--------- Hello everyone. I called the, Charlottesville City Council meeting back to order. Brian, will you read us out of closed session, please? Yes. I move that this council certify by a recorded vote that to the best of each council member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion con convening the closed session were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session. Thank you. Are we gonna Second. Second. Did you want to vote electronically? I've initiated the Okay.
So just in case, some some people are may be here for the Dairy Road Bridge. Item has been removed until December 1, just in case someone's here for that. Okay. Okay. So we will, begin with a moment of silence. Thank you very much. Are there any announcements? Yes. Every Saturday morning, the bike and pedestrian advisory committee, hosts a bike ride around town that meets at 10:00 at the city market. It's 10:00 in the winter. It's 09:00 in the summer. So, you get a little extra hour of sleep and let it get light a
little bit more. This is the, the ride before Thanksgiving, so it's always good to get in a little bit, extra pedals. Oh, a little guilt. Yeah. We want it to be a really fun big one to kind of kick off the holidays. So, please come join us. We meet at the bike rack at the corner of City Market, kind of diagonal from Darling. So, if you have a bike come out and join, it's a really easy casual ride. If you need to borrow a bike, check out the the ebike lending library. You can rent a bike for free from them, and scoot around town on that.
So hopefully, we'll see some of you there. It's an amazing opportunity. I do it every Saturday that I'm available. And, I thought I knew the city, but, you know, to take it through some bike route routes that, you know, particular people that do it a lot, you learn and see different parts of the city. So encouraging the ones that's out there that's available to to go is really fun. And if you can't make this Saturday, it's every Saturday. So Yeah. Join when you can. And I just have another announcement. Jaunt, the power transportation provider for the area, they're celebrating their fifty year anniversary, and
they presented to us earlier, and they, are looking for stories that maybe you or maybe a family member or someone you know may have a story that, they want to be able to tell those story of John Impact and the community over the next fifty years. So you can go to their site, and they have a your story. So please, we're trying to help them get the word out. So thank you, for that. Any other announcements? We have a couple of proclamations. I'm gonna have you go, first.
Sure thing. Alright. Restorative Justice Week, November 16 through the twenty second twenty twenty five. Whereas Restorative Justice Week begins annually on the November, falling in 2025 on the week of November 16 through the twenty second, and whereas restorative justice week aims to recognize the power and effect of justice based on the restoration of human connection in lieu of retributive and punitive proceedings, and whereas restorative justice is an internationally recognized approach for responding to crime and incidents of harm that provides the opportunity for dialogue between those
who have experienced harm, the harm perpetrators, and their community to address the harm and meet the needs of those involved. And we're a Central Virginia community justice serving Charlottesville City and Albemarle County was established in 2022 to provide space for those involved in harm to lead their own accountability and healing through restorative justice. And where a Central Virginia community justice has supported over 200 individuals through the restorative justice process to address situations of harm in our communities and our schools, and whereas restorative justice week serves as an opportunity for residents to reflect on how our community
can find growth, healing, and accountability in restorative approaches to conflict and harm. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that Charles Phil City Council does hereby support and observe restorative justice week, November 16 through the 2025, to promote safety and well-being for all city residents, workers, and visitors by encouraging the learning and practice of restorative skills of human connection and healing as a means of attaining justice. Sign and dated this date, 11/17/2025, by Juan Diego Wade, mayor. Thank you. Is someone here to Yes, please.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, mayor Wade and councilors. I'm Ashley Sonali Matthews, executive director of Central Virginia Community Justice. For Assorted Justice Week, I just wanna share one quick story. One afternoon, a driver looked down at his phone for a moment to check directions and accidentally struck a man exercising on the side of the Road. The criminal case began as usual, investigation, charges, incarceration, and lots of unanswered questions, for the man who was hit. Thankfully, the prosecutor was listening to the harm person. And when she heard him say that what he really wanted was a chance to
make the community safer, they reached out to us. So after the case came to CBCJ, we were able to bring together the people involved in this case to make a plan for how something good could come out of this harm. They ended up agreeing the responsible person would make 25 presentations about distracted driving. And so over the next year, he told his story to over 600 people, including 400 driving age youth from our community. And I can tell you it was a very effective presentation because I still think of it when my phone dings when I'm driving around and remember not to look
at it. So the harm person's desire for answers and for a meaningful outcome while the responsible person was able to take accountability with dignity and actions that actually made a difference in the community. All of this is possible because the people in Marvel were willing to try restorative justice. So we just want the community to know that whether you're an adult or a youth, whether someone's been charged with a crime, or you need help with a situation that maybe happened in the community or in the schools, you can reach out to CBCJ to initiate a process, where your needs, your healing, and the whole community's safety
are prioritized. So we're celebrating National Restorative Justice Week. We have lots of events coming up this week. If anyone wants to check them out, we're at communityjusticeva.org/events, and just wanna say thank you so much. We're so grateful to the city for your support and for for our collaboration with the Commonwealth's Attorney's Offices in Charlottesville and Albemarle, without which we would not be able to do what we do. So thank you very much for this recognition. Thank you, Ashley. Appreciate that you all are part of our, community and work that you do. Thank you. We have a proclamation for, you know, for miss, Teresa, Jackson Walker Price.
So when, you know, I first moved into this community, it's a few giants that you get to meet, that you particularly if you want to run for office, or get involved in the community. And miss Teresa is one of those. And so this is a proclamation honoring her one hundredth birthday. So can we give her a round of applause? She looks amazing. Her birth her Her birth her birthday is actually December? December 14. December 14, and there's gonna be, a family celebration, and I know Lord is going
to be going to that for council. So thank you. But I do have this proclamation and and, so glad that we could do this for you. Whereas, Teresa Jackson Waller Price has devoted a century of her life to strengthening her community through compassion, leadership, and tireless service, whereas as she is known as building bridges with her telephone, Teresa has brought people together across neighborhoods and generations to work towards a common good fostering relationship, relationships that might never have existed without her steadfast commitment.
And whereas when the Star Hill neighborhood was selected for the first federal community development block grant, Teresa, patient leadership, inquire, persistent, ensured that the residents voices were heard, questions were answered, and the neighborhood ultimately flourished. And whereas a teacher at Lane High School do during the challenging era of school, integration and later as a beloved librarian at Clark, Teresa guided countless students and guided
wisdom, easing transition and cultivating understanding. And whereas Teresa opened her home to African American students at the University of Virginia during her early integration years offering them calm, belonging, and encouraging to pursue their education in face of adversity. And whereas through her tireless, advocacy and organizing, Teresa played a central role in saving the historic Jefferson School and Carver Rec Center, ensuring that they continue to serve a vital, as vital community centers for education, culture, and community life.
And whereas efforts have been recognized with numerous honors including the Reflector Award from the Jefferson School, the African American Heritage Center, and the Martin Luther King Community Award through Teresa's, though Teresa herself remains very humble, calling herself simply a good volunteer. Net there net therefore be, we, the city of Charlottesville City Council, do hereby recognize and commemorate commemorate the one hundredth birthday of Teresa Jackson Walker Price.
On behalf of a grateful community, we extend our deepest gratitude and warmest congratulation on this momentous occasion without adoration for life so beautifully and purposefully live, signed this date, the 11/17/2025 by, me. I would say I wasn't quite that small, but I I knew her son in eighth grade. She she's still out of business. So Thank you. There we go.
Thank you. Change happens. Thank you so much. Yeah. We're we're learning and we're growing as a community. Thank you. We're near to, opportunity for community matters. We have, seven positions, for preregistered and so that we have nine opportunities. But first, we have, comments from an invited guest, miss, Delia Cohen, who will speak about a TEDx program at the Fluvanna Correction Center for Women, next year.
So, Please. Thank you very much. Yes. So I wanted to tell you all about this exciting TEDx event that is happening March 11 at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, which is, what, fifteen, twenty minutes away from here. Mhmm. TED Talks, if you don't know, are kind of like inspirational lectures and often have an idea to improve the world. I have been working with a group of incarcerated women and a few staff people there since last December organizing this event.
We opened up auditions to the entire prison, staff and incarcerated, to try out for this TED Talk. And about 65 women auditioned and maybe a dozen staff. We also have outside speakers, including the illustrious mayor, we hope. Yes. The woman who, controls the organization that Mark Zuckerberg gave all a lot of money to for criminal justice.
She's speaking. We have a really interesting inventor who's speaking. And, the audience is half incarcerated women from the facility and some prison staff and half, community leaders from around here. Some people are coming from Richmond and DC, even Arkansas. One person's coming from Japan, somebody from France. And some of the things that the women are talking about are one woman is
comparing trans transforming in prison to the process of alchemy. Another one is a violinist and is going to play for us. We always try to have to include as speakers at least one correctional officer, one survivor of crime, somebody from law enforcement. And this is not the first TEDx event in a prison in Virginia. I organized one last year at Green Rock Correctional Center in Chatham, Virginia, and the head of the Virginia's Department of Corrections, Chadwick Dotson, he spoke at the event, and
he liked it so much that he said, please come back and do it for the women so that they have a chance, to experience it. And women incarcerated women are often overlooked because they are such a small small percentage of the incarcerated population. So I I'm really happy that we're doing this at at Fluvanna. I don't know if anybody has any questions about it, but I would certainly love all of you city council to go. And if anybody wants to attend or learn more information about it, you should go
to my website, which is, proximityforjustice.0rg. And you can email me at info@proximityforjustice.org. And the last thing I'll tell you is that I've been doing this for twelve years in prisons all around the country. And the talk that has gone the most viral has been seen over 10,000,000 times. It's called How I Learned to Read and Trade Stocks in Prison. Thank you very much.
Are there questions? When is it? 03/11/2026. And it's all day long. And it's not just talks. The e in TED stands for entertainment, so there will be lots of entertainment as well. Yeah. Thank you. I went to check out the the site, you know, not before I agreed to speak, but I just wanted to know what the brother was getting into. So, but it's amazing and and transformational to to hear, the, the speakers on both sides, you know, whether they're incarcerated or or not, you know, to to tell their
stories. I don't know what I wanna speak on yet, but we'll we'll we'll talk. So, if you could give that site one more time. And, and, you know, if you could we we can put it on the site, the city council site too. The website is proximity for justice, and the email is info@proximityforjustice.org. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. You heading back up in Upstate New York?
Wednesday. Wednesday. Great. Thank you so much. We're now at Community Matters, and, I'm not sure if if Adrian did did, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm listening to Good evening. Good evening. Tonight, I share a few comments regarding your November 3 decision to vote to move forward with vacating Clark Court for the Jefferson Scholars Program. The board of the Frye Spring Neighborhood Association wrote each of you an email requesting
that this application be denied, emphasizing that the public parking spaces on Clark Court are a valuable asset to our neighbors and to our neighborhood businesses. These parking spaces are used regularly by patrons and nearby businesses. In its presentation to you, the Jefferson Scholars Program communicated that they had a working relationship with nearby businesses, whereby patrons and employees could use their parking during non business hours. The Jefferson Scholars indicated understanding would continue should the city vacate Clark Court. It's a wonderful vision, but it's not realistic. Having spoken with several of the nearby businesses, collectively, this understanding does not exist.
The comments regarding this communal relationship were misleading and greatly understate the value of five public parking spaces found in Clark Court. I'm gonna take a minute for a breath. Additionally, the Jefferson Scholars per presentation claimed a sixteen year history of regular dialogue with the Fry Spring Neighborhood Association. I have been active in the FSNA for over sixteen years, served serving often on, on the board, and this assertion is not congruent with our association's institutional knowledge. I'm unfamiliar with any dialogue between our neighborhood association and the Jefferson Scholars Program.
Considering the staff's informed and measured suggestion that the application for vacation be denied based ultimately on insufficient evidence of public gain. Given the FSNA board's request that this application be denied, and given the distortions of the Jefferson Scholar Program's presentation to you, I am greatly disheartened at your three two vote to move forward. I appreciate counselor Payne's and counselor Asherin's comments and their decision to largely, decision to largely based on staff recommendation vote against vacating this public street so that a private
entity may create a private drive. Given the falsehoods which contributed to the yes vote, I ask that you reconsider this matter entirely. If you then decide to continue the process of vacating Clark Court, I ask that the city insists on the replacement of each public parking space forfeited with its vacation of Clark Court. I ask that the immediate neighbors needs be considered during this process. And not to delete the message, but, I also wanted to mention that as a multiply disabled person, it's very difficult for many of us to show up for public
comments. So if you could reconsider the Zoom comment option, I would appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much, miss Dan. Joy? Good evening. My name is Joy Johnson, and I am the chair of FARD. This is the seventh city council meeting that I have attended, trying to make noise to make sure or to make and and to keep on letting you know that we would like for you to change the zoning code. At the last city council work session, you all said you needed to study the
rest of 10th and page in Fifefield. We don't need any more study. Residents are already coming to council, and you are and we hope you are listening. Low income residents low income black residents are just as important than any residents or group in the city of Charlottesville. But in Charlottesville, it feels like there are only one group that city council listened to when it comes to housing. And I'm here to say low income residents of color are just as important as them. The zoning needs to change because it does not allow student housing to offer on-site
affordable units. Student housing developers are required to pay into the affordable fund, but they are paying much lower fees, almost half of non student housing fee. Student housing developer should be should have the option to build affordable unit, one size, or to be required to pay full market rate price into the fund. The zoning also defines student housing within a half a mile from UVA, but developers
are using Stacy Hall as the marker. And that's causing these luxury student apartment to encroach on our community. One, we need core neighborhood overlay on all core neighborhoods. Two, we need multiple opportunity to challenge these kinds of development. The BAR is not even guaranteed. Building guarantee that just because we have that one voice that it will change anything.
If if it is if it weren't for those two tiny cottage on 7 And A Half Street, they would have already built that seven story building. Please reconsider Hunter? Lucy. Hello. Alright. So I was interested in the topic of the potential developments Main Street just because
it it frustrates me that it seems like the only way that anything can get built nowadays is just if some investor with a lot of money decides that they can make even more money by building some expensive apartment that they can rent out for some unaffordable amount. And it just seems like economically, mathematically, there has to be some better way as in if there is more public housing. If the city spent the same amount of money that LV Collective is willing to spend and were to just hypothetically hire the same contractors and use the same materials
and even the same plans, though preferably it could be a plan that was more in line with what the community wants and needs in the area, then the city could build the same sort of housing, but save money on not having to spend for property taxes and wouldn't have to pay shareholders or landlords for any of that. And so you could build lower you could build more affordable housing and get the same return on investment, just hypothetically. And so I was wondering why it seems like very little public housing has been
built in the last thirty years. And my understanding is that this is because of the federal government, because of changes in 1973 when the Nixon administration used the pretext of corruption to say that the public housing as a concept was just untenable. And so instead, they left everything to the free market. And so the priority of the federal government would have changed from instead of building public housing that would compete with local landlords and helping state and local governments to
build that and bring down the cost of rent to instead just subsidizing through stuff like section eight to offset the cost of living increasing for families. The cost of housing, the median amount of rent, cost of rent in The United States went from a $108 a month in 1970, which is like $850 in today's money to 1,487 per month in 2024, which is a 70% increase accounting for inflation. It just we are paying more in rent because of that because of that increase
than we would hypothetically be paying to build and maintain public housing through taxes. And so my hope is that given that the elections two weeks ago brought in a new state government, that now would be a good time for the city to work with state leaders and have plans to build and expand and improve public housing rather than just selling off parts of the community to or selling off the land of the community to some billionaire in Texas. K. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, counsel.
