them having a fundamental category, which I love.
Yeah. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And hopefully hopefully, our designation helped Yes. Get that from allheart. Oh, I promise I'll be sharing that information. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for your work. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thank you. There's more. Oh, yes. Gonna try this side for a change. Two things before we get into what I have, here on the screen highlighted for you. First, shout out to the Rose Hill Neighborhood Association for a great event this Saturday at Washington Park. Yeah. Alright. That's good. Appreciate that. Had a good time out there hanging out with folks and had a few folks
that took me out when I spoke to the group. If you wanna come ask the city manager questions, I'll happily take them. So a few people to the phone. Oh, no. They were nice, so they were really good. And they were good questions. They were really, important questions as well. In addition to that, there have been questions that have come my way in regards to the Oak Lawn, property transaction. So I just wanted to add a little detail in regards to that particular matter. UVA Board of Visitors approved on Friday a lease agreement with the city, to take on take over, the Oak Lawn property under a lease with an intent to transfer
that property at some point in the future. There's some work that has to be done. The city has stepped forward and said, yes, we will take that property. The transaction is tied to the idea that we will first prioritize schools as, what we will use that site for. So we are going to begin that engagement as soon as we get the lease done. I confirmed today that the city attorney's office will be the point, mister Maddox will be the point on working with council, with the university for that particular transaction, and from that, we're also gonna have our parks director our deputy director of public works
meet, on-site to do a walk through the property so that we can gain an understanding of the maintenance responsibilities that we are going to take on, of course, with taking on this property. And then we will start the feasibility analysis of what can become of the property. So we'll be working to get the lease done shortly, and then we'll get into planning the future of that site. So I just wanted to provide that clarity. A lot of folks have just had the ask the question of, is it going to the schools? Is it going to the city? It's actually coming to the city. The city would be the owner in addition to the property we own in that
site, which is the middle school, the boys and girls club site, and, Smith Aquatic Center. So just wanna clear that up. In addition, the last council meeting, as you all know, was pretty contentious meeting in regards to managing of, camping, and an ordinance that was brought before you at your request for review. The conversation went where I imagined it would go, and I think ultimately I think what's important for me to make sure that I do in this moment is let's make sure the facts are on the table about the work that the city is doing. I've heard from a number of people myself, and I know that you all have
heard from a number of people because I get those too. And there's been a lot of confusion, a lot of questions, and a lot of requests that the city get up and do something. And I decided what was important for us to do is just to capture what have we been doing, what are we doing right now, what we continued, to do as it relates to this issue. So what I thought I would do is present to you all, and this is now posted on the city manager site, so anyone can go to that site as of now and take a look at this document, and council have provided you a copy without the highlights. I'm just gonna touch on the things that are highlighted here. What you have is what I'm referring to as the city's home homeless intervention plan
by timeline. It's meant to just identify for you what we've been doing and how we've been doing that, and I'm framing it around the time period that since I've been the city manager. There's been a lot of work that's been going on in this space, but ideally, I just wanna speak to you about what's happened in the past two years. What's happened in the past two years is number one, we've identified a position that the city is taking as it relates to homelessness in this city. And for that we have we have decided that we're going to prioritize comprehensive delivery of services, to ensure that, any member in this community that's experiencing homelessness has a
chance to access basic human needs and services. For that reason, and for that, we've identified a set of priorities and those priorities are the things that you've heard us continually talk about and the things that we will continue, to consider adding to if we feel the need to. Number one is a low barrier year round shelter facility. We need a family focused shelter facility to ensure family units remain intact. We need a family, a facility to service, specific needs of seniors experiencing homelessness, which is a growing population by all accounts. We need to make sure that we are conducting an annual point in time count
in the winter and the summer so that we can accurately measure what is happening in our community because we know it is changing. We need to strengthen the capacity of the continuum of care, which this council has done in the f y twenty six budget and probably look at additional ways for us to do that. And there is critical need for twenty four seven detox and other emergency mental health beds in this city. So with that position, with that priority, just a little bit on what we've been doing. And again, framing it around the notion that this is in the past two years since I've been city manager. I started my tenure with focusing on a lot of conversations, and all those conversations
in every single one of them, there was a touch point on homelessness. And as was mentioned earlier, that has been consistent. It hasn't changed. I also wanted to just point out to you that I recognize that this became my issue when a decision that I made in September 2023 to block, enforcement in Market Street Park was, met with what resulted in an encampment. Up to 40 individuals found themselves sleeping in the park overnight while we were investigating a claim that there were issues with our police department. And once we cleared that matter, we also moved to have the park emptied and
resort back to our observing closing hours. That was all done with the soft touch approach in partnership between myself and the chief of police. I took that on myself and made sure that we were gonna prioritize that we would get, everything back to the normal order without arrest and we were successful in in getting that done. What I also did in that same month was ensure that we had an internal working group. So we had 15 member work group, 12 different city departments and offices were brought together, and the goal was to advise me on ways that we can work as a city government to address this issue.
We've continued to work on that and from that I developed what was the homeless intervention strategy that I presented to you at that time identifying short term, midterm, and long term actions that we could take and that ultimately led to what I've continued to work on over and over as we went forward. But the internal conversation with staff continued on ways that we can do things to interrupt this issue. Interrupt this issue. It was also around that time that I tapped our economic development director to search for property listings for a space that we could actually acquire and make it possible for a low barrier shelter. So that's how far back this conversation about a shelter goes. In addition to that, we moved into November.
We had a conversation about adding a pod on-site at the Salvation Army to allow us to help in the management of storing, items that, individuals experiencing homelessness were having, and that has continued to be there. That pot is there still today. City is still paying for that, and it is being used. Our our intervention division within the police department is still facilitating access for individuals to store things and to get those things as they need them, and we're gonna continue to do that for as long as we can. And if we have to find another place, we'll do that as well. In December 2023, I actually had the economic development director bring me what results he
had on available properties. We worked through that list and nothing was, recognized as viable. So I basically sent him back and told him to keep looking because we weren't gonna stop looking and try to figure out what we could do. In January 2024, I started a conversation with our regional peers. I had the ability for that conversation to begin about getting all of our county peers around us to come back together. And in doing that, everyone did their check-in on what's going on in your area, what's your top priority, and I led with homelessness as ours. Pointing out to them that this was our problem, not Charlottesville's problem.
And I continue to remind them and they will tell you that he has said that to us repeatedly. In, February 2024, I spoke at Rotary. That was my introductory conversation with them, and it just so happened that the major at Salvation Army was in in the audience. And shortly thereafter, he reached out and said, hey. I'd like to have a conversation with you about the low barrier shelter, and that is where the Cherry Avenue Thrift Store concept came from. That conversation was simply, I would like to see if there's a way for the Salvation Army to help. We didn't know exactly what that meant, but there was a conversation about the thrift
store could be the location if we could figure out how to make that work, and that is when we started the conversation. In March, I brought before I brought to the city council an opportunity to acquire the Avon Levy site, brought it forward with no plan, no specific plan for redevelopment, but it was about gaining control of a site where we could make a difference in what is needed in this space. And as we've heard today, affordable housing being the priority, no guarantee exactly as to what that was. But the last part of what's highlighted there is once clarity is reached with the planned development projects in various stages of design.
That is what my focus has been. I would like the city to consider building what is needed based on what we know the gaps still continue what we still continue to see as gaps. So I think we're close to being able to figure that out, and you'll see that come up later. In May 2024, I asked Deputy City Manager Marshall to coordinate the first state of the homeless presentation to council with the intent that that would become an annual presentation of which it has now become. Later in that month, there was also a city county leader's visit to Harrisonburg Rockingham County's new homeless, homelessness receiving center to give us some ideas and inspiration of what
could be done. In June, the presentation, by the group PACHA board of directors to discuss the city's interest in establishing a low barrier shelter in partnership with Salvation Army with an invitation for PACHA to join in considering how to do that with the request that they consider an operations plan being produced, and we're waiting for that. September 2024, I also sat down with the Salvation Army and said to them the same thing. If you're proposing an operations plan for running a low barrier shelter and you can
gain permission to do so, we invite you to produce an operations plan and bring that forward. Next slide, Remi. I know you're managing this for me. Thank you. In where are we? In December of later that year, that in December, the city contributed $3,000,000 to the Salvation Army Center for Hope capital campaign, and that was in recognition of increasing the number of beds from 55 units to a 114 overnight shelter bed units, expanding the dining room and additional enhancements to that facility. So we did that and that is con, actual contribution that's been made.
Mayor Wade and Vice Mayor Pinkston went to the five Neighborhood Association to discuss the low barrier shelter being proposed at 504 Cherry. They were met with a lot of discussion and opinion as to why that may not be a good idea. In January, I went and heard the same story. I went back later in March and had further conversation, but we talked about homelessness more broadly. We, brought BRAC, PACHA, The Haven, and The Salvation Army to help answer questions. And that was an opportunity for us to really, We must address it.
It is not the people that is the problem. It is what we have to focus on to address their needs. And I continue to remind everyone that it will take all of us figuring out different ways that we can support that, and that is also being uncomfortable, and that is something we can't forget. Council adopted its f y twenty six budget in April 2025 with serious commitments to improving the, capacity of the COC, our continuum of care, meaning BRAC as a fundamental agency, in addition to adding $500,000 a year to help operate a low barrier shelter
whenever someone agrees to do it and whenever we have a place to do it in, and up to a million dollars in offsetting losses should it be the Cherry Avenue thrift store. We also, in May, met with our homeless providers to talk about the state of homelessness again that came before council and presented what's going on, at this point in time, and we continue to work on trying to answer questions about that location, Cherry Avenue location, or any other location. In June, myself and deputy city manager, Freeze engaged the CRHA executive director in looking
at vacant CRHA owned property for possible temporary shelter and emergency housing options. We've looked at that as a way to try to figure out, can we bring that village concept that has been pitched to you as well by me, as a way to add a different set of housing opportunities, and we continue to have that conversation going at this time. Alright. Remy, next slide. One more. There we go. I also, requested, from CRHA information in regards to the Crossings two project that was
originally proposed at the Avon Levy site to give us a chance to take a look at is that the project that we should begin to consider at this time and that is in reference to the comment that I made earlier about looking at what the needs are after we start to see projects jump off the design board onto the development board. So with VISTA '29 starting with the, expansion of the Ridge Street shelter for the Salvation Army, with other development projects coming along with greater detail, all of what's happening with CRHA, Park Street, Macca, Kindlewood, all the different places where we are adding additional
units. The question that I'm posing to us at this time is and still what is missing. And the idea is that there could possibly be a need for additional housing, and I'm just interested in taking a look at the crossings project because I wasn't here when that was proposed. This month, city council heard significant opposition to considering an anti camping, and storage ordinance and council decided to pull the item and not vote. And with that, gave a directive that we must find a place for alternative locations for anyone that we would ask to move. And I have continued to work on that and as you see I've been working
on that since October '23 because I knew that we had to. I also, reached out to, mister Sales and asked him to really take, that tiny village concept forward, and we are going to go on a site visit and take a look at what options might exist at that point. I also toured, a potential facility for acquisition. Property remains of interest. There is no active negotiation at this time, but the city will continue to look at what city will continue to look at what options is will options exist, and we will continue to look for property. We're not gonna stop. Mister Engel is gonna continue to look for what is available, and the goal is
for us to be able to find what makes sense for the city to invest in. And ultimately, recognizing that whatever we attempt to buy is going to require an upfit and that is a significant outlay of cash and that is what the biggest concern has been about simply buying a space because you don't just buy a space and shove people into it. We have to invest in that space for being what we need it to be. Also, on Friday, this past Friday, myself and the deputy, city manager Friess joined senator Creedides on a tour of Caritas. It's a non profit operator of a multi tier facility in Richmond.
It is focused on shelter, recovery support, education, employment, and most importantly, hope. It is a model replicated on, work that was done in Louisville, Kentucky. It would be ideal for me to be able to send another contingent back to tour Caritas, spending time with them to ask a million and one questions led by miss Marshall. And as soon as we feel like we have the ability to see if we can do what they were able to do, then we will actually facilitate that particular visit. So I lastly just wanna point out that we have continued to work internally on
this issue. This is not a dead issue for us. This is not something that we're not talking about. We are looking at it from every angle. I just want the public to appreciate the idea that this is not something that we are missing. We're not caring about. We're not understanding. We are continually looking at ways that we can work on this, and I just wanted to make sure that counsel and the public heard that from me specifically. I also wanna point out that the capital campaign that's been initiated by the Salvation Army today is not at 50% complete. I think it is important for the public to hear that we need to get that capital campaign closed because a Hope has a Place capital campaign brings that many
more beds for individuals who are unhoused, a bigger dining room, and additional services that will meet the needs that we have in this community along with all the other things that we're talking about. So I'll stop there and allow you to ask any questions that you may have. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Michael, do you wanna start? Well, we've talked about this quite a lot, and I know we'll continue to talk about it going forward. So I don't have questions, but, just a few comments. I mean, I think you mentioned it, but I think it's worth highlighting for the
community the Vista 29, formerly Premier Circle project, which is set to be finished by the 2026 and have 80 units for people who are homeless to be able to move out of homelessness. And, essentially, that became what was crossings too. Right. And the city's invested a significant amount of money in that project, and that's gonna have a huge impact to have 80 units for people to move out of homelessness into permanent supportive housing. We probably still need a cross since '3, but, that's really important.