My name is Aylin Dutt and I'm a current student at UVA and a member of UVA's Friends of Far who many of you see behind me today and we are here to support West Haven and 10th And Page residents against the LV collective development. I would like to take the time to review some claims that have been made by city council members regarding a study about decreasing rents in Austin, Texas due to increased development. Broadly speaking, for those who don't know, the study found that negative rent growth in Austin was due to an increased demand from renters and thus an increased supply from developers. The study states that this economic principle holds true for all cities in The US,
and these general claims have broadly been used to justify the development of LV. While building more units faster may seem like a simple and viable solution, the reality for Charlottesville is much more complicated. For towns surrounding large public universities like UVA, a study in 2024 published by the Journal of Planning Education and Research found that newly built rental housing in university neighborhoods does not address the primary concerns of existing residents, nor does it soak up housing demand like in Austin. In fact, the development of luxury student housing bifurcates the student market with high income
students moving towards luxury develop and lower income students being pushed into older community housing and further displacing local residents. Rather than meeting demand at market rate, these developments often attract wealthy right white residents into historically black and previously affordable neighborhoods, further burdening affordable housing stock and increasing housing costs. Furthermore, researchers found that in towns located near large universities, student oriented housing development further exacerbated housing supply and demand for housing in Charlottesville is directly influenced by the influx
of university students and student oriented housing. When UVA follows through on their plans to house all first and second years by 2030, large developments by like LV Collective will begin seeing lower capture rates regardless of increased student population. The towering star stories of LV could be rendered empty due to other existing developments within UVA and privately like the VERB on JPA. The LV Collective development will serve as a reminder and a permanent symbol in the community of the council's prioritization of profits and students over the local community. I urge the city council to make transparent the intent behind development and why we
are continuing to let it happen so that it is abundantly clear to which side the council resides. The residents of Charlottesville do not want this development. The students of UVA do not want this development. And it leaves me to beg the question, why does the city council want this development? Do you serve prophets or do you serve your people? Thank you. Thank you. The next the next speaker is Terry Tyree. Terry Tyree. Miss Tyree, it's good seeing you again. You too. Thank you. My name is Terry Tyree. I'm a resident at South 1st Street and an intern at FAR in Virginia Organizer.
Good evening, and thank you all for the opportunity to speak. I've come before you today, also deeply troubled by the proposed LV Collective development on West Main Street. At first, it may seem like just another student housing project, but for the West Haven community, it is much more than that. It is a reminder of a painful history and a real risk to the future of a neighborhood that has long been overlooked. West Haven is not just any neighborhood. It's Charlottesville's oldest public housing development, and its history is inseparable from the legacy of
Vinegar Hill, the black community that was raised in the nineteen sixties. The star of urban renewal are still visible socially, physically, and emotionally. Many West Haven residents are the descendants of those displaced from Vinegar Hill. Now, LV Collective proposes to build an 11, now eight story luxury student apartment building right next door. Even though under the current zoning, this is by right, the impact on the West Haven neighborhood would be profound. The key concerns that I have consistently heard expressed are physical and psychological overwhelm, disrespect
a community led vision, lack of genuine community engagement, historical injustice repeating itself, threat to equity, access, and community and cultural identity, and structural power imbalances. What I urge this body to do, politely, is demand significant reductions in height, not just three stories. The current proposal is not compatible with the scale and the needs of the West Haven residents, require meaningful participatory design, not just presentation and consultation, but give residents real
decision making power, revisit zoning rules in areas like West Main, especially when adjacent to public housing to restore discretionary review and accountability, prioritize deeply affordable housing, not just affordable enough to meet a by right requirement, and to support the West Haven residents' own vision, walkways, green space, community centers, not in walls. Thank you. Thank you, miss Tyree. Miss Tyra, you did a great job. Thank you. Alicia? Yes. Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan.
I'm a resident of the county. Since April, you have been reminded that stripping constitutional rights from our immigrant and refugee neighbors threatens all our rights. Since April, you have been reminded that far from targeting violent criminals, the administration sweeps up anyone it wants to, including American citizens. In July, you are presented with a resolution that requires ICE agents to be unmasked, identify themselves, present barns, and drive marked vehicles. Excerpts are worth reading into the record because the situation has only gotten worse.
Quote, ICE tactics have been widely documented in national media and public forums, creating confusion and fear among residents, undermining the ability to verify whether those carrying out enforcement are legitimate federal agents or individuals posing as law enforcement. Numerous reports and video evidence show that US citizens and immigrants with lawful status have been detained, questioned, or targeted, exacerbating distrust and public safety risks, end quote. The resolution lists values that we all hope are held dear by this body, Quote,
the city of Charlottesville is committed to the rule of law, civil rights, and the safety and dignity of all its residents regardless of immigration status. The city of Charlottesville reaffirms its commitment to due process, equal protection, and the rights of all to due process, equal protection, and the rights of all individuals within its jurisdiction. The city of Charlottesville will continue to uphold its values as a safe, inclusive, and law abiding community where government transparency and public safety remain paramount. The city of Charlottesville strongly condemns using unmarked vehicles, masked agents, and unidentifiable personnel in
immigration in immigration enforcement activities conducted within the city and views such tactics as harmful to public trust, community safety, and constitutional principles, end quote. You have been unwilling to take a principled stand based on ideals. Perhaps this development will provide you with the shield of pragmatism. The FBI issued a bulletin and public warnings about criminals impersonating ICE agents in early November of this year. The internal bulletin was circulated to all law enforcement agencies and detailed several instances throughout the The FBI urged all law enforcement to The FBI urged all law enforcement to
adequately identify themselves during operations and to help the public distinguish between legitimate agents and impostors. It is not radical to expect ICE agents to be unmasked, identifiable, drive marked vehicles, and provide legal documentation authorizing their presence. Thank you. I forgot to ask, Rebecca Newell. Sorry. Hello. Hello. Hi. Thanks for having me. My name is Rebecca Newell, and I'm a member of the Fifeville neighborhood.
I'm here today asking you to please pause the traffic calming quick build project that is slated to begin in our neighborhood this December. Fifeville is a highly engaged neighborhood, and we we ask for help back in the 2023 when, we neighbors came together and petitioned for a traffic study done because the five zero one cherry would increase the number of cars in our neighborhood. Our concerns were speed on 5th Street as a cut through from West Main to Cherry Ave. We worked hard and got 50% of houses to sign the petition for the traffic
study. In June 2024, after after data were collected, the results and a draft plan were shared to the Fife Field Neighborhood Association by Brennan Duncan. These data showed 85% of cars followed the speed limit of 25 miles per hour, but a whopping 15% of cars were speeding at extremely high rates of over 40 and even 45 miles per hour in our neighborhood. And I know that you all know how narrow and small our streets are in Faith Hill. Brennan Duncan provided a draft of a plan that included major directional changes to many
one way streets. Many neighbors had feedback and wanted to understand how these data led to the complicated plan by Brennan Duncan. The Fifele Neighborhood Association reached out to Brennan and Duncan many times following the June 2024 meeting to engage the neighborhood and provide feedback. Brennan had been promoted and was busy with his new workload and unable to reply to us. No detailed information was provided to the community explaining the plan or how these data resulted in the very cumbersome, plan with many one way roads having, directional changes.
Fast forward to 10/15/2025, the new traffic engineer, Caleb Smith, informed the FNA and put put up a few signs informing small parts of the Fifeville neighborhood that traffic changes would happen this December with only two with only a two week email feedback period. Over 50 community members provided extensive feedback via email with no replies or explanation or answers to even basic questions. Prior to this sudden move forward with the draft ideas Brennan Duncan provided over a
year ago, no opportunities for feedback were provided. Only after several emails that cc'd city council and other city officials did Brennan and Caleb reluctantly agree to any community engagement. During this process, city engineers these two city sent engineers have provided no clear description of how data collected resulted in the plan provided, no clear format for collecting and synthesizing community feedback, no plan to address community concerns. Furthermore, they have treated community members with condescending replies and even laughed at our concerns.
Both engineers said they would be moving forward with the plan regardless of how the neighborhood felt. Both engineers stated sidewalks were not their responsibility. Both engineers said that speed enforcement was a police job and Fifeville will not receive any enforcement because we are a marginalized community. Both engineers stated the fire chief will not allow for two way traffic as a slowing method despite data that prove its effectiveness. Please, please, we beg you to pause this plan. Thank you, miss Smith. Thank you. We have the opportunity for, is it nine?
Yes. Who else would like to speak? Yes. Hi, everyone. My name is Sophie Marrero, and I'm a community organizer at the Public Housing Association of Residents. I'm here to speak about LB Collective's desire to build an extremely huge luxury student housing building on Main Street. As you have heard from others especially the residents of West Haven, we do not they do not want this. They do not want this building. The history of Vinegar Hill should serve as evidence for the horrors the city has done against black residents. We must learn from this and say never again. I also wanna reiterate that housing is a human right. And by housing, I mean affordable, realizable, safe housing.
What the city needs is more affordable housing, not more ginormous buildings that overshadow communities that have existed for decades. It is necessary to change the zoning code and provide more opportunities for residents to input on developments on in their own neighborhoods, specifically the core neighborhoods. It is necessary to stronger, better, more gradual height and massing massing transitions for core neighborhoods in the areas border bordering them. UVA must also be held accountable. It is necessary to truly look at that point five mile radius that allows developers to not have to pay as much money for affordable housing and get rid of it. Last thing I'll say is I'm not from Charlottesville but I moved here to attend
UVA and found my home here. I found my community. I met people who inspired me to become the person I am today and to them I am eternally thankful. Everyone deserves to have that. Everyone deserves to have a home, to have a safe space, to have a community. We should be empowering communities, not overshadowing them. We should be uplifting them, not silencing them as they have been throughout history. I urge you to strongly think about your place as city council your place as city council and your right to serve your constituents. Residents don't want it and students don't want it. Thank you. Thank you. Who else would like to speak?
Hi. I am Joe Lawson. I live on, 7 And A Half Street Southwest. I'm here, also, to kinda plead that the, FIFIL calming plan be at least paused, for the feedback that the community has given back to be considered and actually, like, reconciled. It's our understanding that one of the, imperatives driving this is that it is a quick build project. And, we we were curious in what the meetings, how many quick build wins kind
of, city manager was was getting, thinking it would be a low number, but turned out to be 40 plus. And so we're just asking that, for this quick bill to be paused, so that, we can actually get our feedback in, especially with the one way switches, the lack of signage or, and also it's unclear how the rollout would even be phased, what the comment periods would be. We were told that it's just happening and our only chance was to present our case to city council and to the city manager.
So I am, asking you all on behalf of the neighborhood to at least pause that, from going forward until the comments can, be at least addressed and heard, and the community can get, data regarding, what's driving the decision. If it's just a quick build, we ask that we take one quick build off the board. If there is data, that is available, we we don't want the pictures. We'd like to actually work with the data, so that we can also follow, as
the period is evaluated, so that we can understand how traffic is adjusting and stuff like that. None of that's been planned out or spelled out to us. It's a great concern because, as it was stated earlier, we engaged to petition the city to get something done. It kinda fell on the wayside. There was some interactions, but the the signs just showed up haphazardly, and, that's kind of when we we found out that our petition was heard. So we appreciate the city engaging to, work on this particular problem.
However, the way that it's gone about, we don't think it's suitable for a quick build. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak over here? Miss Tyre, wait, you can speak, since you already, spoke. You can, speak when we, have it the next one at the end. Okay? Yes, sir. Thank you. My name is Frank Bector. I'm a resident of Fifeville. Mister mayor, city manager, council. The zoning code of the city needs some adjustment, and every related department in the city needs to adopt that as their general understanding.
There's complications in in changing the code, but in particular, we have projects that have been spoken of that are scheduled to to move forward or or or could move forward and every department that is related to these proposals, the fire department, the city planner, the, traffic department, the building official can't just give no comments as recently happened in some of those cases. They need to weigh in fully, with full scrutiny of these proposals.
Please let me quote from a recent email, not from a long ago, but from, the new, traffic, manager for the city, Caleb Smith, who's been spoken of. And this is a really excellent comment that I thank thank him for. It's regarding a different matter, the matter that you've just heard of. But this their department proposes to make modest adjustments without permanently altering the neighborhood's character. So that is in a city document by a city official saying, we don't want
to permanently alter the neighborhood's character. But as we know, the proposal for 7th Street, will not only alter the neighborhood's character, it will completely annex a city block, more or less, with an absolutely huge building that will certainly alter the permanently alter the neighborhood's character, but it will, in fact, annex it. It. No no five full residents will live there, and that is prime real estate for the affordable housing that's been spoken of and that every five full resident would like to see there.
I've been told by people who know about these things more than I that Rx five zoning essentially means seven story student housing because that's the kind of thing that a developer will do to bring in optimal money. Now, it's worth noting too how this traffic study that you've heard of came to pass and has been noted. We knocked door to door and got residents, 50% of residents on every street in
the neighborhood, not just my street that I was concerned about. Every street, we had volunteers doing that. And I asked the city, what did it do to make its zoning absolutely clear to those residents as we were required to do when we wanted to address, traffic calming in our neighborhood? Were we told, you know, r x five means there's probably gonna be an outside developer proposing a seven story building, with 600 beds in it for that space.
Thank you very much. Thank you. You would like to submit this letter just for your reference. I've highlighted the Oh, try over here, Hi, Mayor Wade. Hi, council. Thank you for having me again. You've heard from me before. My name is Rachel Mulvaney. I am here on behalf of the UVA Club Friends Afar to support the residents
of West Haven in 10th And Page against the LV Collective proposal. I just wanted to take a moment for all of the Friends of Far members slash allies in the room to stand so that you could get a sense of the scale of the group that is here against LV Collective. This is just a fraction of the Friends of Fog communication stream that we have organizing ourselves, and we will keep organizing on this issue. So I just wanted Thank you.
Anyone else in the middle who'd like to speak? Hello, counsel. I didn't need to bring a prepared remark, but something kind of just kinda hit me when I was walking in today. I'm new to Charlesville as of about two months ago, and I I feel my perspective is actually valuable as a new resident because I can see the problems that maybe long time residents can't. And I know that this is a problem that the long time residents do see, but it is really apparent is the the homelessness issue in Charlottesville is it's horrible. And I think I think what's more striking, really is I walked in and I
think I saw four or five homeless people between the bus stop at the downtown mall in here, which is shocking, really, anywhere. And I think even more shocking is the fact that when I'm in Stonefield, I don't see a single homeless person. Frankly, EVA, you may or may not, but they're not everywhere. If you walk down the downtown mall in the middle of the day, you probably you probably can't count on your hands how many you see. So I I'd really just like to ask the council, how do you fix this problem? Because we're we're talking a lot about affordable housing, and there's no one in this room to speak for them, today.
But I think I think something has to be done really quickly. I mean, it's it's getting cold outside. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. What I'm sorry. What was your name, sir? Oh, Braden. Brandon? Braden Dean. Thank you. Anyone over here like to speak? Anyone over here? There'll be another opportunity later. Anyone in the middle? Thank you so much. We'll close the the pub the public comment period at this time, and we will now have the city manager's report. The city manager's report this aft this evening is I'm sorry.
Go ahead. Consent agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Consent agenda. Consent agenda number four, minutes, 05/19/2025, regular meeting, 10/06/2025 regular meeting. Five, ordinance amending city code article 16, police civilian oversight board, second reading, resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Historic Resources grant funds to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, dollars 500,000, one of two readings. Seven, resolution to approve critical slope special exception at 1002nd Street Southeast.
I move for adoption of the consent agenda. Is there a second? I'll second it. Okay. We could, vote on this, please. Okay. The motion passes, five okay. The motion passes five to zero. Now we go to the city manager's report. Mister mayor and council, tonight, this is, the quarter in which, we bring forward the quarterly financial report. So the city treasurer, Jason Vandiver and miss Hamill, our budget and grants manage grants director, demoted you.
Sorry. Are gonna give you a presentation on this, quarter's financial report. Alright. Good evening. I think I'm up first. Yes. My name is Jason Vandiver. I'm the city treasurer. So I think the plan tonight is to talk a little bit about the retirement fund, the city's retirement plans, and then, Chrissy will be giving a quarterly review, the financial report. So, you may remember last year, we took an opportunity at the November meeting to talk a little bit about the city's retirement plans, give an overview of the, results from the prior fiscal year, and look forward a little bit to the next budget
cycle and and how that might play out. So we're gonna do that again, tonight. So just as a reminder, the city has two separate retirement plans. The first is a traditional defined benefit pension plan, that also includes, other post employment benefits such as medical, dental, and, a small life insurance benefit. The plan was started around the nineteen fifties or so, by city council. It's an independent plan which is somewhat unique in the state of Virginia as most localities participate in the Virginia retirement system.
And a pension plan is, you know, what you think of as a general, traditional plan where the benefit is based on, the employee's salary and years of service, and there's a multiplier that defines that benefit pension, at their retirement. It's payable, throughout the rest of their life. The other option, so the employee gets to choose, when they come to the city is a four zero one a defined contribution plan. So that's very similar to what you would see in the private sector, for a four zero one k plan. So the city makes a set contribution, each pay period to the employee's account.
And then it's a self directed, employee led investment account that they, can choose the investments from a selection, that's been made available in the plan. So, yeah, historically, since that plan has been put into place, about two thirds of employees pick the defined benefit plan and about one third of employees, choose the defined contribution plan. And that's, you know, for the most part held since then. Although interestingly in the last year or two, we have seen an uptick in the employees picking the defined contribution plan. So you'll see that a little bit later in the presentation. And then employees in both plans, because they can't make, their own contributions to the
four zero one a plan, they have an opportunity to contribute to a deferred compensation plan, which is just sort of a self directed investment plan. They make pre tax contributions or or post tax contributions and those, those funds are available once they they leave employment with the city. So just an oversight, all of those plans are, overseen by the retirement commission. So their commission is made up of employees, member of city council, which is Councillor Pinkston, city manager, several staff members, a retiree, and then two community members.
So the employees are represented from across the plans and across the city. So, currently we have a library employee, an employee from the police department, and an employee from public works. So, they they serve a term of several years and then have the opportunity to either continue or, have have somebody else take their place. So right now the the committee is is fully staffed and, all the positions are filled and, very engaged in the work that we're doing. So just a quick overview of the plan assets, in the pension plan, currently at
the end end of the fiscal year, dollars 194,000,000. That is, an increase. The plan, you know, had a had a pretty good year financially, which we'll go into the the details a little bit later. But, the OPEB trust, which again is primarily as insurance benefits, is all the funds are invested together, but the OPEB trust is technically a separate trust, about $68,000,000 and so just for comparison, last year the pension plan had a $172,000,000 and, so it grew about 11% and and now there's a 194,000,000.
So everything moving in the right direction and certainly that's a reflection of the contributions that Citi and employees have made, but also the market returns that we experienced. So defined contribution plans, you can see it's a smaller plan. Those are all that's the sum of all the individual accounts for each employee, dollars 36,000,000. And then there's contributions and investment early earnings that employees have made, and their accounts have grown in the deferred compensation plan of around 42,000,000. So just an overview of all of the, plans and assets that the commission oversees in some capacity. So services for plan participants, on a staff level, we have an HR retirement administrator
and that is Lisa Birch, and she is here. And, happy to answer any questions, I'm sure. But she is sort of the the day to day face of their retirement fund to both retirees and active employees. So questions they have about their pending retirement or retirees who have questions about their benefits, she's gonna be the the first point of contact for them. Additionally, throughout the year, HR and Lisa, along with our third party administrators, provide educational, sessions, lunch and learns, webinars, that sort of thing, for all of our active employees
and retirees. They also have access to a retirement planning specialist, who they can meet on-site or online if they have specific questions about their accounts, specific questions about their asset allocation and investment decisions that they're trying to make. And then everyone as well, as a benefit of, the third party administrator that we use, has access to a certified financial planner for sort of those deeper questions that they might have, about their financial planning situation. So, just a overview of some of those additional benefits, that are offered to employees. So, sort of a recap of fiscal year twenty five, which just wrapped up, up,
at the June. The funded status of the pension plan improved by just over seven percent, which is great. Again, that's from contributions both from the city and employees, as well as, an investment return that exceeded the expected rate of return. Additionally, city council fully funded the actuarially determined contribution, as well as funding all impacts of collective bargaining and any changes to pay scales that have occurred over the last few years. So that's been something that, you all have been committed to and the city manager's
been committed to is when those changes occur, we've made sure that we are able to quantify those changes to you and make that commitment either through the budgetary process or year end process to make make that commitment either through the budgetary process or year end process to make sure that we're not negatively impacting the funded status of the plan. Additionally, on the defined contribution side, as those plan assets grow, there are other share classes available to the city, that are, you know, lower cost investment structures. And, so we executed several agreements on the funds that will save plan participants over $30,000 in management fees every year.
So that was something really great that we've accomplished in the last few months for the plan, as well on the DCM, authorized by the Secure Act, SecurePoint two point o, to allow employees employees for, certain either withdrawal provisions or additional contribution provisions based on their age. And so those were things that we added to the plan documents, that were, you know, just recently allowable. On the administrative side, on the retirement commission, we created and adopted bylaws for the
first time, which, takes longer than you would think. Although, I guess you all have been through that too, so Yeah. And the electronic meeting provisions as well, which have been really useful for a lot of the plan members. We meet at 08:30 in the morning, so sometimes, have been able to meet, remotely has been, a benefit. And then finally, there were several updates that we made that we brought to City Council that were approved. One was a clarification around public safety disability, provisions and eligibility. Just clarifying that whether a public safety officer is in the pension plan or the
defined contribution plan, that they are eligible for those public safety, disability, benefits. As well as, the fire department added an EMS only role, to try to fill some of those harder to fill spots and we updated city code to make sure that they were classified as public safety employees as well. So just a breakdown of the asset allocation and the pension and OPEB trust, this is similar to last year. The only note that I'm going to make here is, obviously the the fund is, you know, very heavily invested in domestic equity and, we spent the last two months really looking into rebalancing of the fund as we've had, you know, three years of
pretty solid gains. And some of these allocations, you know, were slightly overweight or underweight. And so, just as a measure of caution and sticking to the plan policy, we did make some allocation changes and rebalancing that, was about $12,000,000 and that was just, completed last month. So you can see here the the return on investments, the one year return just over 12%, the three year return at 11%, and the ten year return, around 8.5%. And I mentioned before the actuarial return, which is calculated slightly differently, was exactly 11%.
So we do have an assumed rate of return of 7.5%, based on the plan's investment strategies. And so as you can see, the the ten year mark has exceeded that by by around 1%. So this slide, this goes back ten years. This is sort of the journey that we've been on, as a city, as a plan. You know, in 2015, the city embarked on a sustainability study in regards to retirement benefits and retirement plan, and there were, lots of compromises and strategies put into place both from retirees, employees, the city, the city manager's office, and city council, to make
sure that the plan that we are offering and the promises that we had made to employees, would remain intact, that we'd be able to meet those promises and fund future benefits, retirements for our employees. And so the goal was, that we would, you know, within ten to twelve years, exceed the 80% funded status and be well on our way to a 100% funded. And as you can see, there have been some ups and downs over the years, but generally, moving in the right direction, the funded status has improved from in 2016 when it really started and, and embarked on this from 50% now, at 76%.
So that's, really been, you know, a testament to to your commitment to to fund the plan every year and make additional contributions when we can. And we're very close to reaching that goal of 80% and, you know, probably it's hard to say, you know, whether whether we'll actually be there in two years, kind of given volatility in the market, but that at least is on track to to reach that goal of 80%, which is kind of what we set out to do around ten years ago. So really pleased with the way this chart has turned out.
We'll see what it looks like next year. Just a quick overview. I mentioned that there's also a separate OPEB trust. Those assets are are invested alongside the pension, but it is a separate trust. I think I mentioned last time, you know, localities have to disclose their OPEB liabilities, on their balance sheet. And so everyone does. Most localities don't pre fund them the way that Charlottesville does. That's something unique in our approach, and that trust is funded at 93%. So we're, you know, 76% on the pension side, 93% on the OPEC side. When you put those together, the overall liability is actually funded at 80% altogether.
And so that's, you know, right where we want to be and we'll continue to to fund the plan and fund those required contributions and contributions and until we get, you know, much closer to a 100%. So I mentioned the same sustainability study. I won't go over that again, but we're gonna, you know, continue to honor those commitments and do everything that we can to to reach those funding goals over the next few years. And with that, I will open up for there any questions. Thank you. So sounds pretty good, but, Ryan, are you is that the committee that you Yeah.
Jason and Lisa do a great job, managing all of that. So thank you for the update. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Lloyd, do you have any comments? I Just for the benefit of folks out there who hear that we're funding 80% of our pension liabilities, that sounds like we're underfunding. Are we? No. Actually, the city is overfunding the required contribution. So there is an unfunded liability that is currently being amortized over a set time period. And that when you say 80%, there's sort of this goal, it's sort of a commonly accepted benchmark that a plan is, healthy, that you, you know, are not in
danger of running out of assets at any point in the future, and that you are close enough that you can catch up in a reasonable amount of time. So we mentioned in 2015, there were some assumption changes that, you know, lowered the funded status, but gave us a more realistic picture of where we were and there were a lot of, funding strategies that were put into place around, funding cost of living increases when they were granted, making sure that we had adopted the most recent mortality tables for the plan, that as people long, live longer, that we're making sure
that we're recognizing those assumptions, in the contributions that we're making. And so we are on the way to reaching a 100% funded status. It's just it's something that takes time. And so to go from 50% to 76%, you know, in less than ten years, I think, is a great step and and certainly those those extra contributions that the city has made, you know, when changes are made to, bring on a new collective bargaining unit or something like that, we've immediately funded that liability, as soon as it's incurred.
So we're doing all of the right things and taking all of the right steps, and certainly it's, you know, it's something that budgetarily the the city has been able to do up until this point. So So ten years ago, we were at 50%? Yes. And the goal is to get to a 100? Yeah. Eventually. Once you get to a 100%, you you sort of shed that unfunded liability that is for past it's incurred in the past. And then you're really only funding the the normal cost, which is the costs that are incurred each year as benefits are incurred or, you know, as employees are accruing
those benefits. And so then those costs go down because you're only funding one year's worth of benefits. Right now, we're playing catch up a little bit, because of some things that, you know, happened twenty or thirty years ago. But, you know, going forward, once you pay off that unfunded liability, which is you know, it's kinda like once you pay off your mortgage, then you just sort of have upkeep expenses. So Okay. Thank you. Michael? Oh, yeah. You already said this, but just to kinda underline and make sure I'm hearing you correctly. So the the cost of the collective bargaining and the increase of retirement benefits that
came along with that is something that's already funded from your end. That's baked in funded. It is. Yeah. So it's funded ongoing and the contributions that the city is gonna make, but that one time cost that that would have been incurred was funded by council, in the last two years. And so that's you know, it it did not negatively impact the funded status and it's built into all the projections going forward. Mhmm. And just kinda out of curiosity, obviously, you know, the progress in recent years from, you know, around 50% to where we are now and hopefully on track for 80%,
is positive. What's kind of the average for localities in Virginia who aren't part of VRS, and just out of curiosity. Yeah. I would say historically, because of because we're playing catch up a little bit, the city's funded status was probably historically in the lower 25% of those plans, and they're only, you know, nine to 11 plans or so. It's changed. Some of them have joined VRS, and so they just sort of have a legacy
plan for, employees who have either, you know, vested a benefit or retired already. And so we were playing catch up. I think now we're probably in the middle of the back or so, with where we are on our funded status among those independent plans. Okay. Yeah. Well, no. That that's it. Thank you. Okay. Natalie. First of all, congratulations on your reelection. I know that was a nail biter. Nail biter. But, this all looks, you know, pretty rosy. You know, we're not quite at a lot of our goals, but the projections are
are we're headed in the right direction. Are there any concerns or challenges that we should be aware of coming coming up or that you're contending with now? Yeah. No. That's a good question. I think, you know, you see that line that's just gone straight up, you know, for the last ten years. Certainly, a market correction the funded status is greatly dependent on the return on assets. And so, you know, a 20% downturn or something like that would negatively impact the funded status. And so that's something that we're aware of and even though the funded status has
improved and the city's contribution rates have eased slightly, you know, over the last few years. It's certainly something that we're very cognizant of, and we've tried to, when we can, make sure that we're contributing as much as we can, meeting all of the contribution rate, recommendations from the actuary. And like the meeting, they presented their results in October, and they said, hey. Look. These look really good right now, but just use some caution. You know, don't don't take all these savings in one year because, you know, next year, if you have a down market, you'll be back where you were before.