You touched on as well, but just on the prevention side that the city has f y twenty twenty two, the Pathways Fund was less than a $100,000. It's over a million dollars now. And to provide, emergency money for people who may be facing eviction if they can't make rent that month. Likewise, we've invested money in eviction prevention, fundamental agencies, including shelter for help and emergency and Blue Ridge area collision for the homeless being added there, and that being done in a way to increase the total amount of funding available for nonprofit funding in the city.
I just say all of that to say, you highlighted them, but it's worth there's a lot we've done. And the commitment is there, but there's a lot more we need to do, particularly building a permanent year round low barrier shelter. And likely even after Vista twenty nine, more permanent supportive housing. And I know you highlighted those, but to me, those are still the number one and number two priorities. Until we have those, the impact will be marginal. Sure. Yep. And I would also just indicate because I could imagine what she's thinking over there. And we don't really believe a guarantee of everyone who goes into VISTA 20 nine
will actually be formally homeless. So that may not reach as many, it may not be 80 people off the street that actually live there, and I think that is kind of the point that we're making. There is still more that is needed because that isn't gonna capture all of them. And we're gonna have to keep thinking about that for the volume of of individuals facing that today. Yeah. Do we know exactly how many units are project based vouchers for vouchers for people exiting homelessness? Yeah. I don't have that. I don't know that myself, but we we can find out.
I know we have that because our housing team has it. I just don't have it. Natalie, did you have any questions? It's always good to see everything in a timeline like this because it's hard to it's hard to keep track of it all. So thank you for for giving the timeline to us and to the public so they do know that, there's work being done behind the scenes, and in front of the scenes too. But, Just trying to make sure it's out in front because I know a lot
of people don't know that, and it's just Yeah. And we do get emails that that, you know, people tune into a short part of what we do and ask, well, what are you doing? And so it's good to be able to point at something and say, this is what's going on. So I know that's part of why you did this, but it's also good and and helpful, for us to know because, I wasn't here for all of this either. Sure. So thank you. And I I I like that we were able to use, some of our money
from the feds towards the Salvation Army project so that it didn't get taken away. Mhmm. I thought that was a a good use of that dollars. I'm not I'm still hesitant to be enthusiastic about a kind of tiny village situation because I I still don't know if the evidence doesn't seem like the ROI is as good as if we put those dollars somewhere else. I do appreciate the fact that it is housing now, which, you know, we Housing First is the best way to get people in housing, but, that just they're so
expensive. I'm I've I'm gonna take a little more convincing to to spend our money on that. We have work to do before we bring anything forward with it. Yes. And hopefully, yeah, hopefully, we'll we don't there's still a big hole, which is a low barrier shelter and an overnight shelter year round. So even though we've done a lot of work, and we have VISTA twenty nine coming on board, there is there is that big hole. So, hopefully, we'll be able to to fill that soon and have good news for the community.
As I mentioned in the last meeting, we have that that momentum clearly with all of the feedback we've been getting. And so when something comes up that we're gonna need to spend our money on, I hope that momentum stays because that that is how we get things done is is spending money. That's our that's our tool. So, this is a priority that the community has clearly outlined as a priority, and so it's up to us to make sure that we fund that and make make
good decisions with the money that they've given us. Thank you. Okay. Brian. No comments. A great list. Thank you. Lloyd. Yeah. I I am I'm glad to have it set down in one document, and timelines and numbers of beds coming online at certain times and so on. We know that we have we as council and US city manager have been working on these plans for some time. One of the problems I think we have from a PR standpoint is that it's
rarely useful to talk about half made plans. And we've got a lot we've had a lot of half made plans over the last year, year and a half. And in some cases, the reason why the plans are only half made and not not fully executed or even executable, it comes down to, difficulties in working things out with some of our nonprofit partners. And one of the things that I hope we will be able to do in the next, you know, year or so as we hopefully find a location that we
can then get the nonprofit partners working on the same sheet of music to be able to to do things that they do better than we would do them. But we've gotta have agreement on what that plan is, and so it's gonna take more than just council and more than just the city manager to do that. Your comment about it being the entire community's problem, that entire community includes the nonprofits, it includes the county, it includes a lot of other folks who aren't literally in
this room tonight. And it will be a challenge, for you to to get all of the, all of the cats marching in the same direction at the same time. It is a challenge and will continue to be a challenge, but challenge nonetheless. We will get there. We got it. Yep. Yeah. So, Lloyd, are you done, sir? Yes. So, I wanna thank everyone for their comments and and you, and your staff because, you know, I often have to respond for, counsel with those many, many emails that
we get. And oftentimes, I tell them that it's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't have this a conversation or something with Sam about Please. About about, you know, what what are we doing? What, you know, what about this? You know, and and so this here, document shows, you know, just a a part of doesn't it count, like, the countless meetings and emails and Or it could be a lot longer. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen you in meetings really push our non profits for, you know, commitment, for,
you know, to for partnership. But this is difficult work that that we're we're doing and has many, there's no one solution for it. But, I wanna thank you and your staff for doing it. Did you have something else you wanna get to, Michael? Yeah. Just just quickly to piggyback off that and highlighting something you said as well is if the community expects this to be something where its city government solve this, that's not gonna work. The city government is gonna have to play a necessary, very important role, but we're gonna need foundations.
We're gonna need private philanthropy. We're gonna need, rich individuals in our community to help build out a permanent year round homeless shelter, and we're gonna need all our nonprofits to be able to coordinate and work together. And historically, there's a lot of competition and ill will among the nonprofit space, and that's also gonna have to change. So, I just appreciate that point and hope the community understands it as well. City government is literally unable to do this alone. We just can't. If you expect us to do it alone, we can't. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
So the next item we have with Nanda, action items. And the first one is a public hearing, for a resolution to approve, an exercise of intimate domain for the acquisition of right of way and easement and service, to the East High Street, street scape. Mister Cooper? Oh, yeah. Good afternoon, Mayor Wade, city council members, city manager Sanders. This action item as mentioned is for the East High Streetscape project.
I'm lee cooper by the way, project manager for the capital development division. We are currently at, obtained 23 of the 26 parcels. The three parcels being presented tonight, all the three remaining, that will fulfill the right away task for the East High Streetscape project. The three parcels listed are, two owned by East Jefferson and Simlage LLC. Those are parcels three and twenty six listed in the packet. The other parcel is MWPC properties LLC and IRR Properties LLC, and that is Parcel
32. They're owned by the same entity. Just two, three different names there for ownership designation. These three parcels are, including some permanent easements, utility easements, and some fee right away acquisition, along the strip thereof of East High. We have been dealing with this property only for quite a while, with no agreement. And the city staff, is recommending, council exercise the, procedure to go to eminent domain.
Okay. So before I open up the public hearing, were you finished, sir? Yes. Yes. Before, I'll ask, any clarification questions. Lord, I'll start with you. I don't have any clarification questions. I've been to the site. I'm good. Okay. Natalie? No. Michael, go ahead. So did any of the landowners have specific concerns that they raised? Was it just non responses, or were there very specific concerns he'd raised? Yeah. These are, we had two parcels, three parcels back in May if you recall. We came to an agreement on one of those.
It it's more or less value. This particular landowner on Parcel 32 is his main concern is a Dominion Utility easement that's going near his property. And that's the only real concern he had. No real concern about the project itself. It's just the impacts to his particular property there with the with the utility easement. Was there a specific concern that that could block access or was it His concern was a new code, a new zoning code about building closer to the right of the line, setback areas, stuff of that nature. So he's kinda he was Because we made his divestment.
Yes. Exactly. Okay. Thank you. I had no question. So I will now open up the public hearing. Would anyone like to speak on this? If not, I will close the public hearing and entertain a motion. Yeah. If I can find it. I'm happy to move the resolution. On page 46 of the packet resolution authorizing the acquisition for public purposes by purchase or condemnation of real property for the East High Streetscape project. There's three parcels mentioned in the exhibit a 003, 026, and 032.
Second. Okay. So we I didn't get yours in their way. Did you save it? Yes. Is it a yes? Yes. Okay. Master's, please come in now. Thank you. Thank you, miss the Title on the agenda is a is a resolution considering, 1114 East High Street, a
special a street special exception permit amendment. And mister Colby? Good evening, council. Yeah. I'm Ben Kogam, a planner with, Neighborhood Development Services here at the City of Charlottesville. And today, we are this evening, we are meeting to discuss a request for a special exception for the bill two requirements and the transition screening report requirements, excuse me, for 1114 East High Street. This did run by you guys in April, only for the bill two, requirement, for
special exception consideration and was approved. However, through further development review, this transition screening sort of did come up as a part of, something that the applicant is trying to have amended. And as a part of that, special acceptance may be amended, as they go through our they will be amended as if it was a brand new application. So that's what brings us back here today. So we can go to the next slide. Over there. It's over here, Ben. Over there. We got it. He's changing it. Wow. Yeah. I'll be right back. Maybe we should get two of those.
Oh, okay. Alright. So, yeah, this parcel at 1114 East High Street is zoned c x five. Its future land use designation is that of an urban mixed use corridor, and this is all for the purposes of allowing a workshop space to be constructed behind, the existing structure on East High Street and the purpose in their, for carpentry and construction of cabinetry. So therefore, to build it where the applicant wants it to be, the special exception is required to sort of meet the development goals of the applicant. You can go to the next slide. I guess I have to click right now too.
So, so what that really will entail is the build to requirement to, you know, reiterate from April that, any building in the CX 5 Zoning District must be, built between zero to 10 feet from the front property line and must be, take up 75% of that build to width within that zero to 10 feet. So ultimately, the intent of that is to create a convenient, attractive, and harmonious community by regulating the placement of buildings along the public realm so that buildings frame the
public realm with a consistent pattern of development. So what it really looks like on the parcel right now is there is an existing structure out there. It's definitely outside of that zero to 10 foot, build to zone and is short probably probably about 40% currently of the build to requirement is being met. So on both counts, you know, the existing structure isn't really making, making that requirement, bringing the site into nonconformity. You can go to the next slide or let me take a little lead. Alright. Great. Additionally, since the subject parcel zone c x five does have direct abutment on an
RA zone parcel, it it there's a type c transition scheme requirement. This wasn't really this wasn't identified when we came through for the special exception initially. So that would that's what part of what's bringing us back here today. The transition type c requirement is that of a 20 foot building setback for the proposed structure and a moderate transition screening type. There are two options for a transit or moderate transition screening type, that of an eight foot wide screening area with a planting of two large trees and a six foot fence width requirements nonconforming in that way.
So there is the build to requirement being requested, pretty much fully waiving that requirement to allow for the building in the rear, and the transition screening type to be reduced from a 20 foot building setback to a five foot setback from that property line and reduce the screening depth from eight feet to five feet. And that the applicant was requesting that, you know, in that area, you know, there would be no trees planted, so there was a request to bring that from two trees to zero trees. So here's what the proposal is there. The existing structure there on East High Street isn't shown, but that's where the workshop
space would be. In the rear, there is that parking area. You can see some renderings there and what the, you know, the interior is gonna look like. So, yeah, ultimately, those that's what's being So, yeah, ultimately, those that's what's being requested. So considering, you know, the the approval criteria for the special exception, you know, we'll sort of go point by point because there are two components to this. But the first criteria to be considered for a special exception permit is that whether the proposed modifications to dimensional standards will be harmonious with the existing patterns of development on or the same or on the same or opposing block of, block face abutting
the property. So in consideration of that, we'll start with the build two criteria. And since April was a while ago, I'll go back into depth. The streetscape along East High Street is, you know, it is fairly uniform in that section where those are these old, like, residential residences that have been converted to offices in that stretch. So the what the as proposed, the existing streetscape would remain largely unaltered, with if the building is allowed to be built off the rear of it. So that does conflict partially with, you know, some of the goals of the comprehensive plan to bring, you know, structures towards the street to create that sort of harmonious
and cohesive, streetscape that's, you know, you know, it does speak to, you know, regular development and consistency. But there already is sort of that consistency out there already. So, you know, considering that, I think it would be appropriate to add these in the build to context to, you know, reapprove that portion of the special exception, since there is already a relatively cohesive streetscape. Then that, would be meeting that criteria there. Moving into the transition screening requirement, I think it's, you know, important to note that,
you know, the comprehensive plan does speak to that, sorry. I am getting a little ahead of myself here. Reducing the building setback from 20 feet to five feet will obviously allow for that structure to be close to that property line. But considering the constraints on the parcel, with the existing parking lot, you know, having that 20 foot setback, per the applicant would not be conducive to this development. And it's worth considering that, you know, this light industrial use is permitted by right in the C X 5 zoning district.