And so, that would be the only thing that we're keeping an eye on that if we do run into a year where we have a significant downturn, we just wanna make sure that we, you know, haven't done any long term damage by lowering the contribution rate when, you know, we know that that's possible, for sure, in the next year or two. Okay. Great. Thank you. I have a little question. Thank you so much. I do have one other question, if I might. Back in August, in our retreat, we heard a report from our financial advisers that suggested that their indicators were were leaning towards recession.
If it had been for three months in a row, do you have any sense of what the current indicators are from those same folks? I don't know whether you talked to them on it with any regularity, but No. I I guess maybe when Christie comes up, she can talk a little bit about that. Okay. Because I'm I'm looking at the asset allocation, and it's, you know, 56% in American equities, and and we add emerging markets, international developed markets, and stocks, and so on. And I'm given the pessimism that we heard back in August, I was sort of
expecting perhaps there might be a a little bit less growth oriented, approach. Yeah. And and those numbers were as of June 30, and so we have done rebalancing so those numbers would look slightly different, but that generally is the the allocation. And, again, it's a it's a long term portfolio Yeah. And these liabilities are are very long term. And so, while we might make small changes on the allocation year to year, it's not really necessarily driven by, oh, we think this will happen next year, so we're gonna change our strategy.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Chrissy. Good evening, counsel. Chrissy Hamill, budget director, grants of budget and grants management. Now I can't say it. So, now is the time of the year when we're basically working in three different fiscal years. We're finance is working hard to close out f y twenty five. Chris Collin and the finance director will be coming to you sometime in December to give you those results. We're also currently in FY twenty six and we're here tonight to talk about the performance of the first quarter. And then as you know, we are also starting to develop the f y twenty
seven budget. So we've got lots of years and lots of data in the air, but, this it tonight to talk as I said, to talk about the first quarter performance of f y twenty six. And so, as it stands right now, at the end of the first quarter, which was September 30, roughly twenty seven percent or 70 just over $73,000,000 of the general fund budget has been spent. Salary and benefits account for, 17,200,000.0
of that and other expenses total about 56,500,000.0. This is up slightly from the '25. We're at 30.6 for both as opposed to the '23. Most of that is coming from annual the timing of payments for annual software licenses and contracted services that are contributing to higher expenditures in this first quarter. We're not concerned about any of those. All of those things were budgeted. So the budget is still tracking. In terms of revenues, we're about 12 and a half percent or 33,000,000 of the
total general fund budget has been collected to date. As you know, real estate and personal property are the two biggest revenue sources two of the biggest revenue sources, and those bills are due on December 5. So our current revised projections, for the 26 revenues, are looking a little bit better. I think a couple weeks ago, we did a kickoff, with you for the '27 budget development. And at that time, we were talking about, downward trends that we were seeing for
sales and meals. You'll notice in this case, the last two months, three months, we've seen some slight upward trend trends, which, have we have used to revise our projections slightly for, f y twenty six. Noting that we have, for all the revenue adjustments, we are revising our projections to be at, point 35% higher than the budget at nine just over nine hundred and twenty one thousand thousand dollars.
And this chart here will show you the areas in which we are seeing some revisions. The state revenues are basically being revised because we did not have a final state budget at the time we adopted. So we made some projections there. Most of those were in our favor except for police protection was down a little bit. Interest income continues to do well. We have we we were thinking that the interest rates would start to fall sooner than they did, or will. And so that is up a bit. And then, the refund of prior year expenses, that, mister Murphy was here earlier tonight.
A 136 ish of that, is a is a refund from Jaunt for some of their excess, and I can't remember right now what the other one is. But that's what makes up the refund of prior year expenses. Any questions about any of that? Moving on just quickly, the CIP fund, that has an outstanding budget or a budget of $261,700,000. That is collective of this year's budget plus carryover budgets.
And, right now about 201,000,000 of that remains unspent. And at the end of the quarter one, just under 25% or 65,300,000.0 was spent or encumbered on the various projects. And so if there's no questions, I would like to take just a moment. My colleague Brian is on and we have a budget explorer tool which lives on our budget website that will give you the opportunity to be able to view these numbers and the detail of these numbers. And so I just wanna refresh your, memory on the tools that are available.
So Brian. Alright. Can you hear me? Yes. Can you see my screen? Yes. Okay. I just wanna remind you, how to get to the budget explorer, first of all, and then walk you through the navigation of the budget explorer and and and the different screens. So first of all, I'll have you get to the budget explorer. So this is the main landing page for the city website. You just go up to government, come over here to budget and grants management. So this is the the main page of the budget and grants management's website.
So right here is the budget explorer. So you click here and that will take you right to the budget explorer. So here is the actual budget explorer tool. So just to walk you through the navigation, these tabs across the top here are how you navigate to the different screens. So we have a couple of screens here that cover the general fund. So we have the the revenues and the expenditures for general fund, and then we have, the revenues and expenditures for all of the other funds, and then we have another tab over here for the CIP.
So I'll just walk through each of these screens real quick to see if you have an idea of what you can see here. So this is our general fund revenue screen. So at the top here, we've got the details of the, the budget versus the actuals for all of the different major revenue categories. We have some of the larger revenues just isolated, and then we have, some of the smaller revenues are just grouped into these categories. And then at the bottom here is just a sort of a visualization of the total, revenues collected versus the total total budget.
And then for each of these screens, you can usually filter at the top here. So in this on this screen, you can filter to a particular department. So we can look at NDS, for example, and now all of the visualizations filter directly to that department. Alright. Moving on to expenditures. It's similar similar screen. There's one additional visualization over here, this pie chart that represents the percent of the total general fund expenses that are that are being sort of shown on the screen at this time. So we're looking at all of the departments currently.
So we're gonna we see all the departments and all of and the, the budget versus actuals for these particular budget areas. And at the bottom, the same, total expenditures versus total budget. And if you filter to a department again, you can see now this this pie chart filters to now you can see the NDS represents 1.56% of the end of the total, general fund expenditure budget.
Moving along to other funds. So this is same sort of visualizations here, except in this case, you can choose entire funds. So now we're looking at the entire general fund here, but you can also switch over and say, look at maybe the social services fund. And so social services fund represents 2.1% 2.01% of the entire city budget. And then finally, we have, the CIP over here. So this lists all of the projects that we have in our enterprise system, by
project, and then the budget sort of versus actual details and then the totals here at the bottom. And the filter is a little bit different here. In this screen, you can filter by the different sort of categories of of CIP projects. So if you want to look at transportation and access, now you filter to just the transportation and access projects. And then an additional filter, which is kind of interesting, is you can select the total amount that has been expended of the available funding for '26.
So if you select this zero to 25%, this will show all the projects that have only expended between 025% of their available '26 funding. So that is the budget explorer in a nutshell. If there's any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. Any questions, Sonat? Okay. I've spent some time noodling around on it. So I Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to just to play with, so encourage that. So It's easy to chase a lot of rabbits down a lot of holes. Are you finished? We have one other addition that, I think you saw a produce yet.
A prototype. I always say that. Sorry, Brian. I'll get in trouble tomorrow. A prototype, of the but now we have implemented it. So we have also a new quarterly CIP report that's a little more, granular than what you see here. And Brian, are you able to scroll? James, do you wanna talk about this? Sure. So, as Chrissy mentioned, we we've presented on this once before. So we just really just putting this up as a reminder. We are asking, staff to update this on a quarterly basis, and we are building
out the number of projects that are shown in here, with the goal of at least adding, more of the CIP projects with each with each quarter as it goes by. But again, this shows, project status. It shows location of projects down there at the map in the bottom side. You can sort by different, by different types of projects as before. And for if you click on an individual project, it takes you to a detailed page with information about the project and photos and so on. So, again, I'm not gonna go into details on this.
We've been over it once before, but I encourage folks to take a look at it. And as I said, we're trying to keep this updated, and get all of our c ultimately get to the point where all of our active CIP projects are are shown here so that people can see where those projects are and what their status is. And to just looking at this screen, it is apparent that, for example, where it says Charlottesville Middle School, that embraces more than just one fiscal year. Yes. Correct. What does that do though, for things like the the sidewalk replacement fund, where we
allocate a new amount each year, where well, hopefully, the projects we had in mind two years ago have finally been finished. Yeah. So that's a that's a actually really interesting question and one of the ones who we're wrestling with as we think about how to use this tool. But the way we're doing that is is twofold. One, if we click on new sidewalks, thank you, Brian, you'll see examples of some of the projects that have been completed in that category. But the other thing that we're trying to do is actually pull out the larger sidewalk projects and make them their own stand alone line so that you can see those separately and see them actually go to completion.
Because otherwise, as you said, if we're adding every year, then the project never completes. Right? Like a scribbling, for example, would have its own line. Stripling definitely has its own line, and there'll be projects, How about the just completed Rugby Avenue project? That has its own line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. Rugby Avenue Trail. Yeah. And for a lot of those lump sums, one of the things we've been talking about is we are gonna try to get away from those as those funds are allocated. So we might budget a a pool of money for new sidewalks, for example, but as James mentioned, then as they get allocated to specific, sidewalk projects, they'll show up
as an individual line item here. And then one final thing, in addition to so all of this updates quarterly, and the other thing is, we will be releasing a CIP book, on the eighteenth. No. Excuse me. Yes. Tomorrow. Totally, I'm in three years right now. Tomorrow, which is will be the packet for the planning commission work session on the twenty fifth. The that will the online, budget book will have all of the projects that are
currently in draft form in the CIP draft that we're working on right now. It will have updated information. It'll have very similar information of what you see here for the projects that are in the, current draft of the plan. And then you all will be meeting with the planning commission on December, I think it's the ninth, in a joint public hearing on that draft. Any questions? No. Brian? No. Thank you. Thanks. Michael? Yeah. I know you all. Be seeing a lot of you starting early next year.
The bell of the ball. Thank you. Thank you. So I'll conclude by just referencing, these two tools are good examples of the kind of things that we geek out on, especially people like me who've been trying to make sure that we get more information, available to the public. These are good ways for you to be able to use this, play around with it, see what questions you can pose. And from that, we'll do our best to give you answers on those. But before I close out, I do want to speak to, comments that were made this evening in regards to the Fife Bill project. Clearly, I'm recognizing that public engagement is a continued stress point for us.
We're continuing to take a look at how we approach that. I have already initiated questions. I will dig into that a little bit more. I won't announce that we'll pause anything at this pump at this moment, but I will look into the matter and and really see what's going on in regards to where we are and then provide an update to the neighborhood association and those that have spoken to us about that specifically. This is the street project? Yes. Thank you. We're now into action items, part of the agenda. The first item is a resolution authorizing a lease agreement extension at Carver Rec Center.
And just to repeat for any late comers, the Derry Road Bridge project has been taken off the agenda. To be scheduled at a later date in December. Good evening, councilors. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present this item. This is a, extension for Carver Recreation Center lease. We've been leasing the property, the Jefferson School property for, fifteen years. The lease has come, it will be coming to an end. What we have discussed and agreed upon was to, put the lease on a physical,
our physical year, budgeting so it will be easier for staff to budget, the least amount. So today, I would like to ask, counsel, to review and approve, this resolution. Is this a single reading? This is a single reading? This is the least yes. It is single reading. Okay. So this is one of the more used facilities that we have. Are there questions Lloyd? We we have a number of broader issues to discuss with this whole thing, but
not this particular piece of it. Yeah. This is pretty simple. Yeah. Michael? Yeah. Likewise, I think the framework of, extending it through 2026 and that being a time period to, you know, have larger conversations, I think makes sense as a framework. And, I don't have any concerns with what's in front of us tonight. Yeah. Natalie? No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No Carver Recreation Center.
Second. Okay. Can we vote, please? I can figure out how to get back to it. There we go. Okay. Again, motion passes five to zero. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you for working on that. The next is a resolution to approve an establishment of a sister city partnership with Way, Waits and Angle. I hope Sherry proves that I said that correctly. And as mister Herring comes up, I I wore my, Guatemala shirt today, and we got a hat that we were there.
Part of the delegation was was there. Good evening. Good evening. Members of the council, admin staff. My name is Edward Herring with the sister city commission. This is Christian Petros who also was with us on the trip. He was involved with the community action side of our development of Wayway Tidalgo. Let me go back and give you a very, very brief history to catch us up to the point where we are today. In 2018, sister city, a Spanish speaking sister city and we began a process with
the approval of counsel in January 2018 to search for cities that might would be interested and together with the city we also as part of our policy, search for support groups because each of our sister cities needs to have a support group to work with the community. Now, we have had sister cities now for forty eight years. We have a sister city relationship with Peugeot in Italy which will celebrate in two
years our fiftieth anniversary. Next year in 2026, we will celebrate our twentieth year anniversary with Besser Saal in France. And of course, we have a relationship with Guinevere in Ghana. I admit if you're aware of that. In December 2020, council voted to extend an offer to the City of Huey Wittenango in Guatemala to become our Friendship City. Friendship City is the first step towards becoming a sister city. It's sort of like getting engaged and then we spent a few years getting to
know each other. So we became Friendship Cities officially on 07/01/2021. So when the time left had to do with the pandemic that happened where we were not able to have meetings, we were not able to travel and therefore we we got started much slower than we normally would have and of course, since July 2021, we've been actively involved. I made a trip there, the initial trip in 2023 to explore the city to meet the founding, the fathers there, to meet the commission there.
The gentleman from Wayway to Dango and the vice mayor came here in November 2023 for their first visit and mostly recently, Esmeil Wade said, we took a delegation of 12 people to away with Tango, Mel Wade, Ms. Petros, several people also from the Guertimaya Foundation. Guertimaya Foundation represents the community with which we work, which give us support for our relationship. For a second, if we would, we'll let miss Spectros speak to the community.
Mhmm. Thank you, Edward. I'm not as off the cuff as Edward. I have some words prepared. So good evening, council members, and thanks for welcoming us. My name is Kristen Petros Degueish, and I have been a Charlottesville resident for many years. I had the privilege of serving as a Peace Corps volunteer for Honduras on community led health and sanitation projects. More recently, I worked at the Inter American Foundation, supporting grassroots community development across Latin America.