So there's not necessarily a concern from a use perspective, but it would be, you know, the modification to that screening requirement. Yeah. Moving the parking or yeah. Moving the building into the parking space. Yeah. It's a non starter. Moving into criteria two, that whether or not the proposed modification supports the goals and strategies of the comprehensive plan. In terms of the build two standard, I already spoke to it a little bit in that, the comprehensive plan does speak to setting building setbacks to be appropriate with the site and context to increase network connectivity, create more pedestrian friendly streetscape, and reduce
speeds on high volume roadways across the city. Additionally, there is some consideration to a reduction of the front set and side yard building setbacks, as a part of, comprehensive plan chapter four goal 2.4, and the support in support of the designation of the entire city as an urban development area. So considering those two, like I sort of started speaking to, it does speak to, you know, existing existing streetscapes, and it does sort of these criteria do value, you
know, site specific considerations where it's, you know, not a greenfield that we're building in. You know, there is that existing streetscape there. So either you know, to meet the build to requirement as it's written would either be to, you know, require him to build that structure in front of the existing, office space there or create an addition off the front of that building there. And, you know, it doesn't really seem, especially given the topography on the site in which there is from the road, a pretty steep in elevation towards the existing structure.
With those things considered, I think, you know, requiring anything to be built in the front doesn't really seem reasonable to me. So in that consideration, I think that, special exception to the build two is warranted in that way. Considering the, transition screening, it is important to note that the comprehensive plan, you know, definitely does speak to the, the comprehensive plan and the development code, you know, speaks to, you know, the importance of transition screening to, you know, protect, you know, residences
from potential adverse impacts of commercial development. So, you know, there's no skirting around that. But again, sort of those goals of the comprehensive plan do also speak to, you know, site specific considerations, and, like, you know, development, considerate or development specific considerations as well. So considering with the fact that the proposed structure I'll take us back as well so we can look at it a little bit. None of the building's openings are going to be facing towards the existing fence that
it does exist right now between the office space and the residence on Meriwether. So they are meeting there. Yeah. It's important to note that. They are there is an existing fence there that, you know, is sort of meeting part of their transition screening requirements, and we're recommending a condition that the fence does maintain. Currently, I believe it's it's owned by the residents. But, you know, speaking with the applicant, you know, they're willing to, if that fence does go away for whatever reason, replace that and maintain it in good stead. But all of the building's openings will be facing away from the residents.
It'll just be a it'll be a blank wall behind, you know, the existing fence. So any noise of construction, any deliveries, you know, would be sort of buffered by the building itself. I think it does lend itself to, you know, it does lend itself towards, you know, considering approval in that way. Could you go back to the slide that summarized? This one? Yeah. Are you do you still have more, I guess, on your list? I'm wrapping up. Okay. Okay. But ultimately, and moving into the I guess, moving into the final criterion, which is,
whether with any conditions, the special exception would be consistent with the public necessity, convenience, general welfare, and good zoning practice. We are, as a part of this, staff and planning commission are recommending that the workshop space be limited to one story in height, that the existing fence be preserved and maintained in good stead, and that those two trees that would have been required as part of that transition screen be planted elsewhere on the site just to sort of make sure that they are somewhere on-site. So with those criteria, I think, yeah, I think it's fine to say that, you
know, we planning commission recommended approval on this with these conditions So you're and staff is recommending approval as well. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that presentation. It's very helpful. So in your assessment, those four items are reasonable, and you'd recommend them, and the planning commission has done the same. Correct. K. They seem imminently reasonable to me. Yep. Thank you. Natalie, did you have a question or comment on this? Yeah. Does the, has the applicant been involved those and is okay with them?
Yeah. I mean, these came out. I'm planning a commission, and I'm sure Mike give me the thumbs up there that gets all the conditions. For the record. Reasonable. Okay. Yeah. I would also note that it's not inconsistent with the neighborhood in general. There's another backyard workshop just down Meriwether Street. So it's added layer of consistency there. Great. Yeah. Thank you. Michael, do you have any questions or comments? No. I think as you outlined, you know, the requirements make sense for greenfield development or tearing down and complete new construction. But I think a special exception permit in a case like this is completely warranted,
and it's pretty straightforward and making sense. So, you know, I'm fully supportive of it. Thank you. And, Lloyd, do you have anything to add? I was curious. When did it become apparent that there was a 20 foot building setback that had to be complied with? Sure. Because, I mean, I I was out there. I mean, it's it the, you know, the base is built. Mhmm. It's not like it's a theoretical problem. Right. So We approved that in the spring. Right? Sorry? We approved that piece in the spring. Correct? Including the setback? Yeah.
Well, there was That was the piece we approved, I think. Well, the we didn't consider the, that 20 foot separation when we first came through. So, you know, the this special exception permit and the development plan review sort of did happen simultaneously. This happened, this came through first just based on how the timelines worked out. So the transition screen had not yet been identified. And so as that process went on, that became identified. And, you know, we, yeah. So in that process, building permit was actually, Matt, when did if you can speak
for that time on a little bit. Yeah. Matt Alffley. I'm the, development planning manager at NDS. So originally, when the application was submitted, it was with the SEP, special exception permit, and the development review application, which are two separate applications. And so when, you heard this before, it was for the special exception permit for the bill two, which was the request. During the, development review process, this other issue was identified. And so the applicant is coming back because that came out of the development review
process. The applicant has been working with the building official to try to keep the project moving forward while this issue is being resolved along with another issue with the development review plan, that's being resolved with fire. So and then this issue gets resolved and the issue with fire gets resolved, the development plan can be approved. So in staff is is currently actually working on making sure this this has been part of our learning process. Staff is, moving forward with some changes that will require an applicant to go through
one round of development review or final site plan review before they request any special exception permits. So that we're able staff to gather all the, relevant requests and bring them forward at once. I mean, the purpose of my question was not to accuse anybody of doing anything improper, but to suggest, and it sounds like you're already thinking about this, that to have gotten through this stage without it having been identified as a problem before that is as much a problem on the city's review side as it is on the
part of the the applicant. Correct, counselor. We we have been highly recommending applicants do a round of development review before they request any special exception permits. But this is a good kind of learning opportunity while we are going to require it moving forward. That's all. Thank you. Any other questions or comment? So the resolution we have is this paper copy, madam clerk? Yes. That's the revised the one that was in the packet, I believe, had some corrections that were needed. So we've provided online the clean copy or the new updated copy as well as
paper copy for you. K. I'm happy to move this. Thank you. Okay. Move the resolution approving a special expect gosh. Approving a special exception permit amendment for property located at 1114 East High Street. I'm not gonna read all this. Whereas Lucky Balls Juggler Training Camp, landowner is the current owner of this property, whereas the landowner proposes to modify pieces of this, whereas the planning commission made a recommendation
of approval at its August, subject to the following conditions. The size, location, and use will be consistent with the materials and application PLDash25DashDash0038 and PLDash25Dash0041, both dated 08/12/2025. Number two, two large trees shall be provided on the subject property in accordance with section 34 dash four dot seven transition screening. However, placement of these trees is not required between the studio workshop and the property
line. Number three, at minimum six foot fence, existing or future shall be provided between the studio workshop and the property line. Fence shall be maintained and kept in good repair. And for the studio workshop shall not exceed 14 feet five inches in height. I wanted to just read that since we didn't. So I move this resolution. Second. Quickly, if I may, I think well, planning commission recommended a condition the condition be that the, workshop be limited to one story in height and not tie a foot
measurement to it. That might not be represented there. So It's not what we have. Right. So, Sam, what what do you Oh. I'm not sure. That I was just gonna note that oh, first of all, so you've made the motion? I've made the motion. Has it been seconded? Michael seconded. I mean, just to comment, I I prefer the, the 14 feet five inches to one story because one story can mean a lot of different things. This is Fourteen five is Clear enough to work with.
Yes. Mhmm. So It's fine. Okay. Okay. Great. It's democracy in action. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's been moved properly. Second, further discussion? Nope. If not, can we vote? Alright. The motion, passes, five zero. Alright, Mike. Thank you. Thank you all so much for working on this. The next, item on the agenda is a resolution appropriating, community flood, preparedness funds, grant award in the amount of $400,000.
Crystal? Yes. Good evening, Mayor Wade, council. My name is Crystal Rittervold. I'm the director of the Office of Sustainability. City manager requested that I bring before you a little bit of information about a recent grant award notification. And I Let me go ahead and get the clicker. Talk through what I think the slides are in your pocket. Oh, yeah. Here they are. Let's see what our driver is doing. He's gonna have to do it. Okay. Okay. So, just I wanna provide a little bit of background on this, this, funding source. The Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund was established, through the twenty twenty session of the
General Assembly. And the purpose of the funding is to support regions and localities to reduce the impacts of flooding. It's a fund that's operated by DCR and it's managed by the Virginia Resource Authority and it essentially provides grants and loans for both what they call capacity building and then projects itself. We can go to the next slide, please. One thing I wanted to share and make sure is in our awareness is that this community flood preparedness fund is, actually funded by proceeds from the Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative. And And so we know that acronym, RGGI, it's a market based cap and trade program that's designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. And as you can see, this is a quarterly auction cycle. You can see how the funds, the revenues are split between low income energy efficiency programs and flood preparedness work. Virginia has been participating in RGGI, since the 2020 piece of legislation. There were actually three years of auctions that generated over $800,000,000 worth of funding.
Currently, that admin that, that, the state has pulled us out of this regional cap and trade market. That administration is the action of an ongoing lawsuit. And so as of January 2024, Virginia is no longer participating, but there are funds in this funding program. And so, if you can go to the next slide, please. There have been a series a number of rounds of funding. Actually, I'm jumping ahead. Here you can see several planning efforts either completed or underway from the comp plan
to the hazard mitigation plan, the current Resilient Together work that is, responding to the climate driven risks that have been identified for this region, including increased flooding potential hazards. We have a 2023 flood resilience plan that was accepted by DCR, and I think there's a recognition among interdepartmental team that that plan really needs to be activated. And you will, in the future, be hearing about an updated or an environmental regulations
and policy review project that is also gonna contemplate floodplain management in the suite of water resources and other environmental topics. So there are a lot of things that have happened and that are in the works that are related to this topic. So, we convened an interdepartmental team for a series of conversations around the state of floodplain management, and there was a recognition that if there was a funding opportunity to provide some added capacity, that would be an appealing thing to do. So if we can go to the next, slide, please.
This is the fifth round of funding, and we have actually been successful in three previous grant applications. The first one in September 21, provided funding to do stormwater modeling for the Morse Creek Watershed. We then got funding to do the flood resilience plan, and then the latest round had been to complete the stormwater models for Meadow Creek and the Rivanna River. That project is nearly complete. The other the first one is complete. And then in July, we were notified of successful application to the tune of $360,000
to do capacity the graphic here I'm sorry. While you're on this page, I I I don't know if you're about to go on to the next one, but I'm curious. The Moores Creek Watershed model, September 2021, was that when it was awarded, or was that when it was awarded? Done? Has the work been done? That one just recently got completed. Okay. Because I remember we had a Moores Creek watershed issue back in, February 2021, and people were saying, well, we've got this this proposal that's coming and Yeah.
And in any case, now four years later, and hopefully, we're now gonna get an answer. I hope so. What's the what's the expectation with, the timing on the Meadow Creek and Ravenna River watersheds? It's my understanding. So the utilities department is leading that project through the water resources group, and, I think the latest I heard is that toward towards end October, they'll have that work completed. Like, in the next thirty days then? Oh, cool. Okay. Thank you. And I think this graphic is really awesome to see how much of that flood preparedness fund has been distributed around the Commonwealth.
So flooding concerns are not just a coastal issue. There's a lot of inland flooding, especially in older inland communities with restricted systems. So, if we can go to the next slide. I will share with you that, this project, we called it the program review and the flood resilience plan update. It falls in that category of capacity building and planning. And really, there's a recognition that there are a number of unanswered questions about are we doing kind of best in class as a program. And so, the amount awarded would be $360,000 with a local match of $40,000 There's
a, three year project completion horizon that we're aiming for. I think it's a five year limit. But as you see here, it's an opportunity to review what is our program doing, can we do a gap analysis of what there is, let's review the roles and responsibilities, identify best practices, and see which of those are applicable to Charlottesville, integrate these updated stormwater models, take a look at the plans and policies that we have all over the place related to this topic, review and prioritize the identified flood mitigation projects,
figure out a funding and execution plan, really speak about preparedness and communication. This is, overlap in the emergency management realm, friends in the audience, and then develop these proactive initiatives to consider flooding challenge resulting from climate change. So at the next slide, you'll see that, the next steps would be to, appropriate the grant funding with the resolution in front of you tonight, execute the grant agreement when that comes in, develop the scope of work, secure consultant services, and then, pull
team Charlottesville together to work through what we would like to see get done with this funding. And the next slide basically invites you to ask questions. I'm curious. Is the picture on page 89 of of our Rivanna? It is. Yes. About so. And there's another picture that I think is, River Road and Yeah. Yeah. We used real local pictures, not stock photography. Well, anyway, people keep saying, oh, the right van, it doesn't flood anymore. We've got these dams up there. We've seen it flood. Yep. Thank you. Yes. You're welcome. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions?
So Sorry. She said thank you, and I said thank you. You're welcome. Is the end of this process gonna result in policy changes at the city level or ordinances or recommendations that come to city council for votes? TBD. I mean, I think that when we do a gap analysis and we try to see what the best practice is out there, it will include a review of our floodplain regulations, and it will see whether there are recommendations to be considered by the elected body. Right. Because I think I think that's where we have to go.
I mean, you talked about the need to activate these plans, not just have them. And I know it's been years at this point that we've known by national standards, our existing flood regulations have the lowest score possible on national standards, so we're nowhere near. So I I just think we have to I hope we get there. I think we have to get there. And all our hazard and emergency planning documents, extreme flooding is listed as our biggest risk. We've had multiple people die just this past spring and summer from flooding.
And I think it's really just a matter of when a tropical storm or hurricane takes a path through Central Virginia and Again. Again. And if we haven't been smart about our regulations and been as strategic as we can about how to treat impervious surfaces, I think we'll just have a lot of regrets in that moment. Yeah. When were the when were these photos from? Do you know? I don't have those dates memorized. They were within the last five years, I'm assuming. Yeah.
And I would just the other comment I would say is, like, I think we are really recognizing that a culture of preparedness is really the right the right sort of shift. And there's a lot of, evidence out there that, you know, investing in prevent preparedness and prevention and and mitigation at the front end, while costly, is a lot less costly than dealing with disaster and recovery. And we seek peer communities that have dealt with that. Yeah. Okay. So, did we want to put this on a consent agenda in, October 6?
I'm good with that. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. The next item on the agenda is resolution authorizing the city's participation in a proposed settlement of the Orient opiate, related claims against, Alvogen, m Neil, Techs, hip HIPMA, and the other ones. These are all these are all also Ikea pieces of furniture. Councilmember, that's exactly what I'm talking about right at this, but good evening.
A little more serious. Ashley Reynolds Marshall. I serve as a deputy city manager for social equity, and I'm with you all today to talk about settlements from all those, IKEA pieces of furniture. So, just by way of giving a quick background, in 2021, city council approved the Virginia opioid abatement fund and settlement allocation memorandum of understanding. And what that step really meant is that Charlottesville did not need to file its own lawsuit in all of the work that was going on due to the opioid
use crisis. It allowed us to engage in a statewide process and receive our share of the settlement funds, and that statewide process is led by the attorney general's office. Since then, we have benefited from those national settlements with large distributors, manufacturers, and retail pharmacies. As shown on the slide, that is an estimated total of the entire amount of funding that we received, so about $1,500,000 from all of those particular ways that we
can receive that money, which is through direct, distribution from settler settlements, which is what we are talking about today, as well as through some additional funding from the Opioid Abatement Authority, which is what Virginia set up as part of its processes. So, there are some additional settlements that are now available with seven more manufacturers, Alvegin, Ammonil, Apotex, Himica, Indivor, Milan, Sun, and Zydus, which very much sounds like a Greek mythology character.
That total settlement nationwide is gonna settlement nationwide is gonna be about $720,000,000 from all of those parties, which is most likely one of the reasons why they join them together. And we do know that Virginia will receive about 16,400,000.0 of that funding. That funding will go into, the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority, and then it will be also allocated to the city. So Virginia will get some funding that we can then apply for. We will receive some directly to our coffers, but I do not know how much
our share will be at this time. The funds are still restricted for opioid remediation, prevention, and recovery efforts, but participation in this requires local council authorization, which is why I'm before you today. So our next steps are pretty straightforward. My request is that you approve Charlottesville's participation in these new settlements and authorize the city attorney or outside counsel if we needed that, which which we do not, to sign the necessary documents. This is consistent with our past approvals under the twenty twenty one MOU, and it
ensures that Charlottesville continues to receive funding to address the local impacts of the opioid epidemic. May I answer any questions for you all? Lord, do you have any questions? Yes. Your slide there showed $1,500,000 to be received over twenty years. Have we received any money from it so far? Yes, sir. Absolutely. We have received, of course, NASDAQ, and it disappears. I was just looking at an SAP today. We have about roughly $400,000 from the direct settlements, and then we have applied for
three projects where we have received funding for two of them. I'm waiting for funding for one of them from the Opioid Abatement Authority. And that ranged from in f y twenty five, the largest request for funding that I've asked for was about 27, thousand dollars, and the smallest was about $12,000. So that is for our, city, naloxone project where we will be buying, doses of naloxone, for city, not only city staff if they so choose to carry it, but
every bloodborne pathogens box in any city facility will have doses there, and they will be replaced as used. It is to help provide a NECC clinician to help support individuals who may be calling in crisis. That is co funded by Albemarle County as well. And it is for the, Albemarle, Albemarle Regional Jail, Albemarle Regional Jail Project, where we are, piloting with them the ability for city residents who find themselves incarcerated and having
an opioid use disorder to receive injections of Suboxone, which lasts for thirty days versus, our normal, medicated treatment, which you have to go get every day. Our hope is that not only stabilizes them while they may happen to be in the regional jail facility, but our real goal is that those individuals leave incarceration with some stabilization. It's possible they may have received the shot the day before. It's possible they still may have a week or two, but that's one less thing to worry about when you're rejoining far.
Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. Any other questions or comments on I know that the the names are silly, but it's a serious matter. And I appreciate that we're doing what we can with the money that we get, which doesn't seem like a lot, but Yeah. The impacts you've outlined are are great. So thank you for for sharing that. Of course. And we are also continuing to look for other ways to ensure that we are utilizing this funding, in the best way possible given that it is, if we think about it, not a lot of money. But we're hoping that the projects that we propose have a really big impact.
So there's one we're still working on, but when it's ready, And as long as it goes through, I'm really excited about it. Cool. K. Thanks. Great. I do have a question. This one is listed as one of two readings, and I wanna clarify whether You you beat it does actually require to. You beat me to it. Okay. As this is a resolution not appropriating funds, only a single reading is required. Okay. Okay. So can I get a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Second. Okay. Can we vote? I need just a moment to mark that.
Okay. That was moved by Natalie? Yes. Initiated the vote. Thank you. We're now at the general business for discussion legislative agenda, part one. Alright. So that's that's me. Just a basic introduction. Remy, if you would pull up the packet. Again, there are three attachments towards the end, and we'll just kind of thumb through them. Counselors and members of the public, this item, is a two parter, for this meeting
this evening. You have three sets of recommendations, that were submitted by the Human Rights Commission, the Planning Commission, and your office of sustainability. The intention that I had was to not have you trying to consider a whole bunch of agenda items for your legislative agenda packet at the same time, but to try to break them up and give you a chance to consider them, ask questions, and give us a chance to bring you answers in a follow-up meeting if needed. So this is part one. The goal was for you to have a chance to review those items. I've asked, staff and our representatives to be here to help you recognize what the
package consists of, if you have questions on those. And then on the October 6 meeting, we'll take a look at a few more items, to make sure that you have had a chance to express your support, and or questions about those. And then on October 20, we will have compiled from both of those meetings what is your proposed, legislative agenda packet for adoption that will go to the TJPDC as a part of the regional packaging that they do on behalf of all of the regions in the area to follow once those items go forward for consideration by the
general assembly. Yeah. Someone it was something that came up today. I thought we had, like, a subcommittee that You do. Natalie and I are the subcommittee. Mhmm. Right. So we talk about this with them. Regularly happen. Because there's a lot here. Last month before every meeting. You know, there's a lot. I guess the planning commission wanted went on and on and on, which is I'm not criticizing. I think it's great. But it's a lot. And I don't know that I feel Right. So what qualified to even sort of separate the wheat from the chaff.
Sure. So I ultimately, if you've read through it and if you don't have questions, that's great. If you do have questions, we can get answers for you on those questions. If there's heartburn about any items, that's really what we're looking for, to identify anything that may not necessarily feel okay, to a majority of you. And again, we have representatives here that can speak to the various conversations in regards to, that work if you so choose. But ideally, that's that's what we were looking to do this evening. Yeah. I I'm gonna have to spend more time with it.
Well, the first question I would have, I just, miss Rivald is still here. So she's given us a three or four page list of things pertaining to sustainability. We are always told by the legislative folks, give us one page. And I don't mean and they don't mean one page from each city department, but one page from the city. Can you tell us the top three top I can tell you one thing. Those four pages consist of one page of sustainability suggestions and three pages of notes
related to them that got put in that packet together. So, really, if you only look at page one Of the first page. That's the summary list. Okay. The other one was an attempt at capturing, like, are these issues that have been, captured in previous bills in previous sessions? So it's really one page. The one page is 10 separate items that how if we're gonna try to winnow things down for the per for the benefit of our legislators, what are the top, say, three or so from office of sustainability? How how we've talked about we did have a little meeting about this and how we wanted to present it to, our state reps.
And because we have been asked to provide a single page of the top priorities, we wanna do, like, a page one that's the number ones, page two that's the number twos, where it's like, if you have the chance to support these, and then the page three of, like, also keep these in mind. And so kind of what's on your page one that we can share with the other groups? Yeah. I mean, I'd be happy to take these and maybe flag the top three. I think that clearly one of the things to keep in mind is that energy prices are going up, And so legislative priorities related to expanding distributed energy, meaning solar,
all all over the place in different ways. Ways in which, the utility develops their long term energy planning in a way that is transparent and that prioritizes known strategies like energy efficiency and battery storage a second
tier. And some of this was more, you know, for your awareness, for example, supporting our continued participation in RGGI is not gonna be a state something that the general assembly is gonna take up. But if you ask me about a like a a priority, that's a that's a policy priority to be aware of. So that that particular one was actually a question that I had in your previous presentation, but wanted to say for this since it was one of the legislative items is how easy what is the steps to get us back in?
What does that look like? Is it I Assuming a new administration that's favorable to us. An administrative it it's either gonna be, litigated, which is actively being litigated, or it will take a direction from a new administration. And is it, And probably if, an amendment to the budget. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Alright. But it seems like the sort of thing that's so important that I mean, I'm
I we should definitely include it, but I would think that almost anyone doing activism in this space is already it's, like, at the top of their list. So Yeah. And And we've expressed support on that item already. Right. And we're actually actively working on, a an opportunity to participate in that litigation process, reiterating what we did about eighteen months ago Yeah. Sort of restating the reasons why there's local harm that could be realized by the
loss of this revenue source for different kinds of programs. Yeah. It would it was done politic for political reasons, not Right. Financial reasons. So, So I'll capture I will capture, the prioritization, and that will be what we will start with looking at in the next meeting. That's That's what I was looking for. Is that for each of these three pieces? I'm gonna ask Todd if he wants to come. And would you can you speak to your understanding of the Human Rights Commission and their list, if you can identify potentially prioritization? Thanks. Yeah.
Good evening. Todd Niemeyer with the Human Rights Commission. So, their list is fairly long as well. I don't want to speak for them to say which of these would be their priority. But again, we could bring this back. They have a regular meeting, this Thursday so we can bring that request to them. I'd prefer them to articulate what our priorities are. And then, again, you know, if it's like a top three, top five, if that works for you, we'll we'll do that. Okay. Yeah. And it would be helpful just sort of thinking about this to if if you
know, for example, that there's a certain bill that is going to be dealing with that to be we could say to delegate Colson, keep an eye out for delegate so and so's bill number four seventeen that is gonna be touching on this issue or something like that. Yeah. I appreciate you bringing that up. I've been looking at, Crystal's notes. Actually, I was impressed. I was like, hey. That's a really good idea. So, you know, we'll be using that, and, we can do that research for you if that would be helpful on the top five. Is that what you're Three to five. Yeah. Sounds good.
And If if you get the three and you say, we gotta have four. Yeah. That's okay. Okay. Sure. Sure. Can I just add, though, like, those the the bill references that I put in our section, that's from the past? There are no bills with numbers and sponsors yet. We're a little bit early in that game, but we can certainly if if counsel includes certain items in your packet, then we can also help track when those bills start growing legs. Right. Mhmm. When they get reintroduced. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. So one oh, sorry. No.
Yeah. One I don't quite how to put this, and I don't want to cause offense. I I have to be careful what I say, I guess. But what's in the human resources packet, human resources commission? I mean, I think all these are are lovely things. I I would be interested before I I mean, you and Natalie, I guess, are kinda kinda sift this out, but I'd be interested in what perhaps Michael's a subject
matter expert on a lot of these things. I'd be interested in what, Sure. Deputy manager, Marshall would have to say. So for example, you know, I wonder if some of these things are just sort of aspirational notions, not that there's anything wrong with having aspirations. The one it says here, require that each county and city in Virginia maintain a public overnight homeless shelter or fund a private equivalent. I mean, that would be lovely because we're we're we're doing this, I have a sense, for neighboring counties and communities, the work that we're doing here.
But does that have any hope of being passed? I mean, I'm not sure the the the line between, like, this is our aspiration of things that we all think would be good versus what is something specific that we should put time and effort towards. There's it seem to be a number of things in that list. And again, I think Michael and Ashley would be good to just sort of scan over that and say, what do you all think are really I won't say low hanging fruit, but obtainable. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I'm certainly, you know, I'm certainly not the only voice that matters.