My husband, Marco, is indigenous Maya from Guatemala's Department of El Quiche. And our children are bilingual and multicultural. And being part of a family that straddles both Charlottesville and Guatemala has given me a deep appreciation for the importance of connection, culture, and shared experience. We also live in the vibrant community of Southwood, which includes many neighbors from Guatemala and Uwetenango specifically. So these personal and local ties make the sister city initiative both meaningful and deeply relevant. As, Edward mentioned, the Guate Maya Alliance, which is formally the Ishatan Foundation, will serve
as our local advocacy partner and I'm honored to serve on their board. Together, we're envisioning programs that are locally guided and mutually beneficial, including cultural celebrations, educational exchanges, youth leadership, and community driven driven economic development projects. We've identified over a dozen community partners partners with connections to Guatemala including building building goodness foundation, Sim Barreras, the church of the incarnation, UVA's Latin American studies department, and Charlottesville City Schools among others who are ready to collaborate on exchange activities.
And just last month, I had the privilege of joining mayor Wade on a week long delegation to We met local leaders, visited artisan markets, experienced music and dance, and saw firsthand the efforts that families are making to improve health and well-being in their communities. On one visit to a remote village, we met a family who had recently paved their dirt floors, and that was a milestone that they were deeply proud of. Watching mayor Wade chat with the children and congratulate the family was a moment of genuine human connection that reflected exactly what a sister city relationship can foster.
And I will be wrapping up. Just wanted to say that Wawetenango is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse departments in Guatemala. It's both, like a state and a city by that name. It's home to some nine distinct indigenous communities speaking their own languages. So a sister city relationship can honor that richness and potentially support learning and exchange opportunities between indigenous communities both there and here, such as the Monacan Nation if that is welcome and guided by the communities themselves. So in closing, by supporting this elevation to full sister city status, city council will
help strengthen the ties between our cities to supporting cultural exchange and nurturing relationships that are built on respect, collaboration, and lived experience. On behalf of the Sister Cities Commission, the Guatemala Alliance, and the residents of both of our cities who are ready to participate, I ask for your support in advancing with with Tana'o from a friendship city to a full sister Kristen. In the package you have in front of you with a resolution, basically it stated that we are that we have the recommendation of the full sister's division as well
as admin staff here to make this change. We've spent three years working closely together with the commission and with the mayor directly with the mayor of Weywood and Angles and we have identified several projects which some are already in process. Included in the package also is a preliminary budget for the first two years which list activities that we've envisioned working with Way With In Angle. We discussed most of these activities with Weiwei. All of them will not happen. Some of them are also activities, general activities that we're doing with all our cities
together so we will include them in those but that gives you an idea of some of the things that are going to be happening not uniquely for Wei Wei but for all our sister cities together. I do need to mention the fight that is very important to understand we had some very serious conversations with the mayor from Weybridge and Angle. What some of you may may not know is the fact that during the cold war era there was a lot of activities that went on that were sponsored by the United States government which undermine the governments of Latin America, in particular Guatemala to
a point where we help replace the democratically elected presidents. We help support genocide to some extent and we help support the takeover of the lands of indigenous people by the United Fruit Company. There's a period of almost one hundred years of distrust, of distrust. Unfortunately, it only ended most recently in 1996, which means the fact that it is still fresh and in memory of many people. So we went in and we did some of the conversations on friendship and reconciliation
where we talk about the fact that we understand the past, we understand the role that America played in the past, but at the same time we wanted to reemphasize the purpose of the social cities international which is the relationships and diplomacy, person to person, citizen to citizen, city to city. And the fact that we accept it as a an American our responsibility, but at the same time we promise to work with them respectfully and directly. And I think the relationship that we formed during this most recent trip, I wish
all of you could have been there to say how warmly we were received. And the fact that the last thing you have, there are two things in your package also. There is an agreement that will be signed by our mayor and their mayor on our next meeting. It is a partnership agreement for it to become full cities. In addition to that, there is a memorandum of understanding which outlines some of the different activities, bylaws, and expectations of wayward in angle from a friendship city to a
full sister city. Thank you so very much. Thank thank you. And I just wanted to chime in, you know, because it's been about one month since we have returned and that I concur with everything that, Ed would say that we warmly receive. I saw just countless opportunities for, partnerships, collaboration between, the two localities. Whether it's students visiting, whether it's some teachers going down to, you know, partner with
the, Guatemala, Alliance, with, the project based learning. The the city is it is, you know, has everything. We're in the urban part, but then, you know, a few hours still in the local the the region, we're able to be in the most remote areas of the country and, you know, visiting people who've just had their floors, concreted. So you you you able to to get the whole gamut. And, it was just really, great for me to visit and to see and feel
and taste, for myself. And I've already, you know, had many friends already to have established and we've already been in touch several times since, I have returned. And, looking forward to going back. So I, strongly support this, this resolution. So Would you like to move it to the top? I moved we adopt the, Can I ask you a question? Yes. I'm sorry. So a lot of this, I'm gonna be supportive, but I just have a question, which is because I was having before I was, on council.
How does the the exact city get chosen? Who brings that up? Well Yeah. I was actually on the commission back in 2018 when we first approached the idea and it was approved. So we were open to receiving requests from five different cities ranging from Mexico to Argentina. What we were looking for, number one, was a city that had something unique to offer. We already have cities in Europe, so we were not looking for another European culture. We wanted a city that was a Spanish speaking city particularly to meet this criteria,
but we wanted something that would bring in a unique culture to us. And so some of the cities that we had looked at, the culture was not that different. For instance, in Argentina, the city outside of Buenos Aires had a culture that was very, very European, much like being in Spain. But we already have a city in France, have a city in Italy. So we didn't feel that Argentina would bring a unique perspective to us. We wanted a city that had some struggles similar to us.
We've had issues, obviously, this is Virginia, this is Charlottesville, so we still struggle with racial equality, racism. Now we were looking for a city that understood, now their racism in Guatemala is very different. There are five hundred years of a blended people, but still there's racism. So they have different perspectives. We were looking for a place, a city where we can learn from them, where we can learn about how they have been coping with different issues. They're a poor city, very, very poor city.
They are coping with trying to bring basic education to their population and so we are finding the fight that we have a lot to learn. We are not a big brother. We are not someone who's gonna go there and take them tons of money in a wheelbarrow. But what we are taking with them are perhaps some of our experiences. At the same time, we're learning to look at things from Different perspective. Each of our sister cities brings a different picture to us. Ghana, Winnebuhr, it's a different story that has to do historically with the slave trade,
but it's also a very modern city. France, we have ties to France that we've had for many, many years. But everyone in Virginia seems to have those and we're very close with them. France is also very important because of the twenty year relationship between Charlottesville High School School and the high schools in France. Italy because of goes back many, many years, forty eight years, worked relationship in Italy and some of the different inspirations for architecture Charlottesville came for this. So each city has brought a unique flavor to our relationship.
So that's what we were looking for and that's what we found, with Wayward Geneango. Great. Thank you. I move that we adopt the resolution. Second. As we're voting, I want to thank, my colleagues that went with me there. And, Christian, thank you for helping me at the airport there when we were in Guatemala City. I appreciate you helping a brother out there. I was in a tight spot, so thank you. Glad you could speak Spanish fluently. So, yes.
Yes. I have it it up here. Thank you very much. Alright. Thank you. Motion passes. Thank you so much. Appreciate y'all. So we're now at the second time for communion matters. Would anyone like to speak? Yes. Watch the others use this. Maybe I'll do better. Okay. Hi. Joe Lawson, 7 And A Half Street South West. I appreciate you, commenting on the five fill, of action or inaction that we're asking for somewhat. It's more of a feedback. But I did wanna emphasize one other thing that's come up a little bit, that I didn't make a point because most of this was about, kind of traffic changes,
sign changes, but, the speeding, that occurs in the neighborhood. The city, did a survey, and they found that there were an average of, 4,200 cars, traversing five the the little northern section of Fifeville every day, which is remarkable. And then, 5% of that were traveling in excess of 45 miles an hour, which I don't even know how you get that fast on in there. But that's 210 cars every day going greater than 45 miles an hour through our,
very narrow old neighborhood. And one of the things that's come up several times, and and I understand that it can be sensitive, is Kathy, the traditionally marginalized neighborhood and that, police, types of policing was disproportionately applied, and and has kind of, just been removed, all together from the neighborhood. However, if, the 5% of these cars are the ones that are speeding through, maybe
it would be good for the city to work with police to see if, some engagement, and and kind of identifying and and, dissuading people to speed through the neighborhood. I mean, like, I've I've gotten hassled by a cop for riding on a scooter more than I've seen people, kind of getting a ticket going the wrong way, which happens all the time. You change signs, people are still gonna go the wrong way if they have impunity. So I just wanna, raise that point as well, as, something that, we think would
help with the speeding, is, not police chases. None of that. But I know that they could just see the car, and they have the video of them going. That's enough, right, for the cops to have, a death fight. They don't have to chase them down. Anyway, thank you all, for this extended session. Thank you. Anyone else like this? Joy. Again, my name is Joy Johnson, and I am with a cheer up for you only have one more month in this year for you to come see me.
But, anyway, I I would like to just explain something about why I do what I do and why I have been coming in the last and I'm coming in December also. It's simply because affordable housing to some people, doesn't mean anything because it leaves out a certain portion of people from zero to 50%. And most of the housing that is being built and what developers are building, it
doesn't meet the criteria for a certain group of people. So when I come here to voice my opinion, it's not because you're not building affordable housing. We have to look at the people who need deeply affordable housing because of how high rents are in the city of Charlottesville. And even though CRHA is doing redevelopment, we're losing a lot of public housing because the subsidy for a public housing unit doesn't fit the performer because project based and
HCB vouchers are three times more in the subsidy. So even though it looks like we're having more units, we we do have some affordable housing, deeply affordable through CRHA because of, the funding that is being raised to put on top of the tax credit and to put on top of the loans. HUD doesn't give CRHA not 1 dime to redevelop. Let me say that again. HUD doesn't give not 1 dime.
What they give is replacement vouchers and relocation vouchers. And if you don't understand the two, let me try to do it in fifty six seconds. Replacement vouchers mean we are turning our public housing into HCV units, project based unit. A relocation voucher means you can take the voucher and go anywhere you want. If you choose to come back, that voucher go away. If they choose to stay, that voucher go away.
We are losing units. So the reason why I come here is to beg. I usually read, but I wanna tell you all. I'm coming here to beg and said there is a certain portion of residents and people and working people that you are missing who cannot afford to live in this city, who have was born and raised here. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Thank you. Can I get a motion to adjourn, please? So moved. Second. Thank you.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Do I need a post? Oh, all in favor, please say yes. Yes. Auto post, please say no. Part: 2
We're missing a couple of counselors, but we have quorum. So I like to do things on time. So we're gonna, start the Charlottesville City Council meeting for November 0, seventeenth twenty twenty five. Madam councilor, as lord enters this room, can you call the roll, please? Madam councilor. Councilor Ashwin? Here. We hope to see councilor Payne soon. Vice mayor Pinkston? Here. Councilor Snook? Here. Mayor Wade? Here. Is there, we do have one change to agenda.
Staff has requested that we defer the, Durry Bridge Road project to the but can we get a motion to approve minus that project? So moved. Second. Second. And, we will, take a voice vote. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Yes. All opposed, please say no. Motion passes four zero. The meeting would be divided into three sections. The first will be a work session where we will hear, and discuss followed by,
a closed session, and then we will have a regular business meeting at 06:30. Today, we have three reports. The first one would be, Jaunt, and Mike Murphy will come up. And I served on Jaunt Board for, like, twenty five years before you, Mike. So I I I know the building well, so it's a great service. Thank you. Well, thank you, for inviting me to talk a little bit about the job today. I have more slides than minutes as I understand it. So I will do it at a brisk pace, but I know that many of you are aware of our service.
So thanks again, mister mayor, members of council, city manager Sanders. I can use this. Alright. So I'm gonna try and tell you a little bit, about Jaunt and how it relates to the city and to the region. No. Not that. Okay. Yep. Alright. So, very strange construct at Jaunt for those of you who don't know this, it's a public service corporation, a corporate construct that hasn't existed for new organizations in the state of Virginia since 1984. But it does mean that Charlottesville is a part owner of John.
And there are certain powers that you have, with your shareholder representative, mister Sanders, and certain powers that you have with the four people that counsel appoints, to our 14 member board. There are five jurisdictions that have voting privileges at the board. Charlottesville, Albemarle, Louisa, Nelson, Savannah, and Charlottesville and Albemarle essentially have double the voting power of those outlying jurisdictions. We do serve Green and Buckingham, but they do not have governance responsibilities on the
board. They're purchasing service. And just two months ago, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the very first ride of Jaunt in September 1975. And so, we are in the midst of a campaign, where we're trying to get stories from you and the public about, your your interaction with John. And so, one of my asks at the end will be that you, engage with that and put the word out, as you're talking with constituents in the city. Wanna give you a little bit of an idea about the scope and scale of
what we do at John. So as you know, the city that you govern is 10.26 square miles, and this is the overlay of the cat routes. And you see that it goes over, into Albemarle County, but it's not inclusive of every part of the city. And so that cat footprint is a little bit less than city overall, 9.84 square miles. And when you talk in planning circles about what does it mean to get on public transit as a able-bodied passenger, they're usually saying, well, within a quarter mile of
that bus stop, which extends the reach of CAT to 18 and a half square miles. And for ADA, because we are the complimentary paratransit provider for CAT, that buffer turns into three quarters mile, which means that we actually go to somebody's door and take them where they need to go within the service area. That extends it to three times the size of the city, 30.67 square miles. And Jaunt is a little bit bigger than that. We have almost 2,800 square miles, about 90 times larger than just the area that,
is, ADA service area, and, of course, the whole metro area here plus Buckingham, when you think about the Planning District. In the year that we're in, we have been experiencing some increase. And like most service providers, John has been increasing steadily ever since, everybody's trips, dropped almost to zero during COVID. But, basically, how you can think about it is that about 20,000 trips every month are coming through Jaunt. And how do those 20,000 trips happen?
About 74% of those are people who book a ride to where they want to go right now over the phone or through a subscription. And in the future, hopefully, through some software products. You're familiar, I know all of you, with what's happening with your microcat service, and we will be talking a little bit about how we'll be doing very similar work, in the days ahead. About, 56% of that is the paratransit work, for the demand response. And when we think about the demand response, that means that almost a 100,000 trips,
97,000 trips a year are ADA service that we're doing on behalf of CAT. And that's required whenever you take the federal money, the $53.00 $7 for small urban areas. And so when somebody goes on to the website, what do they see about moving within Charlottesville, when you are ADA eligible? Well, first of all, they need to go to CAP and be found eligible because anybody who doesn't have eligibility needs to ride the CAP bus. That's the expectation per the federal government.