But I think, Well, we've already gotten really good input. And I I I think your point about asking the Human Rights Commission, what are the top five of this? I do I do know, having read through it, that there are some of the Human Rights Commission's recommendations do relate to existing legislation that has gone through several years of subcommittees and committees and have broad statewide coalitions. And there are others which have no legislation attached to them with no legislative history. So there definitely is some that potentially, I think, really could get passed this year,
including, like, the 5,000 family funds or first right of refusal. But for example, the homeless shelter one you mentioned, I mean, I I I would feel I think we could all feel confident saying there's no chance that passes this year. Not that it couldn't be an aspiration long term, but there's certainly no legislation, you know, this year. I think just going back to, the reference that councilor Osheron, made is that we're we're gonna have, the first page would be the top the top priorities. The second page would be more of positions that this body would like to express
it wants to take. And then we'll have more of a packet for other things. I think the prioritization that can come from each of these sets is is really the place to start. And then if you all have just a good strong feeling about, yeah, let's not leave that out, we can add it to the packet. It's more about placement within the packet that I I think we should just focus on. I I agree. I think the legislative history is gonna be useful, so we know how close did we get to this last time or, just kind of for our benefit. So The bill references would probably be helpful just because our delegation then, with their
staff, could probably find those old bills and catch up on them if it's something that they're not familiar with. So I do think, that's a good point, Todd, for lifting Crystal's effort, and I think we can try to do that going forward for everybody else. And who's gonna work on the planning commissions list? Is that something that Mister Duranzio is here and can speak to, any prioritization, I would think, or or at least recognize that you would take it back to the planning commission for them to consider doing something like that. Sure. I can speak a couple of these just briefly. Bill Bronzio of the planning commission.
So we provided you with a, you know, very quick list of 15 things we'd like. But to sort of run through them, I I've just sort of been categorizing them as as you've been speaking here. And the first four are really one in that they are all dealing with essentially the same matter, which is knits in zoning practice. Number one, actually, city attorney has asked to, to own, which has to do with, the relationship between transportation planning and rezoning and the requirements thereof.
Frankly, Lyle and James and I thought about that last year and realized we didn't really wanna spotlight that without having a chief legal officer in place to actually drive that bus considering other matters that are out there. So that's back on. Then the two, three, and four are all about, expediting of development reviews, and clarifications. And, number two, for example, has a direct on point for this evening, which was, to actually get the authority to delegate special exception permits to the planning commission and
let people appeal to council so that we're not reinventing the wheel three times. Especially exception permit can be granted by when it is denied, then they can appeal to council. For example, one of them has to do with defining hardship standards and, and defining, and having local delegation of authority to things like what is harm in making a zoning change. So those are they're all sort of combined together. There are a couple of things that we recycled from last year having to do
with the 1¢ tax for schools, you know, yet again. And also, Sally Hudson, put forth a bifurcation of land and improvements and being able to tax them at different rates. So land value tax Correct. Legislation, which is an affordable housing benefit there. And those are sort of the priorities there. And then the rest of them are we support, which are things that we think the state should be doing, and taking a look at. Things like let's get some sense and modernize what fire equipment really needs in terms
of turning corners because that's all over the place. Let's look at unifying, covenants and restrictions and seeing what's really out there buried in court houses and how to get some clarity on how they apply and don't. And of course, statewide, for accessory, statewide permitting for accessory dwelling units, but we already do that. So, you know, if the rest of the state didn't wanna do it, they don't wanna do it. And then the last one is really down into the weeds on a technical matter, and, I'm happy to speak to you all, individually on that.
It's my own personal hobby horse about a rule on subordinate mortgages that has some pretty strong affordable housing interventions. But we can come back to you with here's category a, here's category b, here's category c. Any thoughts on any of that? Great. Thank you. Yep. Yep. Thank you. Thanks, Phil. Thank you. So we'll capture the prioritizations, for the next meeting. And, as mister Duranzio mentioned, mister Maddox has one maybe more one item?
Two. Two items. I put out a request to, staff as a reminder if there are any others that, you know, are formulated by our own experiences in doing the work, so that we'll be able to capture that as well. So we can start the next, version of this looking at the three packets that we have in the prioritization and anything new with the goal of being able to have you, adopt something have something ready for adoption consideration on the twentieth. And I would I would just offer I definitely agree with prioritization. And I would just offer I think we may have the most impact if as best as we can.
We try to focus our prioritization on legislation that is not going to be sponsored except by our local representatives. I think our local representatives will probably be with us on everything that is sponsored by other members of the General Assembly. That's where we've had the most impact in the past with inclusionary zoning. We've got state law changed on PCOB powers, local official renuminate renumination, other issues. So I just offer that as well as beyond legislation. If there's anything we have in terms of dollar amounts for specific investments in an
initiative in the community or a partner, because we are fortunate enough to have our state senator be on the Appropriations Committee and is directly involved in the negotiations for creating the budget. So I think beyond legislation, a dollar amount for something may get us somewhere too. So, Mike, I don't I don't know if I understood the first part of your comments where you said that the, legislation that only our delegation can support. What can you explain what you mean by that again?
So, like, some of the legislation like, we we probably be more impactful if we don't just prioritize based on the legislation we like the most. Like, there's environmental Delegates member in Northern Virginia. Every Democrat's gonna vote for it. Are any of these things not going to be in front of the general assembly unless we get, Delegate Colson or state senator deeds to sponsor it themselves. So something is, like, make page one kind of priorities that we can only be the ones that carry, and then page two is, like, yeah.
We're gonna support these when that person recommends. Yeah. I got yeah. And then we can talk about that more because we are planning to set up a meeting with them to occur to review those kinds of things. And if we have, like, a dollar amount and maybe it's for a very ambitious, unified shelter system. And if we come with a dollar amount for that, I think, you know, senator Deeds can be a tremendous help there. As direction given on Friday. I've got I've got a question for mister Geronzio. And this might be something I could find if I went back and watched a a planning commission meeting, but since you're here, was there any discussion about, continued support
for a single stair amendment? Yes. It's it's actually in there. And, actually, Lyle is, carries the ball for that. He is neck deep in it. He is and he is, driving the state rewrite of the code to permit that and to look at those, guidance. So, yes, that is, we do have that, but we're a little farther down the road than requesting its possibility. I can get Lyle to connect with you. He's way deep in the weeds on that. Okay. Yeah. That'd be great. Great. Thank you.
Thank you. That's it. K. Any other discussion on that? I'll now see if anyone wants to put on there. It was it was the planning commission that finally the members of the public who were left here, they finally had to check it out. You did it. So Yeah. Chase everybody away. Yes. Any other matters from the public? If not, can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. All in favor, Part: 2
Hey John, how you doing sir? I call the Charlottesville City Council September the 15, 2025 meeting to order. Um, Madame Clerk, will you please call the role? >> Councelor Ashin, >> present. >> Councelor Payne, >> here. >> Vice Mayor Pinkston >> here.
>> Councelor Snook >> here. >> Mayor Wade >> here. Thank you. Um, is there a motion to approve or amend the agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Okay. Are we voting? Um, >> do a voice vote for now.
>> Okay. Um, all in favor, please say yes. >> Yes. >> All oppose, please say no. Great. Great. So, um, the meeting will be divided into um three sections. The first one will be um a work session where we will hear and
discuss um presentations that do not require council vote and then we will go into close session. Then the city council will have its regular business meeting at 6:30. And today we have three reports. One from the Charlottesville free clinic, the Brewitch Health
District and the Child Health Partnership. So, um, the first we have is the Charlottesville free clinic. >> I guess I I speak here. >> Yes. Yes. And if you need a clicker, if it's not there, then it's at the other one.
>> Um, hi, my name is Willa Barnhart. I'm the executive director of the Charlottesville Free Clinic. And, um, thank you for inviting me and the free clinic here today. Um so as you know the free clinic is uh a nonprofit healthcare
organization. We serve the working uninsured and underinsured members of our community and um our primary objective. Uh we went through strate strategic planning a few years ago and what came out of that was that we wanted
to see more patients and provide more integrated care between our medical and dental clinics. And um I believe we've succeeded in hitting those goals and we're going to continue to do so in the coming years. But um
to that end, what we've done is in the last year we've built a new dental clinic and that's been a huge success. There are now six clinic rooms as opposed to four. So we're filling those with many patients in the community. We've um modified our dental clinic
eligibility to ensure that patients between our medical clinic and dental clinic can access that care easier. And we're working on expanding our specialty clinics to see more patients in the medical clinic. We also do something called easy access in our medical
clinic. And that means that anyone that needs um is in need, they can come to an they can call, make an appointment, walk in, and we'll try and see them as soon as possible. And then we'll assess what they need. Well, they get one appointment, and they get a 30-day
prescription, and then we help them navigate the health care system to see if we're their appropriate home or perhaps they need Medicaid or Medicare, and they can go somewhere else. Um uh but to take a step back, the whole reason we do this and we kind of look at
the community at at large to find out, you know, where is the need and we look at the census data and those numbers are for Charlottesville and Almaro and I'm sure you're both you're all very aware of this, but uh you know close to 11,000 people without health insurance, 19,000
living in poverty. And then we also often look at the United Way uh the asset limited income constrained employed. That's kind of our demographic and there are close to 19,000 households in Charlotte Charlottesville and Almor that live within that category. And so
our whole mission is to serve these people and make sure they know about us. Overall in the last year we provided just under or just over 9,000 visits between our medical clinic and dental clinic. And then our patients were pretty split between our dental and
medical. And there was a 10% increase there, which is great. And that's what we're always striving to do is reach more people, see more people across the clinics. Um, we do this with a small staff. Uh, our
medical clinic has only one staff provider. She's a family nurse practitioner. And our dental clinic, we have one dentist. Uh we struggle like any other small organization with staff turnover, but we try to do our best to keep quality uh candidate or quality
employees uh that really care about our mission and serving the community. We also rely on many volunteers in the community. So we had 972 volunteer roles that were filled by 754 people last year. I just the number of people in and
out helping our community through the free clinic is incredible. Um, of these, uh, they were doctors, dentists, nurses, uh, people that worked at the front desk, helped fill prescriptions.
154 of them were doctors, and they usually come from Santara and UVA after their day jobs to our evening clinics and see our patients. So then just uh highlight our medical clinic.
We've made every effort to um do more and see more. To that end, we started offering physical therapy. That was a service that we used to refer out uh to ACAC and patients had to pay um a a
stipend to go and get that care. Now they can come to the free clinic and they get it for free. This is really good because if anyone's been to physical therapy, you often need to go more than once and that can really add up. So, we have two volunteers now and we're looking at adding a third uh which
is just a wonderful addition. We also um have seen a big need for optometry and that's something we added in the last two to three years. We have uh a room dedicated to optometry where all the equipment was donated and a couple comes every month and um donates their time
and we work with partners to provide glasses to our patients at a discounted rate. Um another thing that I want to highlight with the medical clinic is our mental health support. So we had about 840 mental health visits last year.
Those are um offered through our family nurse practitioner who's also a counselor. We work with the women's health initiative and we have a volunteer that comes in every Thursday to see patients. Um we also offer PHQ9s to every
appointment to every person that comes in for their first appointment. They fill out a PHQ9 to evaluate if they should be um offered a connection with a mental health resource. And we do that every six months just to check in with the patients. >> What's the PHQ9?
>> Um a patient health questionnaire. So it's nine questions to evaluate how you how your mental health is. >> Got it. Thank you. >> And are you um are you having problems finding mental health workers or volunteers?
>> Um we always want more volunteers. So I mean yes, but we're we are okay. Um because we do also pay the women's health initiative, we have that support of the reliability of a paid staff
member. Okay. >> Uh and we're lucky enough to have this one volunteer that comes every Thursday. But if we had more volunteers, would we be able to fill those appointments? Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. Um and then um
another piece of the mental clinic is that medical clinic is that we do a lot of like I said specialty services but if there's something we can't provide in the clinic we refer them to outside clinics um or outside partners and we pay for those visits. The patient pays
nothing. So um VA breast care, Charlottesville radiology uh or gastro health, they'll go to those appointments. and they pay nothing. In our budget, it's about between 60 to $80,000 a year. So, it's a significant cost even though we're paying a
discounted rate, but um it's very important if somebody thinks that they might have cancer or um or something else more serious. So, that's our medical clinic. Um this is a snapshot and I think it's pretty neat to see. We do three evening clinics
a week and they involve a lot of people. So there's usually about three staff uh a significant number of volunteers. We have between 12 to 35 patients. Our pharmacy is also open at the same time. And then usually we have a restaurant
donate dinner to the volunteers. So that's pretty nice. uh our dental clinic. In the last year, I mentioned that we have a new dental clinic um which is really exciting and has just it's helped recruit um
volunteers. I think it's given the patients um I guess a renewed sense of excitement to go to the dentist and um it's also helped we hired a new hygienist. So, as I'm sure you've heard,
the hygiene uh finding a hygienist is very hard. We were able to find one through a VCU rotation. She um saw our mission. She said she had been at the free clinic when she was younger and she really just wanted to get back into that
kind of missiondriven work. So, we hired her in June. And that also helps us increase our patient numbers and patient visits significantly. Um, we were hoping we would hire we have would have hired her a year ago, but that's just kind of how long it takes in the market today.
Uh, we also though at the dental clinic for in regards to staffing rely on VCU. VCU um had we have four VCU dental students come each week and two VCU dental hygiene students come each week and this just supplements how many
patients we can see. Uh we have a small number of dentists volunteer but much smaller than what we see in the medical clinic volunteers. Um what else about our dentists? Um oh yeah, my gosh, this picture says it all.
So digital dentistry is a brand new area that we're exploring. Um we were gifted a 3D printer. So when we used to just people would come in, they're in pain, they have nowhere else to go, they come into our walk-in clinic, we generally evaluate them,
probably pull a tooth, and then we try to set them up for hygiene and comprehensive care. Now, we could actually replace that tooth, which is really significant. Um, imagine trying to get a job if you're missing your two front teeth. And so in since June, we've
provided about 75 acclusal guards, which are night guards. We have done 14 removable partial dentures. That's means if someone's missing one of their front teeth, we are reply we're providing a new tooth for them. And we did our first
crown today. We've partnered with a third party called Dandy, which is a digital dentistry company, and we're getting reduced rates because we're a free clinic. Um, so that's I'd say the biggest advancement in our dental clinic has seen in a long time and it's been
great for the patients. Uh, we're just kind of balancing the cost of this service with how much we can do. Uh, and then our pharmacy, our pharmacy services, our medical clinic and some of our dental clinic patients. We are able
to provide um an incred incredible value of pharmaceuticals at a much reduced cost in part because of a prescription assistance program. And that means that once we get income eligibility from a patient, we work with the pharmaceutical
company to get that medicine at a discounted rate. Um and it's been an incredible way that we can provide medicines to our patients. We also recently switched software which made it a lot easier for our volunteers to help
win the pharmacy. Um, and just I mean this shows you but I mean generally we save about$1red to $160,000 every month through the PAT program. And then we don't need to get into this.
I feel like you you know this, but just looking forward, we're bracing for um our patient numbers to really increase. Medicaid, not as much because well, I mean, Medicaid will impact us, but we we
don't see patients with Medicaid. Um but ACA with with deductibles going up and people not being able to afford their health insurance, that will significantly um probably grow our patient base starting in January. We're not making any internal changes. We're going to see what happens and then
decide what we need to do. Um but that's kind of what we're bracing for. Um yeah. Um those are all the slides I had and the highlights from the last year, but I'm
happy to answer any questions. >> Yeah. Um Michael, do you have any questions? >> Sure. Um, obviously you've touched on like ACA Medicaid changes. Is there do you have like a known scale if any of
how much budget impacts you're expecting over the next several years in terms of the budget available to you from changes in federal funding? >> Well, we don't receive federal funding, but there could be downstream consequences for that. Um, so we are
incredibly grateful for the city of Charlottesville support. Uh, that's makes up a significant amount of our budget in Almar County. Um, we receive money from the VACC, which is the Virginia Association of Free and Charitable Clinics. Um, but that's
that's state funding. What we have seen in recent like donor conversations is um with all the unknowns going on people are just giving less and I've noticed that over the last three months
um more than 60% of our funding comes from individuals. So that's that's a little worrisome but um unsure how the federal funding will impact us because we don't directly receive any. Right. So I guess at this point
your your biggest anticipated impact is just a likely rise in demand less so something from the federal government or pass through from the federal government to the state you know impact. >> Yeah. Um the VACC goes to the general assembly every year and we try and talk
to the lawmakers and um actively work with them to talk about the value we provide. But yeah, >> it's unknown. Thank you, >> Nat. >> Um, I'm curious about what kind of I mean, a lot of the work you do is very
specialized. What kind of qualifications do volunteers need to have? Is there a spot for anyone or do you have to have some? >> Um, so we it depends what the position is, right? >> Uh, we're always looking for doctors and
dentists because that that those are people that can actually provide the care. Um, ideally if somebody is bilingual that's even better, but we have a on our website you can apply to become a volunteer. Um we have community members that don't have medical backgrounds that can volunteer at the
front desk or in exit interviews, but otherwise um usually it's made up of either doctors, retired doctors, retired dentists, somebody in the medical or dental field or um a community member that just feels passionate about
community health and they could like I said those other positions or even hand out prescriptions. So there's a place for anybody. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. >> Fine. >> Uh, no comments. Just thank you for the work that you do and really enjoyed the
presentation. >> Okay. Thanks, >> Joe. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Enjoyed my tour. >> Oh, good. Yeah. >> Yeah. A few years ago, Brian, I think Brian, you you and I took a tour and it was this amazing operation that you have
there of the different things that you do. It's it's um amazing that all that is done by primarily um volunteers and I just think that I know that our community would just be a lot different if that
safety net wasn't wasn't there. So, so thank you all so much >> for what you do. And um some of the I just was at a couple other meetings today the tourism and Java heard some of the same things about the well not the
tourism about the funding um and donors you know that people may be still giving but they may be giving less because there's some uncertainty. So um I think we're going to be hearing that a lot. So anyway thank you for your incredible work >> and appreciate you coming out. This is
like a health um presentation evening. So I know um the next one will be um the Blue Ridge Health District. Ryan, are you doing it? Okay. I appreciate uh the council's invitation to come present on some highlights that we have, but also to discuss where we
are with our federal funding. Um it seems timely as the Virginia Department of Health and certainly Blige Health District learns a little bit more about what's coming out from different funding proposals, what we've learned over the last 3 to four months regarding a number of our federal grants. Um, and to really
say that, you know, across the country, public health is at a crossroads. Funding that we've received for decades to support some of our core services has factually been cut or is in limbo in terms of what we're going to receive. Uh, a lot of the guidance that we've
received, long-standing guidance around how we prevent the spread of disease, how we provide treatment is either changed, is proposed to be changed. And so while public health always lives in sort of this dynamic situation and working environment, it's much more prevalent and I think we have a lot more
questions and we actually have answers to at this point. And so what I'd like to do today is really take sort of the abstract around those cuts and really make it local. What are the true impacts that we would receive at the local level? Um the negative impacts, the lack of services, the access to care. Um that
won't only impact the health district but could impact our partners. we've already heard from Willlet today about the potential for an increase in the clients that they see. Um, and then I'll take some of those highlights from the year and really apply those to the grants that we're looking at that may
have um some potential cuts uh moving forward. So just kind of as a reminder and sort of set sort of the mindset around what our thinking is um you know we serve six localities in our district um that correlate with PD10 uh Charlottesville,
Fana, Albamarl, Green, Louisa, Nelson and we also have a Yansy community center um that we um have occupied for a number of years. Our services there are pretty much educational with a bit of clinical services. Um but when we're thinking through um our budget, our
decision-m, it's yes, it's specific to Charlottesville, but it also incorporates all the other things that we have to look for. Um public health and health does not look at borders. It crosses borders. And so the decisions that we make, the actions we take, the services that we provide do translate
into overall health of our district, incorporating that into the health of our state. So we obviously look specifically within each locality but we also keep in mind that what we decide in one locality may have an impact on the other. Uh here are our core services. We
provide some or all of these in each of our locations depending on what the need is. Um something I want to highlight is that everything that's in yellow has some sort of federal funding in terms of a grant attached to it. Some of it is in whole. So, our public health emergency
preparedness program uh the director of our epidemiology uh program 100% funded by what's called the public health emergency preparedness grant and has been funded fully for um nearly 23 years since 2002. Others are partly funded.
So, family planning is a small number. Our TB grant is a small number. But when we start looking at this holistically, those small numbers add up. Um our grant funding for the current fiscal year is right around $1.8 8 million, the bulk of which is with our WIC services program,
which is around $738,000. Um, and then our public health emergency preparedness grant, which is around $260,000. So, you can see the potential impact here even in small numbers, but our larger numbers where if we saw uh significant cuts, that would be a pretty
impactful thing for our staffing, but also for um and most importantly, the communities that we serve. I do want to highlight something that I had communicated to Mr. Sanders and other local government officials back in
March. Um, seemingly overnight, we lost about $2.9 million in federal funding for our COVID related grants. Now, these are grants that we had received um, obviously during the pandemic and had received um, no cost extensions um, really through June of 2027. And so as
we were looking forward, we were tying a lot of our community health worker uh positions, epidemiology positions to these grants. Um the immediate impact for our staffing were 15 positions that were lost. Most impactful though is what that means for the community particular around our community health workers who
offer did offer office hours and during those office hours we were connecting individuals to services. That might be mammograms at UVA. It might be um money for rent or electric bills, connections to our community health network uh outreach work group who focuses on
connecting people to jobs and other different services. And so the loss of those dollars and the loss of those positions were pretty significant to that program at that time. The long-term impact I think is still remains to be seen. Um obviously we've we've offered fewer office hours. we don't have the
same capacity to investigate COVID outbreaks within congregate settings, but those are the most vulnerable places um or most vulnerable people to get COVID and so we've really had to partner with our regional uh epidemiologists to bring in individuals to address those
outbreaks some additional funding cuts. So, uh, the Ryan White program at the federal level, which is a pass through grant to the states, um, is a pretty significant program where individuals receive medical and non-medical case management,
access to low or free medications that are truly life-saving, but they're also preventing the spread of other diseases. Um, VDH and many other states have received significant cuts to that. We had also lost um, some rebate funding from the pharmaceutical companies. And
so VDH made a decision to cut funding across the board, not just for local public health. There are five health districts who did receive funding um for Ryan White, but also to community providers. Um UVA health is still receiving funding, still able to provide
a lot of the services to the individuals with HIV, but for us, and we were non-medical case management, we've had to reallocate those responsibilities to other people on our clinical staff. uh on the right hand side disease intervention specialist. So when people
test positive for HIV for other STI we have an individual who is responsible for doing the contact tracing making that connection from um us at the health district to someone who's going to provide treatment. Sometimes that's us. We have two nurse practitioners who can
provide some STI treatment um and ongoing care and sometimes we refer them to UVA. We did lose about $5,600 for that position and it since absorbed that cost into our non-grant, we call it our cooperative budget um non-grant funded budget and so we are able to maintain
that service. While not mandated by the code of Virginia, this is one of those things that only we can do. This person is the only person in our district along with our team that does this type of investigation that does the outreach that really brings people in. And so this we find this to be a critical uh
component of our response um to STI things that we're looking at in the current budget. Um things that either have come up in Senate proposals um the House proposals uh one includes family planning about $31,000 here is at risk.