But when you are eligible, then you can ride every day of the year except for Christmas day, from basically six in the morning until 11PM. What makes people ride transit? I know that you all know a little bit about this, but I want you to just see how Charlottesville stacks up against the region and what the jaunt is doing. And so, one thing that you need to know about is people get on transit when you have the right density. Well, Charlottesville has the biggest advantage in the region, as far as that goes.
And older people are more likely to get on, public transportation than younger folks, and you see what that looks like in the region as well. People with a disability, which for the city of Charlottesville is our special focus, and you see the density particularly on the edges of, Charlottesville and going into Albemarle County. And you see that you, have people in poverty. You're a little bit more likely to get on public transportation, and we have a little higher concentration in the city than a lot of the parts of the region.
And finally, the percentage of households that don't own a car, which you see some intensity in the city as well. So, obviously, Charlottesville is a good place, or a good candidate to have and expand public transportation, and I know that it's one of your main priorities and focuses, over this last year. Different way for people to digest it if you don't love the maps as much. This is just a table for you all to think about later about what the wrong numbers are. What you would see, if you were to, come to a board meeting or participate
in that way, and I wanna acknowledge that, you all have four board members. One of them is in the room today because you recently appointed your finance director, mister Cullinan, to our board. And I'm lucky enough to have hired a new CFO in the last six months, missus Corbin, who's in the back, for moral support, just in case. You know, it's hard for me to come back to Chambers after all these years. About, half of the rides that are ADA are within the city limits, of course, because of where you go into the county. The other half are county residents. County is the biggest funder of John, and we'll show you some budget stuff in
a minute. When I came to John, I was asked to come off of the board at John and, serve as the CEO on an interim basis in kind of an emergency circumstance, and then we agreed that I would, stay for, a period of time. And so what did I see at that time? Well, we need to anchor employee behaviors, to values. I could still tell you what the city values were from my twenty five years here and anywhere I've ever been. If we want people to really work together, we have to be values connected. And so that was the first thing we did. Together, we have to be values connected.
And so that was the first thing we did. And so we have a walking billboard, with all those, buses and with the uniforms we wear. And so you will see on the back of every shirt that we print people service connection to remind people. And the board had not engaged in any kind of strategic thinking for about six years at the time that I was joining. And so in January and March this year, we engaged in an exercise to really march through all of the major considerations that would allow them to make priorities for the next year or two. And these were the headings for that discussion.
That was two days worth of retreat, and I'm not gonna try and get into that level of detail with you. But I want you to know the planful way in which we're asking the board to set priorities for Charlottesville and the rest of the region. And so that led to about 25, areas, that were initiatives that we might prioritize. And in the end, these five areas here, we'll spend a little bit more time on this slide, were those that were selected by the board. And the first is you're all well aware that you have endorsed the creation of
the Charlottesville Regional Transit Authority, which means that, tomorrow night will be the last meeting of the RTP, after many years of that initiative. And I've been serving on that with vice mayor Pinkston and councilor Ochsner, for the last two years. But it's important to the job board that we continue to maintain an active presence as CARTA develops. And I believe that the vision is that each of the transit providers from the area, CAP, Jaunt, and UTS, will be present at all the future CARTA meetings beginning,
in 2026. We have been the complimentary paratransit provider for the city of Charlottesville since 1987. It's a really big part of the identity of John, and the board would like to see that sit stay that way. It's been a little while since we've had a written agreement with the city of Charlottesville, and the last person to sign that contract is some guy named Mike Murphy. So it's been, out of date for a period of time. So, that is something, that is in process, with Garland, and, we've been waiting to
make sure that the results from the triennial evaluation would be in, in case anything needed to be added to that contract. Hopeful that that contract will be before, us and staff and, potentially, you sometime soon. You all are aware that, we, have been doing this paratransit for a long time and that in the way that things happen, for a long time and that in the way that things happen today, you need to know one to seven days ahead of time where you wanna go and when. Right? And based on the success of the microcap pilot, you know that, there are people
who want a more on demand type of, transit rather than a demand response type of transit. And so we do have money from the state now to pilot in the city and in Greene County a different approach to scheduling that's gonna facilitate that live service for ADA in the future. And then the fifth bullet I'll skip down to since it relates to this is that, John has been handicapped by the fact that we've had the same type of scheduling software for almost three decades now, which is not best in class, by a
long shot. And so we have secured a million and a half dollars from the state, for a new, much more technologically advanced, software solution that's gonna allow people to book on their phones, call into the call center, use a laptop or desktop in the future. And then finally, we can't be the great team that, serves the region, if we don't have a system that is focused on giving people feedback and providing performance evaluations. And at the time that I was coming in, most of the people on the
team didn't know the last time they had had one. And, of course, it was vital that we, make that happen. So, in the year that we're in, we have a $21,000,000 budget, and you see that, a good portion of that is three quarters operating. The rest is capital. It's particularly large in capital this year because we have a $3,000,000, parking lot project in the queue. Because for the entirety of John's history, fifty years, they've never had, their assets secured.
And so, this would be the first time that we have fencing, cameras, lighting that is appropriate for an organization of this type. And, we'll talk a little bit as we go forward about how the '26 budget, differs from the '27 budget. There are new new studies, in this year or in next year because one thing that we've done a lot of at Jaunt and in the region is study things, and now the state is, certainly eager for lots of implementation. This is a little roll up, so that you understand what the budget has looked
like over the last three years, and I will talk about the '27 budget to wrap this up. John tries to be a great steward of your dollars and every locality's dollars, and that's why by policy, we have, the ability when we end the year, with excess capital, to retain a certain percentage for operating reserves and capital reserves, and then we distribute the remainder of the localities. Last year, we distributed, over a $130,000 back to Charlottesville.
I can't give you the exact dollar amount because my board hasn't seen our audit yet, but they will see it on December 10. But I do expect it to be more than double that amount, from the f y twenty five, year. So I'm sure mister Cullinan's ears perked up about that. In thinking about, how to budget, I was certainly influenced in the time that I spent, working for this city and laying out, some concepts for the board, as we go about thinking about what this looks like. And so I want you all in broad brush to understand how did we write
the budget that's already been submitted, to the city of Charlottesville and Almar County. Because as you know, budgeting is now a year long practice, not something that just happens at a particular time of year so you can vote each April. And so, the areas in which we need to set those priorities are what does the service look like? And for the city, that service is just a little bit flat, and it depends a little bit on what you all decide about your cat expansion.
Everything you decide for cat CAT has an impact on jaunt, whether that's time of day, or days of the week, or, you know, new routes. All of that creates new buffers where we would need to serve all the people within three quarters of a mile of the new stop. And we are, looking at some modest expansion, particularly in the rural jurisdictions, because we get a lot of people into town at the beginning of the day, so take them home at the end of the day. But in between, there's not a lot for them to do, and so we're trying
to have midday service, in a lot of places in the year ahead. On the capital side, we're we're actually trying to do a little bit less, and, we'll I won't bore you with a lot of details about all these funding types. But, basically, for those of you who've paid attention to John for a period of time, four or five years ago, there were some problems, with the accounting of the organization that led to losing a whole year of state funds. And during that time, it became that instead of what you hear from Garland about the 4% match rate on some of the capital expenses, it went up to 36%
because of the blended use of the fleet. Well, I've spent a lot of time over the last year trying to pitch to the state, what our remedies, have been and will continue to be. And we are the beneficiary of that in this year because they used a different pot of money that's agnostic on rural versus urban that's gonna have us at 4%. So we saved literally, over a million and a half dollars in capital cost, by them being willing to do that this year, which is good news about our partnership with DRPT. Could I ask on this slide? Yes, sir.
I'd maybe this is something I'm supposed to know or I don't. Fifty three eleven rates versus fifty three thirty nine rates? Yeah. So, cap primarily gets fifty three zero seven, small urban. Oh, yeah. That refers to different statutory schemes. Federal, pots and markets. Okay. Fifty three eleven, is for rural only. Fifty three thirty nine doesn't actually care whether or not it's rural or urban. Thank you. Yes. As far as people, we have, identified a couple of places, that we need additional
staff, but we're also understanding that when you have a 120 plus people on your team, that they're not all employed three hundred sixty five days a year. And John has not, in the past, budgeted for attrition savings, which we are in the year ahead. We're looking carefully at the region. We're looking at COLA that's somewhere in between 34%. Obviously, particularly for JOC, we need to be very aware of the fact that CAAT is unionized, and we need to have wages that are competitive. I need to make an immediate adjustment when I join as the interim CEO because
even prior to the unionization, Jaunt was lagging CAAT by 19% in wages. And so you're never gonna attract anybody, when you're that far behind. Other operational considerations. There's some ways in which, John needs to continue to invest. We don't have a sophisticated human resources information system. We have five different systems that don't always speak to each other well. We need a new finance system. In fact, the product that we use, Great Plains, will no longer be supported by Microsoft within the next couple of years.
We need to make some technological advancements. The reservation system that we use is a voice over IP, phone system, which, the contract, was signed off on before we reach full implementation. And I'll say that, while we've made a lot of progress, there are some days in which, the call center is not as great as I'd like it to be, and so we'll need to continue to revisit that. The University of Virginia, as you may know, is doing an awful lot, in the way of thinking about not having as many single passenger vehicles come into the city.
I know that, placement Pinkston and councilor Oshren have heard, mister Silsdorf talk about that they've invested 80 and a half million dollars in parking garages recently, and that it's at $35,000 per space. And so they're actively looking at through their program, Wahoo commute and other ways, trying to get people on commuter buses. And that's where JONK can help to provide support and why they would be giving us extra support in the year ahead. And then finally, we've been looking at, there's a lot of complexity to serving 2,800
square miles and different days of the week and different routes and all that, and we need to tell our story better. So we recently compete, completed a marketing communication strategy. There's a little rebranding that's gonna be coming out along with that, and we just need to continue to invest in communication. It's It's extraordinarily important. In the budget we just submitted, it's about a million dollars less. And big takeaway in that is, overall, we're asking the city for all of the service that we do today, about $97,000 less starting July 1 than we are, receiving,
in the year that we're in. There's a couple of things that could influence that, based on decisions you're making. I know that Garland, who's been a great partner and collaborator to me, during the time that I've been here, has shared some of the scenarios about how many drivers and whether to flex up, frequencies on certain routes, and whether to add Sunday back or not, and whether to add midnight back to midnight or not. All of those have an impact on jaunt, and how we would need to be
staffed. And so the really important part, of this presentation, and I'll wrap up, is to say how you can help. One is, continue to support the long standing partnership. We wanna continue to be the ADA provider. We have been for thirty eight years. Remember that cap changes always mean jaunt changes. I know that if Garland was here with me, he would, really lock arms and encourage you to continue to have fare free service. I need to, really spend just a moment here and say that the cost of
bringing on new staff and software and fare boxes is actually probably going to be greater for cap and jaw combined than what you would recover in the fares themselves. And so we should focus on having great service rather than be, focusing on complex if you're gonna return Sunday service, we would need to know that. I will tell you this, and I talk with Garland about it regularly. We never turned off the Sunday service. So literally, John operates every day but Christmas. And we talk about whether that's a good idea, sometimes.
And it is a place where if push came to shove and the city and county needed to trim somewhere, we could have some efficiency by not having Sunday service. For me, it's the taking away of something that is hard when it comes to public service, whether you're talking about a route or a frequency. And so there would be a loss to community members, a ADA only. And so this is really only city residents I'm talking about. They're the only locality that we serve, with Sunday service. But if you feel like in all those scenarios that you're looking like with cat,
that, you're not gonna be able to resource Sunday for years into the future, then that would be good to know because then it may be worthwhile to consider a change. And, honestly, you know, it can be hard to resource from a human resources standpoint, but we're gonna continue to do it until we hear it's a policy decision for you all. At the state level, you should know that, there will definitely be some action in the upcoming general assembly about transit dollars, and you, in fact, will have a special
item that's in front of the general assembly that you're advocating for to get some, stopgap funding in front of, this body, from the assembly prior to CARTA having the ability to have taxation, authority. And so, obviously, that's really important if you wanna reach your goals about expansion of service. And at the federal level, while you might have less impact when the IIJA phases out, we wanna make sure that everybody does their best to make sure that there's
not a loss of the current transit dollars that are in there. And finally, just remind you that in our fiftieth year, we'll be making outreach to you about, events that will celebrate jaunt as we close out our fiftieth year in September 2026. But we wanna hear your stories about how you've engaged with JAUNT and if you have an opportunity to encourage residents to reach out to us. On our website, there's a special landing area where they can send pictures, videos, or share their stories.
I've moved as fast as I can, but I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Michael, do you have any questions, sir? Yeah. Well, good to have you back here. This is your this is your first time back at Chambers. I'm trying to but, I so you mentioned FairFree. Is that that currently for you all? Is that someone to the city where that's just funded by a state program? Well, the only time that John collects fares is when CAP collects fares because then
it's required. And so when CAP turned off fares, then we did too. So since COVID, nobody's collected nobody's collected fares. And that's the only time that we would bring them back because we had two extra FTEs plus software plus cash collection plus a, armored car service. All those things make it really undesirable based on the amount of dollars that you're gonna recoup. Mhmm. So, essentially, you know, the cost of the city the cost of the city if
we returned, or got rid of what? What do you mean? The cost to the city if we retained fare free service because the state program is ending, John is not adding to that cost. It's the It's already baked into the budget as it's been written. Okay. Yes. The other you mentioned, obviously, CAAT has unionized, and, you know, that's required across the board, adjustment in the market on wages and benefits. Where you know, where does the organization see itself currently in the conversation of, you
know, one, unionization period, and then two, your goal for where you want, wages and benefits to be is the goal. Match cat, exceed cap by a little bit? Like, what is your ideal to kinda settle that? Our entry level wage. And I and I'm gonna talk about operators, because, you know, that's the environment where in this area between cat, jaunt, and the school bus drivers, you require the the same type of credentials and certification of, like, 300 human beings.
We are, at the same starting pay, as cap. The terms of the agreement for the union don't allow jaunt employees to reach Max as quickly as is specified in the union agreement. But it's only off by a couple years. We do have a band that also caps the top because, you know, every good classification and compensation system has to have a starting, a mid range, and an end.