We use this funding to partially support two positions uh public health nurse and then the nurse practitioner who runs that program. maternal and child health. We received a small cut uh last year. Some of this is federally related. This is also related to VDH changing their
formula. And so we received a small cut there. Again, absorbing those costs into our cooperative budget. Other uh projects and programs were looking at TB control. Nothing specific, but when you see general comments in funding proposals about reducing funding
globally for TB and then in the United States for TB programs, we are planning as if this may occur and sort of putting that into our our budget planning, not just for the current fiscal year, but the next couple of fiscal years. And then emergency preparedness. So, federal
funding could drop by 385 million nationally. What that means for us is about $260,000 locally. Um and I'll explain a little bit later about their role and what this means for our comm communities. So here you can see the positions that
are risk um the programming, the staffing, the services. Um all of this involves traditional core public health services from disease investigations, emergency response. So we could think big picture like COVID or we could think about smaller things um pertusus
outbreaks in elementary and middle schools. uh outbreaks, not just COVID in long-term care facilities, GI outbreaks, neurovirus outbreaks. And so the capacity that we would traditionally have if we lose those funding uh dollars, we would be hardpressed to sort
of stretch our resources um and make sure we can continue those services. So for fiscal year 25, here are the highlights of the programs that are funded by uh federal dollars that we're really considering are at risk. So you can see in our clinical services the
number of sexual health clients, family planning clients that we have, uh the number of TV screenings we do. So a lot of the TV screenings that we do are for our public schools for teachers. What I learned today is that CVS no longer does the TB screenings. And then the uh another program in the community that
does TV screenings no longer does it. So we have to adjust our capacity to be able to expand that and we will be doing so beginning in October. But as other programs begin to fall off and we have to consider taking on those responsibilities, again, it's sort of another contributing factor as to our
return on investment in those TB dollars. Um, you can see the immunization visits largely that's around back- tochool vaccinations to asssure that students can start kindergarten, 7th or their 12th grade years provided that they have the right immunizations. Um and I think between
EPNR and the EP and DIS, so these are the STI. Um and the responses, these are I think among many priorities, chief among them for me. Um in earlier this year, we had two responses to um public
health threats. I wouldn't say that they were epidemics, but the maninja coakal disease um it is a rare disease, but it is serious and can be fatal. Um and we encountered this um earlier this year. Uh on the measles response, two cases were identified. They were linked to
each other and to the credit of our staff, to our partnerships with UVA Health, the University of Virginia and VDH. In both these instances, we were able to um limit the amount of spread that occurred. In some ways, we didn't actually have any spread, but it is a
huge resource lift. Um we have to close clinics to be able to provide access to the vaccine. Um the thing about uh disease though is that if measles is happening so is COVID, so is flu, so is pertasus. And so when we think about all the dollars that go into one position or
one program, um it touches all of what we do as a health district. And so there's great concern about what our capacity would be to support these responses if further cuts occurred. So, our strategic direction, uh, a lot of what we're trying to do is look at our budget and how do we move key
positions or portions of our grant-f funded positions over to stable funding. So, funding that we get from the city of Charlottesville, the state of Virginia one year to the next. We can't eliminate all of that. We have to have some reliance on the federal grants. But how can we minimize that? how can we assure
that we're going to have an emergency preparedness coordinator or manager um that lead district epidemiologists who are all grant funded to asssure that we can respond appropriately and just maintain the dayto-day. Um so we're looking at strategies internally as we think about our budget requests which
will be coming in um in October. We're going to think carefully about what we're asking for and what particular resources we need for the programs that we feel like we absolutely have to have, not just because they're mandated by the the Code of Virginia, but because it's the only thing that public health, the
only uh organization that that can perform those tasks. We also want to make sure we're looking at what our partners are doing. So, for the city of Charlottesville, this isn't necessarily a question for you, but how are we aligned with your strategic priorities? looking at your comprehensive plan, health is littered
throughout all of that. How zoning is is addressed, how buildings are addressed, how we have access to healthy foods, all of the traditional things that public health wants to do too to be part of that. And so that comes into um what we're trying to accomplish with the
resources that we have. Um, so one thing I do want to highlight, um, I did send an email today and, um, Mayor Wade, you made a comment about, uh, Jen Fleer and Tamika Irving. They are true ambassadors of public health. They're are essential to what we are trying to
accomplish, not just as a health district, but our partners at Blueridge, at Centa, UVA Health, and then all of the community organizations that are working with us to improve overall health and well-being. And certainly our budget would have an impact in our ability to support the activities, but
it wouldn't impact our ability to influence and drive policy changes supporting our community partners in delivering those those uh services and resources. I won't go into great deal detail here. Jen has presented this to you. You have the electronic company uh
uh copy in your email boxes. What I would say is though, the community health improvement plan is something that we will be working on. This is where we move from action or from understanding to action. What will we do to implement strategies? What will we measure to determine uh changes in
health outcomes and how is that going to look like in real activities over the next three years? To close, I I'll reiterate, you know, we are certainly at a crossroads, but that does not mean we're undeterred. Um we are very determined. our staff are
willing to do what it takes to deliver the services that we need to regardless of where we are with the funding. I will add we are closely watching the hopefully approved budgets um that come from the federal government by the end of this month because if not we'll have to consider um what that means if those
grant dollars don't come to us which may mean putting people on furlow. Um, we're working uh right now to uh determine how much money we can keep all of those individuals over the course of a month, two months, three months, where we alter our clinic services or our services in
general to make sure we can maintain some basic level um for the community, but it remains to be unseen how much a shutdown would impact us and for how long. And with that, I'll take any questions you may have. >> Thank you. Lori, do you have any
question? I'm just struck presentation after presentation that we're getting of who knows what's going to come out of Washington. And I appreciate the difficulties that you all have in trying to make sense of things and contingency
planning and contingencies upon contingencies. And I I have no questions, just sort of respect for what you're doing. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Yeah. Excuse me. I would second that. Um, are you getting, if this is something
that's even borderline controversial to talk about, just tell me to stop. Are you getting any, are you getting any sort of policy direction or directives the about things that you think are like, "This is weird. Why
would we be doing this? We've been telling people to get their shots forever, but now we're I don't know." Are you are you getting um are you getting any kind of policy as part of the VDH? Do you have I'm
assuming the VDH has a level of autonomy in terms of its policies for vaccines or whatever separate from whatever the federal government is do is doing. Is that true? >> That is true. Some of that's set by the code of Virginia and so uh back to school vaccines. Okay. measles, mumps,
reubella, those those are all in the code of Virginia. So, we have the legal um statutes that are there that allow us to promote and require certain vaccines >> um to be put in uh place for schools. You know, I think the the policy around
COVID vaccine um is a little more fluid. >> Okay. Um the state commissioner of health on Thursday issued a standing order that removes the requirement for a prescription to be written so that a pharmacist can administer COVID vaccine.
So someone does not need to go with a prescription to have that done um provided that they have the underlying health um health conditions for the requirement. If you're 65 and above, you don't have to worry about that. >> So that was a huge barrier I think and that's one where we have that autonomy
at the state level. Other states are doing different things. Some it's come one, come all, you can get your vaccine. Um here we're just trying to make sure we're removing that prescription barrier and then addressing things that come up. So um the next meeting at this the
federal level is on Thursday, Friday to vote on COVID vaccine, whether or not it's going to be approved for free vaccine for children, free vaccine for adults, what the requirements are going to be um for children to get access to the vaccine. So there's still some uncertainty there. Um, fortunately,
anything that's in the code of Virginia would require a change in the code. So we feel pretty comfortable where we are with that right now. >> Good. Thank you. >> Thanks. Um, yikes. the the um this is one I I kept
uh during your presentation ringing in my head was um Ashley saying social determinance of health over and over again at at previous presentations and how all of the things that you promote, provide, educate about are worthwhile
and a good thing to have uh funding for because it has all of these downstream positive effects in the community. Um, so it's tough to see how in jeopardy everything is for no good reason. Um, how come CVS and the other institutions
stopped doing TB tests? Do we know >> that? I don't know. Um, that there's certainly time as a factor in that. I'm not sure if um, now having greater ability to provide COVID vaccine has contributed to that where they have to make a decision. I'm not I'm not quite sure. But
>> um as far as the TV screenings, you know, I think we're we have the capacity to take that on. The other thing that we do, especially when it comes to schools, vetinarians, we'll set up an agreement where um we know that we're going to screen 55 people for that organization
and so we can sort of plan accordingly. Um so it's it's an adjustment. It's adding some some uh clinic time, maybe taking away from some other things, but something we feel comfortable taking on at this point. >> Okay. Um, great. And then I know the
potential for a government shutdown is looming >> and you you mentioned how that would be negative um for your daily operations. Does that would that kick in immediately or is there like some time we can write it out before >> there is some time that we can write it
out. I'm not sure I can confidently say how long. Um, and the idea behind that would be we would make sure people are paid through our cooperative budget and then we would sort of reallocate those funds back to the grants once the shutdown occurred. Um, and so we're taking a lot of steps internally to
figure out pay period by pay period what can we afford and then what can we expect to get back in return from those grants. Um, there could be some pain there both in terms of our staff, in terms of what we're able to offer the community. So I don't want to downplay that. I think that's that's still really
important. Um, so it's unknown for how long, but we we feel like we have a plan in place that would allow us to for some length of time continue to offer services. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. Um yeah, as we heard earlier and you
outlined, it's obviously, you know, a perilous moment for public health with premium rises, devastating cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, along with cuts to public health providers all coming together with more people unable to
afford preventative care, um rising demand for your services. At the same time, you're getting cuts. You said there's about 3.2 2 million an expected budget shortfall going into FY27. Um I guess the question is at this point
do you have a sense of scale of what you would be thinking if that stays the situation um kind of the scale of requests you would be looking for from state government, local government, other partners? >> I can't say on the the state government
side. So VDH really manages the budget request to the general assembly and then they get a pot of money and then that money comes down to the local uh health districts and then we sort of divvy that up between our localities based on proportion. Um you know I think what we did last year we submitted a request
that included a small amount for a community health worker supervisor knowing that in two years that funding would be gone. We didn't anticipate that it would be gone in six months, but fortunately all of our localities contributed money proportionally to fund that position and our intent was to
slowly do that over time. Um, I think that's probably a conversation with each locality to say what is a reasonable expectation that we could submit a request for in a given year to help stabilize the funding for those positions. Um, I think all localities
are probably facing similar or asking themselves similar questions. What is the economy going to look like? What federal funding do we we receive? How is that impact other things? So, you know, we've we've made requests in the last three years of anywhere between
6 and 14% to localities and we've received between six and 14%. I would expect similar things um to try to to stabilize our grant-f funed positions. And if the state decides they want to give staff a 3% raise, we also have to
figure that in as well. Um so I'm not I don't have a great answer for that other than to say I think it's a conversation between myself, local governments to really figure out what's reasonable in our budget request for the next fiscal year and the years to come. At this point,
you know, heading into the next general assembly session in the new year, is your sense that there is momentum and conversation at the general assembly level in terms of increasing state funding to try to fill the gap? Is that something that at this point seems to
have momentum or has reached the attention of gubernatorial campaigns? Kind of what is what is your sense of where that stands? VDH has put together a couple of uh additional funding requests for more positions, more stabilized and regular funding uh from the general assembly. Um I don't know
what the momentum is at the at the among elected officials at this point. I think because those are trickling up their way to the general assembly, it's going to be some time before we have a sense of what may or may not get approved. Um I think BH had submitted some um funding
requests two years ago for community health workers focused on maternal child health and that was passed. So short-term history there is some momentum building but in terms of like all of the things that the federal government provides to states I'm not
sure where VDH ranks in their priorities in relation to other government uh agencies. >> Thank you. >> Welcome. Um, so Ryan, thank you for your for information. I have kind of a a question. is a
um if you had like a special magic wand, not me, not one um and you could address like any of the issues in your the community health assessment, what would you like say that's what I want to
um address or get, you know, make it go away? uh social drivers of health, social determinance of health, that's the base, the base for everything for people. Um quality housing, access to food, it's the true like root cause of
what we're trying to solve and the upstream problems that exist that have upstream solutions. And I think if we can focus on those barriers to healthy food, um, housing, transportation, the things that people need just to improve their overall health, I would love to
have, uh, a greater ability to work on that. For us, obviously, we're a community health strategist um, led by Jen in this process. love to have more comm community health workers that really connect individuals to the services that they need that really do
focus in a lot of ways on the social determinance of health. >> Thank you. I threw your little curveball there that was good. >> Thank you. Appreciate >> Thank you so much. Appreciate all the work that y'all do. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, John
with um Child Health Partnership. Good afternoon. Um, I really appreciate the chance to talk and share with all of you this afternoon as well and appreciate your time and particularly following our good partners at the health district and the free clinic. Um,
so I'm John Nafiger. I'm executive director with child health partnership. Um, just celebrated my 10th anniversary with the organization, which is hard to believe. Uh, I want to introduce we have one of our board members, Greg Winston, who's our treasurer, is here as well.
And I'm sure Greg would be happy to help answer questions later as uh if you have questions for him. Um, I know some of you are are um very familiar with Child Health Partnership. I'm going to uh some of you maybe less so. So, I'm going uh try to quickly give um some background
to the program. Um, and as you see, our mission focuses on at home support for children and parents to promote health and well-being of families facing challenges in our community. And I think um the the message I the broad messages I would
share today is that I think our program is in a uh a pretty good relatively strong place and the families we work with are facing really uh intense greater challenges than than what we've
seen in certainly in my 10 years uh with the program. Um but we you know we work with uh with pregnant women and with families to build trusting relationships to re to remove barriers and as has been
talked about you know really kind of uh on the ground individually working with families to address um to address social determinance of health. So um I'm going to throw a couple of statistics or ideas at you.
One is this one that children have about 2,000 days between when they're born and when they get to kindergarten. Um, which in some ways is a significant number and in in many ways goes very fast. And those are all days and moments when kids
are either getting positive support that are is going to prepare them for uh for school and for life or are missing out on that support. And um our program child health partnership is a model we use uh registered nurses, community
health nurses um and trained parent family support specialists. Each each family has uh a team of a nurse and a family support specialist who go out to the home. Um that is a way to uh remove barriers to service. Families don't have
to worry about child care. They don't have to worry about transportation. Um and it's a situation where we can just develop very different much um stronger trusting relationships with families than than can normally de be developed
in a clinic or a more institutional setting. Um so the pillars of our program in doing that are child and family health uh working on parenting skills and child development and then fostering family self-sufficiency.
Um, and uh we are this is our 35th anniversary uh which we're excited about. Um uh I think all of you should have an invitation or one in the mail uh for our celebration on October 19th and we'll be reaching out to you um as well.
I wanted to say um child health partnership uh started in 1991 as a local government effort with the program under the health district and and MACA and that was our uh how we worked uh up
until 2008. So, our first 17 or 18 years and the the second half of our time, uh, we've been an independent nonprofit um, in the city and the county. And in these three kind of pillars of child and
family health and parenting, child development, and self-sufficiency, our services then are really individualized to each family of where they're at, what their goals for their for their children and their families are. um and what they're hoping to uh how they're hoping
to move that. This is something that you you maybe have seen, but it it really is a kind of wellestablished um research that uh the impacts prenatally and in those first few years um can be
can be so profound in terms of the trae trajectory of children's lives. um and you know where we're working with families to provide support, identify and provide needed assistance that
really are not interventions. It's before it's things are to a a a place where children uh need what would be considered an intervention that we're able to to identify what supports are needed. Um
so I I mentioned the challenges for families in this last year. Now the the all of the families we work with are are underresourced. Um of families enrolled in the last year 65% were food insecure when they came into the program. Um I
wish I could say after a year that none of them were, but it's it's still a real challenge. Um likewise coming into the program um 30% of families had moved at least twice in the previous year. Um we
can assume that moving once uh might be a good thing. Uh might not be a good thing pretty much two or three times. um it's kind of universally uh a problem and shows um instability and and kind of the the
needs that we're trying to address to give to give babies and young kids an environment where they can can grow up with the support they need. So, uh, our nurses focus on the health side of things, uh, prenatal support. We
do depression screenings, uh, and real a lot of health education and a lot of focus on access to improved access to medical and dental care. Um, and our family support staff are focused on child development. um you know we don't
uh we work hard to build that parenting bond between between the parent and child. We're not again not kind of going there to do an intervention with the child but to build that relationship to build parent confidence. Um we work
closely with um department of social services. Um we have some families that are connected to DSS, some that that are not. Uh we have um you know we have children with complex significant
medical needs. Not all of them but um certainly for some families is helping to navigate a complicated health system um to get their kids the help they need. Um and then um one of the one of the other
programs that we've been able to add in the last year is um kind of peer support parenting groups for for um for new mothers um with a an evidence-based model. We've been working uh in the last
year with the women's initiative on that. uh we run three groups for about 40 uh parents and are planning to continue that into the coming year. Uh so um our services are free to families and are completely voluntary.
That's one of the things that I say we have we have a really diverse group of families. you see um 225 in the last year and the one thing they have in common is uh is a desire to uh improve the lives of their children and and work
to figure out how they can best do that. Um and then um you know just we we both coming into the program and uh and ongoing we track a lot of data and um you know have a lot of good outcomes in
terms of the impact. Uh almost all of our children have medical homes and are up to date on immunizations. uh almost all are current on developmental screenings to see what supports they uh they need for for good development. And you'll see further down
that list again I mentioned that 30% of uh families had moved twice or more um enrolling in the program after a year. That's down to 12% which is not where we'd like it to be but um but a good change. Likewise for children who needed
medical care and didn't get it uh after a year in the program that drops to 3% and um dental drops very significantly as well. So then um finally a kind of update on where we're at right now. Uh we've had a
good year in terms of staff continuity and uh which is is really important for the work we do um building long-term relationships with families. I mentioned the outcomes that we're really pleased with. We've um continue to see coming
out of the pandemic uh an increase in the referrals we're getting and uh enrollments in the program and I think largely uh due to a a a very fortunate staff addition. We've seen a good year in terms of our private
fundraising um without knowing what the coming year is going to going to hold. In terms of challenges, um, we have, you know, when when I think originally when the program started, this was kind of seen as a, uh, chip is
a Virginia model was kind of seen as a 5050 state uh, local match. And we are now just over 20% um, state funded. And we have made up that that gap with private funding, but effectively we haven't had an increase in our state
support since 2017. um which effectively is about a 32% 32% inflation 32% effective cut over that time. So even going into this year that is a challenge for us. Um
and I you know I I think um just mention uh in terms of ongoing pandemic impacts or or family stress, it just it is a very different time than it was 5 years ago. I think for uh many of
us, including the families we work with, of how we feel about uh being around people at all, much less people coming into our home. um that that that is a a kind of a challenge that we still um work with and it is it's just a
difficult time in our society to um to build new relationships to engage families and be able to build trust. Um, I think again compared to compared to what that looked like a number of years ago for our federal impacts, you know, I
I I put budget second um because the biggest impact we've seen honestly, we work with with a lot of immigrant and refugee families and it has just it's been it's been and remains a very very difficult time. um families are under a
lot of stress uh economically in terms of work, in terms of immigration policies uh and and uh in a lot of other areas. So that and that certainly um I was going to say trickles down. It's more than a trickle,
but but impacts our frontline staff as well, going out and working with uh with these families on a regular basis and helping them problem solve and and try to figure out um how best to move forward. In terms of budget, we are um
as it's shown uh in terms of direct federal funding, we have one grant which is through the Virginia Department of Health. Um, at the moment we have not heard rumblings of that being a problem. So, we think that's good for the coming year at least. Um, and we'll see. We are
fortunate that, uh, a couple of years ago, um, our state funding was largely federal tanniff dollars and that changed a couple years ago so that it's all general fund dollars at this point. Um but um you
know we still between local government and state government we're about twothirds government funded and so impacts related to SNAP and Medicaid and and other programs th those pressures on um on budgets are certainly uh going to
be pressures on on us as well. Um, so, uh, again, thank you. Uh, we really appreciate the partnership that, uh, that we have and have had for 35 years with the city and, uh, happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you, John. Um, I'll start with
you, Michael. You have any questions or comments? >> Sure. So, favorite question, always, money. Um it sounds like you're in relatively stable place in terms of federal funding. Obviously, as you highlighted, increased
state funding would be a big priority and that along with health district funding may be important for our legislative agenda and talking with our state representatives about. Um, beyond that, over the next year or two, are you anticipating
any budget gaps caused by an increase of demand that you're expecting or at this point do you not know enough to know about the scale of any potential funding gaps? Um, I don't know what will happen in terms of we have in the past few months uh
flipped into a small waiting list for services. Um, so what's going to happen in that regard? I I don't know. Um, I mean, one of the um one of the great challenges of nonprofit budgeting is that providing more services doesn't
mean you have more revenue. Um, so I I think we are looking to um uh to manage that. You know, I I I would still in in terms of of my concerns and I think our challenges, I
would put budget as second or third and not first if that's kind of part of the answer. We do in terms of legislative agenda. We have been working the past three or four years uh related to a state funding increase specifically
targeted to being able to do a trial and move to um we use a lot of evidence-based tools. We are not cons as a Virginia model. We are not currently considered a federal evidence evidence-based program and therefore there is federal uh money that we are
not eligible for. uh and a state a state increase would allow us both to increase numbers and get that that study research done to then open those other doors. I mean, that would that would take a while, but um so that's that's the ask
we've had the last couple of years. Um and it's it's the ask that we're planning to go back with. Um I know that there there is some support for that. It's it's um we're the kind of work and program that um almost everybody
supports. It's a question of whether we're high enough on the agenda to to get those dollars. >> That's helpful. And I know later on in our meeting we have a first discussion of our legislative agenda. So timely, but thank you. >> That would that would be it would be a
great support to to be on that agenda. N >> um yeah for the legislative agenda we get feedback from some different city departments and um then we can add
whatever we want and we talk about it. Uh and I guess this is a question for Sam is do we get an official legislative request from any of these groups? No, we we have not solicited. Uh they come in at times, I guess, through various
conversations, but I'm not aware. Um I don't think we've had anything come in specifically from any of our community partners. >> Okay. So, like an official bullet point might be helpful. >> Yeah, I would be happy to do that. I I think we maybe shared something last year, but pretty late in the process, so
I don't know where I don't know where it fit fit in, but would be happy to do that. >> It would help. Um, and Ryan to as well as uh just let you know that if there's anything specific for any of the associations that you're a part of, if you provide the specific language, then we can make sure that that's available
for council to consider. >> That's all. Thank you, >> Mhm. Brian. >> Yeah. No comment. Thank you for your service to the community. >> Thank you, Lily. I have a question that I guess I would like to address to you as well as to the other folks who have
already spoken if we could get comments there too. One of the things that strikes me about the three different presentations we had uh as well as just generally knowing what else is going on in the community is that the
the public health aspect of things is really an ecosystem and it's got a lot of component parts and a lot of needs that some you may address, some Blue Ridge may address, you know, and and so on.
Are there things, are there needs that nobody is addressing that we should be aware of um I would say certainly not the ones that are in the top 10 on the list. I mean, I
think the the work of the uh the map, the community um that the health assessment um those have been shifted some but been pretty steady over
I've been part of that process longer than I want to say but certainly over the last 10 or 15 years that mental health I mean social determinance of health much of that comes down to housing um transportation
um you know we haven't mentioned for our families there is is certainly an impact around um preschool and child care access ability to work I mean we are seeing um families in the last couple years working more than before not that
they weren't working before but um you know folks working second and third jobs that didn't have to do that before um so that's a piece But you know and I think you're absolutely right that that you know even when we talk about social determinance of health those are all you
know employment and income and transportation and health care all of those are so intertwined that for specific families they play out in different ways. And you know, I think what we what we see is uh and and in
very broad strokes um the free clinic dealing with a lot of adult adult healthc care issues that impact those other things because likewise if you have the health issues going on first then employment and uh parenting become much more difficult. um you know, a lot
of systemic work from the health district. And you know what our staff ends up doing on a on a daily basis is kind of addressing that um very immediate whether it's housing or keeping the electricity on or food or
um or uh transportation issue that that we're helping families problem solve and try to get that you know what they need to get done today related to social determinance. So uh I have to yield to other thoughts.
>> I mean one >> one could be the pediatric dental need and um but I think two organiz like we lowered our dental eligibility age to 14 to help accommodate that and we'll see I mean it's all based on the teeth. So if
there's a 12-year-old that has adult teeth we can see them and we'll see them for free. And then there's the CDC and they see children but Medicaid and so there is a cost sometimes for those um families that go to that clinic. Um and I know there's been a there's the dental
task force which I'm sure you guys are aware of uh that's trying to fix that. Um so that's the only one in regards to health that I've seen but I think communities are members are working together to try and solve that that I've seen at the free clinic.
I'd love to see someone make an attempt at some kind of ven diagram where it shows all of sort of what we do and where we overlap. I think it was last week I saw um a van from child health partnership there um bringing a client to the first wick clinic or their first wick appointment. So there's certainly a
lot of overlap in what we do. Um public health I would say is a team sport. It's a community sport. Like we all need to be engaged around that. Um, Willow brings up a good point about pediatric dentistry. There are very few, if any, outside of the CDC that accept Medicaid um, as part of their their private
practice um, for children. And so that's a huge component that I think is missing, not just, you know, in the city of Charlottesville, but uh, probably across the district. Um, I don't know if there's any other gaps. I think what what I'm thinking a lot about now that we're moving into the community health
improvement plan piece really the actionoriented around improving health and outcomes is momentum and capacity and resources mostly in the terms of money but terms of staffing as well to carry out the objectives and the initiatives that we're really looking at. Um, a few years ago we were able to
in partnership with UVA Health and Centa offer grants uh to organizations if they were going to address certain things and I think we'd love to be able to do that again. I'm just not sure that the funding is there and so I'm thinking through some ideas around how could we do that as a health district? How could
our local government support that um and want to formulate a little bit more of a plan around that um but to me that's the critical aspect of what we're trying to accomplish in the next three years with that plan. It's the implementation piece. How are we meeting objectives that really try to move the needle even
in small ways. Um, and that's going to require a lot of momentum, a lot of effort um, strategically from us as a health district um, but certainly from our community partners as well. They also navigate funding cuts and they also navigate what that means um, for private
donations and how can we maintain that momentum? How can we provide each other with support? So, I don't know if the gap is in coverage, it might be the gap in funding, the gap in momentum. um that we really need to sustain once the improvement plan is is in place.
>> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> If I can I I would just add I think with a little more time to think um one is not >> the spot there. one is not new and and will not be a surprise but you know I haven't heard specifically address the
racial disparities in in healthcare and the impacts of social determinative health and that is certainly something that is still with us you know for our work particularly um maternal health outcomes I think in the community are not as uh amazingly
bad as they were 10 years ago but they're still pretty bad Um and I think the other for our work which is starting to get more um be identified more and get more recognition is really
the prevalence of postpartum depression uh and what a you know as the most common uh pregnancy related illness and uh it it can be um can be difficult to deal with but there are actually some
some good ways to deal with that. So, I think the the recognition and the efforts to um to make sure that we are we're looking out for that is a is an important one. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, John. It's good to see I I
previously served on your board and the misses serves on your board now. It's good to see that y'all still doing great work in the community and and just really to get that strong s um start. I never heard of that that 2,000 days and
um it's so important. It it ties into um the public school system that you know want the children to come there healthy and ready to learn. So it's all kind of tied in together. >> Thank you all. >> The city and our local other local
government partners are really the the drivers that make it possible. Thank you. >> Thank you, John. Thank you all so much for presenting. Um any other questions or comments? Thank you guys so much for the work that you're doing in the community. Can I get a motion to go into close session, please?
>> So moved. >> A real move. A real motion. Sorry. >> Uh pursuant to section 2.2-3712 2-3712 of the Virginia code. I move that this city council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of
Information Act as follows. One, pursuant to Virginia Code section 2.2-3711 2-3711 A3 discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for public purpose or of the disposition of publicly held real property where discussion in an open meeting would
adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body and two pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2-3711A1 2-3711A1 for consultation with legal counsel pertaining to actual or probable
litigation where such consultation or briefing and open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body. >> Second. >> Second. Um >> do we um K did you want us to vote on u um hey
>> I've initiated the vote. >> Okay. Okay. So, we will see everyone back here at 6:30. Thank you. >> So much for our public. >> Yeah.
>> Motion passes.