And so we're we're pretty we're closer than we've ever been, to CAT. With regard to unionization, at the time that the union was coming to this area and talking with CAT employees, they did talk to some junk employees. And the fact is, and you've received a letter from me at some point about this last year that you may or may not recall, Dillon rules state issue. Right? So if it's it's not specified in the code, then you're not able to do
it in the state of Virginia. Public service corporations are not specified in the code, and so we got a legal opinion on that. A local, delegate did bring forward language and consulted with us, on that language about adding public service corporations to the code of Virginia about unionization, and it didn't make it forward very long, once it was in Richmond. Yeah. And I know, you know, obviously, you know, following this recent election, it's a very
different environment. So, you know, I'm almost anticipating, you know, maybe not this session, but maybe next session Mhmm. That it's at least a good possibility legislation like that could pass and kind of what the approach at that point, you know, may be. And, the final question you touched upon, you know, CARTA and obviously continuing to participate in CARTA and recognizing the importance of that. And I know there's a long way way to go until we would get to this point, but one of the goals is, you know, being able to combine into one agency for funding efficiencies, operational efficiencies.
Is that something that is yet being kind of discussed and planned for, or is that kind of waiting until, discussions with this new entity CARTA develop? Because to me, that's the the end goal is to be able to, you know, ideally bring together cat, jaunt, harder to get, but UTS as well into one service. And that's obviously a huge, huge structural and operational change that would take years of planning. Yeah. I would say I appreciate your vision.
I don't know that there's a unified vision, out there about bringing those organizations together from a service perspective so much as there is about what's required of, greatly enhanced and cooperative regional planning. And the the really I mean, without going too deep into what We don't have time to go deep deep. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. With with the CARTA, happy to come back and talk about that. But, you know, John is responsible for over 2,700 square miles that, at this time, are not joining Carta. And so, that would really mean that you would, a, either want to remove complimentary paratransit from John's service and bring it in house, or, b, expect that, you know,
the the public service corporation would dissolve some of its members or you would not be a part of it. I'm not there's some complexity there. So, it is a easy answer to say that I think there's plenty that could be done even before there's funding available. And there are lots of willing and collaborative, partners to this process now, which has not always been the case. The the question is, is the authority there to ensure that the region has everything
that it should, and that you aspire to in serving the public, with transit services, or is the ambition to do it with just one entity? Because Jaunt is owned by five entities. Yeah. Well, I'll ask because I know there's there's others. But yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Natalie. Hello. Nice to see you again. I'll just keep it quick, with a question back to the, excess capital slide because that's not something we usually see.
Yeah. And just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about, why there is an excess, and is there anything that we can help provide to use up that capital? Or, is there anything that the gap that could be used for that it's currently not that you would like to see be added to services? Yeah. Understood. So why is there excess? Part of that is, vacancy savings. Part of that is, you know, when the cost of a capital project comes in
less than you had imagined, sometimes, after COVID and certainly starting with COVID, buses have I'm sure that Garland has told you, have really doubled, tripled, quadruped, you know, in price. And, so DRPT had instructed agencies to build in all these escalators. There's a lot of reasons that there is money, and part of it is just sound financial management. And so at the end of the day, when you spend less and you're a public entity, why shouldn't you return a portion of those proceeds back to the localities
that contributed them? I point out that during the time that I served on the detention and jail boards on behalf of the city, the same types of policies were instituted. And this policy was instituted while I was a board member at John. Great. Thank you. Brian? No questions. Thank you. No questions. Thank you. So, yeah. We definitely get out some, notice about the anniversary. I I think that, you know, it's a great story to tell and the work that it does in the community. So I'm glad that you're at the helm of it, to steady the ship there,
and continue to have great things about the service there. So thank you so much for your service there, sir. Thank you. Mike. Good to see you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Alright. That'll be next, we have, Region 10, doctor Beets. Hi. Beets. I'm sorry. Yep. Yep. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Lisa Bites. I'm the executive director for Region 10. Thank you, mayor, councilors, mister Sanders for allowing us to come and present to you today. We're gonna spend about thirty minutes on several, topics of priority for Region 10.
We will not get to all the things, and I'll just say out of the gate that we'll come back whenever you invite us if you'd like to talk about other priorities that we don't touch on. Let's see. Okay. Just to level set, we're gonna start with an overview of Region 10 for those of you who may not know. Region 10, serves Charlottesville and five surrounding localities. Last year, we served about 8,500 people. If you look at our percentages in the locality, you'll notice they do not equal
a 100%. And that is not because we did social work math around, localities. It's because this data represents number of people who receive services based on residents. In addition, region ten provides services to people who are experiencing a psychiatric emergency if they're in our catchment area regardless of residents. And we also are the hub CSV for the nine community services boards in Region
1, which means that we provide some program and services to additional folks who live across Central Virginia. For the purpose of this conversation and just so that we're all speaking of data from the same place, this is number of people served by residents, which locality. You'll see that we're primarily serving, adults, at sixty three percent, and of those, forty seven percent have a serious mental illness. Our children, thirty percent with thirty eight percent of those children having a serious emotional
disturbance, which true as well is that folks come through our door with, multiple needs and a desire to address, different domains of their life. This pulls data around primary request for service. What's also important funding source for service. I don't know why clicker seems hard for me.
Okay. Let's talk about Charlottesville specifically. You will see in the Charlottesville specific slide that the numbers served represent, are are congruent with the overall numbers. 74% of the people served in Charlottesville City are adults. Of those fifty four percent are are people with SMI. Fifty six percent of the people who we serve are, are receiving Medicaid. What's also of note for Charlottesville is we serve more Charlottesville residents than residents of any other locality in our catchment area.
You are our biggest customer as it were. In terms of program outcomes for mental health outpatient services for f y twenty five, ninety five percent of the people we serve said they were satisfied with the services they received. Ninety percent of the people who we served from Charlottesville had no change or improvement in their employment. And in terms of SUD services, while in active SUD treatment, those, reported that a 100% had no new arrests in the previous thirty days of service.
It's not that we are, you know, we've cracked the code on substance abuse treatment. It's that while in active service, people can, engage in treatment and stay out of the criminal justice system while they're engaged. What's true for Charlottesville, but, of course, all of our localities, they were funded by federal, state, local funds, third party payers like Medicaid, self pay based on sliding fees sliding fee scale, grants, and donations.
We're heavily reliant on Medicaid as you see here. Many of the people who come into Region 10, come through our emergency services. There are many, entryways in. Oftentimes, it's someone experiencing a psychiatric emergency. And so the first time we talk with someone, they are in crisis, and so they engage continuum. What is true to know is that in last fiscal year, we served 11 we provided 11,000 crisis services to more than 2,000 Charlottesville residents.
We did 2,607 evaluations, which means that we evaluated people to see if they needed a prescreening for involuntary inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. And of those, four hundred and seventy six were Charlottesville residents. It's important to note that we've had an increase in evaluations. It's a indicator that people are going into crisis and reaching out for services or a loved one is reaching out or, they're they interface with law enforcement who's connecting
to an assessment. But, but our increase in hospitalization has been more modest at four percent. And I think that that's a real credit to, the anchor team, our hearts team, the crisis continuum being built out, our serve our community based service providers. What we know is the beginnings of the proof of concept that if we have a robust continuum at the community level, people can divert from involuntary hospitalization and and remain in the community, and we share that mission across service providers.
And I think we're seeing some success there. It doesn't mean that the state psychiatric bed crisis is over, and it doesn't mean that there aren't times that that people don't need inpatient hospitalization. It just means that people have more choices and, we can serve people while they remain with their families or with their with their natural support system, and that's positive. In terms of wellness recovery, that's our crisis stabilization unit. We stabilization unit. We provided 436 bed days to 70 city residents last year, and which true for
anyone that interfaces with our crisis continuum of care, we offer them a harm reduction kit, and we we handed out almost 600 last year. That last, bubble that you see on your slide is really that's not Charlottesville specific data, and I wanna note that. But I want to say, as you may know, community services boards have mandates through code of Virginia. We are by law required to do any number of things. And that includes, competency restoration, supporting people who were found not guilty by reason of
insanity or in a state psychiatric facility returning back to the community. And we had served, you know, close to 700 folks around that, in our CTAC through, through NGRI and competency restoration. Region 10 is not required by code, but we see it as fundamental to our mission to be ready to respond to critical community incidents. And last year, overall, we responded to 28 incidents. And last year, overall, we responded to 28 requests for incidents in the community. We have 40 staff who were trained to facility service dogs.
We're here for the community when, things occur, and we we need to, provide support in the immediate. Three of those incidents were in the city. And then our state beds, the again, the the crisis at the state psychiatric facilities, 16 state beds utilized is a significant decrease from the year before, and that's, I think, because of the community based infrastructure. We're gonna switch gears a little bit and talk about the opioid abatement authority, Charlottesville
Impact. So you were asked, two years ago to sign a cooperative agreement so that region ten could put forward two projects we wanted to implement in Charlottesville and the five surrounding counties. I wanna express an awful lot of gratitude for both the financial support we received as well as the signature of support for the projects. We did two things with, with that support and money. We provided community outreach. And so between f y twenty four and today, we've had a 100% increase in
residents served through community outreach. And we have distributed 673 harm reduction kits. That's in addition to the harm reduction kits that we distribute in crisis services. So we're saturating the community with ways to stay safe. And with that, we've been able to connect 23 people who are on house with SUD treatment in patient, and we've been part of reversing more than two hundred opioid overdoses. The we're blown away by the statistics here because, going out into the community in
a low barrier, high touch engagement way just to have access to resource and conversation has been critical in, in, connecting people to being safe and some to service, but more to being safe initially. Our second cooperative agreement, project was our crisis response and CTAC expansion. I'll talk more about that in a minute, but it's our crisis receiving center. It's a three legged stool. It is first our CTAC, our crisis intervention team assessment center, where a road deputy
can bring someone in who's under ECO and transfer custody to someone in the program for the purpose of assessment and determination of whether they need a TDO. It is our crisis crisis stabilization unit and as wellness recovery so that people can come in and have a voluntary short term stay to divert from hospitalization and, become more stable. And then 23 chair service, which is that someone can arrive, they can stay with us for up to twenty four hours, receive peer support, maybe a PRN medication, some
counseling, some, a nurse if needed. And with those interventions can divert from hospitalization, get connection to service, and move on to another community based service. So our opioid abatement authority project is a five year project, and in that time, we have made significant gains in both of these areas. And we'll talk a little more about CRC in a different slide. What is true for us is that we, share the concern that the city shares around our unhoused.
We have a partnership. It's a federal state local partnership for the project for assistance for transitioning from homelessness. It's our PATH program. It is two staff strong. It is a region ten staff and a partnership with On Our Own. And those two staff in the last year, served a 133 individuals. They made amazing progress in 295 referrals, to all of those services you see on your slide and connected 11 to permanent supported housing.
We, overall served almost 300 people who self reported to being unhoused in the city last year in addition to those served through PATH. Our Blue Ridge Center, which is here in the city, used to be a day program, and we heard from the community the desire to have a low barrier outreach and engagement program where people could come in for support or contact without having to go through an initial clinical assessment which could take two hours, and all the formal,
procedures that happen that we're required to do when somebody enters for formal services. So we changed our programming at Blue Ridge Center, and we, have people come in. It's a it's a drop in center, not a drop off center. A drop in center is something different than drop off, which is someone in crisis, which means you can come in unscheduled. You could join a group. You could connect with a counselor, you could ask for, concrete resources, you could come every day, you could come once in a while.
And our goal is to be available and responsive, but also to make sure that people understand that when they're ready, if they become ready, we're gonna provide them with other kinds of services. It's been an incredible connection. 94% of the people we served last year were from the city. At the Blue Ridge? At the Blue Ridge Center. Mhmm. We're working on a, harm reduction vending machine, and that will be also placed right outside the Blue Ridge Center when that is built out. What's true about Region 10 is that we are we are not housing development or
not landlords. We, but we do provide housing support. And we provide housing support last year to 429 individuals. So what that means is we have a number of different vouchers that are connected to the people who We serve, and we then connect them to housing. We, that's that is through any number of avenues, and it's only as strong as our ability to re receive, sustain, and grow the number of vouchers that come in.
So in the last year, 04/1929, the greatest challenge for us is if funding is lost, and that has happened, externally in a few places or that there's not enough, landlords who are willing to provide leases to our folks. When I when I got the invitation to come speak today, the request was challenges in the environment, what we might be seeing federally. And so I'll I'll speak a little bit to both of those things. Medicaid access is a challenge in the environment.
I think what you know is that, the discussion at the federal level around Medicaid expansion has been a, variable top topic over time, and that our current governor has said that he does not have a plan to, reduce Medicaid in Virginia. Well, you know, we're whether the, a number of things are could change at any given time. And what we do know is that over the next two years, the plan is
that there will be an increase in the need for reauthorizations. So people will have to be reauthorized for eligibility for Medicaid twice a year, whereas right now, it's once a year. So that's the first thing to be concerned about for our population. And the second is that for people who are eligible under expansion that their work requirements are increasing. The reason that those two things are challenges in the environment for Region 10 are that, the people that we serve will have great difficulty for the most part in
keeping up with twice a year reauthorizations, and the people that we serve for the most part are working if they can or wanting to work if they can, or in school or volunteering, those kinds of requirements. If those requirements go into place they are a barrier to access to insurance and has the same net effect as decreasing the funding for that population. As you saw on the first two slides, fifty six percent of the people who we serve who have insurance are are, insured by Medicaid, and that overall could have
up to an 18,000,000, dollar impact for Region 10 overall. If it's just expansion and we're just talking the city, we're talking closer to $2,000,000. It's noteworthy that I'm speaking of impact for behavioral health, impact to revenue for Region 10, but then there's just the community impact for overall wellness because, of course, Medicaid helps people stay well and not just for behavioral health but for physical health, dental, vision, I mean, all the things we all need to stay healthy. And so we're watching Medicaid access.
We're talking to our legislators about it because what we want to see happen is what does the federal's, government say that we have to do? What does Virginia have in its choice, you know, in its purview to make choices around? And then we're gonna advocate around the people who we serve having access to the insurance. Behavioral health redesign, it there's a two minute, primer on behavioral health redesign if you haven't been following it. The general assembly tasked DMAS, Virginia Medicaid to retire, a number of legacy services at
the end of this fiscal year and replace it with new services that are budget neutral. What's true for Region 10 is of those legacy services retiring, we provide one called mental health skill building. There are others that other providers, are are providing that have impact. But for Region 10, there are a 100 people receiving mental health skill building today. When these services retire and the new programs come into place, they are not apples to apples. And so the question and the concern is as, we move forward with the new
implementation, will it be will those new services have reimbursement rates that allow us to provide the service? Will they be effective in keeping people well in the community? And what are the credentials and, that the people need to be able to provide the service under our licensing regs because, of our third challenge in the environment, workforce development and retention. There's a national behavioral health workforce crisis. It's true in Virginia.
I think that, what you all know is that there are fewer behavioral health professionals coming into the workforce, and that's licensed and licensed eligible clinicians, psychiatrists, and nurses advocate advocate around reducing requirements under licensing so that we can attract, more robust workforce who
can do the work as well as ways we can increase our revenue to be competitive to attract fewer the the people who are providing the services, and I'll talk about that in a minute. Last but not least for challenges, community based services infrastructure, in as much as we are I think we collectively are doing a good job here in Charlottesville. The questions become, do we have enough community based providers? Do they accept the insurance and the client population that might be served by region
ten as well as others? Population that might be served by region ten as well as others, and, are they the right type of service for the community needs at any given point? And I think that there is more to do there. Region ten priorities. Medicaid for all the reasons I spoke of. Workforce, I'm gonna take a moment to, talk about workforce just one for one more minute. I, region ten staff are our greatest asset, our most valuable asset, and it's not just because it's the primary, cost in our budget.
Right? It's not expense and not because you need people to help people, but because it really takes, a commitment of heart and mind. So Saturday morning, 08:00, I was preparing for this presentation. I get a call from one of the senior leaders at region ten, and she says, that one of our residential facilities has caught fire. And, she tells me, you know, that, yeah, here's the plan for the day.
Here's here's what's going on, and that the administrator on call lives within walking distance of the residential facility and she got the call about the fire and she put on her shoes and ran towards the program. She got there before the fire truck, and she helped people get out. And then she met the fire marshal. And when I talked with the senior leader the next day, Sunday, that same administrator on call had worked into the night to clean up after Servpro and the fire
department and such so that the gentleman we were serving could come back in. In the meantime, there had to be, I think, 15 staff. People missed parts of their daughter's 16 party, their weekend at the Bourbon Festival out of town, date night with their husband to make sure that the people that we served, were in a safe place and had connection to service. Regent and staff, they run towards the fire. And so our workforce is our most valuable asset because we ask 600 strong to
run towards it every day. Are we able to, to put out the fire all the time? Absolutely not. But are we gonna do everything we can to support? We are. And so in terms of our priorities, we're gonna hold that as our, one of our highest priorities because if we support the people who are providing the service, we are going to provide better service to our community. Last but not least, certified community behavioral health clinics. We I see certified community behavioral health clinics as a solution to the Medicaid and
workforce challenge. The state of Virginia is seeking to apply to have all 40 CSVs in Virginia become certified as community behavioral health clinics, which allows for a prospective payment system, which is a formula based system to determine actual cost of service and be reimbursed prospectively for that service. It would increase our service capacity, increase our our, salaries, have more reliance on federal funding than state funding because it's a federal program.
And so we've been in contact through our association with the incoming governor to, advocate for all CSBs becoming certified as community behavioral health clinics. Region ten initiatives, the crisis receiving center, that three legged stool I spoke of, we received opioid abatement authority funds as well as funds from our state department. That project to receive the state funds required that we expand our physical footprint. What we've done is we've bought a building on Avon Street just behind King Pavilion.
We're super excited about it. To be able to move our administrative services out of our old Lynchburg Road campus to expand our crisis receiving center. So we are we are in the middle of doing that. And in the new building on Avon Street, we will have HR and IT and, conference space and training space at the end of the downtown mall. But even more than that, we begin to have a physical presence right here. And we look forward to being right here at the end of the mall.
We look forward to having people come into our facility and coming, down on the mall, seeing how we can be of service over time. You all will receive a invitation, I hope you come, to our open house, which we have targeted for February. More to come on that. Mobile crisis services. We're expanding mobile crisis response as part of our our crisis continuum of care. Community outreach, we need to continue to look for nontraditional ways to engage people and support them in coming in for service or receiving service out in the community.
And then priority one waiver for DD services, governor Youngkin, had the bold initiative that we supported to have all people who are on the waiver wait list to our priority one, top priority, funded over two years, and that has occurred. It does not mean that there aren't new people who pop into that priority one waiver wait list, or we need to, support those who have not moved into priority
one to keep from needing more urgent emergent priorities. That remains an initiative for us. We also support building out of community based providers for the DD population specifically. So these are your appointees, and you'll see that Dave, Joe, and Francesca are here today. We're glad to have them. Alex, Joe, and Francesca are in the middle of their term, and Alex is our vice chair. Francesca is our secretary. Dave is our fearless chair of the board. And so he his term is a freeloader.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's in the middle of his term. Yeah. I, he did I would back up into that. No. I got stuck there. Dave's term ends June. And so without the Dave's knowledge or consent, this is my shameless plug for reappointment for Dave Opper. As our board chair, he, what you all, I'm sure know, is the learning curve to understand the mission and work of region ten is very challenging. It takes a year at least of being on the board to understand it.
And each of these representatives bring, a a different strategy, a different level of expertise, a different frame of reference, all very valuable to our organization. I wanna thank you for their appointment, support Dave's reappointment while I have you here, and, and I I will take questions from there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Lolly, I'll start with you, sir. I'm you know, I guess the first time I started dealing with you, Lisa, was, four or five years ago when we started talking about what is is now the
anchor program. And I just wanna say that you were very helpful at that point in helping us understand what has to happen from your end of things. I'm curious as to how you have a sense or what your sense is of how the city and the county, of course, have slightly different programs, slightly different acronyms, if nothing else, but how those are working and what changes, if anything, you think you you would identify that we would need? I'll say that the one of the greatest values of the hearts and anchor team
is that they are not constricted by some of the regulatory oversight requirements that are required for community service sports. So both of those teams were built, strategically and with enough, agility to be responsive in creative ways without having to do some of the things that a regulatory environment such as Region 10 requires. So that's been of great value. I think that, we always, we have daily conversations with both teams even if it's
consultation. And at times, we partner around services, other times not, and that's okay. What is true is that we each have a role. What I see is that for the Marcus alert, between now and 2028, we will need to create that formalized framework and MOU that connects to the triage levels that, the Marcus Alert requires and bring a strong connection so that PSAPs can transfer calls
to the call center for people in crisis the the communications, our our our communications folks, so that they can transfer calls to our to the 988 crisis line. That's the work to do. So How much of that is gonna end up getting dictated by the state in any event? I think I think I know you talk about developing an MOU, but, The MOU is prescribed. I think the question is and this was the question four, five years ago. What do we want for the residents of the city of Charlottesville? And then if we want, multiple core response teams or, we want to be sure
communication and 988 have that type, call transfer connection, then let's build that. What we're waiting on related to the Marcus alert is one, there's some supposed to be promised in 2028. I say supposed to be. Nothing is, you know, nothing is for certain. And two, what the, those baseline requirements are just that baseline requirements. And so let's meet the baseline requirements, the MOU and the and the triage levels,
and then have a a more robust conversation about what else do we want for this city. And I think the anchor team is a great, start to that. Thank you. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. Excuse me. First of all, peanut, I thank you for coming to see us, and thank you for all of the work that Regent ten does. I was on the board for just a little while, and it really is an amazing organization. One of the things that I've wondered, in my time here, and since I'm not gonna be here next year during budget season, I'll just Which we know you will
miss. Yes. I will. I can't recall exactly how the funding formula works in terms of the various counties that make up, Region 10. My recollection is that the funding in absolute numbers hasn't really gone up that much, at least over the time that I'm here I've been here. So just a pitch, you know, particularly since I'm not here. And we have, miss Fleischer who will be here next year and is a expert in this field. My pitch is that y'all ask for more money.
Thank you. We did ask for more money. Okay. Yes. We did. Very easy for me to do, but I I No comment. I sincerely, you know, the CSB is is, you know, it's foundational for the way the state government has set things up. It's it's really foundational. And every time we have a conversation not every time. We often have conversations about one problem or another or issue or opportunity, whatever you wanna call it. And region ten is always in one of those sentences.
Region ten will help with this. Region ten will help with that. And, anyway, good luck, mister senior manager. Natalie? No questions for me right now, but mostly in the interest of saving time. Thank you so much for everything that you do. Thank you. Oh, and do we do we have a closed session? Yes. Then I mean, even right now, might it might make sense for us to move the item after this to the beginning of our regular meeting? I mean, I mean, otherwise, we're gonna have, like Fifteen minutes. Ten minutes total for them. I don't know how long we're gonna need, so that's Yeah. We can do do we have a big closed session?
We have three items to discuss. Yeah. It might take a little time. Yeah. Go ahead. That clock is wrong. Yes. Yes. I know. But, I mean, we're still gonna be very rushed on a topic that thing. Yeah. It's pop important to the public, but whatever. So for to to to add to Brian's question, the city has given about $1,200,000 total, and that's been completely flat and unchanged since at least 2022.
So at least four years. You know, if the city was open to increasing that local funding to increase service or, provide an additional service within, Charlottesville. Is that something that would be, that you would see as feasible or or, a value to the organization? It is feasible. I think the quest what I hear you asking is our primary responsibility for city council is to serve the city of Charlottesville. And so how do do we develop services that come back to Charlottesville residents?
And could it be a special project? Does it, how does that work? And the answer is yes and yes. We we have some clear ideas about gaps in service. I'm sure you all have clear ideas as well. If there was an initiative that we wanted to partner on for the city, yes. In fact, Regent ten is able and willing to do that. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, it's just, not as a just as an observation, I think, in in our budget, I think region ten is the, you know, our only organization that has
been completely flat for that length of time. And I, you know, I don't know everything involved in that, but it does I would just echo what Brian has said and that it sticks out and that it's very unique that it's been that flat and unchanged, particularly in the environment, as you said, where we know there's, just even greater budget challenges that you're facing gonna be facing. A related question is, you know, if there's a partner agency who on the housing side is able to provide assistance on the the landlord piece and, you know, there's
funding sources from the city or other places. Is that a partnership that you would see as feasible or open to as an organization? Are there challenges, like, that you see there in terms of just what that practically really looks like? What practically that looks like for us is that we, have current partnerships where we provide mental health skill building services or case management. We provide wrap around services and supports to people in housing situations. We also can administer the vouchers. So that is how it works for us.
Gosh. If there were, you know, a shelter, in place, would there be outreach that region ten would want to do there? Absolutely. Would there be an ability to try to connect people to services and supports for folks who are being served, absolutely, we would have an interest in that. Yes. And final question for now is is you've touched on I mean, you all do incredibly important work. It's also very difficult work and a very challenging, you know, budget situation statewide and
federally. As part of that, where where do you see, you know, where Region 10 is right now in terms of the competitiveness of your wages, you know, in the general market? And how much turnover do you see throughout the organization? And, you know, is that wage and and benefits level a significant part of that? We have an 11%, vacancy rate right now, point in time, 2% turnover. We have pockets that are more challenging than others, nursing being one, licensed clinicians being
one, direct support professionals who work in our day program for folks with developmental disabilities. Our salary ranges are not, out of line broadly, which true is it's deceptive because what then we can hire someone for within that range is the challenge. So if region ten region ten spent, I think, up to ten years without COLA
increases for a period of time, fifteen, twenty years ago, hard times. And people stayed through that. A number of people in this room stayed through those hard times. But what that meant was that our internal people with tenure at the organization were not, getting raises on pace with what we are competitive to bring people in for. So today, if I have a twenty six year region ten veteran, can I hire
a person a year out of school at the same or less than my twenty six year veteran, right, from an internal equity standpoint? And that's the challenge. So a rising tide lifts all boats, and our goal is to, raise, in, to to reward people who have stayed with region ten, raise salaries to the extent we can. We push that limit every year so that we retain our people, but that within that salary range, we can hire new people connected with internal equity at a higher
range. We are, we are 10 to 20,000 low across the board, I would imagine. Like, just as, you know, in a very casual way in this conversation. So our salary ranges if you go out online, It may or may not be so off. It's what we can hire people into based on those factors. Yeah. And I'll I'll just say I appreciate that. I think that's so important for the community to hear because, I mean, that's just so foundational, even that ballpark number of being 10 to $20,000 below and, you know, just all the impacts of that.
And, obviously, we've seen it in the city, in our own context, you know, especially during the pandemic and how that distorted wages and what we needed to do. So, appreciate that. And appreciate the information and presentation tonight as well. Thank you. I just had a couple of comments as I just wanna, concur about the the the salaries for my many years working at the career center. We will often get some workers who, you know, wanted to change, jobs because of, you know, better compensation or something. So I'm glad that that's something that you're you're looking at.
And I I don't remember if it was Brian or Lloyd that talked about, you know, the the importance of you in the in the community. I was meeting with the some people from Impact already, the the organization and and I'm sure that again, Region 10 will be mentioned in probably some of their priorities, this this year. So you're integral in what we do in the community. I didn't realize the impact that you have on housing. I think it's over four hundred and and twenty, you know, units.
So that's that's significant. So thank you for your work in there. And, you had mentioned something about, the community, the surveys. If you could just spend a minute talking about how you get gather community input on what you do in your programs. So we, offer, quarterly a request for feedback for people actively in service. We do discharge quest surveys for people leaving service, and then we have an opportunity
for people to offer feedback on our website at any time. In addition, we have access to our compliance, staff. If there's a concern about something that occurred and we have a formal process to respond, and then a statewide number if somebody wishes to call the state. What is, also just part of the culture of what occurs is that we sit in partnership with stakeholders and community partners every week, and we are receiving informal verbal
feedback, regularly around what people would like to see us do more or different or the same. So in all those ways. Right. Right. And I think the informal is, you you know, that's how I get a lot of my input, you know, just seeing people in the streets. So Yeah. I wanna thank the city residents for serving on the board, and your incredible staff for being here, and if you could give the, the resident manager that went out
and Savannah Brock. And and and the staff that, you know, gave up their weekend, that is those are untold stories about the impact that you are doing and how we're serving the client. So thank you and please share, our our gratitude to them as well that we know that they're making a difference out there and we appreciate the work that they do. So, thank you all so much. Appreciate y'all so thank you. Thank you. Alright. So mister mayor, we'd like to move the third item to the next agenda on
December 1. That actually gives staff additional time and no rush, and then it wouldn't really work for some of them to be able to stay a little bit longer. Okay. Thank you, Kelly and staff. Appreciate y'all for being here. So Do we have to vote on that since it's changing the agenda? It's just a report. So Okay. We'll just make sure it's on the next agenda. Great. Thank you all so much. We're gonna both agree to go into closed session. Thank you, region ten and everyone for being here. Yeah. One, pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2 dash thirty seven eleven a seven for consultation with legal counsel pertaining to actual or
probable litigation where such consultation or briefing an open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body. And two, pursuant to Virginia code section 2.2 dash thirty seven eleven eight a eight, which permits closed sessions for consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by public body regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel. Second. We doing verbal vote. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Yes. All opposed, please say no.
Thank you.